MB Trading : 1 Trades: 1.0 pips
GO Markets : 1 Trades: 0.8 pips
InterbankFx : 1 Trades: 0.8 pips
FxPro : 1 Trades: 0.3 pips
Alpari UK (Mini-1) : 1 Trades: 0.2 pips
Alpari UK (Classic): 1 Trades: 0.1 pips
FXDD : 1 Trades: 1.0 pips
AxiTrader : 1 Trades: 1.0 pips
Forex.com : 1 Trades: 1.0 pips
Alpari UK (Late) : 1 Trades: 3.1 pips
TRADE DETAILS: Open Close Profit
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MB Trading Buy: 16:09:59 1.34653 -> 22:50:18 1.34663 1.0 pips
GO Markets Buy: 22:14:56 1.34640 -> 4:50:12 1.34648 0.8 pips
InterbankFx Buy: 20:16:07 1.34640 -> 2:50:10 1.34648 0.8 pips
FxPro Buy: 23:16:10 1.34637 -> 5:50:12 1.34640 0.3 pips
Alpari UK (Mini-1) Buy: 22:16:09 1.34637 -> 4:50:11 1.34639 0.2 pips
Alpari UK (Classic) Buy: 22:16:09 1.34638 -> 4:50:11 1.34639 0.1 pips
FXDD Buy: 23:08:13 1.34650 -> 5:50:20 1.34660 1.0 pips
AxiTrader Buy: 20:16:07 1.34639 -> 2:50:11 1.34649 1.0 pips
Forex.com Buy: 20:14:50 1.34650 -> 2:50:16 1.34660 1.0 pips
Alpari UK (Late) Buy: 0:23:07 1.34334 -> 1:51:16 1.34365 3.1 pips
Settings - All accounts using Megadroid 1.30
- Alpari (LATE) : autoGmt = false: gmtOffset = 2
- Other accounts: autoGmt = true
Today’s trade struggled, and was lucky not to stop out. At one point it was around 34 pips down, but managed to close around breakeven
Hi Richard,
I noticed the struggle there, it looked like the stop loss was around 59 pips, is that what you had?
I thought that trade was about to wipe out all the gain I’ve had so far but the FXCM demo closed out at 1.3 pips up, close call. 🙂
Not that I want a losing trade but I am interested to see how a trade like that on FXCM compares to the other brokers. Would it be greater, less or in line with others?
E.
The best way to assess your FXCM demo trade is to just compare the open and close prices I got at the various brokers (see above live trade results). However one trade on a demo account won’t tell you much about how a live FXCM account will perform. Demo and live accounts are very different. All my results are from live accounts trading real money i.e. not demo accounts. The only way to gauge how FXCM performs is to run a live account. I don’t trade with FXCM because of previous poor live trading results.
Hi there, Richard, thank you for this informative blog,just want to know if you can post a link or more to your live account with mt4stats or mt4i.com,if you can i really would appreciate it and so do others reader via your blog,thanks ;).
Mr.GTO
Hi Richard,
I agree, live and demo are different. It’s always different trading a live account.
I need to get a live mt4 account. 🙂
I read somewhere that megadroid doesn’t trade the last few days of a month, have you found that to be true?
Thank ya, Thank ya very much
E.
Hi GTO,
I don’t need to use those websites, because this website actually extracts all the trade information directly from my live trading accounts, and presents it in a format that allows me to compare the performance between my live trading accounts. I use this information when deciding how much to trade at a particular broker i.e. I’ll trade more lots at a better performing broker, and less at a poorer performing broker.
Hi Elvis,
Yes. I don’t think Megadroid trades for the last 3 days of each month.
Hi Richard,
Greate job you are doing! I have been trading live since the beginning of this year on IBFX using Megadroid and a couple of other robots. I am very happy with it although at times the drawdowns can be very scary. As you know all brokers in US will be required to provide a maximum leverage of only 50:1. I am currently on 100:1. I am wondering if I should move my account overseas and will a higher leverage work better for Megadroid or there is no difference from your experience? What leverage do you use or recommend?
Hi Ling,
Yep, Megadroid can be scary at times. The key is being patient, consistent, using the right broker(s), changing brokers when necessary, and not risking too much. It’s been a good strategy so far. I’m hoping it continues.
The only US-based accounts I’m using now are:
– MB Trading
– FXDD
– Interbank Fx
The other non-US accounts are
– Forex.com: Account 1:200 leverage (Australia)
– FxPro : 1:500 leverage (Cyprus)
– GO Markets: 1:300 leverage (Australia)
– Axitrader: 1:200 leverage (Australia)
– Alpari UK: 1:500 leverage (UK)
You should be able to see from my Monthly Results how they’ve been performing.
I wrote an article (see HERE) on choosing a broker that you might find useful. Apart from FxPro, all my brokers are regulated brokers in the US, UK or Australia.
As you’re probably aware the US brokers (e.g InterbankFx, Forex.com, CMS, Fxsol, FXDD etc), are setting up offices in other countries (mostly UK and Australia) so that they aren’t restricted by the CFTC’s leverage restriction rules. In general these outlying branches are very small. All the account opening, support enquires, and backoffice stuff is handled in the US. The trade servers are generally located in the US as well, so in theory the trade performance should be the same. The only downside is that your account is technically not US regulated anymore.
If I had a preference, I’d prefer US regulation, because they seem to keep a tighter watch on the broker’s balance sheets. The UK and Australia regulators are the next best. Swiss brokers with a Swiss Banking License should be OK as well although I don’t use any.
I’m actually considering opening a InterbankFx account at their Australian branch. They offer 1:400 leverage. I can then trade both the AU and US accounts, and compare the results.
Hello Richard, thank You for sharing Your daily results with MegaDroid. This is quite most valuable site on this topic for me. Please can i ask what are Your MegaDroid risk ratios on Your accounts?
I have a new iamfx 1:200, $1000, 0.2 risk ratio account.
Thank You,
Vit
Hi Vit,
I don’t use the Megadroid RiskLevel setting on any of my live accounts. Instead I use fixed lots. I trade more lots at the better performing brokers, and less lots at the poorer performing ones. I use the results I’m posting on this blog to determine the better performing brokers.
The Megadroid Risk setting just scales the lots size in a proportional manner against the account balance. If you set the RiskLevel too high, there’s a chance the account will margin call during a floating negative position. This will depend on the account leverage, because a lower leverage account will require more margin to open a EUR/USD position, and so there’ll be less free margin available to contend with any floating drawdown.
A Risklevel of 0.2 is probably about the safe limit with a 1:200 account. What you could do, is see what lot sizes Megadroid trades with this setting, and then calculate how many pips of drawdown your account could tolerate before using up all it’s free margin. Sometimes we have had 2 open positions each around the -50 pip mark, so you need to have enough free margin to deal with 100 pips of drawdown or so, otherwise you account will margin call and the positions will close out at a loss automatically.
Hi Richard,
thanks for sharing your results, it is very useful. Have couple of questions:
1. It would be great of you would post somewhere on this blog the settings of your Megadroid. I am especially interested if you run it with Aggressive=True or False?
2. According to your 1+ year experience, which broker do you think is the best, if we consider only the performance of the Megadroid?
Hi Almandine,
Posting Settings
That’s a good suggestion. I was going to do that, because it’s a very common question.
I just use default settings with Aggressive = true, and Recovery = false.
Best Broker over 1+ years?
It’s a difficult question, because performance at a particular broker can change dramatically from month-to-month due to the load on their server, server settings etc. Early in 2009, GO Markets were fantastic, but from around June 09 to Dec 09 MB Trading was the best performance wise. I had a beta account with them. The performance at MB trading went downhill early this year for some reason, and has only recently improved. Alpari has been a reasonably consistent performer throughout. InterbankFx has been good over the past few months.
The point is it varies, and that’s why I trade at multiple accounts and watch the results closely so I can skew the lots toward the better performing brokers when needed, thereby optimizing my returns.
The other factor to consider is safety of funds. This should be the over-riding factor IMO. I personally wouldn’t touch any non-regulated online broker without a physical address and with only callback phone support, regardless of their performance.
Here’s the Megadroid Settings I’m using.
Thank you and 🙂 I have the same question regarding ALpari UK Late? What it means?
“Alpari UK Late” is one account I’ve configured to trade 1 hour latter than the other accounts.
You can find the settings for that account HERE.
Sorry. Now I read all your articles and you already have explained.
Very interesting.
I set that account up because when Megadroid was updated from version 1.21 to 1.30, they brought the trading times forward by 1 hour.
So the Alpari UK LATE account trades the same times as version 1.21. It’ll be interesting to see how this “LATE” account compares to the others with default settings. The accounts with default settings did better in September.
Do you use a VPS? Can you recomand it?
Hi andrei,
I personally don’t use a VPS for the Megadroid at present.
I’ve used Commercial Network Services, Galaxyvisions, and SWVPS in the past. They were all similar from my experience. I never had any problems with them. They generally charge around $40 USD per month for a basic VPS, and around $65 USD per month for a faster one with more memory. Some of them have data centers in US and UK. If you’re using a UK broker (e.g. Alpari), it probably make sense to get a UK server, because there’ll be less trade latency.
If you only run 1-3 MT4 terminals, you probably only need the cheaper, basic one.
A VPS is a good solution if you can’t keep a computer running at home, or have an unreliable Internet connection.
The downside is that VPS’s do occasionally crash. So you need to login from time to time to make sure your MT4 terminal is still running.
Thank you.
Thanks, Richard, for sharing your settings.
You may be interested in that I have been running Megadroid since June 2009 on FXOpen. Since then it accumulated +77% profit. I run it with aggressive=False. The lot size was fixed until this spring, when I changed to 0.3 risk level. Based on your results, I started a second account with aggressive=True.
Can you estimate what is the approximate yearly / monthly percentage profit with Megadroid?
Hi Almandine,
It’s hard to know exactly what the account % gains would have been, but it’s possible to estimate.
If you run a backtest on a $10,000 demo account, using 0.3 risk, you’ll see the lot sizes are around 230k EUR/USD i.e about $23 per pip.
So assuming the average profit month is about 40 pips, that’s $920 (=23 x 40) per month or 9.2%. That doesn’t take into account compounding during the month, but that won’t be a huge factor.