Robot Trading: Six Weeks In

Things are going well. As you can see BREAD (Basic Robot Earning All Day) is starting to look like a winner. Return Day 0.1900% Sun 13 September 3.2339% Mon 14 3.1616% Tue 15 3.2615% Wed 16 2.1510% Thu 17 0.4442% Fri 18 --------------- 13.05% 0.1850% Sun 20 2.0259% Mon 21 0.9016% Tue 22 1.1536% Wed 23 0.2460% Thu 24 0.1338% Fri 25 ----------

Forex Robot Wars: BREAD vs ARTFAB

Two titans of the forex robot trading industry are squaring off in the search for higher profits.In the green corner we have BREAD (Basic Robot Earning All Day) with consistent earnings of approximately 1.2% per day. In the other green corner we have the relatively new ARTFAB (A Rising Tide Floats All Boats) with very promising early results. Already today ARTFAB has locked in over 3.0%

New Robot Rules Fermenting

It's late Friday night, the markets are closed, and all through the house not a creature is stirring. Well, nobody but the scheming trader hatching up another robotic system.As someone who designs software systems for a living I can assure you that, in terms of making improvements, nothing is more helpful than watching a system in action. The key point here is the concept of "seeing" the results

Recent Forex Results

I've had some success analyzing the AUDJPY over the last few days. In particular, whether by luck or otherwise I managed to spot some channels, one of them an apparent bull flag, a wedge leading to 82.00 and then predicting a breakthrough beyond that level.It's very rewarding to make an observation and then have results conform to your expectations.Anyway, I'm still letting my robot do my

Robot Upgrades: Preliminary Results

On weekends I like to either tweak existing robots or create new ones. While it's very early in the process I think the most recent tweaks are going to have a noticeable positive effect.I woke up around 4:00am this morning and thought I'd check on the computer. What did I see? A nice AUDJPY move from 81.10 to 81.50 for now. Anyhow, this weekend's tweaks were operating on the dip and return.

BREAD's Trading Results

Yes, for lack of a better name I am calling my robot BREAD. This is short for Basic Robot Earning All Day. It has been given minor tweaks from time to time but it still continues to follow the same system and strategy... taking advantage of constant price oscillations in the AUDJPY. While the results don't look all that spectacular I invite you to investigate how this ends up in a compound

Robot Strategy / Development

Without getting into detailed specifics I thought I'd try to answer a recent question about the strategies I'm trying with my various robots.First, a bit of background in case this is the first post you see on this blog:I design software and systems for a livingI've been trading for years -- learning through the heart of the downturn.With that out of the way I'd suggest looking at one of my posts

Forex Robot Mania

As suggested in my last post...As a side note, I'm planning to make opposing robots this weekend. They will trade long and short positions in different sub-accounts.I've put together yet another robot. It will trade the same currency both long and short in separate sub-accounts. I'll have to wait until Monday or Tuesday to activate it.A few points I feel are worth mentioning:I've been developing

Weekend Robot Development II

While not fully tested, as the market isn't open for trading, I have also completed both the meta-robot concept and a notification system.The meta-robot will look at the trades made via the current profitable robot and impose rules that require trades to open at a better price. The required difference, in pips, will be divided in two and added to the meta-robot's take profit point. For example,

Two Live Robots

Sunday evening I unleashed another trading robot. Here's how I set up my sub-accounts to do this in a reasonably safe manner.My initial or primary account is used to add or remove funds.Each robot trades in it's own sub-accountThis let's me track the returns for each robot in a trivial manner. It also means that each robot is 100% independent. If you do this be sure to name your sub-accounts

Oanda Robot Trading -- Cost Efficiently

If you are trading with Oanda, as I am, you are probably aware that you have to trade a fair amount before their monthly API fees are waived.However, there is an alternative. The first time I tried their platform, probably shortly after it was released, I didn't find it very inviting. However, about a month ago I tried again. Guess what? While I might not use the platform for discretionary

Robot Trading

I'm finally trading my own proprietary forex robot.The best part is that I have the sound of money chiming on my computer at work every time I have a position closed due to reaching it's take profit price.Anyway, no, I have no other hype to push.What I do have is the power of the robot mind to watch the market 24 hours a day. What do I mean? I mean that as long as my computer stays on and

MT4 EA: Average Position Based Trading

While I don't have any pictures to show, yet, I am working on an EA that trades AUDJPY based on the market price relative to the average price of positions held.The first few passes at this type of system were pitiful. My testing starts from September of last year to now while only opening long positions. As you can imagine this is a difficult period of time for a long only system!However, late

MT4 EA: Stupid Programming Mistakes

Well, I spent last evening tracking down some problems in my next foray into programming expert advisers.It turns our that a simple logical test was using an '&' instead of an '&&' between two terms.This little horseshoe nail caused some position closing attempts to fail with an error 138 -- meaning that the price being used to close the position was too far away from the market price.I also ran

MT4 EA: Moving Towards Sustainability

Yesterday's experiments with creating an expert advisor to scalp the 5 minute chart show great profits and great risk.I've been working to reduce the level of risk without taking away the reasonable chance of making reasonable profits.Here is the most recent chart:This is running from 01-Feb-2009 to 25-Apr-2009 and obviously surviving any ups and downs during that period.I'm still not happy with

MT4 EA: Aggresive 5 Minute Scalper

Well, it's the weekend, what else is a grown man to do?I had an inspiration for an (overly) aggressive expert advisor today. Basically, it's a simple buy low and sell high machine using oscillators.Scope out the chart. It does fairly well for a period of time and then when the market finds it's achilles heel it is undone.All is not lost. I have some ideas for improving the aggression factor as

Sample MQ4 Code

Here is a bit of code that demonstrates what I've been blogging about. It's a simple way to manage pending position requests. The idea is that a signal his been raised but that this code will let you wait for an improvement in the price before actually opening a position.// *******************************************************************// Name: AMS_PEND.MQ4// Date: 01-Mar-2009// Prog: Rookie

Expert Adviser Weekend

Finally, the weekend is almost here. I've been stealing a few moments here and there during the week but it's not that productive.Basically, I've limited myself to testing various "opening" strategies. What I've found is that I can increase earnings across the test set -- but generally at the expense of a bigger draw down. I'd like to come up with a system that tests out a tripling of the

EA Development by Component

Okay, I've got a few EA components under my belt now.First, I've made myself a trivial system to determine potential entry points. Basically, this system raises a signal when the price is above or below a moving average for some period of time and then crosses over. Remember, I'm only concerned about making an easy to manage framework at this point.Second, signals raised above are tossed into a

EA Development

I was able to put some serious effort into developing an expert adviser over the weekend. At this stage I believe I can build something that will be both relatively safe and profitable. This is not an easy task!Anyway, I do want to assure you that I have no intention of ever selling an EA. If it works I'll use it for myself. If it doesn't work, then I'd have nothing worth selling in any case.