The Metatrader 5 Series Trying Metatrader 5 Porting Watukushay FE ~ forex trading jobs in dubai

2:36 PM in 5, fe, for, Forex, future, getting, metatrader, porting, ready, series, the, trying, watukushay

I have to confess that I was pretty excited last week when I learned about the release of the full metatrader 5 strategy tester. Being a fan of simulations to accurately model past trading I was dreaming about all the great enhancements that were now available and how all current Asirikuy systems would benefit from these implementations. This week I have been playing extensively with this new platform, mainly getting to know the MQL5 new programming language and all the "new ways" of doing things we must now relearn. I started by analyzing and understanding the sample experts released with the platform and later coded a few very simple systems to get to know the way in which things are done, indicators called, etc within this new trading program. On todays post I want to talk to you about my first "real exercise" which involved the porting of a preliminary version of Watukushay FE to metatrader 5. I will describe the process I went through, what I achieved and some of the things that surprised me when comparing results obtained with the Metatrader 4 backtester.

First of all, I have to say that coding experts for MQL4 has almost nothing to do with coding in MQL5. Almost everything is done differently and even though previous knowledge of MQL4 is useful, the truth is that several things like order placement, reading of indicator values, reading of bar values (high/low/open/close) and order selection are done differently. I found the approach implemented in MQL5 to be a little bit harder but yet a ton more flexible. This is particularly true of the new implementation of indicator and order handling which will now lend itself to an incredible coding flexibility. There are also some very useful functions included within the Trade.mqh file (downloaded with the platform) that will make EA programming a ton easier for those of you looking towards an "easier transition" from MQL4 to MQL5.

After familiarizing myself with the platform I decided to code the system that would be most easily available to all of you. Since Watukushay FE is the most widely used Asirikuy system -due to its free character- I decided to give the porting of Watukushay FE first priority. It is however important to say here that I did this porting merely as an exercise and it wont be the final release version of this EA for metatrader 5 which will probably take a few more months of polishing to develop (since we are currently developing a common MQL5 framework for Asirikuy systems taking advantage of the new classes implementation in this language). However the preliminary EA version I coded contains all the logic of Watukushay FE and follows the exact same logic as the MQL4 version in backtesting.

I have to say that I am amazed with the capabilities of Metatrader 5 regarding speed of execution. Simulations are not only fast but about an order of magnitude faster than in Metatrader 4. Watukushay FE runs a 10 year simulation in MQL4 in about 5 minutes while the Metatrader 5 implementation takes a little bit more than 30 seconds. Added to this absolutely great feature is the fact that multithreading is available for optimizations meaning that I can run a full 200 run optimization in less than half an hour when it previously took about half a day. Being able to run optimizations in parallel is a blessing and it will most likely open up the doors towards the finding of many profitable instruments and setups not currently used with Asirikuy systems. Below you can see an image of an optimization running on the 4 cores of one of my beloved quad processors.
--
You are probably also wondering how the Metatrader 5 backtesting results compare with the Metatrader 4 results and I would have to tell you that the results are a little bit puzzling to me. Watukushay FE is definitely long term profitable on both platforms but results are overall much better in Metatrader 5 when compared with the MQL4 version. The nature of this difference seems to be the difference between data sets. Since this version of Metatrader is new, we could assume that the data quality and interpolation mechanisms are better but such an assumption would have to be proved. Right now I am pleased to tell you that the EA - with the exact same settings - performs better on MQL5 and the Metatrader 5 data than on the Metatrader 4 version, meaning that -if anything- Watukushay FE is as good or better than what we think.
-
-
There is also a ton more of things to discuss regarding the optimizations of Watukushay FE and the new features and results available within the Strategy tester but for today I think that all the above information is enough :o). I have now started this series of posts called "The Metatrader 5 Series" which will deal with topics related to simulations, programming and overall features of this new Metatrader 5 platform which is bound to become the standard within the next few years in automated trading. During the next few weeks I will release several new posts on Metatrader 5 and probably Asirikuy members will also be able to enjoy a few videos on the matter :o)

If you would like to learn more about automated trading and how you can code your own likely long term profitable systems based on sound trading tactics please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or joining Asirikuy to receive all ebook purchase benefits, weekly updates, check the live accounts I am running with several expert advisors and get in the road towards long term success in the forex market using automated trading systems. I hope you enjoyed the article !

forex trading jobs in dubai

Read more

Trade Asirikuy Systems Risk Free The New Challenge Account Restoration Fund ~ forex trading jobs in kenya

10:14 PM in account, asirikuy, bands, bollinger, challenge, Forex, free, fund, indicator, new, restoration, risk, series, systems, the, trade, understanding

Today you will be witnessing one of the most important decisions I have taken within Asirikuy history. Several months ago I decided to create a fund called the micro-account stimulation project (MASP) which had as an objective the donation of 100 USD to a random Asirikuy member every month so that the selected member could create a challenge account and trade an Asirikuy system of my choice within it. The selected member would be given the 100 USD with the mere condition of running the EA on a VPS for two years and allowing me to monitor the account within Asirikuy. I was full of hope with this project and I hoped it will encourage people to open up mini accounts to try out Asirikuy systems and truly commit to their trading. However I was wrong about this. Today I will talk to you about the fate of this MASP fund and what will now be done with the money I have been putting aside for this project.

So what happened with the MASP ? People simply were not interested in my offer. During the past 5 months I have been contacting random Asirikuy members every month to tell them that they "won the prize" and would be given a free 100 USD from me to start their own micro account to trade an Asirikuy system. However the few who answered never really created the account or emailed me the details and the truth is that most members didnt even bother to contact me back. I also informed them they had won on the newsletters, the forum, etc and almost all the time I simply did not receive any reply.

I think that the reasons for this may have been several. Perhaps people are reluctant to receive money from a stranger (could be ?), perhaps they didnt want to open an account with any broker offering mini cent accounts, they didnt have a VPS or perhaps the price of the funding for the broker they wanted was too high. For whatever reason, the truth is that my very well intended Micro Account Stimuation Project failed and I now have 500 USD saved which clearly had a purpose they no longer have.

The solution ? I will now be changing the MASP to a project called the Challenge Account Restoration Fund. From now on I will be adding 100 USD to this fund every month (plus the 500 USD currently there) and the collected money will be used to restore the account of a challenger who reaches worst-case scenario levels within his or her account. Every system and every portfolio has a worst-case projected level and if this level is reached, I will send the owner of the account money from the Challenge Account Restoration Fund to replace their lost capital. Of course, the funds capacity is limited and it will cover older accounts and accounts with less initial trading capital with a higher priority. Up until now no account in Asirikuy has reached a worst case scenario but all current challengers can now be assured that if they reach such a case, there will be some insurance waiting for them :o).

The idea of this project is to provide challengers with some degree of compensation for the risk they are taking and to spend this money I was already looking forward to donate to Asirikuy members in a more efficient manner. This effectively means that people can now participate with cent accounts in Asirikuy in a Risk-free manner since the fund will obviously be able to cover the 30-60% worst-case scenario for small 100-200 USD accounts. As you see, I do this because I truly believe in my systems and I believe that a worst-case scenario for them is unlikely - although possible - and I want people to have some benefit when they take a risk with any new Asirikuy EA.

So now I can say that I am doing something no person involved in trading has ever done - to the best of my knowledge- I will be returning money lost by traders who use my systems if they reach certain draw down levels (provided they are Asirikuy challengers). I hope this encourages many traders to join Asirikuy and possibly some Asirikuy members to join with challenge account in this quest towards long term profitability :o).

If you would like to learn more about my journey in automated trading and how you too can trade automated trading systems with a high like hood of long term success please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or joining Asirikuy to receive all ebook purchase benefits, weekly updates, check the live accounts I am running with several expert advisors and get in the road towards long term success in the forex market using automated trading systems. I hope you enjoyed the article !

forex trading jobs in kenya

Read more

The Indicator Series The Awesome Oscillator A Tool to Measure Momentum ~ forex trading for beginners

8:01 AM in a, arbitrage, awesome, does, forex, in, indicator, it, measure, momentum, oscillator, series, the, three, to, tool, triangular, way, work

On todays article we will be discussing a very interesting indicator which forms part of Bill Williams "chaos trading" theory in which several indicators are used to attempt to trade the markets profitably. This indicator- called the Awesome Oscillator - was developed as a means to get an idea about short term momentum on a given trading instrument. Within the next few paragraphs you will learn more about how this indicators values are calculated, what it really tells us about the market and how we can use this information for the building of likely long term profitable automated trading systems. As a part of the "indicator series" this article will attempt to give you an idea about the essence of the indicator and the real nature of the information it conveys.

So what is the Awesome Oscillator about ? What makes it so awesome ? This indicator - usually plotted as a histogram - uses a very simple calculation to measure what we would call "market momentum". The indicators value is obtained as the difference between a 34 and a 5 moving average calculated around the median price (which is the (high-low)/2 of each bar). Putting it simple, the values are obtained with this simple equation :

Awesome Oscillator = SMA(MEDIAN PRICE, 5)-SMA(MEDIAN PRICE, 34)

You might have also noted that the awesome oscillator contains red and green colors which depend on the increasing or decreasing nature of the values. If the last value is lower than the current values the current bar is green while the opposite case makes the bar red. To sum it up the awesome oscillator tells us if the 34 and 5 period average values of median price are coming closer or falling further apart. When the values are falling apart there is momentum (since short term price is - in average - moving away from the longer term average, when the values are closer then we have the opposite.
-
-
It may now seem more evident how this indicator might be traded. We can build a system that trades the cross of the 0 line (which is equivalent to the simple moving average cross system of the 34 and 5 period MA values calculated on median price) or we can trade changes in direction (changes from red to green) to attempt to capture changes in momentum which may forecast an eventual cross of the moving averages. However the fact that the oscillator only gives us information about the momentum change taking into account a relatively small number of bars means that its success on lower time frames is bound to be very limited. When using this indicator on time frames lower than the daily you will see that it gives extremely confusing signals since the 34 and 5 median calculated moving averages cross a lot, something that makes the finding of an inefficiency quite hard.

Added to that is the fact that the awesome oscillator momentum "changes" (color changes from red to green) can happen during a single bar and therefore give a lot of fake signals. For this reason most people will advice to trade this indicator on three bar signals to gain a better perspective and eliminate signals that are simply spikes that might only "seem" like changes in momentum. By doing this we can gauge changes in momentum better and build a system that reacts quicker to changes in market direction. Exiting trades when the first opposite bar appears also seems to be a good exit strategy since usually this wont happen after the majority of the large move happens. Of course, the success of such an approach is bound to be minimal on lower time frames, again due to the inherent problems of the low period usage of the awesome oscillator on these charts.
-
-
Above you can see a USD/CHF daily chart with some of the possible signals during the financial crisis which was a very trending period for this and other currency pairs. You can see here how the awesome oscillator would have captured moves with very good accuracy. Of course, the system is not going to be perfect and under conditions when the 34 and 5 MA comes close for large periods of time the system would suffer large amounts of losses (this is the systems market exposure so that it can get into this very good trades when they develop). The above mentioned signals also allow us to get back into trends after retracements, so they are definitely a necessary compliment since they help us fully exploit large runs without missing a large part (as if we only entered shorts above 0 and longs below 0).
-
-
So as you see, the awesome oscillator is really not that awesome, it is simply a tool to measure momentum which compares the prices of two simple moving averages calculated on median price values. This information is bound to be useful for the development of a momentum based automated trading system, especially on large time frames - like the daily - where these signals are much more meaningful than on lower time frames when the low periods used by the oscillator will make the finding of inefficiencies extremely hard, if not actually impossible.

If you would like to learn more about automated trading and gain a true education in the development of likely long term profitable mechanical trading systems please consider joining Asirikuy.com, a website filled with educational videos, trading systems, development and a sound, honest and transparent approach automated trading in general . I hope you enjoyed this article ! :o)

forex trading for beginners

Read more

The Indicator Series Understanding Bollinger Bands ~ forex trading jobs from home

8:36 PM in and, bands, best, bollinger, brokers, deposit, five, for, Forex, indicator, nfa, non, reliable, safety, series, the, trading, understanding

If you have been involved with almost any form of technical trading you may have heard and probably used Bollinger Bands. This technical indicator named after its creator - John Bollinger- became one of the most popular tools used by traders during the 20th century. Today I am going to dedicate this post to a description and analysis of this indicator and how it can be used to create successful mechanical trading strategies. I am going to talk about the calculation of the indicator, what it tells us about price action and how we can analyze it to find different types of market inefficiencies. As always the objective of this post will be to teach you how to understand this indicator better and how to design effective systems that tie its logical relationship with price in a rational manner.

So how is the Bollinger Bands indicator calculated ? This is one of the simplest technical indicators available to modern traders. It is formed by two parallel lines plotted around an X period moving average. These lines are distanced from the MA by a certain number of standard deviations. The value of the standard deviation is calculated at the same number of periods as the X period MA. To sum it up the indicator is formed by the following line :

upper band = X period MA + Y times the standard deviation
lower band = X period MA - Y times the standard deviation
central line = X period MA

But what does it tell us ? The standard deviation is simply a measure of how much price moved away from its average. A high standard deviation implies that price moved further away from the central average while a low standard deviation implies that price remained more rangebound and close to its average. When this value is low, volatility is low, when it is high, volatility is high. The plotting of the traditional Bollinger Band indicator with the moving average and standard deviation calculated on close prices over 20 periods is shown below. The upper and lower bands are placed 2 standard deviation measures away from the central line.
--
The problem now seems to be to find an exploitable ineffiency using the above indicator. We must therefore find a behavior related to the standard deviation that will produce a forecast of future market movements with a positive mathematical expectancy over a long period of time. However when you attempt to do this you will find that most of your attempts will be frustrated by the fact that volatility related behavior - which is what the standard deviation of price tells us - does not appear to have a relationship with any particular inefficiency. In particular, attempting to capture volatility breakouts using Bollinger Bands is very difficult in forex trading and such a strategy does not hold a positive mathematical expectancy on most currency pairs.

Contrary to popular belief, there is also no clear statistical tendency when evaluating price "touching" the Bollinger Bands. If you attempt to create a strategy to profit from bounces from one side of the band to another you will find that profitable periods will exist but unprofitable periods in which the market will not bounce, but follow a particular band will happen. The same happens if you attempt to do the opposite. None of these approaches seems to give you a positive mathematical expectancy and in the end they do not lend themselves to the creation of mechanical strategies.

Is it not possible then to create a profitable system using this indicator ? Of course not ! Certainly there are ways in which this indicator might be exploited to give entries with positive mathematical expectancies. For example, statistically we might expect price levels outside the bollinger bands to be quite rare and in fact, significant price moves outside the bands might prove to be signals that price is moving decisively in that given direction. We could therefore use these signals to exploit both a short term retracement and a longer term trending movement, expecting price to return within the bands but to continue to move in that direction. Overall entry rules based on this approach have a positive mathematical expectancy meaning that they do provide us with a way to create Bollinger Band-based long term profitable systems.
-

-
As you see it comes down to understanding the meaning of the standard deviation and how price movements that are statistically rare can be exploited to signal - with positive accuracy over the long term - price movements in a given direction. Bollinger Bands are therefore a simple indicator that may not prove to be as useful as traditional technical analysis wants it to be, but it does lend itself to the creation of profitable strategies both on its own and as a compliment to others indicators as shown by the Gods Gift ATR trading system. I am currently developing a few strategies based solely on Bollinger Bands. Will I succeed to make a long term profitable system out of this ? Stay tuned to check it out :o)

If you would like to learn more about automated trading and how you too can create your own systems to achieve success using expert advisors please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or joining Asirikuy to receive all ebook purchase benefits, weekly updates, check the live accounts I am running with several expert advisors and get in the road towards long term success in the forex market using automated trading systems. I hope you enjoyed the article !

forex trading jobs from home

Read more

Watukushay FE An Intra Instrument Experiment Part No 1 ~ forex trading journal excel

2:46 PM in 1, 5, an, experiment, fe, Forex, instrument, intra, metatrader, no, part, porting, series, the, trying, watukushay

One of the best things about the new metatrader 5 platform - as I mentioned on a previous post - is the extreme quickness in which backtesting and optimizations can be done. It is remarkable how I can now do a 200 run optimization in less than an hour while previously it took more than 5 or 6 hours and even 24-48 for certain trading systems. After porting Watukushay FE and enjoying this very fast simulations capability I decided that it was time to try a multi-instrument approach for this freely available trading system. Certainly I had donde some experiments before on the USD/CHF and the GBP/USD but I had never been able to try as many combinations and settings as I wanted to due to the inherent slowness of MQL4 based backtesting. On today and tomorrows post I want to show you some of the results of my studies on several currency pairs for Watukushay FE and how these results show us a very wide and unique perspective about the Watukushay FE trading system. For those of you who do not know anything about Watukushay FE it is a freely available trading system I coded available at http://watukushayfe.blogspot.com.

It is important to note here that I coded Watukushay FE based solely on my observations of the RSI and trend behavior on the EUR/USD and I had never thought about making this expert trade on other instruments when I first designed and implemented its logic. It is a fallacy that a "good system" should work on "all" currency pairs as it tackles a "vital aspect of market psychology" since different pairs have different trading makeups and volumes which make their particular price action very different. Pairs that people may regard as similar such as the EUR/USD and the USD/CHF are in fact tremendously different with many systems that work on the EUR/USD failing to work on the USD/CHF and vice versa. Some of the reasons why this happens include bank intervention, liquidity, volume, trade deficit difference, etc.

However it is always interesting to look at the performance of systems on other currency pairs since it brings a hint about the differences between instruments, showing us why a system may work on one and not on another. Understanding and knowing the true nature of these differences allows us to develop systems that are "adapted" to each different currency pairs trading nature. An analysis of these differences also allows us to change the design of a system- particularly its exit logic- to better exploit inefficiencies found in a particular instrument.

The first think I did with Watukushay FE was to run the "standard" settings derived from very coarse optimizations on the EUR/USD on the GBP/USD, USD/CHF, AUD/USD and USD/CAD (10 year backtests on Metatrader 5). The results are indeed good -as shown in the graphs below- in the sense that the system is profitable in the long term on all of these currency pairs, however it is important to say here that profitability is much lower than on the EUR/USD with most of these pairs reaching only a compounded yearly profit to maximum draw down ratio of 1:3 to 1:5. This shows us that the system tackles a market inefficiency that is present to a certain extent on all these currency pairs but unfavorable conditions are much more frequent than on the EUR/USD.
--
It is evident when comparing the different equity curves that the smoothest of them is the EUR/USD which - of course - achieves the best results. We see that Watukushay FE has smooth periods of profit on most of these instruments but unprofitable periods are simply very destructive for the other pairs while they are only mild for the EUR/USD. Even tough the equity curves seem to show us that all instruments could be traded profitably the potential reward for instruments other than the EUR/USD is simply not enough to compensate for the risk taken. The deeper draw down periods also make Watukushay FE on other currency pairs far more difficult to trade also limiting risk escalation to a great extent.

However it is clear that some very interesting questions arise. Is it possible to do coarse optimizations on other pairs to find more EUR/USD-like results ? It is possible to implement small modification to the logic that improve the trading technique significantly ? Are there any other instruments worth trading for Watukushay FE besides the EUR/USD ? I will tray to address some of these questions on tomorrows post. If you would like to learn more about Watukushay FE and all the Watukushay Project experts please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or joining Asirikuy to receive all ebook purchase benefits, weekly updates, check the live accounts I am running with several expert advisors and get in the road towards long term success in the forex market using automated trading systems. I hope you enjoyed the article !

forex trading journal excel

Read more

The Metatrader 5 Series When Huge Backtesting Differences Appear ~ forex trading journal

9:35 PM in 5, answering, appear, backtesting, differences, every, Forex, huge, if, intelligent, metatrader, series, the, trading, what, when

If you look at my last few weeks of posts I have been very excited about the new qualities of the Metatrader 5 trading platform and the benefits it brings to system development regarding faster execution, faster optimization and added flexibility. Using my prototype implementation of Watukushay FE I analyzed trading over several different instruments and I finally came up with the "starting point" of intra-currency trading for this well-known freely available trading machine. This week I decided to do a small experiment and compare my results of Watukushay FE for the AUD/USD on Metatrader 5 with those found out with Metatrader 4 and the results found were extremely surprising. On todays post I want to talk about my findings, the possible causes of the issues found and what I will be doing to investigate the nature of this problem and what solutions can be implemented to deal with it.

During the first post comparing Metatrader 4 with 5 and the backtesting results of Watukushay FE we already saw a small yet noticeable difference between the testing results obtained on both trading platforms. I talked about the possibility of these errors being feed-related and the fact that the Metatrader 5 history feed might be more reliable since it has been "remastered and fixed" for this new platform. However the difference was small and therefore there was no substantial issue besides an anecdotical note pointing out this curious fact.

However when I decided to run the initial AUD/USD tests on Metatrader 4 to compare the results I obtained with Metatrader 5 the difference changed from "noticeable" to "abismal". The pictures below show you the results for MT5 and MT4 using the exact same settings on the AUD/USD currency pair backtest from 2000 to 2010. The overall equity curve is very different and the results do point out that something is substantially very changed between the historical feeds of MT4 and MT5. I first thought that the difference would be due to the presence of Sunday candles but this turned out to be false since the MT5 feed doesnt have any of them, so regarding this aspect it is the same as MT4. I then thought about the possibility that the whole difference is caused by important changes in data prior to 2006 (before metatrader 4 was launched) and the fact is that data differences are NOT limited to pre 2006 periods, the whole historical feed is different between both trading stations and meaningful differences are present. If you analyze the results youll notice that almost all candles have different - if only very slightly - high/low/open/close values pointing out that RSI and ATR values will be very different. The change in one minute interpolation mechanisms is also not likely a factor here as Watukushay FE strictly controls bar opening on both its MQL4 and MQL5 implementations.
--
What causes such a dramatic change in profitability ? To get to the bottom of this problem I decided to strip down the logic to its simplest form and eliminate the closing logic of the EA, leaving only the entry rules. This shows us that there is still some difference between backtesting results (shown below). This means that differences in results are caused by differences in the RSI and ATR indicator calculations which are dependent on each backtests particular historical feed. Stripping down the logic does reveal that most dependency is located before 2002 with results beyond this date being in better agreement. However there is still some dependency which is caused by differences in data between both historical sets beyond this period.
--
Since we simply cannot know for sure which of the two historical data selections is better - and they are probably both valid within normal broker differences (with the 2000-2002 data being very different probably due to differences between feeds in this period) - it becomes a wise decision to run backtests on both and trust the less profitable results to calculate profit and draw down targets. In some cases like the EUR/USD backtests this proves to be trivial but on others like the one I showed you today doing this mixed analysis proves to be extremely important. I will email the people at metaquotes to get some information about the different nature of the feeds and I will let you know once I have more information about their origin. However up until now all backtests of Watukushay FE seem to be more profitable on MT5 (meaning that our MT4 simulations are in fact the worst case scenario). Investigating other issues which may be related with the closing mechanism of orders in MT5 is also something I am currenlty doing since I have seen that the differences when the closing logic is enabled seem to have other strong causes besides simple feed dependency (more on this on a later post !).

If you would like to learn more about automated trading, the evaluation of expert advisors and the programming of your own strategies please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or joining Asirikuy to receive all ebook purchase benefits, weekly updates, check the live accounts I am running with several expert advisors and get in the road towards long term success in the forex market using automated trading systems. I hope you enjoyed the article !

forex trading journal

Read more