Confused beginner

[Gary Fishlock]

First I’d like to say a big hello to everyone and thanks to Petko for some great courses. So far done about 10 of his courses and still got a few more to go. Been downloading a lot of his free EA’s to demo accounts and about a month ago opened a VPS account. Got fxblue and been trying to do everything by the book. About a week and a half ago I opened a live account with £1000 to see how I got on, I picked the best 3 or 4 EA’s from 4 demo accounts, so it was about 12 EA’s and a portfolio of 1m time frame EURUSD which a few of them seemed to be doing well at the time. first 4 days I made about £50 and thought this is great, got this all worked out, then next 4 days went down about £60 so I’m about £10 down which is nothing to worry about at this stage, as I was expecting drawdowns. What I was confused about was on my demo account I had EA’s that had 7 wins and 2 losses for profit factors of 3.65 and as soon as I put it on live account had 4 wins and 3 losses for PF of -2.85, another one with 14 wins 1 loss PF of 2.31 on demo, then on live it had 6 wins and 3 losses for profit factor of 0.43. I’ve taken them both off live account but was wondering should I of left them for awhile as they looked like good EA’s. Another thing I can’t work out is why some of them have got such a big stop loss, there’s one I’ve got that’s had 9 wins and 1 loss and have still only got a profit factor of 0.98, seems like there’s quite a few that win far more then they loss but still can’t make any money. I’ve got a couple so far that make money all the time, so I know this EA lark works,  so it’s just a case  of finding a few more good one’s before I start making some proper money. I will keep working on it for as long as it takes, and will try and keep you up to date every couple of weeks if anyone is interested. Keep up the good work Petko, love the course’s and have learnt a lot so far.

[Alan Northam]

I create my own EURUSD EA’s for the 1 minute time frame and they work fine.  However, I do not use them for more that 5 days.  I then create new ones.  EA’s do not work over long periods of time as the market conditions change.  With EA’s created for the 15 and 60 minute time frames Petko uses them for one month and then creates new ones.  When trading the 1 minute time frame EA’s created for this time frame need to be removed and replaced quite often.  So I have to ask do the EA’s work for more than one week with the demo account?  Were the EA’s created to be used on the 1 minute time frame?  Does the real account use the same broker as the demo account?

[Petko Aleksandrov]

Hey Gary,

Glad to see you in the Forum. And it is excellent you shared your experience so we might give you some valuable tips. What Alan shared is quite interesting. He is an experienced trader, so that you can learn from his answer.

Anyway, you first need to check if your broker provides the same prices on Demo or Live. You can do that by placing 3-4 EAs with 0.01 simultaneously on both Demo and Live and comparing the results for a week.  If the results are different, then the whole Demo testing becomes useless.

However, keep trading with 0.01 lot until you feel comfortable with the management of the EAs.

[Samuel Jackson]

Hi Gary,

Just checking how you are getting on? I would strongly advise you stop trading live as it seems way to early for that at the moment from what I am reading.

My initial advise would simply be this:

Switch to a demo (mock live) account and keep doing what you are doing, only when you have seen successful results for a few months running should you progress to a small live account as you are doing. The odds of you losing money if you skip this important step are astronomically high.

Any winning periods will most likely be luck (certainly not a good thing if it mean you then start to increase the size of account and risk size with false confidence) and large losses will be just round the corner.

Keep asking questions but just had to start with making those thoughts clear ;-)

I have some questions:

1 – How long have you been trading?

2 – How long have you been algo trading?

3 – Do you have EA studio?

Also I would add that the behaviour of an EA to have a winning pf over several trades and then a losing pf over several trades as you have described is not so uncommon.

Petkos suggested demo/live comparison is right on point btw, it very much should be the same (I have found it to be with most reputable brokers), but if not then thats definately a problem.

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