HomeDaily ResultsMegadroid Results: Thur 16th Dec 2010

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Megadroid Results: Thur 16th Dec 2010 — 29 Comments

  1. Just moved my VPS to a NYC location since I have my account with FXDD out of NY. It made 2 trades today, but the one that you show made 1 pip I lost 62 pips. Any idea what happened?

  2. Hi Brett,

    What was the open price for that trade?

    If the price was worse than mine (i.e. less than 1.3237), there’s a chance that the take profit target didn’t get hit, before the EUR/USD reversed upwards. The other possibility is that the trade couldn’t be closed for some reason.

    Below is a screen grab from my FXDD account, showing the 2 trades. It looks like I was lucky the first trade just closed before the reversal.

  3. That explains it.

    If you look at the open prices for the S1 trades on all of my accounts, you’ll see none of them were less than 1.3236.

    Your trade was slipped about 3 pips for some reason.

  4. Richard, I get same results as Brett, and reading my Journal Tab, I can see that these 3 pips were because from the launch of the order until the server accepted it, it did late about 20 seconds. I am very upset due to the poor performance of my broker IamFX. I have a demo account from AlpariUK, and it lates just 1 second (in the same VPS).

  5. Hi Xere,

    There seems to have been a very fine line today between a break-even trade, and a 63 pip stop loss. I’m surprised I didn’t get at least one stop on any of my 10 accounts.

    This is a good example of just how sensitive this strategy is to broker slippage. Any slippage increases the chance of a stop occurring, because the take profit point is further away.

    In 2009 I had to stop using several brokers who consistently slipped my orders by 3 pips or more (PFG Best, Gallant and FXCM). Because of this slippage, I was getting more stops on those accounts, and was struggling to make Megadroid profitable.

  6. Not really. Sometimes differences like that happen, even trading on the same broker. A few pips better or worse entry can make all the difference. However if the slippage and poor performance happens consistently, it’s probably time for another broker.

    One approach is to split your trading capital across several MT4 accounts. That way if only one account gets a stop because of excessive slippage, the overall impact is less.

  7. “why would mine slip 3 but yours did not?”

    Fills will always vary even on the same broker. I suspect there’s a big flood of Megadroid EUR/USD orders being submitted at the same time at FXDD. The price you get is really just dependent on timing and a bit of luck. However some brokers tend to slip more than others for whatever reason.

  8. Hi Richard!

    I had the same problem like Brett and Xere – the SL was hit.
    Would be a solution to change the slippage in MD setting to 3 pips instead of 2? Wolud this avoid such ugly stuff to happend in future?

  9. Hi andrei,

    Did all your accounts get the stop today?

    My slippage setting is set to 3 i.e. the default setting. But remember the slippage setting only works on the “Instant Execution” type MT4 brokers. That parameter is ignored by the “Market Execution” (or STP) type MT4 brokers.

    “Instant Execution” Brokers:
    -Alpari
    -FXDD
    -FxPro
    -Forex.com

    “Market Execution” Brokers:
    -MB Trading
    -Go Markets
    -Axitrader
    -Interbank Fx

    I wrote this article (see HERE) describing the difference between these 2 types of MT4 brokers.

  10. Richard. Thanks for your help. I think I have too much problems with IamFX (STP), so I will migrate to Alpari UK. In the same VPS I have an Alpari UK demo account running with the same Megadroid, and when IamFX takes about 23 seconds to place the 1st sell order (getting too much slipage), Alpari takes just 1 second! (I believe it may be not the same in a real account than in demo, but…).

  11. Sounds like a sensible move.

    Right now FxPro and Alpari UK are probably the best performing brokers for Megadroid. Alpari UK are better regulated than FxPro though.

    If I had a choice, I’d always go for an Instant Execution broker over an STP one. I’d far prefer a re-quote and a potential missed trade, rather than excessive slippage resulting in a stop.

    Over the past 18 months, I’ve found that the non-STP brokers perform better with Megadroid. The STP brokers might have great spreads, but they tend to slip more and so the spread you see on the terminal is not what you actually get most of the time. It’s a bit misleading IMO.

    It’s interesting to see how the performance at InterbankFx deteriorated after they changed from non-STP to STP in August. Prior to the change, they were one of my best performing Megadroid brokers.

  12. Running your EA that detects what spread is earning the broker, I see that difference between Alpari UK and IamFX is not great (0.5 pips or leather), and knowing that IamFX charge a commision of 1 pip/lot, Alpari is better in this aspect too. I find that Megadroid is very sensible to these slippages…

  13. Hi Richard!

    Thanks for “Instant Execution” and “Market Execution” stuff.

    I have only one account to FxPro. But my order hit the SL… And again you are right: my default setting with MD is slippage=3.
    So I have no solution to avoid such things to repeat?

  14. Hi Brett,

    I guess there’s a chance a lower slippage setting would have prevented yesterday’s loss. FXDD is a non-STP broker, so the slippage setting on Megadroid will work. You could experiment with a lower setting.

    The only downside of doing that is that you might miss a few trades because of requotes.

  15. Hi andrei,

    I use the same default slippage setting on my FxPro account as well (i.e. 3). As I mentioned above, a lower slippage setting may have prevented that trade.

  16. I’m really surprised by the number of people who reported a stop on the first trade. I would have expected to get at least a few stops on some of my 10 trading accounts.

    I actually trade all my accounts from a home computer, with an average ping time to the brokers of 200 to 300ms! So my orders would have definitely arrived after those placed from Megadroid running on VPS’s.

    Perhaps the delay in my orders (i.e. avoiding the initial bottleneck) had something to do with my results?

  17. Just discovered my broker FXDD is moving to fractional pip pricing starting sometime in January. Good thing or bad in regards to Megadroid?

  18. It’ll take a few months of trading results to work out if the changes at FXDD will have any impact. My understanding is they’re just changing to 5-digit spreads. They don’t seem to be changing to the STP model which is good new.

  19. Hi Richard,

    I had trades on the 13th, 15th and 16th on my fxcm account. I don’t trust the spreads so I have been monitoring the trades and closing alot of them out manually.

    The two trades on the 16th I closed the first one too early for a loss, the second one for a profit leaving the two combined on the plus side still.

    My problem is patience, if I had of left the first trade alone it would have hit the positive but market price was moving too slow for my liking, lol.

    Another thing with fxcm is the auto sync thing, I don’t like it…it always changes the profit and for the most part to the negative side. The mt4 platform spread is also consistently 0.01 pip higher than the standard platform. Also can’t close partial lots with it either which is frustrating.

    I didn’t get a trade on tuesday but I did get one on monday (20th). Did you get a trade then?

    Thank ya,

    E.

  20. Hi Elvis,

    I haven’t had any trades this week so far.

    I never intervene with my Megadroid trades, regardless of how good or bad they are. I just checkup on them after they close. If I get a stop, I know it’ll most likely recover so it doesn’t bother me. All the results I’ve posted on this blog are without any manual intervention.

    FXCM. I used to trade Megadroid at FXCM, but my results were absolutely terrible compared to my other accounts. That’s why I no longer trade with them. I found the signals to be erratic, the slippage was excessive, and the platform was unreliable.

  21. Strange, I wonder why I got those trades then?

    Maybe it’s the recovery mode because that’s the only real difference I have from your setup I think. Mine is on.

    What I did do was change the risk from 0.1 to 0.05 so it’s basically trading the same amount of lots and not double.

    I also changed the lots from 0.1 to 0.01 because it’s a micro account but I had it both ways and the lotsize stayed the same so I don’t think that had anything to do with it.

    FXCM is using BT to power their mt4, they get the extra 0.1 pip as compensation from what I’ve read. They want people to use their strategy trader instead of mt4 but you have to get the EA’s coded for stragegy trader.

    The spreads during that trading time can varies alot at times.

    I agree that manual intervention kind of defeats the purpose of the auto trading but since that last loss which brought me below starting capitol I lost trust in it. After it gets up some maybe I’ll leave it alone. It’s also scarry that slippage caused some here to hit the stop loss.

    Do you know what formula it uses to calculate the stop loss?

    Thank ya,

    E.

  22. Hi Elvis,

    I don’t think recovery mode or the lot size is the reason.

    I used to trade at FXCM in 2009, and I also noticed numerous “spurious” Megadroid trades on my FXCM account, that I didn’t get elsewhere.

    The reason was that the FXCM EUR/USD price feed is significantly different than most other brokers (for whatever reason), and this results in different technical indicator values. Megadroid uses these price levels and technical indicators to generate trade signals.

    I was never able to make Megadroid profitable at FXCM, so that’s why I no longer trade there.

    Stop-Loss formula?

    I’m not sure what it is exactly. But it’s based on elapsed trade time and levels of various price bars. It’s also dependent on the type of trade i.e. S1 or S2.

    Manual Intervention?

    I personally never intervene, and I trade Megadroid every day regardless of public holidays or news events. I don’t try to guess the market, because I know I can’t predict what will happen with any statistical significance. I know many claim to have achieved better performance with Megadroid with manual intervention. They may be right but I’ve never seen evidence of that.

    Sometimes you’ll be lucky and close a trade at a small loss or profit, that would have gone on to hit a stop, but at other times you’ll close at say -20 pips, and then the trade goes on to make +10 pips, and so you have 30 pips of catchup to do on the account.

    The only way to know for sure if manual intervention works for you, would be to trade 2 accounts – one fully automated, and one with manual intervention – and compare the results over 6 months or so. But doing so would require several hours of trading time per day which is a big commitment. The results will also depend on your skill as a trader.

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