Hello Jacpin,

Happy new year to you, and I wish you to continue with your success! I was traveling a few days, desired break after a year without day off :)

Now, I am very happy to see your post, and it makes me extremely proud that I was able to give you the right path in trading. This is what I am aiming in the Academy, to teach people to trade, to provide them with the right tools and education. In other words to build traders!

Many students ask me daily for signals in trading, but this is something I do not want to do. I can, but this is the lazy way in trading. And I have put so much effort during the last years to record courses, to provide better and better Expert Advisors, to educate traders, and to start providing signals will be ridiculous for me.

As you said it takes time and patience but when the results are there, the feeling is just fantastic :)

Thank you for sharing your experience in the Forum, I am sure you will motivate many new traders!

Success!

@Petko-Keep up the excellent work that you are doing. I am spreading the word to everyone I talk to about your courses, EA Studio software, trading in general, etc. :)

Hey Jacpin,

I wish all the traders are like you, so positive!

Believe it or not it is essentially important to be positive in trading. I have seen so so many discouraged and disappointed people just because they started trading without education, and they do believe that Forex only makes you lose..

Thanks again for sharing your results! I hope more traders will start doing that!

Hi Jacpin,

so nice of you sharing your results. Very motivating for me again. I started working on my portfolio just after Christmas (can dedicate more time on it now).

I am planning to test 99 EAs on the account, and my target is to have 16 EA on the live. May I know why you reduced the number of your EAs?

@Andi-Good question. I reduced the number of EAs because I wanted to consolidate my trading portfolio focus. I’m only trading on 9 different pairs and on 2 different time frames (M15 and H1). I’m picking the top 2 strategies after generation, demo them, and them place on live. I took Petko’s advice and I have about 10 backup strategies for each pair and timeframe that can be demoed after putting some on live. This way, I always have backup for when a live strategy starts to perform below my expectation, I can quickly replace it (after doing some initial validation) and not lose time with waiting for a new strategy to past my demo criteria.

I know this is kind of a long post, but I was trying to make sure I got my thoughts out as best as I could. But the main reason was focus. I wanted to zero in on pairs that I like based on how they perform and basically try to become an EA Studio expert in creating the most profitable strategies for each asset. :) I didn’t want to spread myself thin with analyzing a bunch of different assets like I was doing before. I found that if I focused more and considered myself to specialize more on a particular asset, I was producing better results in how I looked at profitable strategies created by EA Studio.

Hello Jacpin,

good to hear you took my advice of having ready Expert Advisors. It is all about creating and testing.

The more you create and test Expert Advisors, the better trader you will become.

Hey Jacpin,

so happy to see that you are doing great results! Make sure to keep the good money management and to stick with your plan. Anyway you will easy jump to the greedy, and you might be at risk.

@Petko-Thanks, Petko!

@Haliffa-You are absolutely right. I was almost tempted to jump from creating strategies and putting them right into my live account. But I stopped myself and had to make sure that I stick to what has been working for me. And to not deviate. As a result, the only thing that changed was me consolidating the assets I’m focusing and not making any changes to the way I was creating strategies, testing them, and then going live. :)

Right, when something is working do not touch it.

I feel very motivated nowadays after the New Year. My current profit since the beginning of the year is 566 dollars trading with 8 EAs from EA Studio, and I wish that is not a luck but will remain as a consistent profit.

@Andi-That is a great start to the new year! See…2019 is already looking good. And it can only go up from there. :)

@Jacpin – Thanks for sharing your successes! I’ve actually taken a page out of your book from the last thread we communicated on about the win rates. Just went live last week with 5 ea’s myself and am already up 11%. My portfolio consists of EURUSD, USDJPY, GBPJPY, EURGBP, GBPUSD, XAUUSD, DAX, and soon WTI. Currently running reactor for Dax on the H1. I agree with you on keeping it simple with the portfolio. Size up on what’s working instead of overloading yourself with hundreds of EA’s to babysit. Keep it up my good sir!

Hey Jac, which are you liking better. Strats with stop losses or without them?

@Roman-That is awesome! I swear GBP has been making a ton of moves lately. :) Love this portfolio mix. You keep up the great work as well. Like I said 2019 is going to be a great year!

I like the positive mood in here, guys! Believe it or not, being positive will make you a better trader!

Hello Jacpin,

So pleased to see that there are people sharing experience.

When you say 70%, how do you follow that in the live account?

Do you wait 10 trades to be done and see what is the ratio, or you calculate it with every closed trade?

Thanks!

@George-Hi there! I’m glad that others are engaging more in the forum as well. For my 70% winning performance criteria in the live account, I follow every closed trade and confirm that there are no more than 3 losses within 10 trades. For instance, I recently took off an EA that was making money for me before, but towards the end of December it had 3 losses in a row and then 1 more loss a couple of days later. It was only about 6 completed trades, so therefore this EA went below my performance criteria and I took it off.

I find that if I wait for 10 closed trades, I may have more than 3-4 losses and I don’t want to lose more money that need be. So I check the performance of all my EAs using FX Blue Live twice a day. When I put an EA on the live account, I use Petko’s awesome trick to avoid (or do minimal) demo testing. It has saved me a ton of time. So I take into consideration the count of trades that EA Studio found, the count of trades that MT’s strategy tester did, and then I start tracking performance (I take EA Studio’s count of trades even if there is a difference from the strategy tester number). *I still put every EA that I create and use on my demo account as a back-up to monitor performance.

Hello Jacpin,

thank you very much for the answer. Yeah I use Petko’s system as well to avoid Demo trading. It worked always for me. Thanks Petko!

I understand now what you mean by following the trades in FX blue, but lets say you are about 15-16 trades already with the EA and it has 3-4 consecutive losses(just as your example), do you count them according to the 15-16 trades, or when they reach 10, you restart it?

I mean it is clear how you do it till the 10th count of trade, but after that?

Thanks!

George

@George- No problem. I like sharing my experience. I always restart the count after the 10 trade. So after 10 trades, I start looking at the EA to make sure that there are no more than 3 losses within these next 10 trades. If the first 4 trades are losses, I already know that this is an EA I need to take off. I know that sometimes the marker can mess with things and maybe the EA will perform better in the next set of 10 trades, but I don’t want to take that chance. I usually remove the EA and replace it. If I have to replace for that timeframe and trading pair later, I go back to this EA and use the Validator to see if it’s performance improved. If so, then I may use it again. If not, then I just tuck it back for later. After all the time and effort I put into creating EAs, I don’t want to just get rid of ones that were actually performing well and maybe are just in a bit of a downturn temporarily.

Hey Jacpin,

you bring a lot of positive mood in the forum! Good job!

I hope 2019 started well for all traders, if it did not, they should start using EA Studio :) :) :)

Hey Jacpin,

you are pretty right here. It is good to save your work and just reevaluate it after that. Keep your EAs in collections, folders and from time to time you can place the fresh Historical data and see how they go.

All of our work are ready EAs and if you can find the way to use them, you will save a lot of work for yourself.

Hello Jacpin,

so reading your post again, I understand that if you are at about 13-14 trade and until now you had just 2 losses(when you were between 1-10 trade) you will look for new 3 losses from 11-20, and you will not have this one extra left from 1-9, right?

When you reach 10, just restart it, no matter what happened in the previous 10?

Thanks again!

@Petko-Absolutely. I got that idea from you and it is really a time-saver. All the hard work I put into evaluating and creating EAs shouldn’t go to waste. :)

@George-Thanks for the compliments! I am a firm believer in the law of attraction. Put out positivity and it come back around to you. And yes, everybody needs to get on board with EA Studio! Yes, you have that right.  When I reach 10, I just restart my count to look for 3 losses out of the next 10 trades. Even though, it seems like I am getting rid of potentially profitable EAs if they recover after losing 3 in 10 trades, I don’t trash the EAs. I just store them and use the validator each month to see if it has recovered. It probably seems like I am being really strict in my trading, but I honestly am a very conservative person. So, I don’t like to take too many risks in my trading. :)

Hey Jacpin, yes actually what we do is not easy. It is much easier than programming ourselves the EAs, or to hire someone to code you a strategy(even a developer can not be a generator, so how would you know which strategy is profitable?).

EA Studio makes it easier for sure, but the whole thing is not easy at all. Takes time, takes patience. BUT when the results are there its worthy.

Hey Jacpin,

pleasure to see your answer again. Thank you for making it clearer!

For sure we need strict rules, this is a thing I remember Petko said in many of his courses, and he is my Guru in trading :)

I am happy to see that there are already other people like you with experience, and I can learn more!

I will definitely implement your system and see how it goes for me. I hope I can be as strict as you are.

Thank you for sharing all of that!

I wish you great Sunday evening!

George

Nice to see this clarification about the 70% system. I will give it a try too.

I think what Jacpin does with this system is very useful. Having strict rules is the only way to avoid emotions in trading.

Another fan of Jacpin’s system here. I will test it on Demo first and than if I manage to have such successful EAs, I will go to the live :)

Guys, if you test win/loss ratio with 0.7, make sure your EAs are having this ratio before placing them for trading. Anyway the chances to eleminate them immediately are huge.

What I mean is, if you are testing the EAs with a rule, any rule, it needs to be true on the backtest after the generation.

Hope that is clear.

Hello all,

Great topic, Jacpin! Congratulations for having good results, I hope you will keep the good mood and profits :)

I am Rose from South Africa, and I have been using EA Studio for quite a long time now. I was so concentrated in the generation process that I did not look at the Forum for long time. Nice to meet so many new people!

Petko, you are nice to bring so many traders in one place where they can share results and ideas!

@Rose-Hi there! Thanks so much. It’s nice to have a veteran EA Studio user on the forum. There has probably been a lot of changes since you first started using it. I sincerely think that I would not have been a profitable trader, if not for EA Studio. I haven’t been as profitable this month as before, but this is because I reorganized my trading portfolio assets and some of EAs are still in demo testing right now before I go live (even with using Petko’s trick about using the end date with the Data Horizon). But things are looking good and as long as I am in profit, I’m happy. :)

Hey Jacpin,

tomorrow I will upload a video in the EA Studio updates, which will teach you another method of avoiding Demo trading, and combined with the R-squared.  A new method, that might change the trading totally, still testing it, but want to share it with all.

Do not worry if you have losing months, it happens. The important is overall to be on profit, and to keep working hard!

Hello Jacpin,

I have not stopped using the EA Studio even for a day. I just did not look at the forum. And because i was looking at the other forum of forexsb for the updates in EA Studio, I decided to check if Petko has updated somehow, and I was very surprised the other topic where he started to upload videos about the updates in EA Studio. Because in the other forum they are written, but much better to watch video from Petko, because I know he tested it all before recording the video. :)

I do algo trading now full time, I get stable results, but yes, it happens to have bad months. That is normal. Just as all strategies have stagnation, it is normal to have stagnation when trading EAs.

Now, I can tell you that the more you diversify, the bigger number of EAs you trade, the more stable results you will have, the less negative months will be there.

I am so happy with EA Studio too! Changed my life, I have time for all, for my family! Petko is the man! :)

Hello Rose,

it is great to see that you are full-time trader. This gives me a lot of enthusiasm to learn faster the EA Studio. I see that it takes time, but at the end when you can live from it, I believe the time is worth.

So you say that it is better to trade bigger number of EAs on the live account, right?

Hey Chingi,

yes, it takes time. And it depends a lot on how much time you will spend on it.

When I started algorithmic trading with the strategy builders I was spending only few hours on Sunday to generate the EAs and leaving them for trading during the week. This was because I worked on two places and had to take care of my family.

After that I stopped one of the jobs and had 1 hour per day for it. When results came, I quit and decided to do spend the whole time on it :)

Of course this all was long time, that is why I say it depends on the time you spend on it. If you spend the whole day from the beginning, for sure you will get results faster.

Regarding the EAs, I said that the more EAs you have in your live account, you will see less difference in your monthly performance. And this is if you diversify the EAs will.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Hello Rose,

thank you so much for sharing your story! It sounds like a long and hard way you went.

Well, I am still student(in the university), so I have a lot of free time between all the parties :)

No, seriously I am very enthusiastic after reading successful stories in the forum, and I am very very very motivated to master EA Studio.

Petko is fantastic mentor, and every day I watch his lectures. I have taken the 20 courses, so I think I will spend the next 2 months it watching and practicing, but I prefer to learn as much as possible before placing some real money. Plus, as a student I am not capable of huge account, so I will be smart.

I understand about the EAs, and I think to start generating many from now, so when I am ready, I will have a good portfolio prepared.

Thanks again!

I wish I started trading with EA Studio when I was a student :) I would have been a master now. Jocking, that was 12 years back and EA Studio was not developed.

You start with it in the best possible time! Good job!

Chingi, you are really a happy man, having EA Studio and courses from Petko as a student. Use your free time as maximum, because when you start working full time it is so hard to fine time, and it is even harder to leave your job and dedicate to trading.

Well, guys I can say than I am lucky for being born a bit later :)

I realize that, and I am putting all my time and effort into it. After I got the Optimal Pack I have been spending more than 10 hours a day watching the courses from Petko and practicing with EA Studio and FSB Pro.

I think it will be better to first practice EA Studio, and than go to FSB Pro as more advanced software.

Thanks you all for being so honest and so responsive!

Hello Chingi,

I would suggest you to study both EA Studio and FSB Pro along with the courses. These are just different strategy builders and we are able to create different Expert Advisors.

About the hours you spend, good but keep in mind that the time is never enough :)

Hey Chingi, what I do is to run the FSB Pro and EA Studio generators all the time… I am not pausing them at all. If you organize the time well, you will see that it does not cost a lot of time to set it up, and run it while you are doing different things.

So even you are still watching the courses, you can run the generators to get used with the Acceptance Criteria.

Same with me. the generators work all the time. This is the only way. Actually, when I started with EA Studio and FBS Pro I had just a laptop. Now I have 2 laptops and desktop and the generators work everywhere.

I am thinking of taking the third license for FSB Pro, so I can run it on the three machines.

It is really about how you will organize your time. But having the right pieces of software, you need to organize.

Good point here, guys! Use the generators as much as possible. Find the best acceptance criteria for your trading style, and generate strategies!

Keep in mind that most of the traders do not have even 1 profitable strategy and they keep on struggling with manual trading, and we generate dozens just overnight. And we trade them automatically…

I got the third license now, so I will set on fire now :)

Glad to hear that, Andi! Keep up the good work!

How was February for everybody? I had a huge drawdown in my portfolio which recovered now at the end of the month, but the next profit is small…

@George-Same here. But I also have been doing some touch-ups on the assets I’m trading and the EAs due to the software updates. So, March is going to kind of going to be like a restart for me as I am going to be using brand new EAs in trading. I’ll try and post some results at the end of March.

Hello Jacpin,

Maybe the market was just in the wrong direction :)

Which updates are you talking about?

@George-Oh, things like the R-squared being used when I’m generating strategies. After going through all the update videos that Petko produced, it helped a lot with my generating better strategies (better win/loss percentage, better equity lines, better max stagnation and max drawdown, etc.) Oh, I started using the In sample and Out of Sample along with the complete backtest in the acceptance criteria like Petko taught in his videos, to also help with generating better strategies.

Hello Jacpin,

I am glad to hear that the videos I did improved your generation process. Keep up the good work!

For me, the updates were essentially important too! Looking forward to more videos and courses from you.

Cheers, Bob!

I really like the updates too. First, because I don’t have the time to follow what is going on with the strategy builder on their website. And second, because they don’t launch videos with every new update. They just released the new version and you should deal with it.

Petko gives great details about all of the features such as the R-squared which I would never know. The way he uses the acceptance criteria with Out of sample and In of sample is amazing for me. I have been testing it now for 2 weeks and I hope that from the first week of March I will have already expert advisors trading on the live account using this method.

You are right, Halifa. I did not know about R – squared at all. Now it is in my generator all the time thanks to Petko

R-squared is a really great feature because it makes the strategy smooth. I implemented it in my portfolio. I filtered all the strategies that I was trading on live, I removed the ones that have R – squared below 60.

Good job, Andi! It is good to update the portfolio, even the one with the good strategies. If you can make them better, make them better.

How is everyone doing? I got really great 2 first months in 2019, and March is now with +1400$ in my account. I hope my EAs will keep doing great!

@Van-That is awesome. I wish you continued success. I’m doing good. I did a revamp of my trading portfolio at the beginning of this year, so I am rebuilding my profit, but I am still on the positive. I’ll be posting my results around June to give time for EAs to show a longer trend of being profitable.

Hello guys, I am so enthusiastic about trading with EA Studio, especially when I see people profit. I am new to this, I took the Optimal Pack, and now building my first portfolio. I am sure everyone did many portfolios of EAs before profit, so I have that in mind.

Hello Deniza,

I am glad to hear you are enthusiastic, but keep your enthusiasm on a Demo account initially :)

It is great feeling the first time people start using EA Studio, and trading with Expert Advisors, but take your time to practice.

Yes, I can confirm that from my personal experience. :)

Cheers, Van!

Great results, Van! I am on profit since January too, but smaller. Anyway, glad to hear others are more profitable. This makes me hungrier for profits :)

Guys, as I mention in some of my courses, 99% of the traders lose money. You have profits! This should make you very happy and satisfied with your efforts. It means you are in this small 1 %. Keep up the good work, and be happy from what you do!

Hey, Petko! You are correct, most traders lose, I read some other forums still but all there are very negative and they do not believe in trading because most have never seen profits.

I can say that I am quite happy with my work this year, but I know I can make it even better.

Hi Sisi, I know what you are talking about. Before coming to the academy, I was the same…very skeptical about everything…very frustrated with the trading. I did write in some forums as well…anyway it is in the past.  Now I focus on the EAs I build and to perform every new month better and better.

People have no idea about trading and they just buy and sell from what they see in the news….

Just like everyone know how to bet on football :)

Hey guys, unfortunately, you are right. When I worked for a few brokers I really saw that people invest money without an idea, and they lose it all. Maybe this is one of the things that pushed me to record trading courses…

Looking back in time, I can say that  I was one of these people….I started trading on a live without watching any courses, just a few introduction lectures from the broker. I lost 3 small accounts before looking for more serious education. Now I am happy I found Petko and his courses.

Good to know that, Deniza!

It is normal to lose at the beginning especially when no any education is there. Now. losing a small account is bad, but there are people that lose thousands of dollars, and more, there are people losing 100s of thousands. I have seen that when I was working for a few brokers. It was sad.

There are people who take the trading as a pure casino, they do not want to learn. They trust their luck will come one day. That is not the case in Forex trading.

Hi Petko,

I can not believe that someone puts so much money into trading and lose, and then again and again without saying ” Hey! I need to learn how to do that first!” It’s amazing really…

I think most of the people who jump in trading without education lose all their savings. That is sad. It is like to become a doctor and go to operating theater without the 10 years of education needed.

Hehee, well said Andi!

Andi,

The problem with “education” is most educators cannot trade themselves. In the USA, there is a guy review future trading sites. Of the over 1000 he looked at, only a handful kept a track record and were honest. So education is good if it is from profitable traders that fit you style you are learning.

Image learning how to fly an airplane from a guy that only does classroom training and never flies himself.

Hello Craig,

very well said here! The other problems is that many of those are connected with Brokers and they aim only opening live accounts.

You are right that education should fit the students and the traders. Of course, people are different, and it is important for everyone to find his style.

Actually, I have seen people teaching staff they never do or left it behind. For example, I teach Martial Arts in the evening and after 15 years of teaching now, I always train the hardest from all students, and I have seen many other black belts to teach, only with speech, no any movement…

Hey Craig, this is exactly what I liked the most with Petko’s courses – he shows actual trading and examples and at the same time, he does not push anyone for real trading.

Petko is one of a kind trader and mentor. Before reaching to the Academy I had a bad experience with many brokers, expensive courses from brokers and some paid social groups which were useless.

I was more than happy when I found Petko’s course, EA Studio, and FSB Pro. This is really a professional staff and everyone who is already a student in here knows that.

I agree with you, Desita! Also, Petko is professionalist and at the same time a great person!

I’ve decided to go live after 5 long months of reading books and blogs, watching Petko’s courses and generating lots of strategies in FSB Pro. I finally settled for a strategy that works in most currency pairs and have been trading for about 1 week now. Very interesting results so far. I’ll wait for few more weeks before posting an FX Blue result. Hopefully 2019 will be a good year for everyone.

I noticed however that some of my EA’s randomly open trades with double the entry lot size. This has now happened for 2 currency pairs (GBPJPY and EURAUD) within 1 week of trading. For example, the EAs are setup to open 0.05 entry lot and add 0.01 lot with a max 0.07 lot. GBPJPY opened one trade for 0.10 lot and EURUAD opened one for 0.11 lot. I complained to the broker to check if anything is happening on their server end and they responded that they don’t interfere with clients trading in anyway that they trade the instructions/signals provided. I’ve checked the EA and everything is fine. So, I’m not sure what is going on. Has anyone experienced this kind of issue before?

Hi Ossaio. So far I did not have any issues with FSB Pro.

A reason could be that you have the EA on another chart with the higher lot? Or you have it on another computer and another platform with the same EA?

Thanks Andi. I’m using 2 MT4 platforms all in one VPS. Each EA is placed on a single chart. I don’t trade from any other computer.

Just going through my account history, I discovered that it has happened 5 times in the past 1 week with AUDCAD, EURAUD, EURNZD, GBPAUD and GBPJPY. I only discovered because I was inspecting all the trades. I don’t know where this could be coming from.

Quite a strange thing Ossaio!

I think you need to set up the Expert Advisors again, make sure the lots are correct, and they are placed on single charts. There must be a reason.

Also, if all is good with you, it could be really from the broker. No idea why! Just place the very same EAs on a Demo account with other broker and see if this will happen or not. If it does not, it is from the broker.

Thanks for the suggestion. The broker denied involvement. The lots are also correct. I check the lots again in the input window while attaching them to the MT4 charts.

I guess I will follow your advice and set everything up again. I was planning to upgrade my current VPS but I might as well get a new one and reconfigure everything from the beginning. The EAs are high frequency and contain several logical groups. With so many open trades at the same time, I believe a more powerful VPS may help with opening and closing trades in general.

I’m just discovering more problems with my trades. I don’t think I trust this broker any more. I started trading last week with high frequency EAs and have made over 2500 pips in less than 7 full days of trading. I’m trading between 0.01 and 0.05 lots per order. The first 5 days were generally okay until I spotted the first trade with 0.10 lot size. That was an alarm bell for me. It is very difficult to follow all the trades when there are so many open trades in several pairs.

What I just observed now is even more shocking. For an EA which has a 27 pips take profit. A position was opened for 4 pips take profit. Another EA which has 89 pips stop loss was opened for 107 pips stop loss. I’m very sad considering the amount of work I’ve put in with this broker already. I need to find another reliable broker before I lose all my funds and the thought of starting all over is disturbing…..

Sorry guys for my many posts. I just downloaded my trading history to a visualization software and discovered that the problem was more widespread. Some of the stop loss is up to 175 pips instead of 90 pips in the EA.

Although I made money because my EAs have high win rate but it’s just a matter of time and my account will blown up if I continue with these guys. It’s good I’m learning this in my very first week of going live. Trading is very tricky, traders must keep an eye on everything, else it will go horribly wrong.

Hello Ossaio,

Great that you share your experience here(even not a good one with the broker).

The EA is not supposed to open any different lots from what you have in the inputs. Especially after 1-week proper trading and then changing the lots, I might guess it is indeed from the broker.

In some brokers, there are these “risk management” people, who are looking at the profitable traders. First they look for people who are trying to play the system, and second, they try to frustrate the profitable traders. I have seen slippage and delay in the orders, but so far have not seen changed values of the orders. That is totally unacceptable. Does this broker have FCA regulation?

I never had such an issue since I am trading with regulated brokers. I shared before I was scammed, but that was a totally different thing.

I guess trading with EAs and the broker messing up is kind of scammy actions too.

Yes the broker has ASIC and FCA regulation. It is actually an Australian broker with office in London which you have used in the past and some people here still use them. They are supposed to be good and I’m surprised to experience this kind of behaviour. I went to Forex Peace Army for reviews and some people have similar complaints against this broker also. Sometimes, you may never know what your broker is doing until you download your full account history and recheck the lot sizes, take profits and stop losses. It is difficult to identify dodgy practices by just looking at the screen.

I don’t know which broker to use now. Every other broker I’ve seen has both negative and positive reviews. I saw another Australian broker who is not regulated by FCA but has the highest rating in Forex Peace Army. I may try them and see how it goes. They offer 1:100 leverage, so I can open an account with 1k or 1.5k. That will be a manageable risk for me. I’m still on the lookout for Europe based brokers and will welcome suggestions from anyone.

Hey Ossaio, if others have the issue from the broker, they really might have this team as Petko says, who are trying to make the profitable traders losers. I saw hat Petko uses JFD in his courses and so far I have no problems with them. As well, I tested Pepperstone and they were fine.

Anyway, I am sure that the broker could behave differently with the different clients. Keep that in mind.

Hi Haliffa, this is actually Pepperstone and I never expected this from them. My EAs were trading very frequently and at some point had 87% win rate. I immediately closed out most of the open positions at a loss when I discovered the dodgy activities. I contacted my account manager when I first saw the higher lot size issue last week and he said they had nothing to do with it. I sent him another email yesterday after I discovered the issues with take profits and stop losses and he has not responded yet. Maybe he has gone on Easter break. I’m surprised a broker will change a 27 pips take profit to 0.9 pips and increase stop loss from 90 pips to 175 pips. They don’t do this in every trade, so you may never know whether they’ve done it to you until you download your account history and check them in Excel.

I’m checking JFD and Dukascopy. But I’m leaning towards Global Prime in Australia. They seem to have very good reviews although their spreads are not the tightest. I don’t know if anyone has had experience with Global Prime.

Just digging more about Global Prime, it seems the biggest risk with them is client’s fund protection in the event of insolvency.

FCA regulated brokers may be good for peace of mind. Whichever case, it’s good to trade with an amount we can afford to lose and to withdraw profits constantly. I’m still reviewing several brokers. Suggestions are welcome.

I’ve recently opened a live account with Global Prime also after reading good things about them.  I did notice that their spreads were a bit wider than pepperstone, who was the other broker I was considering……  One of my biggest concerns has always been having a large account (one day) and the broker going bust in a market collapse or similar.

So also interested to see what other have to say…….

Great discussion here guys! I do not mind talking about brokers, just do not place links(affiliate links).

Now, Ossaio, I would suggest you send your log file to Mr Popov from Forex Software LTD. I remember before there were some issues with the FSB Pro martingale system (adding options). I think he solved it, but just to check.

Regarding the brokers..I always use 3-4 to diversify the risk.

Thanks Petko. I’ve already raised the question with him and he asked about the details of the previous trades before the higher lot issues. I’m yet to hear from him. This was before I discovered that stop losses and take profits were also being changed. I think I’ll open accounts with 2 or more brokers and compare them at the same time.

I agree Richard, my strategies require tight spreads, so that will be a major factor for me. I’ll shop around and see how it goes.

Hello Ossaio,

Glad to hear that you did your best to find the issue. I am sure you will find the answer, and it will be great to share it here.

Just take your time and always concentrate on having profitable strategies which you already have, so you are almost there.

Have a great weekend ahead!

Hello All,

how was the first month of the Q2? I succeeded to hit my record high profit of 31,7% combined results from my 3 live accounts. The demo accounts where I test the EAs were even better, probably I should think about how to move the EAs faster from Demo to Live…

I am so glad to hear that, Desita! Keep up the good work!

Hey everyone! Q1 was slow but profitable. Q2 is starting off even better. I did have a reset in February and March to redo my trading portfolio and also create better EAs with updated acceptance criteria. I spent all of April creating and demo testing EAs. Everything that passed my criteria went live yesterday and are doing well. Lessons learned made things better and Petko’s videos are helping me to generate better strategies. :)

Hello Jacpin, I am happy to hear you are doing well. I missed you in the Forum. :)

Yes, I do spend a lot of time generating and testing EAs but I guess that is the only way. And yes, Petko is making it better and better.

For me the most important is that we are profitable, we know what we need to do (even there is always something new to add) and we trade without emotions…I really really enjoy trading with the EAs, watching Petko’s courses and free videos and just progress…

@Haliffa-Hey there! Yeah, I have been having issues with getting into the forum, but all has been fixed now. So, I’m back at it again and I missed you guys as well. Did you check out the new update to EA Studio? I don’t know what they did, but the strategies that I am generating today look phenomenal compared to the ones I just generated yesterday. Maybe it’s the asset and timeframe I’m using, but I’m so excited to see how these EAs work out!

Good morning Jacpin, glad you are back! I did not notice the update, maybe it is from yesterday? These guys are amazing they keep on improving it…

Good morning Everybody,

I believe they added Walk Forward Optimization (Finally) as an option instead of the traditional Optimizer. Currently playing around with that. As it’s better to have Walk Forward Optimization in order to use the most current market conditions vs the history as a whole. Kevin Davey wrote an amazing algo trading book (Building Winning Algorithmic Trading Systems) going over the differences in Anchored optimization (EA Studios old optimizer with OOS) and Un-Anchored where the time period and OOS slide with the changing market conditions and current data. He doesn’t cover data mining (what we do here) but I’ve learned how to adapt his book to EA Studio, working on FSB along with Petko’s trainings.

@Desita-Glad to be back. Yes, the update was the other day. Check out the new Full Data Optimization and the Walk Forward Optimization.

@Roman-This is very interesting. I think I will check out that book.

@Jacpin- Yes its amazing. I’ve read it about 3 times now. I visit it every time i get discouraged, as he shares his personal journey going from part time trader to full time. Including the Walk Forward Optimization which he pioneered back when he traded in the world championships.

Hello Roman,

to learn how to go over the times when you are discouraged is the hardest and most important thing in trading, and in life in general.

A man told me once ” It is easy to be profitable when the market is on your side, but the best traders stand out when they do not give up when hard times are there” And this actually applies not just in trading but in life.

I do not know if you have seen my other videos on youtube where I teach martial arts…same thing I say now to my students there: “It is easy to train when you are healthy and feeling well, but the best ones do not miss training even when they are sick or with injuries” in these times the best stand out.

For a few years now I never feel discouraged, when profits are not on my side, I get more and more motivated, I barely do not sleep to turn things on my side! Unfortunately, that is not something I can teach in my courses. Everyone should overcome these periods and turn them into motivational moments.

Hey Petko,

What you say it so true. I found some of your martial arts videos on YouTube, and they are amazing, man!

It looks like you guys, do really hard training there! I love what you do we the stick and the sward:

WooW! Petko, you surprised me again! That is so so beautiful and it looks really like a hard and different style. I did some karate when I was a kid but did not make a single kick for years hope I will not need to :) :) :)

Hey, Petko! That is so interesting to see. When do you find time to teach martial arts? I wish I organize myself better and have time for some training.

Petko excuse my french but that’s bad ass!! I had no idea you were into martial arts as well. And yes i completely understand. I had just pulled out of my drawdowns last week and was having my first fully profitable days live since the beginning of the year. Last week’s NFP completely shattered my gains and is continuing to demolish me today again. I’ll keep on trusting my EA’s as you’ve said.

Petko, you are amazing! Your technique and style is so beautiful.

roman, I always pause the EAs on NFP, I am not such a risk taker.

Hey, guys, appreciate your words! Andi, the forum is not the place for such videos but because I like it too, I will leave it :)

Yes, Martial arts are my other passion. I love to train hard. This gives really a lot of discipline which I believe helped me in trading too.

Yes the NFP is a headache sometimes. What I normally do is to reduce the lots on the previous day. I do not want to pause or stop the trading, but I want to lower the risk.

Ooo, Petko! I didn’t imagine you are so dangerous! Great clip! Do you train or you teach?

Very interesting how you combine trading and martial arts. I guess really the discipline is stone with you.

Hey Violet, yes discipline is quite important in trading and martial arts. Well, in the training I do it quite differently – a lot of music, and I make the students enjoy being there. Not getting close to military education :)

How is May so far with everyone? I had a great start but after 15th, I got draw down with some of the EAs. I removed them from the portfolio but I follow the result on the Demo, if they come back on the profitable side, I will bring them back in.

@Deniza-Hi there! My May is going okay. Forex is doing good. My gold and silver started off great, but also kind of fell after the 15th. UK oil has dropped in the beginning and is picking back up. US oil has been consistent for me. I’ll see how the last week goes, if I’ll hit my target profit for the month.

I got a new broker and started trading live on May 14th. What a volatile time to have entered the market!

Hey Ossaio,

there is no exact time. You never know when the market is suitable or not. The important is to keep strictly the system you follow.

Hey Ossaio,

the market is dynamic, which is great. The more experience with EAs you gain, the more flexible you will become to trade over each market conditions. A tip: reduce the lots if you see volatility, hot news, or anything that might cause you troubles.

Kind regards,

I guess it is all about being strict on the live account. What ever rule is there, we should keep it. At the moment I keep using only the Win/loss ratio with 0.7 and profit factor above 1.5

Yes, the EAs do not stay long on the account, but the losses are minimal. A lot of work for small trading, with good profits :) I feel very comfortable with that!

Goodd point here!

I am too strict sometimes on the Live, but I feel much better this way. I can not look st losses there :)

Hey Andi,

being strict is good and it is a must, but do not make it too strict because you will limit the success in your account. Try to figure exact rules and follow them a long time. This way you will see if a change is needed.

Hey Jacpin,

Hope you are fine, I haven’t heart from you in a while. I have tested your method with the win/loss and I found it really applicable.

I was wondering if you have any updated on it?

@Andi-Hey there! Yeah, I know it’s been awhile. I’ve some personal things going on (nothing to do with trading) that took up a lot of my time. But all is getting better.

Nope, I still use the same win/loss rule. I think I deviated from it once before and it threw everything off for me, so I just stuck with it. It makes things so much more simpler for me. I’m glad that is working for you as well. My motto is work smarter and not harder. :)

The only thing that I have been updated is my Acceptance criteria when generating EAs:

Complete Backtest:

Min. profit factor-1.1

Minimum r-squared-70

In Sample (training) part:

Minimum r-squared-50

Out of Sample (trading) part:

Minimum r-squared-50

This has been doing very well for me.

Hey Jacpin,

Sorry to hear that you had personal issues, I hope everything will be perfect soon with you.

Actually, we use pretty similar Acceptance criteria, only I use Profit factor above 1.2 for the whole period and r-squared – 60%.

What is the reason you use different r-squared in the Complete backtest and in the In/Out of sample?

Thanks for sharing!

@Andi-Honestly, I just copied it from the criteria that Petko had on his videos and since it has been working for me as well, I just kept it. :)

Me too :) Just with the time I increased it(stricter) when I collected more bars.  I think Petko uses much stricter criteria, but in the courses, he shows less because the students will not have a lot of data when watching the courses.

Hi Jacpin,

Glad that you are back and hope you won’t have the problems anymore. How is life in the states? I plan to move next year. I have a decent income now from the EAs, and if I keep it this way (or even improve it) my plans will go fluently.

@Haliffa-Hi there! Yeah, things are a lot better. Life is good but hectic. And we are coming up on another presidential election year, so it is becoming a volatile political atmosphere. Where are you thinking of moving to? I have lived on both the East and West coast, which require way different incomes to live on depending on where you end up. :) If you can, send me a pm and we chat more.

Hey Girls, I am planning to organize in the future personal meetings. For sure, the States will be one point, because we have many traders and students from there. My idea is to meet more users of EA Studio and FSB Pro, students of my courses, for a weekend at a hotel on the beach :) To exchange more ideas, share experience, and get to know each other better.

Hey Petko!!! That sounds really great! I would be happy to meet you in person, I have like 1000 questions :)

Also, it will be great to meet Jacpin, Roman, Andi, and all the rest who write in the Forum.  I am sure such weekends will be really useful for all.

Looking for it!

Jacpin, my husband probably will be moved there from his work, and I will have to go with him :)

I am not sure where it will be, but probably NY. However, I hope by this time I will double the profits from the EAs, and be more confident in moving there. Where is more expensive? On the West?

Count me on for such a meeting, no matter where it is :)

I am glad to hear that the idea is accepted well :) However, that is still an idea, but I hope we can make it happen in 2020.

Cheers,

@Haliffa-It would be so nice to get together in person and commune with my fellow traders.

I have to say that NY is one of the most expensive states to live in and then if your actually in New York City, it is really expensive. It’s because it is a huge city and there is not a lot of space to live which makes the properties expensive. Demand high, supply low equals expensive living.

Honestly, it is always more expensive in the big cities no matter where you go in the states. However, cost of living plays a big part in deference to your salary. For example, I used to live in California for over 12 years. I work from home as a QA Tester and Help Desk Support. My salary in California allowed me to live in a middle-income neighborhood (more on the low end of middle income). Now, I live in Delaware. I kept my same salary, but the cost of living in Delaware is way lower than California. So my California income, goes a long way in Delaware in where I want to live as I could probably afford to live in an even nicer area. Now..here’s another example..I live in Delaware for over 12 years and make Delaware income. I decide to move to California. Since California has a higher cost of living compared to Delaware, my Delaware income is not going to afford me much when I move to California. So instead of a house, I may be downgrading to an apartment, etc. This happens all the time like moving from Miami, FL to Raleigh, NC or San Francisco, CA to Cheyenne, WY and vice-versa. I would highly suggest doing some research on cost of housing comparable to the job just to see how far your money can take you. After that, everything else falls in line.

I will also say to watch out for the different weather systems depending on where you live. The East Coast is notorious for major snowstorms, blizzards, thunderstorms, and hurricanes. NY gets hit the most when it comes to snow because of how far north it is. FL doesn’t get mush snow, but that’s where most of the hurricanes hit. The South and MidWest are big areas for hurricanes, tornados, heat waves, and thunderstorms. The West Coast has to deal with earthquakes because of the fault lines, heat waves, and potential volcano eruptions (there is one in Washington state and there is one in C-Mt. St. Helens, and one in Calfornia Mt. Shasta). The North mostly has to deal with tornados and major snowstorms/blizzards. I guess pick what you can deal with and then go from there. :) Hope this helps.

Jacpin, that is one of the most interesting posts in the Forum :) It is quite amazing what land is there! You have it all, maybe a bit more from some of the things :)

I have always dreamed of living in the US, I do not think that it would ever happen. :) However, I am glad there are people from there in here.

Cheers, Jacpin!

Jacpin, somehow I have missed your answer! Sorry about that!

What you say is really interesting, I will definitely share it with my husband, and hopefully, he will take the right decision.

It is really a dream to live there and work from home…I think that would be my goal in the next 5 years.

The last months I have great results with the EAs in my account, and I feel very positive about this all :)

Once I am there, for sure, I will invite you to our new house.

Regards,

How was the first half of 2019 for all? With me was really good. I am very satisfied with my trading, because I had 5 profitable months, 1 losing, and I succeeded to go over 10 of Petko courses, which were really useful. I will try to apply all that I learned now…

Hello Sharapova,

It makes me happy to hear that you turned your trading positive. Keep up learning. This is the key…

My first half was somewhere in the middle. I am on positive but I had 3 negative months which makes me not really happy…hope to improve this during the second half of the year.

I did great 4 months in the first half, then I had to travel so I decided not to trade when I am not in front of the computer. So the 2 months are just 0, but I guess I did better. I know already that the EAs to the whole job, but I have to move from Demo to live and vice versa, so I decided not to do anything with the trading when I am away…

Anyone, to share if I did right or not?

Hey Chingi,

you definitely did not bad by stopping. If you really have no chance to monitor your EAs and manage them, you better do nothing…

What I normally do when I travel is to bring my laptop with me, and I connect with TeamViewer the computers so I can manage the EAs (move them from Demo to live and vice versa).

You can try that, but give it a try first with the Demo only. Also, if you have a VPS would be easier to manage the EAs wherever you travel.

How are the result for August with everyone? I did some great profits with Petko’s EAs. Trying to figure it out how he generates such strategies…:)

Very interesting topic here. Steve, my name is Teo and I am new to the Academy and the forum. Just going over all post and trying to learn as much as possible for algorithmic trading. I hope next months I will be able to achieve profits with Expert Advisors from Petko, and after that with the EAs I generate.

Would love to have an FSB/EA Studio student summit Petko!

Sorry Ladies and Gents, took a little break for my eyes and sanity. Was working on a hopeful partnership that fell through while I was incubating a few strategies. Am back in R&D mode! Missed the forum!

Hello Roman,

Glad to see you back. Your posts are very useful!

You missed an update with EA Studio. No new features but it works so much faster now :)

Actually this was a very important update because the faster EA Studio generator works the more strategies we are getting. When we have a bigger choice we will have bigger profits with Expert Advisors we trade.

Everything is connected and when one of the features improve, it improves the whole process.

Yes, Cone! You are right, the faster it works the more strategies we will have at the end and a better choice.

Now the profits with Expert Advisors depend on many things:

• the proper Historical datA
• strict acceptance criteria
• good set up with the Reactor
• accurate testing on Demo and Live

@Mery- Thank you! Glad to be home with my fellow academy students! Have learned a lot in here as well over the past almost two years.

Hey Petko,

you are right, the profits with Expert Advisors depend on so many things but having the Expert Advisor studio on our side is a HUGE thing!

I am sure the software will be updated more with the time, and the BEST thing for me is that there is a lifetime license. I have couple of programs for my work, and they are all on a yearly subscription. That sucks! This is called ”milking”. In order to use the programs I have to pay every year…

I am glad there is the lifetime license for EA Studio and FSB Pro because I do not feel in rush to use it, I have all the time in the world. :)

Hi Roman!

I have learned a lot as well! Basically the Academy and Petko changed my trading and succeed with profits. With the price action and manual trading, it was such a headache and I was never on a profit at the end of the month.

How are your EAs doing?

Hey traders,

many of you noticed that EA Studio works faster, but have a look at that:

For some of the monthly updates, I have run a few reactors for 4500 min, which is more than 3 days.

I got over 10 MILLION strategies generated :)

Wow! I always run it for 600 min overnight. I did not try such a long generation. Will set one just now :)

Petko, I am really impressed that you do your best to update the new EAs every month and generate better and better ones.

Hi Petko,

Kindly could you expound more on profits with the Expert Advisors?

Good question there, Thomas!
It is really nothing to explain more, I demonstrate in nearly all of my courses how the EAs work.

It is all about managing a Demo and a Live account and moving the profitable EAs from one to another.

This method works the best for me, so just give it a try and see how it goes.

Wow Petko your courses are well explained and detailed enough to answer all the questions a newbie trader would possibly have. I think you’re doing an amazing job! Keep up the good work sir :)

Yes, the courses of Petko are really complete. He puts pressure on the most important stuff, without unnecessary staff and theory.

I am surprised that by so many students around, just a few questions in the Forum…simply not a lot to ask.