Metatrader expert advisors dissected.
Million Dollar Pips live forward test
Trading style: scalping, very short trade duration, multiple concurrent positions possible; due to the low average number of pips per trade, the results for this EA will certainly vary greatly from one broker to another.
Currency pairs: EURUSD (USDJPY and GBPUSD versions exist as a separate purchases worth $99 each)
Timeframe: M1
Expert Advisor price: $99
NFA compliance: full (FIFO setting has to be enabled)
Refund policy: 30 days, no questions asked
Read more at the Million Dollar Pips website
Buy Million Dollar Pips
Birt’s forward test
EURUSD
Settings: all default, except: Risk 1.5, FIFO disabled; starting with 11.10.2011, Stop Orders, Hard Stop Trailing and AutoAdjust_ECN are set to false
Started: 07.08.2011
Broker: PrivateFx
Account type: live, micro
Starting balance: $300
GBPUSD
Settings: all default, except: Risk 1.5, FIFO false, Stop Orders false, Hard Stop Trailing false and AutoAdjust_ECN false
Started: 24.10.2011
Broker: PrivateFx
Account type: live, micro
Starting balance: $300
Current version: 1.2.0
USDJPY
Settings: all default, except: Risk 1.5, FIFO false, Stop Orders false, Hard Stop Trailing false and AutoAdjust_ECN false
Started: 24.10.2011
Broker: PrivateFx
Account type: live, micro
Starting balance: $300
Official forward test
Started: 05.05.2011
Broker: ThinkForex
Account type: demo
Starting balance: $1000
User accounts
Started: 21.10.2011
Settings: risk=3, max_orders=4, FIFO=false, group_orders=true, AutoApplyECN=false
Broker: IBFX
Account type: live standard
Owner: Fred
Started: 06.09.2011
Settings: unspecified
Broker: IBFX
Account type: live
Owner: Professor53
Note: the account is using a proprietary VPS, search for Professor53′s comments below.
Backtests
After seeing the comment posted by Eli below I decided to run my own backtest. I used Dukascopy tick data with a fixed spread of 1.5 and reset all the EA settings to their default values. As you will see below, the result was insanely good (although with a significant drawdown, probably because I used the default risk), but I believe backtesting this particular EA is not realistic due to the very low pip targets. In all likelihood, it will behave very, very different from a broker to another and testing with Dukascopy data is totally irrelevant since you’re most likely not going to run it on a Dukascopy account.
Million Dollar Pips 1.6 2007-2011 tick data, spread 1.5, default settings
| Symbol | EURUSD (Euro vs US Dollar) | ||||
| Period | 1 Minute (M1) 2007.03.30 16:01 - 2011.08.05 19:59 | ||||
| Model | Every tick (the most precise method based on all available least timeframes) | ||||
| Parameters | Configuration="================ Configuration"; Show_Diagnostics=true; Show_Debug=false; Verbose=false; Silent=false; NumOrders_Level_Info_1="Range of 0..4, adjusts Number of Trades"; NumOrders_Level_Info_2="0=Max Profit% 4=Max Num.Trades/Rebates"; NumOrders_Level=0; Additional_Channels_Info_1="Range of 0..8"; Additional_Channels_Info_2="Safely improves trading frequency"; Additional_Channels=1; Slippage_Info_1="Lower value improves profit rate,"; Slippage_Info_2="higher: trades more but less accurately"; Slippage=3; Username=""; Magic=112226; Max_Simultaneous_Orders=8; FIFO_Info_1="if Simultaneous_Orders>1 ,"; FIFO_Info_2="u.s. citizens should turn it on"; FIFO_Info_3="(required for NFA compliance)"; FIFO=true; OrderCmt="MDP_EURUSD_1.1.6"; Pessimistic_Testing_Info_1="Simulate bad live account conditions"; Pessimistic_Testing_Info_2="during backtesting (i.e. Slippages)"; Pessimistic_Testing_Info_3="(this has no effect in FIFO mode :"; Pessimistic_Testing_Info_4=" +turn off FIFO for "optimistic")"; Pessimistic_Testing=false; Funky_Exit_Info="Exit trades sooner"; Funky_Exit=true; AutoApply_ECN_Info_1="Use ECN account settings automatically"; AutoApply_ECN_Info_2="when ECN conditions detected"; AutoApply_ECN=true; Money_Management="---------------- Money Management"; Min_Lots=0.001; Max_Lots=1000; Risk_Info_1="Fixed risk % of balance per order"; Risk_Info_2="NOTE : Trading volume is very variable"; Risk_Info_3="as stop losses are in different distances"; Risk=1.5; Risk_Mode_CommPips_Info_1="Risk is commensurate with target pips"; Risk_Mode_CommPips_Info_2="otherwise it's only determined by %"; Risk_Mode_CommPips=true; SL_TP_Trailing="---------------- SL / TP / Trailing"; Trailing_Resolution=5; Use_Stop_Orders_Info_1="Set true if 1) your broker doesn't deal with"; Use_Stop_Orders_Info_2="opening slippage when executing STOP orders"; Use_Stop_Orders_Info_3="and 2) broker stop level is <= 2.0 pips"; Use_Stop_Orders=true; Hard_Stop_Trailing_Info_1="Trailing hard Stop/Loss and Take/Profit"; Hard_Stop_Trailing_Info_2="Otherwise, doing it in programmatic manner"; Hard_Stop_Trailing_Info_3="and SL/TP is just for covering"; Hard_Stop_Trailing=true; | ||||
| Bars in test | 1610964 | Ticks modelled | 56219367 | Modelling quality | 99.00% |
| Mismatched charts errors | 0 | ||||
| Initial deposit | 10000.00 | ||||
| Total net profit | 149692548.28 | Gross profit | 237886860.68 | Gross loss | -88194312.40 |
| Profit factor | 2.70 | Expected payoff | 11540.56 | ||
| Absolute drawdown | 6138.15 | Maximal drawdown | 4125000.00 (9.74%) | Relative drawdown | 63.67% (8884.05) |
| Total trades | 12971 | Short positions (won %) | 8884 (46.48%) | Long positions (won %) | 4087 (46.37%) |
| Profit trades (% of total) | 6024 (46.44%) | Loss trades (% of total) | 6947 (53.56%) | ||
| Largest | profit trade | 569000.00 | loss trade | -95000.00 | |
| Average | profit trade | 39489.85 | loss trade | -12695.31 | |
| Maximum | consecutive wins (profit in money) | 55 (1606.65) | consecutive losses (loss in money) | 83 (-1236.85) | |
| Maximal | consecutive profit (count of wins) | 5722000.00 (19) | consecutive loss (count of losses) | -2370000.00 (44) | |
| Average | consecutive wins | 6 | consecutive losses | 7 | |
- #336 written by Garry Higgins December 8, 2011 (5 months ago)
- #338 written by Hillbilly December 9, 2011 (5 months ago)
Hey, guys,
Maybe one of you gents can enlighten me on something that’s recently begun to happen.
Beginning sometime last week, during MDP-entry-worthy moves, my MDP has been tossing out Buy/Sell Stop orders, none of which get executed. It’s still made several typical Buy/Sell executions, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing unless this new propensity for Stop orders is knocking me out of real ones…
I DO have Stop Orders set to True, as Birt indicates is appropriate above, but it’s curious because in 2-3 mos of running MDP, i don’t recall it placing a single Buy/Sell Stop order til last week…?
Any ideas? Thanks and have a great weekend!
- #339 written by Anthony December 9, 2011 (5 months ago)
- #340 written by Hillbilly December 11, 2011 (5 months ago)
- #341 written by Anthony December 12, 2011 (5 months ago)
- #342 written by Hillbilly December 12, 2011 (5 months ago)
In all fairness to Support, after emailing them a 3rd time they stated that it was normal. I’m still curious why it just began all of a sudden. There are too many unknowns in this business as it is, and I like to know what to expect from the tools I buy. Guess I’m just funny that way. Have a great week, and merry Christmas!
- #346 written by gristar December 19, 2011 (5 months ago)
Recently we encountered this error with MillionDollarPipsEURUSD_1.2.0:
00:00:00 Memory handler: cannot allocate 193256008 bytes of memory
00:00:00 HistoryBase: not enough memory for ‘EURUSD1′ in AddTick()When that happens, MDP continuous putting trades non stop. MDP has costed us lose of thousands. It does not only happen one time but twice with different broker and computer. Right now we have stop MDP from running live.
I have emailed William Morrison and still waiting for the reply. will update you guys again
- #347 written by birt December 19, 2011 (5 months ago)
That doesn’t sound like an issue with MDP but rather with your MT4 client.
Anyway, I recommend doing the following:
- Close all unused charts.
- Remove all symbols that aren’t used (right click on the symbol list and click hide all, it will only hide the symbols that have no orders or charts).
- Limit the number of bars in history to 8192.
- Limit the number of bars on the chart to 4096.
That should reduce the memory usage of your MT4 client and hopefully avoid such errors in the future. You should do it in environments where memory is limited even with other EAs – not only does it save memory, but it also saves traffic since the quotes for the pairs you don’t use are no longer received.
- #348 written by gristar December 21, 2011 (4 months ago)
This is the reply i got from William.
You need more ram in your computer.You can set silent = true in the settings.
ALso delete the .hst files in History folder of MT4. And delete logs in MT4 folder. Then restart computer. THat hsould help
I am running other EA as well in one client. However other EA is safe but MDP making trade after trade for hours until I notice it. I am pretty sure my QuadCore and 4GB RAM is sufficient. I notice it happen when I run back test using the same client. Not going to run it live cause do not want to wake up one day see my account burnt
- #349 written by birt December 21, 2011 (4 months ago)
I can offer some further advice:
- Never run a backtest from the same MT4 client that you are using for running an EA forward test. Some EAs (not sure if this includes MDP or not) are unable to properly handle two sets of data passed to the DLL and overwrite values in memory resulting in trades being taken erroneously on the forward test. To avoid this, either simply make a copy of the whole MT4 folder for backtesting and use the investor login when it asks for a password, thus also satisfying the need for a particular account number that some EAs might have.
- 4GB should definitely be enough, but nonetheless I would advise a thorough check of your computer. First thing I would look at is whether the swap file is set up correctly. You’re the first person I hear having that error.
- If you intend to run multiple EAs on the same account, it’s always a good idea to run them from different MT4 clients, not for memory issues but for trade context issues.
- Check the memory usage of your terminal.exe. It should not exceed 100 MB if you’re not backtesting with it. Even when backtesting, it should probably sit well under 300 MB. If the memory usage constantly increases for a terminal that you’re not running backtests with, it means the EA you’re running has a memory leak.
Finally, like I said, you’re the first person that I hear complaining about this problem. Before dismissing the EA completely on account of it, I would suggest looking into the multiple suggestions offered, including William’s.
- #350 written by weston December 19, 2011 (4 months ago)
- #351 written by birt December 19, 2011 (4 months ago)
- #353 written by Garry Higgins December 21, 2011 (4 months ago)
- #354 written by Brian December 22, 2011 (4 months ago)
- #355 written by kayla December 24, 2011 (4 months ago)
Hey Brian,
which VPS-Host do you use for executing trades von Universal FX?
Do you have the Live-Server-IP, because i want to test the Latency!Thanks
Brian:
This EA roxx, the only thing is with a slow broker and VPS you don’t have any chance to survive this game. I tested many ECN brokers over months, but now i trade with Universal FX, the execution is the fastet that i ever seen on a Metatrader.
- #357 written by Jean-Paul December 22, 2011 (4 months ago)
Hi Brian
thanks for the Universal FX tip. My current ECN broker Pepperstone is somewhat ‘moody’ i get execution times of between 300ms to 2000ms. Also, i optimized my VPS to be very close (<10ms) to the ECN servers.this due (i believe) to MDP recommending Pepperstone as broker, which makes many smaller accounts jump into the trade at the same time congesting the Pepperstone server.
is Universal FX lower consistent and lower than 300ms?
- #358 written by tom December 24, 2011 (4 months ago)
Hey Birt, you seem to know your stuff on this, just wondered if you could help me out a bit, I just got this EA yesterday, but its throwing out
2011.12.24 06:36:48 2011.12.22 00:00 MillionDollarPipsEURUSD_1.2.0 EURUSD,M1: WARNING offset overflow:993 period:5
about 20 times In the back-test log.
Any ideas?? - #360 written by Peter December 26, 2011 (4 months ago)
Just thought i let you guys know that the creator is a cheater:
void f0_0(double &ada_0[]) {
double ld_4 = ada_0[0];
double ld_12 = ada_0[1];
if (Year() == 2009) {
if (Month() <= 5) {
ld_4 = 2.5 * ld_4;
ld_12 /= 2.5;
} else {
if (Month() == 6 || Month() == 7) {
ld_4 = 3.5 * ld_4;
ld_12 /= 3.5;
} else {
ld_4 = 1.5 * ld_4;
ld_12 /= 1.5;
}
}
}
if (Year() == 2010) {
if (Month() == 5) {
ld_4 = 4.0 * ld_4;
ld_12 /= 4.0;
} else {
ld_4 = 1.5 * ld_4;
ld_12 /= 1.5;
}
}
ada_0[0] = ld_4;
ada_0[1] = ld_12;
}- #362 written by birt December 26, 2011 (4 months ago)
What he posted might be an instance of curve fitting but it’s not easily possible to tell if it’s actually being used by the EA or not since the values are sent to the DLL.
I can confirm that the function is present in 1.2.0 but as we all (should) know, backtesting MDP is quite worthless so I don’t see why would they bother with something like that. To answer AzHofi, the source came from a decompiler.
- #365 written by Peter January 3, 2012 (4 months ago)
- #366 written by Linton January 7, 2012 (4 months ago)
- #369 written by Brian January 9, 2012 (4 months ago)
Hi to all, i hope you had a good weekend. I made good profits last week and i hope that i can do this in the future. Now i have my live acc@myfxbook if you are interested.
http://www.myfxbook.com/members/smithfx1/mdp-live/213998
Do you know if there are any robots like MDP? I mean fast scalpers with tight SL/TP.
- #370 written by Anthony January 9, 2012 (4 months ago)
Forex Thor is another super scalper similar to MDP. I would not recommend putting them in the same account. They will sometimes interfere with each other.
- #371 written by Aries January 11, 2012 (4 months ago)
Hi Birt, I setup MDP on 9 Jan 2012. Since then till I post this, there is no trade from MDP EA and William replied the EA would trade soon, also when there are spike but till now nothing moves.
I would like to find out whether has your MDP EA been trading since 9 Jan 2012 till now? There is no errors on the diagnostics and logs.
Broker: Pepperstone
VPS to live.pepperstone.com: 2 to 8ms.
Settings as recommended here.- #372 written by dalec January 11, 2012 (4 months ago)
- #373 written by Aries January 11, 2012 (4 months ago)
Hi dalec, precisely what you have mentioned but I need more specific information as is the MDP trading on 9 Jan to 11 Jan as it is not reflect in the chart as per the myfxbook (unless I am seeing wrong)…
My point is if Birt’s EA is trading and mine is not, obviously something is not right, my configuration? etc so I can raise the question to William.
I need to know MDP EA is trading between 9 Jan to 11 Jan, if you can help me to check also, or anyone here using MDP EA.
Many thanks.
- #375 written by Remus January 11, 2012 (4 months ago)
Birt has a MDP forward test page (http://eareview.net/live-forward-test/million-dollar-pips). You can get the myfxbook tracking links from there (for EURUSD it is http://www.myfxbook.com/members/birt/million-dollar-pips-eurusd/145575).
The answer is that the his EA did not trade since Jan 6th.
Jan 9th is just a day ago, you need to have more patience. - #378 written by Dave January 11, 2012 (4 months ago)
Aries, my MDP account had not traded from the 6th untill lunch time today and as you say, all losses. I think patience is the name of the game here. I am with Pepperstone as this was the recommended broker given when I purchased MDP and I have had a warning up for the past week… Connection/Broker slow… maybe there server just cant handle things now?
- #379 written by Aries January 12, 2012 (4 months ago)
Hi Dave, precisely what I encountered now. After I got 1 group trade, the connection/broker slow error popup. When I ping my VPS to the server, it shows only 2ms…so where the heck is the error coming from. I changed the max simultaneous to 4. I have also emailed William about this.
I hope MDP allows some tweaking on this as I am seeing trades opportunity from an indicator which I has to trade manually. Sigh…
- #380 written by Remus January 12, 2012 (4 months ago)
- #381 written by Chad January 12, 2012 (4 months ago)
- #382 written by birt January 13, 2012 (4 months ago)
They most definitely affect performance. I changed them frankly because it was performing too well, better than most people can get in their accounts. The point of my website is to offer a good, realistic perspective on the performance of expert advisors by providing results that can be reproduced in other live accounts opened with different brokers, unlike other sites that show you demo results and where MDP has made millions.
These being said, it’s wise to keep the stop settings set to true on your account.
- #385 written by Trev January 13, 2012 (4 months ago)
My average spread with my broker for Eur Usd is about 2.5 pips…seems to be better than a lot of brokers, and the execution is lightning fast. On your back test you did it with 1.5 pips fixed spread…but on one of the brokers you recommend using this on (liteforex), their Eur Usd spread is fixed at 3 pips.
Why did you choose 1.5 pips as the fixed spread? Could you post a back test that uses 3 pips as the fixed spread?
Thanks!
- #387 written by birt January 13, 2012 (4 months ago)
Umm, I don’t recall recommending LiteForex for MDP. In fact, quite the opposite would be true, it would most likely not be profitable there. You might be referring to the fact that I mentioned the LiteForex floating spread account (which by the way has variable spread, not fixed) for the 10k lotsize that gives very good control on money management. I haven’t tried it there but in all likelihood, it’s not suitable for MDP and other EAs that trade similarly fast.
I chose 1.5 pips spread because that’s about the worst you can typically get when trading with an ECN broker. Like Anthony said, MDP has a cap of 2.0 pips above which it will not trade. If your broker has a 2.5 spread average, I wouldn’t recommend running MDP there even if you do increase the 2.0 limit manually. In any case, do not rely on MDP backtesting – sure, it might look good, but it’s not really indicative – live performance doesn’t look even remotely like the backtests in the case of this particular EA.
- #388 written by Vinish January 14, 2012 (4 months ago)
Hey Birt! Having a great time reading all your reviews. Thank you for all the hard work!
I would like to check on a certain setting that MDP Employs , ‘Hard-stop trailing’. I have set ‘Use_stop_orders’ to False but ‘Hard-stop trailing’ to TRUE.
Could you advice on what will happen if i turn ‘Hard-stop trailing’ to false like you have? Is there an inbuilt mechanism that will exit the trade? And does it tend to be more profitable?
Thank you!
- #389 written by birt January 14, 2012 (4 months ago)
Thanks for the nice words!
I would advise keeping both stop parameters set to true since it’s almost always more profitable this way. There is a mechanism that will exit the trade but it’s not as efficient as the hard stop trailing. I had special reasons to set the stop settings to false (they’re posted here in the comments section somewhere if you’re interested to find out more info).
- #391 written by Aspro January 19, 2012 (3 months ago)
- #392 written by Anthony January 19, 2012 (3 months ago)
- #393 written by Aspro January 20, 2012 (3 months ago)
- #394 written by Remus January 20, 2012 (3 months ago)
- #395 written by Aspro January 23, 2012 (3 months ago)
I know what you’re saying, but that’s not how it pans out. eg v2.0 entered with 89 Lots that day while v1.6 entered with 53 Lots. MDP said they fixed some money management issues in v1.6 so maybe that’s the difference. I’m just helping people (and me) quantify the risks we are taking more accurately. Thanks for the discussion.
- #396 written by Remus January 23, 2012 (3 months ago)
- #398 written by Steve January 19, 2012 (3 months ago)
No one should ever put their hard earned money left to trade by a bot, period. There is no such thing as an ea sold for $99, lol that will continuously grow a real money account. If there was such a product, the inventor would never sell it. Especially for $99!!! Wake up people. If you want to trade the forex market, learn what makes prices move. Learn chart patterns for highly probable reversals etc. I can’t believe I have to even write this. It is common sense. Anyone running one of these will blow up their account eventually. That is guaranteed.
- #399 written by birt January 19, 2012 (3 months ago)
Here’s a wake-up call for you: if you have a really good forex robot and you use it safely, it brings say 50-100% per year. On the other hand, if you decide to sell it for $99 and it sells 1000 copies, whoop-dee-doo you made 100k, which is probably several orders of magnitude more than you’d have made trading it yourself. Take FAP Turbo for instance, which sold over 50k copies (despite not being a particularly good EA); multiply that by $150 or whatever it goes for and you might get the point of selling forex strategies.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that all EAs are good. Many (likely most) expert advisors are scams one way or another, but among them there are some that have a genuine potential for profit and the whole idea of my site is to find those and point them out.
As for the “guaranteed blow up”, unless you use an unlimited martingale or grid EA, that’s actually quite hard if you don’t overleverage. How come there are so many profitable real accounts on myfxbook that are running commercial EAs? Or perhaps it’s all a giant conspiracy, right?
- #400 written by Steve January 20, 2012 (3 months ago)
LOL…the reason they show profit now is because they haven’t been up long enough to show what will really happen! Do you actually think you can have one of these running a live account for the next 20 years and expect profits year over year?? These developers for the most part rehash older ea’s, tweak them a bit and resell them under a new name. It’s common knowledge in this industry of these practices. The reason people buy them is because they are relatively cheap, and they are desperate to make easy money! I’ve got news for you, nothing comes easy. No type of investing comes easy. It takes a lot of trial and error and and whole lot of determination to finally become a successful trader. Don’t you think the banking institutions would be using this robot if it could turn $250 into over a million in a year? Of course they would, but they don’t because these are all based on back tests. These bots cannot adjust to changing markets, and the markets change all of the time. What worked last year may not work in the future. Keep dreaming, keep losing money, and keep chasing after the next hyped up bot that comes along. Most probably next week.
- #401 written by Remus January 20, 2012 (3 months ago)
Steve, so what are you trying to do here? Educate us all about how stupid we are for even trying to profit from automated systems? Who said anything about running the same EA for the next 20 years? Maybe the same EA with the same settings won’t work for more than a couple of years, maybe even less than 1 year if the robot had too many optimizations built in.
The whole effort point of Birt’s site is to provide 3rd party information, since the vendors rarely tell the whole truth. If he and his readers are wasting time, because of all the reasons you mentioned, so be it. I know I learned a lot from the experience with EAs, and most of that know-how can be translated to manual trading. Indeed, I did not make a fortune just from trading EAs, and that was never my target. But since I seriously stared trading EAs I did make more money than my other passive income streams combined, and that for me is an accomplishment.
- #402 written by birt January 20, 2012 (3 months ago)
Steve, I’m going to take a wild guess: you fell for some Forex EA scams in the past and instead of blaming your poor choices, you decided to blame the whole industry and label it as a collective scam, does that sound about right?
You can’t be more wrong, though. I know a lot of people who are actively making money with commercial expert advisors, some of them even in excess of 50% per year. And that’s using mostly Forex robots that can be found in the EA Top here. It’s not easy as you would imagine and it takes a lot of time to research, filtering out products to find those that are potentially profitable and it might even be that some of them only work for 1-2 years, but using an EA portfolio and taking a smart approach to its management can be very lucrative. If you wish to deny that in spite of people who tell you otherwise and in spite of evidence that can be easily witnessed on sites such as myfxbook, so be it. I’m guessing that there are still people denying the existence of electricity because they can’t see it, but it’s not something that I have the will to correct.
I’m not saying one can become an overnight millionaire by investing $1k – far from me that thought. it’s completely misguided to think that you’d become rich in a period even as long as 1-2 years with such a low starting amount. Like I said, it’s somewhat safe to make 50-100% yearly returns but getting from 1k to 1mil in that rhythm will take quite a long time. Personally, I don’t know anyone who became a millionaire by trading Forex EAs, but I’ve heard from a whole bunch of people who are making decent profits.
Finally, since you’re obviously not interested in automated strategies, may I inquire how did you even land on this website that deals exclusively with such products?
- #403 written by Steve January 20, 2012 (3 months ago)
I tried one years and years ago to find out what the ea industry is all about. If you really want to make true lasting profits for life, educate yourself on the market. Otherwise, you are subjecting yourself to certain failure. All ea’s blow at some point and time. Even if you could get some profits out of one , why not make so much more by understanding what moves the markets? Just don’t rely on them for 100% of your trading career. I trade manually and would never do it any other way. The most successful traders in the world trade manually! They do not rely on over produced software when it comes to their nestegg. Do what you feel is right with your hard earned money, but there is no substitute for good sound investing techniques. Once I dedicated myself to learning how to trade the spot fx market, I have sound investment tools that will last a lifetime. No ea will ever give you that, not for $99, lol
- #404 written by birt January 20, 2012 (3 months ago)
So you’re saying that manual trading is foolproof and that’s the only way to go? If you’re trying so hard to convince people, why not post a statement to your manual trading account? Most traders agree that where emotion is involved, the risk of loss is quite large, but you seem to be of a different opinion.
Also, I fail to see how you’re competent in judging a whole industry when all you ever tried was one product. That’s very much like trying a pair of jeans that are perhaps too small for you then proceeding to bash the whole jeans industry and telling everyone that they shouldn’t buy jeans and that they’re fools for wearing them.
Nobody here said that a $99 EA will make profits for your whole life and that you can leave it as inheritance to your grandsons. The whole point is that some EAs are profitable but you seem to fail to grasp that in spite of all the evidence presented.
- #405 written by Steve January 20, 2012 (3 months ago)
- #406 written by birt January 20, 2012 (3 months ago)
What do you even mean by “these kinds of sites”? Did you stop and consider for a moment that if I wanted to, I could’ve easily deleted your comments here? Speaking of which, I’ve had just about enough of your completely unfounded remarks and of your refuse to comprehend the facts laid before you, so unless you intend to post a link to a statement of your manual trading account just so we can bow to your manual trading proficiency, I would kindly ask you to take your whole warning campaign elsewhere, misguided as it is – because it seems that you’re one of those people that will deny the existence of an apple even when it’s in front of them.
- #407 written by Anthony January 20, 2012 (3 months ago)
Hmmmmm. I wonder what the guys who run HFT systems would think of this statement?
I personally have strict technical strategies that have proven to be incredibly profitable, that cannot be traded manually due to the number of calculations necessary in a brief period. So, I suppose, at least by your statements, that those are just my imagination….even with the proven track record. Hehehe! I always knew I had a good imagination but never realized it was so good it was capable of changing reality. Anybody need me to imagine something into existence for them??
- #408 written by Steve January 20, 2012 (3 months ago)
Quick folks, buy the latest bot now out from the creators of MDP. He now has Fast Forex Millions!! LOL This is what I’m talking about. This is how these people make their money, not by trading, but peddling one product after another to unsuspecting hopefuls. Birt, go ahead and delete my posts! They’ve already been read and my point has been received! As far as my trading account, I would never let any stranger look at my account. Start with proven chart patterns for both bullish and bearish reversals in both trending markets. Gartley’s and butterfly’s are a good place to start. Good luck with trading. It should be done the proper way.
- #409 written by birt January 20, 2012 (3 months ago)
Good luck with your trading and fare well. Since you refuse to see facts that are in front of your nose and you bash stuff that you admittedly have absolutely no clue about, your biased opinions are no longer welcome here and while I am not going to delete any of your existing posts, I am kindly asking you to refrain from any further posting on my website and I’ll thank you in advance for that. Just for your information, there’s even a word for what you are doing: “trolling”, google it.
- #410 written by hillbilly January 20, 2012 (3 months ago)
Dude, the tripe you’ve persisted in regurgitation is so wrongheaded and on so many levels I wouldn’t know where to begin. I used to know an old guy who said, “Whether you’re dumb or not all depends on where you’re standing at the time.” Maybe you’d better go stand somewhere else, perhaps where there’s a greater population of discretionary traders…
- #411 written by Julien January 22, 2012 (3 months ago)
Hi there… Aside from all the negativity lol… Has anyone tried MDP with the broker FxPro ? I’m hesitating to buy the EA because it seems highly sensitive to broker, latency, ECN or not, etc… For information, Fx Pro MT4 accounts are not ECN, and the average latency from my laptop (I don’t use VPS yet) is about 40 ms… Is it worth trying ? Any idea ? Thanks in advance for any feedback (except Steve’s one lol) and thanks Birt for your useful website…
- #412 written by Remus January 22, 2012 (3 months ago)
Julien, two general things you can do before anyone replies about Fx Pro:
1) measure the execution time with ExTest tool from http://forex-expats.com/recommended/. That ignores liquidity, and if it’s low, like 300-500 ms, you COULD have a shot at profitability with MDP
2) measure the average spread; if it’s above 2.0, you’ll LIKELY not get trades by MDP, since it has a filter that requires 2.0 and below
- #414 written by Jean-Paul January 22, 2012 (3 months ago)
Julien,
dont do FXPro. i’ve had an account there. for FAST trading EA’s it’s not fast enough. using remus lantency tool, i got anywhere between 500 to 800ms. For manual discretionary trading a good broker with a broad range of instruments.
Try pepperstone that has it’s servers inside NY4 Equinix (www.equinix.com) facility. thats where Wall Street have at least part of their FX providing liquidity server.
Next, you absoultely need to have a VPS that is <2ms away from NY4. i have this combination running profitably, but at times lantency is slow, which makes you miss some trades. key is a fast broker (ECN with powerfull and speedy execution). Shop around MT4 brokers/VPS. I have two licences and keep trying to improve constantly. the more peoble run MDP with one specific broker, the less likely you get a (good) fill.
Remember if you have optimal conditions MDP can do dozens of trades within seconds/minutes. total risk is =0 #trades * risk per trade, can make a large hole into your account (my risk is 0.25% per trade)
hope this helps.- #415 written by Remus January 22, 2012 (3 months ago)
Thanks for sharing, Jean-Paul!
Julien, a few more comments: even if that tool gives you 300 ms, it does not mean you’ll get that for MDP. A good example if exactly Pepperstone NY, which in my case I trade from a 1-2 ms VPS, and still get fills like 1-2 seconds. I am using 0.01 and 0.10 lots as well, with same results (borderline profitable – after commissions is losing).
But if the tool shows you get something like 800 ms (I got that for several brokers, and did not even bother to try MDP there), then it’s a good indication to be a losing broker for MDP (and other super fast traders).
- #416 written by Aspro January 24, 2012 (3 months ago)
I was just talking to a broker who explained they had issues with liquidity when a scalping robot from Brazil was running. He said his company has engineered it so that the scalper will have trouble going for less than 3 pips profit. I wonder if this is relevant to MDP or the other robot recently released by the same vendor since MDP comes out of Brazil? It just shows that all backtesting can all of a sudden become irrelevant and we have to look out for changing broker setups!!!!
- #417 written by Remus January 24, 2012 (3 months ago)
My take is that brokers that play games existed and will exist, the same way as people are still falling for fishing scams. At the same time I see that more brokers realize that transparency pays off more, and they will win a larger customer base in the long run. So I’m not worried about that particular broker, or others that decide to interfere with the way EAs trade.
And the other robot recently released is not a scalper, so it won’t be affected by such broker games anyway.
- #418 written by Anthony January 24, 2012 (3 months ago)
Unfortunately, that isn’t true. We are dealing with corporations and their only reason for existence is to make money in the fastest way possible. My example is a fairly recent one.
Let me bring everyone’s attention to FXCM. http://forexmagnates.com/full-details-of-fxcms-class-action-suit/
They are one of the biggest FX brokers on the planet. They were caught red-handed ripping off their clients. My point is, even when they already make a lot of money by doing good business, they will still rip-off their clientele if they think they can get away with it.- #419 written by Remus January 24, 2012 (3 months ago)
Ok, but that is old news. I mean, it is almost 1 year old, and I’m glad it was posted all over the net, since I believe it to be the reason other brokers chose to play with the cards on the table. What I was talking about are recent developments, like last 6 months, comparing with what was available 12-18 months ago. At least in my experience I get better fills and service. I’m aware of that lawsuit, but am I too much of a dreamer to think that clients are now more aware of what can happen behind the scenes, and be ready to change the broker when it looks like it starts playing games? Or are you saying that everyone is dirty?
- #420 written by Anthony January 24, 2012 (3 months ago)
My point is, IF…..for whatever reason…..a big corporation thinks they can get away with playing dirty to increase their profit margin, they will. What it boils down to is profit. The only thing FXCM regrets is that they got caught, or didn’t stop soon enough to keep from getting caught. I guarantee there are other brokers who were doing the same thing, and they shut down those operations, at least for the time being. All because they didn’t want to run the risk of getting caught and having to pay it back.
You must always remember, this business is greed-based and greed-driven. Retail forex only exists because the big boys needed an easy way to resolve the little bits of odd change from the transactions. Once it got started, they realized it was a profitable business venture. Always remember, FX trading is about greed.
- #422 written by sam January 26, 2012 (3 months ago)
- #423 written by birt January 27, 2012 (3 months ago)
It probably won’t affect MDP but it’s a good idea to run separate MT4 clients for them nonetheless. The other 2 EAs are most likely not what caused your MDP to stop trading. I would suggest checking your logs, checking the comments on your MDP chart and ultimately emailing support for more information if you can’t figure what could be causing it on your own.
- #424 written by Albert January 27, 2012 (3 months ago)
Brit, I read your site daily. I hope that Steve’s input provides a bit more discussion. If you have not personally met anyone who has become a millionaire using EAs, then I ask has anyone who has reviewed this site? I hope so. And I hope they provide an introduction to Brit so that we may all be provided some comfort. I think your site is tremendous and I am using your advice now to test a few EAs. But I can’t help but feel skeptical and hoping the EAs I purchased will make some decent profits. 50% to 100% a year is dreamy. I am hoping to do better than other options and a solid 25% net would be terrific. Brit if you have not personally met anyone who has made millions using EAs, have you met anyone who has made half that or so?
- #426 written by Jean-Paul February 4, 2012 (3 months ago)
first, key to running mdp is speed of execution! demo acc are “executing” very fast because it is no real money. testing latency demo/real i found most broker are a lot slower in real accounts. if you get 300ms execcution time mdp should work. i run mdp on two brokers (real money and low risk) and had on the faster account dozens of trades, while on the slower about a third. the slower worked better on very profitable friday 3rd feb, while losing more than the faster during the week.
…. and of course my result are my result. yours will differ very much, even if you use same settings, brokers and VPS.key is trying and optimizing constantly.
- #427 written by Chris February 8, 2012 (3 months ago)
- #428 written by birt February 8, 2012 (3 months ago)
- #429 written by Chris February 8, 2012 (3 months ago)
- #430 written by birt February 8, 2012 (3 months ago)
- #431 written by Chris February 8, 2012 (3 months ago)
- #432 written by Anthony February 8, 2012 (3 months ago)
- #434 written by birt February 8, 2012 (3 months ago)
I’m guessing that you’re essentially asking what’s the best broker for MDP and I’m afraid I can’t answer that question. Pretty much everyone who got MDP profitable went through a lot of trial & error to land on a good combination and I understand why people are reluctant to divulge such information. Personally, I haven’t tried it on any broker other than PrivateFX so my experience is severely limited in this regard.
- #436 written by Gary February 10, 2012 (3 months ago)
Hello Birt….. I came across your web-site whilst searching for info. on MDP, I must say….. very educational!
After trawling through all the posts in this thread, I have to admit that, half the time, you fellas talk a language that I don’t comprehend, but although I’m a little challenged when it comes to things technical, I’m always willing to learn.
I recently bought MDP and put it on a demo account with Think Forex (recommended by the seller) and like one of your previous posters, I never had any movement at all (no trades) so I contacted support with my predicament and also questioned the settings from the manual, I found them very ambiguous!
In my mind, “default settings” means the settings that are already installed when you receive whatever it is that you’re trying to set…. ie. TV, mobile phone, MT4 EA…… you get my meaning? but then the manual gives recommended settings that are different! which confuses mere mortals like me!I received a blunt explanation for the lack of trades (give it time, it will work) and my settings query was ignored.
I was just about to give up and ask for a refund when I came across another forum where someone had suffered similar problems and had found another MT4 platform where it worked fine, so I tried it, and it did.
From 1st. Feb. up to today it’s turned a 5000 demo account into 7,652-34I’m thinking about putting it on a very modest live account in the near future, and therefore am looking at and researching what platform would be best and also what VPS would work well (I’ve never used one before).
Having read through all the posts on here I’m not asking anyone to lay everything on a plate, but would be gratefull for any info. that anyone could offer regarding platform, VPS and more importantly settings…. the obvious ones I understand eg. risk etc. and I thought I had picked up on some I had set wrong when I read Birt’s post early on about stops and how he had set them as false….. only to read later on that he would recommend against what he had done and set them as true!!!!
Birt….. or anyone….. is there anywhere on the net that you could point me, that explains these settings for EA’s (in laymens terms) as I said earlier, I want to learn, and would love to be able to make up my own mind and maybe exreriment with the settings to find what works best for me.So….. I’ve rambled on enough….. once again, great site Birt! and I’ll definately be popping back to see what I can learn!
- #437 written by Anthony February 10, 2012 (3 months ago)
Just to warn you ahead of time, MDP will not perform even remotely as good on a live account that it does on a demo. The 2 critical factors of MDP are slippage and speed of order execution/modification. Keep the number of orders low or you will get on the broker’s bad side. 4 max is my recommendation, with 2 being even better. set group orders to true. Keep your risk very low until you have seen how the broker does over the course of a few weeks. This will give you a good set of stats on MDP to see if your broker can handle MDP.
- #438 written by Gary February 10, 2012 (3 months ago)
Thanks for the response Antony…… from what I’ve read on here I already expect a lower performance on a live account.
You say “Keep the number of orders low or you will get on the broker’s bad side. 4 max is my recommendation, with 2 being even better. ”
Could you please explain why this would put me on the brokers bad side (I told you I was technically challenged! ) I was under the impression they made their proffit from orders.
Just looking at my settings and the Num_Orders level is set to 0 should I move this up to 2 ?
I have group orders already at true.
My risk is set at 2.0 (default) would you advise lowering to 1.5 ? (think I saw this in an earlier post)
Once again, thanks.- #439 written by Anthony February 10, 2012 (3 months ago)
Glad to help out!
To start, I recommend the lowest possible risk/lot size available to you because it will allow MDP to gather stats on your broker which will tell you if they can handle it without the risk of losing too much money. Now the reason using many orders on MDP will set your broker against you is due to lots of people using MDP. Many many brokers have had to upgrade their servers due to MDP users dumping many thousands of orders at them all at once. If you use more than 4, from what I have seen on forums, the brokers will tend to put a red flag on your account and when they detect MDP trying to dump a bunch of orders, they will stall your orders, or disconnect momentarily to keep you from being able to ram a bunch of order executions through all at once. If you keep the number of trades low, then you won’t send up a red flag.
Hope that clears it up a bit!
- #440 written by Jean-Paul February 10, 2012 (3 months ago)
Gary,
to come back on your questions why you’d be put on brokers bad side. all broker want your money. either they do it by charging you a fee per lot. (i.e. every time you trade you pay $8 per 100’000). or the make bid/ask spread wider than interbank market spread. say EUR/USD is quoted interbank 1.32515 to 1.32521 (a spread of 0.6) the broker would show you a 1.3251 to 1.3253. so that they make money any way you trade. MDP does not like large bid ask spreads and will not trade much. the comission charging broker are called ECN/STP the latter Dealing Desk Broker (DD). Some DD do not pass your order to the market and keep it, knowing that most trades will lose money, they will make what traders lose. if you are a profitable trader obviously the DD makes losses, so it invents all sorts of ‘technical’ obstacles to give you worse prices. so they put you in the corner where you systematically lose. Look to avoid DD brokers as the ‘Desk’ delays execution time. Straight Throught Processing (STP) broker just past your order to a liquidity hup.ECN/STP broker i use are UniversalFX and Pepperstoen (i got 2 licences and have positive but different returns.) sometimes MPD trades on both, some times on one only. sometimes MDP is profitable on one and loss making on the other dealing at the same instances. my risk is $5.- per trade initially. if MDP moves up my account balance by $100.- i move my risk per trade to $10.-
Pepperstone has its servers in NY4 datacenter which has many wall street banks server hosted, so execution time and quality is very good. you only need to find a VPS service nearby (1-2ms).good luck.
- #441 written by Gary February 10, 2012 (3 months ago)
Thanks for that Jean-Paul…… very informative, although it has made me a little paranoid to think what the big companies will get up to, especialy with someone like me who doesn’t really know what to look for!
I have MDP on a demo version with Universal FX and was considering moving to a live account…… just have to research what VPS to go for, when you say the VPS service has to be nearby…… do you mean that geographically?
I’m based in the UK and see that Universal FX have an office in London, and they recommend a VPS from UK2group with an ave. latency of around 4ms. anyone know of any reason I shouldn’t give them a try? - Comment Feed for this Post
Thanks for the explanation Birt. I hope others found it instructive. I notice the vendor uses 2.5% on one of his “live” accounts. Presumably this would only be possible with a 1:400 leverage. He should explain this!!!