Ok… bad start… Very very bad start to the year

Even the new year of the Dragon does not seem to be helping at all…

Sigh…. Well no one to blame except myself. It was personally my fault. In one case, I did not read the manual properly while the other was because I had to scratch an itch.

For Hyper EA, I had the TimeCorrection setting wrong. Yes, this EA still uses a manual time correction setting rather than having an AutoGMT function. Not sure the reason behind this, but comparing my result and his it shows that the trade that I took which cause me to take my first drawdown was a trade that was not taken by his own account with PepperStone.

So it was pretty screwed up. On top of that Hyper EA seems to work better with Fin FX than Pepperstone… This EA does not take trades everyday… Pretty interesting I should say. Not all EA that trades a gazillion times per day is the best EA.

Anyway, the developer is and will try to insert an AutoGMT feature into the next update.

As for Happy EA… The itch I had to scratch was an itch I needed to satisfy. In the manual it was recommended that with less than $1000 (which is the case for my Alpari account) I had to use the second setting which takes a conservative approach.  Being me, I whack setting 1 instead of setting 2 on my account.

And what a whacking I got… well…serves me right… as the developers result shows a steady rise. My result shows a gawd dang fall…

A fundamental self flaw which I need to correct…

It is shocking to note but Plimus just kicked a lot of Forex EA product out of it’s portfolio and they seem to be restricting all forms of forex product. Now clickbank still supports forex product but not forex EA, or forex robots or forex software.

Why?

One of the suspected reason is the rate of refund is just too high. Apparently, 25% rate of refund is the maximum. Anything more than 25% refund rate means your product is $hit. And probably the rate of refund for all forex product with Plimus breached the 25% rate.

Well, they say that Plimus is actually just doing some spring cleaning and clearing out all those lousy forex business model or rather lousy forex product. Fair enough. They have every right to do so… Who wants a product that has a very high rate of refund anyway?

However, a lot of vendors are complaining that they were kick out with out much warning and time to prepare. Some affiliates were also complaining that because they are selling EA, they also got their account suspended.

Yeah… that’s not cool. Even if you want to massive spring cleaning, you do it PROPERLY and PROFESSIONALLY.

Anyway… and like a flock of birds migrating. It seems that all forex ea vendors are moving their payment platform from Plimus to RegNow.

Did a quick search… and voila!!

Most of them have started to move… I suspect there will be more soon.

As they say ‘One man’s losses is another man’s gain.’

There are two ways of looking at this. One, Plimus losses a lot of forex business. RegNow will see an increase in forex business. Two, Plimus have gotten rid of refund rates headache… and RegNow has just began.

One things for sure… Plimus’s credibility has kind of drop heavily overnight and probably they will take a long while to be a competitive Online Selling Platform Provider. Maybe for forex product only…

It’s interesting to note that myfxbook.com keeps improving their services… over and over and over again.

Much like the I can do it Chuggington Town trains… it keeps moving and moving and moving…

If you want to check brokers spread at any time, check this out http://www.myfxbook.com/forex-broker-spreads

If you are a scalper and want to check and compare brokers spread during those nice Asian legs… I mean Asian trading hours. What better place to check everything on one page.

So… all you sissy brokers out there… Don’t you dare spread your legs too wide. We are watching.

It was interesting that while I was preparing this post to wish my visitors a good holiday season, I found that I have been getting hits base on the search term ‘Merry Christmas and Happy New Year’

I really do not know how my site about forex can make it to the top 10 list in google search. Maybe Santa knows I have been very nice…

Anyway, it gave me an opportunity again to look back and read what I had written about a year ago in 2011. On that post (http://bestforexea.com/2010/12/merry-christmas-happy-new-2011/) I mentioned that 2011 was another year of learning and another year of growth.

By gawd… I got what I wished for! 2011 was another year of learning for me and by the end of it… I gawd dang hope that I have grown from it.

Well… just wanted to take this opportunity to wish all my visitors Happy Holidays and have a great new year!

I guess the key here in forex trading is persistence. Continue moving forward is all that I can do. Moving forward with Lovely Megan again

Never say DIE!

That will be my motto for 2012 especially when speculation has it that 2012 is the year of Apocalypse. Bah!! Why fill oneself with DOOM and GLOOM? Better fill oneself with whiskey and vodka no?

Anyway… I’m closing up shop for the holiday season as usual. Winding down Lovely Megan to not take any position during the festive week, you know all about drawdown and $hit like that… Then I shall restart everything once more… from the beginning.

So Santa… I have been very nice this year. So this is what I wish for: Please bring peace to all mankind and please give Barrack Obama and Angela Merkel some wisdom to get us out from this economical mess that the whole world is in or will be in if they don’t do something about it. And after that… do fill my forex account with some nice looking figures… I could use a new car.

For my 2012 goal and objective: To start learning from my past mistake and grow my account further and be consistent over the year. Oh… and not let the cycle happen again. The cycle where I fu(k everything up during the 2nd half of the year.

So wishing you all a very wonderful Christmas and a champagne filled New Year… Be Good ye’all! If not stay safe and be careful…

Courtesy of FreeLogoPlanet.com

After understanding what leverage is, I think it’s time to I learn about… sorry. I RE learn about what this 2% risk is all about.

Both leverage and risk I believe are interconnected. The higher we leverage the more we risk. Taking from the example from my previous post (Understanding Leverage).

With 500:1 leverage I put in 200EUR to trade 1 lot and if I made 100EUR it means my return on my capital/deposit/collateral = 50%

With 100:1 leverage I put in 1000EUR to trade 1 lot and if I made 100EUR it means my return on my capital/deposit/collateral = 10%

With 500:1 leverage I put in 200EUR to trade 1 lot and if I lose 100EUR it means my lost on my capital/deposit/collateral = 50%

With 100:1 leverage I put in 1000EUR to trade 1 lot and if I lose 100EUR it means my lost on my capital/deposit/collateral = 10%

Now doesn’t it relates to risk? If the gain of $100 on on a 100:1 leverage is a 10% profit or reward , a lot of $100 on a 100:1 is a 10% lost or risk. So leverage and risk or reward is interelated.

But I think we need to hump on the risk part, since all traders say that managing your risk is your key to success in trading.

I have been doing some studying and it seems that how much I risk on my trade is actually up to me. And if we are going to equate risk to be equal to how much I leverage on each trade, then it will also mean how much I leverage on each trade is up to me. Plain and simple.

Now here is a new definition I learn: Real Leverage

Read the rest of this entry »

During my recuperating month, I have been going back to basic. You know as they say “When all else fails, go back to the basics of it all”.

And I have been going back to basics. Learning everything all over again. And one of the things was to learn how to do is 99% backtest modeling.

I have been gawd dang lazy and have been procrastinating this particularly simple task. It is simple, but I found it a bit tedious or maybe overwhelming. Whatever the reason it may be it was just an excuse for me to not do it. Don’t know why? And don’t know what?

But… I finally got my ar$e to really do something about it. Better late then never as they say…

Now take a look at Brit’s page here on tick data, it’s just crazy with information. Crazy as in a whole loads of information. I have also bought myself into Rob Casey’s “Guide to Getting Rich with Forex Robot” which also explains about 99% backtesting in a more simple and visual way. Even with Rob’s video steps, I found it a bit of a challenge…

If you are not overwhelm with the information written on Brit’s page… then you are probably a veteran and knows most of what he is talking about. If you are overwhelm, you are not at fault. It’s just that we have not reach that stage just yet.

Rob Casey’s guide was must more simple and with video on how to do it step by step… I found it easier to understand. However, when I want to go back to a point where I was stuck… I have to play the video over again… From the start! And I have to wait for the buffering to reach that point before I can see where I did wrong. That was pretty annoying.

He also had a step by step guide… But sometimes without the visual, I do not know whether I was doing it right or wrong.

So… after learning and doing a few 99% backtest modeling on some EA. I got the hang of it. And I though it will be a great help to all newbies if I share with them my easy understanding of both these two sites about 99% backtesting.

Before I continue, I just want to say that this is what I believe to be the most simplest form a step by step. It’s just a do and follow the steps A, B, C, D, to get result E.  There are no additional information as to why and how and what. All this information has already been very well written in Brit’s page. Take you time to read, learn and understand more if you want.

But if you want to get down and dirty and start doing some 99% backtest modeling… Then continue on…

Here you go… 99% backtesting the straight forward ABC steps without the heavy information.

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I have to admit, while I do understand what leverage is per say… One thing that I am still ignorant about is how leverage is going or can be used properly in Forex.

Especially for a guy who plays with Martingale strategy, leverage and margin are two important key… However, all I know is that I need high leverage and high margin in order for martingale to work but I never realize how it can work or will work towards my favor.

So in order for me to re-educate myself, I share with you what I leave, read and understand.

From Wikipedia Leverage
In finance, leverage (sometimes referred to as gearing in the United Kingdom) is a general term for any technique to multiply gains and losses.[1] Common ways to attain leverage are borrowing money, buying fixed assets and using derivatives.[2] Important examples are:

• A public corporation may leverage its equity by borrowing money. The more it borrows, the less equity capital it needs, so any profits or losses are shared among a smaller base and are proportionately larger as a result.[3]
• A business entity can leverage its revenue by buying fixed assets. This will increase the proportion of fixed, as opposed to variable, costs, meaning that a change in revenue will result in a larger change in operating income.[4][5]
• Hedge funds often leverage their assets by using derivatives. A fund might get any gains or losses on $20 million worth of crude oil by posting $1 million of cash as margin.[6]

It goes on to say that there are two different definition of leverage investing and corporate financing. But I guess we will go on to investing as it is more applicable to me.

Read the rest of this entry »

I am coming close to my third year with SWVPS and I though it would be nice to write about Forex VPS again. There are many articles out there with regards to the need for a Virtual Private Server for forex EA traders and one of the key questions is which is the best forex VPS around.

Why do you need VPS for your forex EA trading? The simple answer is that your MT4 needs to be 24 hours online and you do not want the internet connection to be interrupted by anything.

And on top of that our normal internet connection at home can be said to be unreliable unless you are living in South Korea.

Fast execution is another thing… but if you are not scalping than probably one just needs a reliable connection to ensure that the trade are being executed properly.

Anyway, I am about to renew my VPS subscription and I though after 3 years there should be another VPS provider out there who might be able to provide me with a cheaper and better alternative.

And so I scour the internet once more to find a good and relatively cheap VPS provider. Of course I am going to use my current subscription with SWVPS as my bench mark. On top of that, I am going to make some assumptions here. Other than the parameter I state below in the table, I assume that all other services and perks are equal and non vital to a forex traders requirement

In my honest opinion, there are what I look at when choosing a VPS provider.

Disk Storage: Now, hosting your EA and your MT4 broker does not require a lot of space. At most, one MT4 broker will only take 6 to 8 MB. So why do you need so much disk storage for?

Even if I were to put all my EA on the server it would only take up about 1G.

Unless you want to do backtesting on your VPS, then of course you need more storage space for data download. And if you want to do 99% backtesting on VPS, you need at least 2G per currency pair. But I won’t recommend doing backtesting on your VPS. I don’t want to slow down my VPS for any reason. After all, I want my VPS to be in peak performances when trading.

More disc space means you can also keep other stuff in there.

While disc space is not all that important, humans being humans, the more the better as they say…

Physical Memory(RAM): This is very important because and unless you want to put in say 10MT4 testing it back to back… either demo or live. The more RAM you have, the more MT4 you can host on one VPS.

Bandwidth: Nothing more than how much traffic moving in and out. From my observation, leaving one MT4 platform with 10 charts open, my bandwith is about 800MB if you have 10 MT4 running with 10 charts open it will only be 8GB.

Again, humans being humans… we just want more for less.

So at the end of the day, I let the figures speaks for themselves. And I am sticking to the one and only the best Forex VPS (in my books) in terms of PRICE and POWER…. SWVPS

Forex Arb is the new forex arbitraging tool that came into the market just recently. Yesterday actually at this time of writing.

The idea of arbitraging in the financial market has actually been around for a long long time while forex arbitraging has also been around for as long as forex existed. The only thing was that there was never an avenue for retail traders to take that opportunity.

But now with the booming of forex broker left right and center, forex arbitrating to retail traders has become a reality.

I myself love the idea of arbitraging… Hey… I even toyed with 100PercentWeener.com which is a sport betting arbitraging software. Great way to take advantage of the price differences between two parties.

As usual… the sales page of Forex Arb is relatively attractive. If it wasn’t for my past experiences I would have already jump into the sales and cough up 2 grand for this piece of software…

It was precisely for my past experiences that I was skeptical with this site. Ok… my past experiences was with sport betting arbitrage but I think there are some similarities between both these two methodology of arbitraging.

So… from my limited experiences in arbitraging. I can only say a few things about forexarb.com.

Firstly, additional information is almost non-existences with regards to what is required. What Jason wants you to do is… Pay first… then we will let you know what is required. The sales page is like any other sales page… blah blah blah… how I came about blah blah blah… sad story about how i lost money… blah blah blah… how i discover this by accident… blah blah and more blah…

Read the rest of this entry »

This is an article I have, which I thought it would be interesting to share.

I previously did some manual trading, and I must say… It is not as easy as it sounds. One needs to be like Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris or IPMan… (Everybody is Forex Trading… ) However, if one is not like them, one trys to use what ever resources avaiable to the person to try to steal pips from the market.

As they say, there are many ways to skin a cat… Meowww….

Anyway, if any of you forex ea traders want to try manual trading, probably this article might sound useful

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If you’re keen to improve your success rate within the world of forex trading, then there are certainly one one or two things which you will want to bear in mind Here are just a few points which anyone looking to become involved in forex trading should consider.

Firstly, you may well want to consider investing in a reliable Forex advisory software or system. Of course, this is not essential, but many of new traders find that such systems can be extremely helpful in identifying changes within the foreign exchange market.

You will also want to make sure you have a good knowledge of the worldwide economy. Although this won’t always affect your trades, it sometimes will, and can prove essential in making sure you spot trends and changes in time to be able to benefit from them. Don’t automatically assume that your previous financial experience will mean you are well-equipped to start trading on the foreign exchange market. You might have an extensive background in Commodities or Superannuitants or Futures, but you will need to brush up on your understanding of Forex before attempting to start trading. Without doing so, you will run the risk of encountering significant losses.

However, even the most dedicated and experienced forex trader will be likely to make mistakes and losses at some point during their trading career. The most important thing for anyone who is keen to improve their trading skills is to learn from such mistakes, ensure that they don’t make the same errors in the future. Never attempt to regain any losses which you have made by making risk-heavy trades, which may not pay off. As a forex trader, you will need to learn to be both patient and disciplined with the decisions which you choose to make.

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