Forex Kung Fu

From one of or readers - stay away from Conquest EA!

—–Mensaje original—–
De: Customer Service [mailto:trade@destinyforex.com]
Enviado el: Lunes, 07 de Enero de 2008 11:28
Asunto: Re: SCAM
You are an obvious idiot who cannot read
—– Original Message —–
To: “‘Customer Service’”
Sent: Monday, January 07, 2008 8:23 AM
Subject: RE: SCAM

> Rich Henry:
> You answer is not professional, I don´t accept this kind of answer…
> You must be in jail…
>
> http://www.scam.com/showthread.php?p=468501#post468501
>
> Have a nice day ¡¡¡¡
>
>
> —–Mensaje original—–
> De: Customer Service [mailto:trade@destinyforex.com]
> Enviado el: Lunes, 07 de Enero de 2008 10:02
> Asunto: Re: SCAM
>
> **** off ass hole. You are are a retard obviously. Jealous ******* that
> is
> —– Original Message —–

> To: “‘Destiny Expert Advisor’”
> Sent: Monday, January 07, 2008 7:16 AM
> Subject: SCAM
>
>
>> Your EA are SCAM….?
>>
> http://forexkungfu.com/2007/11/20/spotlight-ea-scammer-rich-henry-conquest-d
>> estiny-eas/
>> http://www.scam.com/showthread.php?t=24557
>> No more mail please-…

I am getting into building my forex platform, and the pinch in my side is becoming dealing with Tic Data.  I have looked into Olsen and Tenfore, but both options seem rather pricey.  I was quoted an Tenfore for two currency pairs for two years at $1400.

Seems like most free data providers, and even some commercial ones like esignal and the like, only have 1M historic data.  Can someone answer the question for me, with all the technology available today, why no one in the community is logging this data for free use? Is there a need for a free repository?

My platform is initially going to be connecting to MBTrading via the FIX protocol - and even there you can’t get any historic quotes…

Where is the quality intra-day forex tic data?? Please post a comment!

Brian

The federal reserve cut a quarter point today, causing equity markets to plummet and creating a dollar rally.

Written by Kathy Lien, Chief Strategist
http://www.dailyfx.com/story/bio1/Is_Bernanke_the_Grinch_Who_1197413504473.html
Is Bernanke the Grinch Who Stole Christmas?

The Federal Reserve cut interest rates by 25bp today, causing US stocks and carry trades to plummet and the dollar to strengthen significantly. For the traders who were hoping for a larger 50bp rate cut and a strong stock market rally, Bernanke may be the Grinch that stole Christmas. Minutes before the interest rate decision, stocks rallied indicating that more traders were adjusting their positions for the possibility of a larger rate cut. Unfortunately, not only did the Fed fail to cut interest rates by 50bp, but they also only lowered the discount rate by the same amount (25bp). The statement reeked on caution as the Fed acknowledged the slowdown in economic growth, the intensification of the housing market correction and the softening of business and consumer spending. They still feel that inflation could rise, but the upside risks to inflation no longer balance the downside risks to growth. This has caused Rosengren to vote in favor of a 50bp rate cut. Last month’s decision was also not unanimous, but at that time, Hoenig voted in favor of leaving interest rates unchanged. The probability of a recession is at the highest level in more than 3 years according to the latest WSJ.com survey. No problems were solved with today’s quarter point rate cut and that is why fed fund futures are pricing in more easing in 2008. The dollar could rally for the remainder of the week, but we expect weakness to resume as we get closer to the end of the year because the Fed won’t be able to avoid looser monetary policy. Pimco’s Bill Gross is calling for 3 percent interest rates, which means that he expects another 125bp of easing. Wholesale inventories fell to the lowest level ever in relation to sales in the month of October. The trade balance and import prices are due for release tomorrow. We expect both numbers to be stronger as the weak dollar boosts import prices and exports.

Bill sent out an upgrade of Bandit II which I have deployed this morning. I manually removed the old EA from the 5 suggested charts and added the new version. From his notes:

Since sending out the recent revision to FxBandit (FxBandit II), I have received feedback from several users. This feedback together with analysis of my forward testing results thus far on the demo account I provided you the login info for, it has been determined that, due to the Close_Trade_Hr condition, some of the trades that have been closed out for loss have been larger than necessary.

Therefore I have removed the Close_Trade_Hr condition from the ESTOP Mode in determining when to close a losing trade.

To clarify the ESTOP Mode function: If the ESTOP_Factor is set at 0.05 and the account balance is $10,000.00, an open trade will be closed out when the floating loss on the trade reaches a value of (0.05)(10,000), or $500.00. This will allow you to set a specific loss in terms of dollars instead of pips. Keep in mind that if you are trading larger lot sizes, the ESTOP Factor will close out a trade quicker than if trading smaller lot size. The ESTOP_Factor should be coordinated together with the number of lots being traded per currency pair.

FX-Bandit is trading up about 10%. It sold most of its losing positions.

In my design of a custom trading platform I am a little perplexed as to how to design a strategy interface. Should I use a simple C++ hook, or reverse engineer mql4 so I can use premade MetaTrader strategies in the new platform? Can anyone speak to the benifits of MQL4 verses C++?

Also I am looking for anyone who has real experience with quantlib or ta-lib deployed with realtime data, not just historic data, who can share a code snippet.

‘Better’ has continued to grow his lead at the automated trading championships - http://championship.mql4.com/

The federal reserve changed their position last week on a rate cut. The talk now seems to be focused on whether the fed will cut 25 or 50. Some analysts on Kudlow & Company last week were calling for as much as a 100 basis point cut, citing the current rates in the bond and treasury markets as indicators of where the fed should be. With the LIBOR increasing week after week and the fed more concerned about the credit markets than the falling dollar does the greenback stand a chance? How long will the Chinese and other greenback holders continue to watch the dollar fall? How many US assets will be purchased by foreign entities before we begin to take care of our trusted greenback?

My 2 cents: Foreign governments need to wake up to the realization if our economy goes into a recession than their economies will follow. This whole global marketplace theology, which believes global markets are now detached from the US markets, is just plain hogwash. Foreign governments should start lowering their interest rates immediately to help protect the American economy, thereby protecting their own interests.

Who am I though. I am an electrical engineer, not an economist.

Most of the EA’s we are forward testing at Forex Kung Fu are trading lower. Hopefully they turn their act around soon.

I watch with interest what is going on at the Automated Trading Championships -’Better’ EA is doing phenomenally well. I am very interested in winwin2007 - as it is a scalping strategy and the author may release the EA to the public.

I am full bore into developing a custom platform for trading Forex - it will run on linux, support the FIX protocol so I don’t have to deal with Market Maker brokers, will support the new FIX FPL standard for rapid strategy development, and bring a more rich backtesting environment than the MetaTrader platform currently offers. I have teamed up with an old friend who is very good in Math who is anxious to apply Monte Carlo and Reinforcement Learning to the Forex markets. I think it will be a lot of fun, and financially rewarding.

Will keep you posted!

I have been doing a lot of research on the best place to open a trading account and have learned a lot along the way. I need an account which is friendly to scalpers, offers very low pip spreads, and supports both MetaTrader and has an open API.

What I discovered along the way is why MetaTrader is for free - they charge the MM (Market Maker) Brokers. Why is that? Because the MetaTrader backend hosted by the broker allows the broker to manipulate spreads, and do a lot of other mischievous activity to take your money. Believe it or not Market Makers actually trade against you, a topic I will cover later.

Along comes ECN’s, or Electronic Communications Networks. These type of brokers do not trade against you, offer incredibly low PIP spread rates - they actually allow you to post your own bid/ask rate! The problem? Most of them do not offer MetaTrader support - there are workarounds available, but who knows how stable they are.

Well this works out well for me anyway - I was planning on building my own trading platform for Linux anyway. Most of the ECN’s have an API called the FIX protocol, and there are some tools available that handle the protocol level connection stability, allowing me to concentrate on the strategy and dealing with incoming pricing.

For the interim, until I get my own custom platform together, I would like to connect MT4 to an ECN with low spread rates. Anyone know a good one? For my custom platform I was planning on testing with EFX - anyone have experience with them, or the FIX protocol in general?

I have deployed CarryGrid v5 on our live testing server. I have added a link to their website under ‘EA Providers’

From their website:

Our software uses the ripples in shorter term trend to find good value positions within the longer term trend. We also look to maximise profits by holding on to the end of the wave. This system is based on a very successful but not well known manual technique that has been trading successfully by traders for some time. In addition, because the system is automated, we are able to add in additional features that only a computer that is available 24/7 can perform. We have the following in our favour.

Market direction using a custom indicator - we go with the direction the market is heading, not against it.

Swap (also known as the ‘interest rate differential’ - which in simple terms means you get paid handsomely every day of the year for simply holding a position!)

Position spreading/dollar cost averaging into positions. This EA is best run on the daily chart, and trend is taken on daily chart so we are pretty much immune to news events and the daily fluctuations barely concern us. We do not take a single position, we scale into a position with the appropriate lot size, when the price is moving in the right direction.We do allow to you run the EA on any timeframe you wish, but the longer-term the chart, the better your results will be.

With other EA systems, often they will focus on the short term trends and trade following the ripples, which brings about more risk. This would explain why many other EA’s seem to look good in theory, but do not perform as well in the long run.
Our system is the result of man-years of research & development and has been designed to work on all market conditions using this longer term method. You can start with any account size, be it a mini or full sized account. You should have some prior experience of forex trading and running Expert Advisors (EA’s).

No real winners or loosers today in the EA game. Steinitz released version 2.61. From his release notes:

This release is going to solve many previous issues that dealt with:

1. Power disconnects

2. Manually closing down MetaTrader platform

3. Broker disconnects

4. Changing platform timeframes and anything else that caused the robot to run an “INIT” function that disrupts the ability for data to be stored within the robot

There were 16 functions within the robot’s code that were potentially affected by the above and now are fixed because of the use of global variables that save this crucial data that the robot is producing and/or monitoring and storing it on your computers hard drive to be retrieved later if needed. This is a major improvement!

Glenn Bacon has allowed us to test his EA’s at http://www.getforexsoftware.com/ - We thank him for this and will be adding live results to the site shortly. Over the holiday weekend we will also be rolling out backtesting results. Stay tuned.

Have a good turkey day!

I was asking an EA provider today to forward test his EA. It got a little testy, and I just wanted to show an example of who you should never buy an EA from. I added a section called ‘Won’t Allow Testing’ on the menu as a result. Basically, if they don’t let you forward test, don’t trust them.

Rich,

Look with all due respect I think having an independent site forward
test your ea brings value to you - it costs you nothing. Also I plan
on investing in several EA’s myself, so it is a potential sale for
you. But I can’t justify spending 1k on an ea i can’t forward test
myself.

I understand your position and if my thoughts change in the future I
will let you know.

Brian
Reply:

It is $50 a week not 1000 dollars. And no. We will not be ever changing
policy on giving trials. Why? Internet Piracy. We give out free trials is
like closing the doors to our company. We have been in business for years
and have never given out a single free trial to anyone for any reason. We
have tons of forward testing posted and if you do not believe it, no
offense, we do not want you as a customer anyway

rich