Generator in EA Studio: Strategies

[Stoyan Stoyanov]

In this topic, traders can share and comment strategies related questions within the EA Studio Generator tool.

P.S. Please use the Reply button if you want to reply to a specific comment. This would make the topic organized and easier to navigate through and will reduce number of duplicate questions.

[Anonymous]

I am failing to generate strategies don’t know why?  I tried on 2 assets XAUUSD & EURUSD.  I keeping getting message of Acceptance Criteria too strict etc.  I am following exactly the steps recommended by Petko and I list below the same:

1. Historical Data – I am taking from FS Dukas copy- adapted to my broker specification. M-15 Time frame.

2. Strategy properties – SL – always use; fixed or trailing; Range 10 – 100; TP – always use; range – 10 to 50 pips

3.  Generator setting – 300 mins; Net Balance; 20% OOS. Common Acceptance Criteria – Min net balance 10; Min count of trades -300, Min profit factor – 1.2; In sample (training) profit factor 1.1; Out of Sample (trading) profit factor 1.1;

4.  Back Test output – Net profit; Profit factor; R squared; Max stagnation; count of trades;

5. Collection – I have no performance filters; only resolve correlation automatically.

6. Data – Max Bars – 200.000; Min Bars – 300; Not using any date range.

I am not even using reactor because at generator level itself I am not generating strategies or sometime one or two!  What mistake am I making?  Help please.  It seems for XAUUSD a different approach is required – Petko can guide please.  But why am I failing?  What other possibilities should I be experimenting with to generate strategies?

VJ

[Anonymous]

Hey Veejay,

I think you are missing something with the historical data. Could you please attach a screenshot so we can see better?

For the Gold, you need to place a wider range for sure. Try 10-10000. And see what values will be there in the strategies that are generated.

Usually, the gold is with different count of digits with the brokers. Usually, it would 200 pips= $20. But it might be different.

Strange you don’t get strategies for EURUSD….you can test if the issue is with the broker. Just remove the acceptance criteria, and generate. If still nothing, it is something from the Historical data. If it works, just start adding acceptance criteria slowly, one by one and you will see what stops you…

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I followed your advice.  I did a sample run of the generator for 300 mins; Net Balance and In sample without any acceptance criteria and without any filter criteria in collection.  I used FS DukaCopy database for M15 and it loaded 200,000 bars from 01/06/2012 to 12/06/2020.  I adjusted the specs to that of my broker for EURUSD  for spread @ 20 points (although the actual spread was 16 points), Swap day to Wednesday and swap rates for long and short. I noticed something interesting – it generated very quickly 100 strategies within first 5 and 10 minutes and then stayed at that right up to the end.  Of the 100 strategies, 98 strategies were correlated.  If I checked the ‘resolve correlations automatically’ I am then left with only 2 strategies! Collection record stats read – Pushed total strategies -4012, Added Strategies 4021; Resolved correlations -0 ; Pruned excessive strategies -3921; Correlated strategies – 98.  I am yet to check out XAUUSD as per advice and will do so.  Look forward to your advice as to able to generate strategies.  Somewhere something is amiss.  The problem it seems that far too may correlated strategies are being throughput and why after 100 the collection doesn’t collect any more strategies I don’t know.  I don’t think it is the historical data but you know better :-)

 

 

[Anonymous]

Hello Veejay,

Actually, you need to check the box with Resolve Correlations before you run the Reactor. Not after that.

The generator generates strategies all the time and pushes the ones that pass the acceptance criteria in the collection.

The maximum is 100. When this number is reached, it keeps pushing, and in this 100 will come just better and better strategies until the end.

So they are not the same strategies staying in there.

I think what happened in this case, is that the generator found a great strategy with many correlated versions and non of the rest succeeded to show better results. When the generator was over, and you clicked to resolve the correlations, obviously you will be left just with a few.

So try again, but first, check the Resolve Correlations and after that run the reactor.

Also, check the tools if everything is fine.

Cheers,

 

[Anonymous]

Ok, followed your advice to obtain limited success but don’t know if it is adequate.  I will present my findings.  I used the Reactor with Monte Carlo validation.  Details as under:

Data Source: FS DukasCopy; USDJPY; M15; 200k bars; Did not use date.  Strategy properties: SL – always use; fixed or trailing; Min pips 10 – Max pips 100; TP – Always use; Min 10; Max 100 pips;

Generator setting – 600 mins; search best – Net Balance; OOs 20%; Common Acceptance Criteria – Min Net profit – 10; Min count of trade – 500; Min profit factor – 1.2; In sample (training) min profit factor of 1.1; OOS (trading) 1.1;

Optimizing strategy – None.  Perform Robustness testing – Monte Carlo validation.

Collection – No performance filters; Only ticked resolve  correlation automatically.

Tools – General Settings – ticked both start backtest from 100 bars and close the position at the end of the back test.

Correlation Analysis threshold at 0.98; and ticked both detect balance lines correlation and detect strategies with similar trading rules.

Settings – Account currency USD; Initial Amount – USD 3k; Leverage 1/200; Trading session – everything is at 00:00 to 24:00 and do not trade on Sunday; ( just for info – my broker does not trade on saturday either);Back test output metrics – Net profit; Profit factor; R-squared; Max stagnation and count of trades;

Data horizon – Max data bars – 200k; Min data bars – 0.3k; No dates were used

The outcome is – Generated 91,643 strategies; Passed validation – 3 (0.00%); Monte Carlo validation – Calculated strategies 3(60); Passed validation 2 (66.67%).  Please advice if these results are in keeping with what is to be expected?  Personally I feel they are too less.  Leave me with very little scope to even have a portfolio!  What I observe from Petko’s training videos is that always lot more strategies are generated.  I don’t know what mistake I am doing anymore!  Clearly something is amiss, or so I think!  While my patience is tested, I do believe am doing something wrong  – hoping someone will guide me through as patiently :-)

[Anonymous]

Hello Veejay,

That is great info that you provide. Usually, the traders ask me questions with ver small information, and I just need to guess what they are doing :)

OK, from what I see, first, you are doing a great job! I think you understand clearly what you are doing.

Here is my opinion what might be stopping you from having more strategies in the collection:

1. The SL with option trailing. Give it a try with fixed. I don’t know why, but for me, it works better.

2. You have to lower the acceptance criteria. For example, just OOS 20% + Profit Factor 1.2 and Count of Trader 300. 500 is a lot for some currency pairs.

The process to figure out what is stopping you is the following:

1. Run the Reactor without any acceptance criteria(no monte Carlo) Just generator.

2. Start adding some criteria. For example, Profit Facto 1.1. See how it goes for 2-3 min. Add Profit Factor 1.2…it will start filtering more and more the strategies. Keep adding until you see a decent amount of strategies.

BUT For 600 min if you see 10 strategies. That is good enough. Sometimes I run multiple times the Reactor for 600min before I get 20-30 strategies. And that is the better thing, rather than having 100s and to waste time on Demo testing.

[Anonymous]

Hi Petko,

Having problems generating good strategies with EA Studio, let alone generating strategies at all.
What’s wrong?
Is it my settings?
Are my brokers’ spreads too high?
Attached, please check my settings.

Followed your settings (to the letter) in the following course:
Algorithmic Trading – The Complete Expert Advisor Bootcamp
Apart from “Broker” and “Symbol settings”, the “Reactor” had the exact same settings. Nevertheless, I get the message:
The Generator Cannot Find Strategies.

It’s almost the same with any currency pair I choose. Either the generation is too slow or I’m not generating any strategies at all.
Of course if I don’t select any Acceptance Criteria, no Monte Carlo, no SL or TP, then I can generate many strategies.
But even with minimum criteria like:
Minimum count of trades of 300 (for M15 and 3,6 years of period)
or
Minimum profit factor of 1,1 (for generating only winning strategies)
… I’m still having problems generating strategies.

PLEASE HELP!

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Attempt to attach the lost screenshot… (Edit: obviously successfully this time)

[Anonymous]

Hey Asser,

That is super strange. There is no reason to have no strategies even with PF of 1.1…

The quality of the pic is not very clear but as far as I can see it, all looks good.

Did you try generating strategies with MetaTrader-Demo data with only PF of 1.1?

If it still fails then it is something in your generator settings that you are missing.

Can you send me screenshots of your settings there? (in separate posts)

[Anonymous]

Hey Petko,

Sent you screenshots of my settings to [email protected]

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Hey Petko,

Thank you for looking at the screenshots and for suggesting to me to set the starting amount to $10,000 and the entry lot to 0.1.
That would have generated strategies but not for my account and might not solve my problem.

As I showed you in the screenshots, both my brokers are from AU (not from the UK) and the leverage is 1:500 (not 1:30).
My initial capital is only $1,000 (with each of my two brokers) because Corona had (and still has) a huge impact on my private finances. $10,000 is not realistic at all for me.

You’re right, I am “missing a little bit of the Forex basics. 1 lot = $100,000 trading units“… I’m still a beginner and can easily miss something – but did you take into consideration that my account has high leverage?

I’ll try to look (again) into generating strategies with 0.01 lot – but have tried that already and it’s only a partial and and limited solution – which is why I asked for help in the first place.

– Are there any Forex settings suitable for generating strategies with $1,000 and 1:500?
– Would I be better off if I reduce my leverage to 1:30 or lower?
– Can anyone put me on the right track please?

Thank you in advance.

[Anonymous]

Hello Asser,

Glad to hear from you again.

If you are with the AU broker then you can have the 1:500. Actually, I think 1:100 is just enough.

You were not getting strategies because you were using 1 lot in a 1000k account. Even your leverage is big, in a few trades you will hit the margin call. And you require 300 trades as a minimum….do you understand what I say? You CAN NOT trade with 1 lot in $1000 account no matter what type of trading you are doing.

This is pure gambling if you open the first trade to go on a profit, and the second and the third…and on 4th, for example, you will blow your account. That is why EA Studio can not find you strategies – it is meant for real Forex trading with appropriate risk in the account.

So keep your account to $1000 in the settings but select 0.01 lot. And this is how much you should be using after that as well.

To see strategies in your account:

• put 0.01 lot in $1000
• min 300 counts of trades
• 1.1 Profit Factor (increase if you see t many)
• Monte Carlo 20 tests and 80%

 

[Anonymous]

Thank you Petko.

Glad to hear from you too.

You’re right: I totally missed the relationship between lot size and initial balance when I copied the 1 lot size from your course. Thank you for putting me on the right track.

YES, I do understand that 1 lot and $1000 account is gambling.

Actually, I was generating strategies quickly (for testing purposes) on 0.01 lot only on 2 brokers and different length of historical data for two weeks. However, I was able to generate very little or no strategies at all when I decided to follow your steps and copied the 1 lot size from your above-mentioned course. As it turned out (thanks to your reply) I totally missed the relationship of the lot size with the initial amount and am so glad you pointed this out for me.

I may also have found two other reasons for little or no strategies:

1.      Spread value in symbol settings doesn’t have to be so set as high as I did. I took the highest value and round it up to factor 10. That’s too much. For example: If my broker’s GBPUSD is between 0 and 41, I set the value in “Symbol settings” to 50. That’s good but too high to generate strategies. I found that a more realistic value would be at 66% or 2/3 of their value as in the following table:

2.      From your (Petko’s) comments to others in this forum, I understand that (everything else being equal) generating strategies slowly isn’t a necessarily a bad sign. Sometimes we have to be patient and wait longer for good strategies to appear.

As to the leverage, I’m not keen on reducing it to less than 1:500 for now. I need the high leverage because I’m unable to increase my initial amount and hope to become good at working with calculated risk at least until my account is big enough.

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Well, no more 1:500 leverage in Australia as per 29. March 2021.
I just received an email from my broker announcing that ASIC decided to follow Europe’s, UK’s and Japan’s regulatory authorities and drop the leverage of CFD for retail traders to 1:30 for Forex pairs,  1:20 for Metals and 1:2 for Crypto-currencies. They don’t like people like us shorting the market.

[Anonymous]

Yes.  I live in Australia and got the same from my brokers…..  I am now looking at alternatives.  We have a few months to sort out alternatives….  Let me know what you come up with and I will do the same.  So far Dukascopy is looking good.  There leverage is 1:100 but can go to 1:200.  I would love to find a trustworthy 1:500 broker.

It seems that if you are a wall street banker you can have all the rules and regulations changed so that you can use massive leverage and get a free bail out when you get it wrong, but the small retail trader is the one that can’t be trusted to manage his own money……..  Oh well that’s the way it goes.  The other thing that I am following closely is the talk of another Bretton  Woods agreement and the likely restructure of the forex markets as we know them in the next few years…..  I think we will all need to be able to adapt quickly in the next few years to keep doing what we are doing here……  Just my opinion…

[Anonymous]

Hey guys,

I think the reduced leverage will become real all over the world in the next years. They “protect” the traders this way…

However, that doesn’t mean they will protect the newbies from the Scam brokers, because they still scam the people by not allowing them to withdraw.

Asser, I was able to help you. Keep the spread to 2pips. That is fine.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Petko.
You are a good teacher (so is Ilan) and you help me a lot as you always do – only sometimes I misunderstand you… Hey I’m human :-)
What do you mean by: Keep the spread to 2 pips?

Sure Richard.
The only alternative would be offshore brokers. Contrary to popular belief, having an offshore account is not illegal and you need not to hide it from the tax authorities. I know I’ll probably be bashed saying this, but good offshore brokers that are regulated, just not under the well-known regulatory entities, could be just as secure because ESMA, CySec, FCA, etc. often mean nothing for many traders. The so-called highly regulated brokers can still get away with anything. The problem with offshore brokers is that there are many crooks who establish an offshore broker website just to suck traders’ money and vanish. We have to find offshore brokers that have been in business for quite some time and have good satisfied customers.

My own challenge with one good offshore broker is that my bank (a large and well-known bank) didn’t allow me to fund my account with that broker. That’s the same bank that was exposed in my country for having helped laundering billions to their customers in their offshore branch, go figure! My bank can harm me by terminating my loan any time they like if I don’t follow their rules. What a world we’re living in!

[Anonymous]

Hello algo traders!

I signed up for EA studio and gave it a try for the first time last night.

I tried to create the strategies last night for 10 hours. It generated only 4063 strategies in 10 hours. Isn’t it too little? 

Below are my testing criteria:

– GBPJPY; H1 – 9221 bars
– From 2021-01-05 07:00 to 2022-06-27 20:00
** I only have this length of data provided from IC markets as I just downloaded it yesterday **

Strategy properties
– I keep it as is, with no change. (Long and short, TP/SL 10-100)

Generator settings
– Out of sample: in sample
– Working minutes: 600
– Everything else stays the same

Acceptance Criteria
– 300 trades
– PF 1.2

Can someone tell me what I’m missing?

TIA :)

[Anonymous]

Hi Tia,

There are a few issues with your settings (I’ll expand on this later as on the train on way to work now). But your low generation number isn’t to do with your settings.

I believe that you have made your window inactive or shut your screen off on laptop maybe? EA studio needs to run on an active browser.

Can I ask a few questions to help you get the most generated EAs for your setup.

1- What browser are you using? (Chrome is by far the best)

2-Are you running on a desktop or laptop

3-What computer processor does your computer have?

We can tackle the low generation number first and then once sorted will discuss some of the other parts of your settings ;-)

[Anonymous]

Hi Samuel,

Thanks for your response.

To answer your question,

1- What browser are you using? (Chrome is by far the best)
– Chrome

2-Are you running on a desktop or laptop
– I’m running on the VPS using chrome. Same VPS I use to run EAs on demo accounts. I just opened and ran them on 4 different chrome windows (not tabs). I’m traveling with my laptop all the time so I need to run them on VPS.

3-What computer processor does your computer have?
– Interserver VPS. 2 Cores. 60GB SSD. 4TB transfer.

What did I do wrong here?

[Anonymous]

Hi Tia,

That all seems fine, 4 windows sounds about right for your vps. Although make sure you don’t push your vps too hard as multiple terminals as wel as 4 browsers could be a bit much on a 2 core vps.

Have you checked your processor utilization?

You didn’t minimize the chrome windows did you? You should make sure that you resize them and that all 4 are active on the screen.

As a quick test set then running on the vps, take note of the number of strategies generated and then log out of your vps (but make sure the windows are active). Then log back in after 15 minutes and make sure the strategies generated number has increased significantly (depends on settings but approx +10,000 say)

Then you will know that all is well. If that still doesn’t work then let me know.

It could also be that you are running too many browsers for your vps which can cause a drastic slowdown of Ea studio but if you confirm the results from the above test first it would be good

[Anonymous]

Hi,

Thanks for the thoughts. I upgraded my VPS to 6 cores (12 GB) and will test them tonight.

Can you recommend good settings as you mentioned earlier that there is something wrong with my settings above?

[Anonymous]

Hey Tanya,

2 main issues is the amount of data is not enough, especially to generate 300 trades on h1.

also some OOS would be a good idea and also Monte Carlo for robustness.

what courses have you been through?

also what symbols are you planning to trade etc?

Did you resolve the issue of low generations first with a single EA browser as it seemed to be a window becoming inactive issue?

Your 6 core vps should be able to handle about 4-6 browsers comfortably depending on how many mt4 terminals you are also running but make sure to check your processor utilization also.

[Anonymous]

Hi Samuel,

Did you resolve the issue of low generations first with a single EA browser as it seemed to be a window becoming inactive issue?
– Yes, I did. Upgrading RAM helps.

What courses have you been through? also what symbols are you planning to trade etc?
– I bought 8-10 different courses on Udemy (Top5, 100 EAs on EURUSD, Crypto monthly, US30, etc). I bought them and tested them out on my demo right now. I mainly bought different ones because I want to diversify my portfolio and learn as much as I can. However, 90% of all courses are repetitive, except for this EA uploaded parts.

2 main issues is the amount of data is not enough, especially to generate 300 trades on h1.
– I see. That’s the only available data I got from downloading from my broker (IC Markets). What would you recommend me to do in this scenario? Also, what’s the ideal OOS %? 20% or 30%?

[Anonymous]

Hey Tanya,

I would recommend using the premium data (or historical data tool – both are the same really) to generate your strategies using more bars and more trades.

Then once you have a collection of EAs that have say 300 trades over 5 years on this data. I would download the collection and run it through the validator with your IC data selected to check that it performs well over that data also. Obviously when running through the validator you would relax the number of trades made. So for example if you had min trades set to 300 over 5 years using premium data then if only have a years data with your broker you would reduce the number of trades to 300/5 = 60.

I’d recommend 20% OOS personally but only use OOS for the strategy generation and not when running them through the validator for your broker data. Likewise with your monte carlo. Validator on broker data should purely be just checking that the statistics are correct.

 

 

[Anonymous]

Understood. I will try your recommendation.

I have 2 more questions:

1. Based on your experiences, do you recommend running walk-forward optimization AND Monte Carlo validation? Does it necessarily mean it will generate better results/strategies, compared to 20% OOS AND Monte Carlo validation?

2. For M15, how far back of the data horizon should I choose to create strategies? 6 months? 1 year? 3 years?

Thanks!
Tanya

[Anonymous]

Hi Tanya,

I would stick with just using the Monte Carlo. If you want to make it more stringent you can try increasing the number of tests and passing percentage or make the validation acceptance criteria better. I’ve found 20 and 80 works well though.

The walk forward is a more advanced tool(but that doesn’t mean better!). I have used it in the past but I no longer do.

For robust strategies I would recommend the combination of a good amount of data with plenty trades, OOS and Monte Carlo.

I only trade M15, H1 and H4 and I typically like the use 5 years data for M15 and H1 and about 10 years for H4. Can use more but I wouldn’t use less.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the recommendations.

I have no intention of trading anything less than M15 as well.

I will use 300 trades, 20% OOS, and 20/80 Monte Carlo as a start then.

[Anonymous]

Another question I have is, what would be the best settings for TP and SL?

May use?
Fixed or trailing?
10 – 100? 10 – 300?

[Anonymous]

Good plan Tanya,

I personally keep things simple and always use a take profit and stop loss. I just use a fixed stop loss also.

For M15 I think a good range is 20-120, but I would increase the upper range a bit for higher timeframes (say 150 for H1 and 200 for H4).

If you are getting plenty strategies coming through using those ranges over approximately 5 years of data then all good :-)

If I run my reactor and get about 50 EAs overnight on a pair and timeframe then I am pretty happy. If a pair has too much more than this then I’ll make a note that can change the settings a bit for that pair and if too few then likewise I will need to relax the settings.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the tips!

– May I ask the reasons why you use fixed SL instead of keeping it open? (can be fixed or trailing or don’t use it at all)

– When running Reactor, how many strategies should I aim for per 1 pair per TF to build a solid pool? What’s your ideal number?

– After getting collections, do you recommend adding the strategies into a portfolio? For example, EURUSD M15 portfolio and EURUSD H1 portfolio. Or it’s better to run it as an individual EA?

If there are other tips about using EA studio expert and/or building strategies, pleaseeeee share them away! :)

[Anonymous]

Hey Tanya,

I think a stop loss should always be used so it’s really only trailing or fixed to choose between.

It’s kind of just a habit that I choose fixed to be honest so definitely feel free to try trailing also and see what gives you the best strategies. You could set two identical reactors running with only difference being one uses fixed and one uses trailing and compare that way to see what’s generally giving you the best looking strategies. Or just set fixed or trailing in the generator so it can choose between the two, both options are all good.

For the portfolios I would definitely recommend working with portfolios rather than individual EAs but I would also recommend not having overly large portfolios unless they are very uncorrelated (which is not easy for same symbol and timeframe).

I would stick to portfolios of about 30 personally, just a preference to limit too many positions being opened at the same time but this really isn’t a big deal unless doing scalping that requires super quick executions. Opening too many positions at once can cause several seconds delay on execution which you will be able to see in MT4.

It’s fine having lots of portfolios on different timeframes and symbols (say 10 portfolios of 30 EAs) as it’s unlikely that for different symbols and timeframes trades will open at the exact same time. But again it’s really not big deal just what I do.

 

[Anonymous]

Oh also for number of strategies, it’s much better to have more in the collection than less as you can use the performance filter to trim things.

It sucks when nothing goes in after 10hrs but I also don’t like it when too many are going in too fast. If I get 50-150 overnight then I am happy and I’ll trim those collections down to a portfolio of 10-30.

[Anonymous]

Hey Samuel,

Thanks for the insights. I will use 10 portfolios with 30 EAs in each portfolio as a ballpark and a starting pool then. And after that, I will pick about 12 winning EAs to run in live/mock demo.

[Anonymous]

Hey Tanya,

Sounds like a good plan. I wouldn’t be too rigid about the 12 EAs. I’d say aim for 10-20 EAs and stick with 0.1 lots size on your 10k account and you will get a feel for how much your balance will change over the course of a month.

It of course depends on the EAs you select as one EA may typically trade more often than another for example.

More important of course is to be moving your balance in the right direction but you will want to also get a feel for the risk you are taking on your account every month.

For example, if you have a trading plan for a month then you should be able to feel pretty sure that even if you have a really bad trading month that your balance is very unlikely to drop below a certain threshold.

As an example of you had 10 EAs trading then for each one you could get the average number of trades a month, win loss ratio and typical size of losing and winning trade. Then you could assume that the win loss ratio was halved to simulate a bad month and calculate what the loss would be for the month and scale your lot size accordingly.

I’m not saying that this is a good way as I just came up with it on the spot as a quick example but it would give you something tangible to estimate as a start and you can improve your calculation as you gain experience.

In a nutshell the point I am trying to make is just that you should have a reason for the lot size you are trading that is as much about the risk you are willing to take as it is about the profit target you are aiming for. But always aim to keep things as simple as they can be :-)

[Anonymous]

hello everyone, please i have been finding it difficult to generate strategy for ETHUSD, i followed all explanation as expalined by petko.

i uploaded the history bar but still no result, the generator cant find strategy for ETHUSD.the broker i am using is OCTA FX. pls how do i fix this.

 

[Anonymous]

Hi James,

How much data are you using and what is your acceptance criteria? This sounds like it could be a combination of not much data and overly strict acceptance criteria.

Have you used EA studio on other pairs successfully?

[Anonymous]

Hello everyone!

What’s the best way to maintain and optimize your EAs monthly?

I’ve been practicing moving EAs to mock live, however, the results were always bad (negative return) compared to the demo account with 100’s of EAs running altogether.

I’m wondering if anyone maintains your EAs by generating a new set of EAs every month regardless of the result of the past month?

I’m not sure what I did wrong, but my ‘moving-winner-port’ has never been profitable.

Thoughts?

 

Briefly on my port:
– Trade on M15, H1, and H4
– GBPJPY, AUDCAD, EURGBP, USDCHF

Tanya

[Anonymous]

Hey Tanya,

Glad to hear from you.

May I ask a few questions before giving you some tips?

1. Do you use the same broker for both accounts, and which is the broker?

2. What rules do you follow to move EAs from the Demo to the mock live, and what rules you follow to remove the EAs from the mock live?

3. How did you choose these pairs GBJPY, AUDCAD, EURGBP, USDCHF?

Cheers,

Petko A.

PS I do not mind the EURGBP but all the rest. :)

[Anonymous]

Hey Petko,

Nice to e-meet you and thanks for your reply.

Below is my answer. Please feel free to give me some tips and your honest feedback  :)

1. Do you use the same broker for both accounts, and which is the broker?
– Yes, I do use the same broker for both accounts (as Sam already mentioned). It’s IC markets.

2. What rules do you follow to move EAs from the Demo to the mock live, and what rules you follow to remove the EAs from the mock live?
– Rules to move EAs from demo to the mock live: I look back 2 weeks AND 1 month data, PF 1.2, trade number 5 or more. Rules to remove, whichever EAs that don’t fall into the criteria I just mentioned. I check and move EAs every 2 weeks.

3. How did you choose these pairs GBJPY, AUDCAD, EURGBP, USDCHF?
– Sam advised me to choose uncorrelated pairs and I came up with these four.

All the best,
Tanya

[Anonymous]

Hey Tanya and Petko,

I can add a few points:

Tanya uses IC markets for both demo and mock live account and I know that she validates the strategies using the IC markets broker data.

Although I didn’t select these pairs I advised Tanya to do what I do which is to select 4 pairs to trade together that are as uncorrelated as possible. They look good to me? Also the mix of timeframes M15, H1 and H4 also works well for minimizing correlation on the same symbol.

I’ve got two of those pairs in my own portfolio at the moment and it’s been trading really well :-)

Can you confirm the above is correct Tanya :-)

As to the poor results Tanya:

You have at least a month of trading on the demo and at least a few trades when deciding how to move EAs right?

How many EAs are you putting on your mock live at a time?

Also you could try a few different mock live accounts at the same time and trial a few different selection methods?

But to answer the original question Tanya (at last :-):

My advice would be to maintain a pool of collections and then check them every 3 months or so using the validator for the most recent three months of data, then remove the ones that don’t perform well over the last three months and keep doing this ongoingly.

Over time you will build a higher quality pool.

The higher quality your pool of strategies the less need to continually create more.

Also keep things simple when moving the EAs, just a good profit factor and more than 5 trades for example over the last month.

Keep the demo running as long as possible and keep replacing the strategies that are performing poorly. This is why I actually prefer to work with single EAs rather than portfolio EAs as it makes it cleaner to just remove an EA that’s performing poorly and then replace it with a new one.

Keep practicing as you are Tanya, things will improve with practice, it sounds simple enough but it does take a while to get the knack of things :-)

 

[Anonymous]

Of course nothing to stop you trying another pair combination in tandem Tanya. If pairs are working better for you then try combining them as it is likely that your pool of EAs for these pairs are higher quality (which can be partly lucky sometimes as it is very possible to run the reactor with exact same settings and pick top 10 the exact same what and one with far more overoptimised poorer quality EAs than the other.

This is one of the main reasons it’s important to test them appropriately out of sample, starting with using demo accounts (and patience) and progressing to using EA studio without the demo as your experience grows.

[Anonymous]

Hey Sam,

It’s been awhile! Hope you’re doing well :)

Your answer always WOW-ed me. I don’t know how you store all these info in your brain haha. Also, I appreciate your prior answer to Petko.

Q: You have at least a month of trading on the demo and at least a few trades when deciding how to move EAs right?
A: About 1-1.5 months I believe. I need to see at least 5-6 trades before I decide to move them.

Q: How many EAs are you putting on your mock live at a time?
A: The last time there were only 6 EAs that matched the winning criteria

Q: Also you could try a few different mock live accounts at the same time and trial a few different selection methods?
A: GREAT idea! I will start doing so

My advice would be to maintain a pool of collections and then check them every 3 months or so using the validator for the most recent three months of data, then remove the ones that don’t perform well over the last three months and keep doing this ongoingly.
– Let me rephrase it and please let me know if I understand correctly; every 3 months, I will validate the EAs using Validator and remove the ones that underperformed. Then I generate new collections using reactors to replace the underperforming ones and to add more into the collection? Because the market is changing all the time, it’s possible to have the same kind of pool over time?

Very best,
Tanya

[Anonymous]

Hey Tanya,

Great to see you are moving forward, and glad you appreciate my help and your kind words ;-)

So my first point would be that it seems you switch the EAs every 2 weeks? This is fine but 2 weeks and 4 weeks together as selection is pretty similar. I would suggest as one of your filter tests you try just a simple filter of moving the EAs that have been profitable over the whole life on you demo account with over 5 trades (say 1.1 pf) and then as the life of your incubator account extends you could add an additional filter for the most recent month also.

Let’s say now you have a collection of 100 EAs in your pool, in three months you validate and only 50 of them have traded as profitable (or even just broken even) over the last 3 months. Move those 50 to a second tier pool for example that only has strategies that have performed suitably over three months on demo in real-time.

Over time you will build a pool of EAs that is higher quality, you could even repeat the exercise on your tier 2 pool after 6 months say and move all the ones passing that to a tier 3 pool.

Hope that makes sense? It’s just a suggestion of how you could build a higher quality pool of robots over time, you of course need a combination of good robots and sensible filter criteria to make profits.

While you are practicing and learning if you do this as a side then over a year you could make a really nice quality pool of strategies for yourself.

[Anonymous]

Also to reinforce that point regarding symbols Tanya, you can defiantely add another different 4 or so symbols and then see what tends to perform best for you, then combine the 4 best ones at the mock live stage?

Just because you have lots of symbols on your incubator demo account doesn’t mean you need to trade them all on your mock live account.

[Anonymous]

Hi Sam,

I understand about short-term and long-term filter. 2 weeks and 1 month is, like you said, very similar. As the time passing by, I should be able to do 2 weeks and 3 months. It’s just that right now my demo account is 1.5 months old.

 

About building the pools over time, it sounds good to me. I don’t quite understand it just yet until I actually put my hands on them as the time goes.

 

I think as of now I will create more EAs on different pairs. And I will check them again every three months. This is probably the best I can do at the moment, unless you have something else you recommend me to do while waiting for the time goes by so I can use short term filter and long-term filter to move EAs to mock live account?

 

I just don’t like sitting and doing nothing for 3 months while waiting to practice moving EAs.

 

Thanks!

Tanya

[Anonymous]

Hi Tanya,

Yes that sounds like a smart way forward, get some more strategies generated for some additional pairs and get them up on demo.

You can also practice tracking using EA studio for selection against your demo accounts. If you are confident that your EA studio validation is matching your demo results (which it will if set up properly), then you can practice using your pool to trade straight to your mock live account.

I don’t recommend rushing this without practicing demo first but it should be worked towards at your own pace.

How many things you can work on depends on how much time you have really. Just make sure you keep track of what you are doing and don’t do so much that you don’t know what is working well for you and what isn’t.

For reference I have a couple of big engineering projects on at the moment that are eating most of my time so have probably only managed to spend a few hours on managing my trading systems over the last month. I’d spend all day everyday working on systems and testing new things if I could, but I modify what I am doing depending on the chaos going on around me :-/

The month before I was working 14hr days straight (9hrs job and then 5hrs trading work) just so I could work on some trading things on the side though. Burnt me out a little though haha

The path you are able to take is very time dependent really, so if you feel you have plenty of time to put in some extra work then you could definitely speed up your progression ;-)

Definitely have a brainstorming session and come up with some ideas to try if you have the time to put into it, there’s always things to learn test/improve/think about. Good to have a mix of active and passive things to work on, by passive I just mean sometimes things can be achieved just by waiting for time to pass while your demo accounts run.

100% agree though, I can’t sit and do nothing either :-)

[Anonymous]

I have suggestion for you Tanya :-)

For your demo account that you have 6 weeks results Already do the following:

Make sure you have all the strategies on that account in a folder of collections (with exactly the same number of strategies), then ongoingly from now have one mock account that you use FXBlue to move EAs according to your selection criteria weekly and then on a second mock account do the same but use the validator in Ea studio to apply the exact same criteria and compare the results and EAs.

This will be a good way to practice using the validator only :-)

[Anonymous]

Hey Tanya,

How many strategies are you running on your demo account at the moment? How many of those EAs have made more than 5 trades and have a profit factor greater than 1?

Also even though its just an incubation account what is the balance of this account since starting. Is it in profit or loss generally?

[Anonymous]

Hello
I don’t know if I’m being reasonable or not, or if I’m going to waste my time, but I would like to have new strategies every 10 days or so and therefore generate new strategies. I think the market is changing too fast, even every week and so that’s why I’m going to do this.I will generate strategies in M15 and H1, put them on a first demo account, then the winners on another demo account as you recommended.
At most, I can test them over 3 three days with 5 trades for each strategy, and put them on a real account afterwards.
With your experience, what do you think, what advice can you give me?

[Anonymous]

Hi Robins,

I think that it is worth a try.

Here is what I do:  When I generate strategies I use different look back times such as 3 months, 6 months, and 12 months, etc.  Also I trade all the major currency pairs and their crosses as well as all the minor currency pairs but I don’t generate all the strategies for all these currency pairs all at one time.  I have a list of all these currency pairs.  So I just start down the list.  Everyday I will pick the next currency pair add it to the generator, choose a lookback time period, and let is run for 10 hours overnight.  The next day I pick the best strategy and add it to my demo account.  Then I pick the most profitable strategies for my live account.  For me I feel this diversifies the currency pairs, the lookback timeframe, and the changing market.

So, don’t be afraid to experiment with various methods, test them and determine which works best for you.

Happy Strategies,
Alann

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Robins,

First point is that EA studio is undoubtedly the best software for this approach given its speed of generation and validation.

I know a trader who does exactly this with EA studio.

I would suggest that to be even more efficient that you save a pool of collections and validate first also, depending on the look back period I would expect most of the strategies you generated the week before to pass again this week (unless you are using an extremely short look back)

If looking for 5 trades in three days then I would expect that m5 and m15 timeframes will work better for this. Usually I expect my h1 EAs to make 1-2 trades a week.

Additionally can you share your trading background so I can help further if you have more questions. I would strongly recommend at this point that your live account is either very small and trading the smallest lot size available or a mock live account until you are getting stable results.

[Anonymous]

Hi Samuel and Alan,

Thank you very much for your reply !

 

 

 

 

[Anonymous]

Good Day Everyone,

I need some help. I am running reactor on the 14-day trial, and I keep getting the message pop up even when running relaxed settings on this currency pair and another currency pair.

Possible reasons: Too strict Acceptance Criteria, Cannot make enough profit, Improper range of Stop Loss, Improper range of Take Profit.

 

I have included my setup below so you can see what i am doing and if I am doing anything wrong.

I uploaded my broker’s data per Petko’s instruction in the free course. I am using 100000 bars as the default in my settings.

 

Below are the strategy properties. I increased the min and max pips to try to find more strategies.

Below are the generator settings again. I increased the values to cast the net wide open.

Lastly, here is the common acceptance criteria. I reduced this from 500 to 300 to see if you could find any strategies.

If i remove the common acceptance criteria, I get strategies, but they are not very good as most of them only have a low number of trades. I prefer to sort these out while looking for strategies.

I leave the generator running for 24 hours at a time. I have 4 Chrome windows open, and two generators have this issue. The other two are working fine and generating strategies. The VPS is 16 cores and 128 GB of ram, so it is not a resource issue on the server.

What else can i do to determine what is causing the issue on this currency pair?

Thanks

Gareth

 

 

 

 

[Anonymous]

Gareth,

We all get that error message from time to time so just ignore it.  You can simply delete if you wish or just leave it there.  EA Studio is still working correctly and gathering collections.

[Anonymous]

Hi Garett, I agree that this message in itself isn’t a problem really. However with the hugely wide settings you have shown I would expect you to be getting some strategies.

I believe I see the issue though ;-)

you have shown the generated image with only 6000 generations in 54 minutes. This is barely anything so what I expect is happening is the browser is becoming inactive.

Watch this generated number for a minute or so to see how many generations you expect and then keep an eye on if it is moving up properly.

The browsers need to be active so if you are running several, minimize them so they are all visible and they should keep running.

Any further issues just post and will help out.

[Anonymous]

Hi Samuel,

I will try and keep the window active and monitor to see if the situation improves.

Thanks

Gareth

 

 

[Anonymous]

I have one instance of EA Studio running now for 7 hours with a total calculated strategies of 47000 which calculates to be an average of 6700 strategies per hour which is about the same as what you are seeing and I have 12 strategies collected.  low number of collected strategies is due to my filtering.   I have a lot of chrome windows open and three instances of FSBpro running.  So the reason why my EA Studio is running slowly is most likely because my processor is simply just working too hard.  One reason you might not be getting any collected strategies could be a result of your Acceptance Criteria filtering.  In your Acceptance Criteria I see you are looking for a minimum net profit of $10.00.  This might be too high of an expectation.   Delete the Minimum Net Profit filter in your Acceptance Criteria.  You can filter this later in the Collection.  If you do this I would expect you would start seeing collected strategies.  Be patient as sometimes it could take awhile before you start to see some collected strategies.

[Anonymous]

Hi Alan,

Ill have to check what I get but this seems low number of generations to me so I expect you are working your computer very hard. Of course it depends on number of bars but I am pretty sure I get about 1000 generation every couple of minutes.

Maybe easiest to attach your settings file Gareth, there could be something with the account size or leverage preventing trades being taken. I see you are generating using 0.01 lots usually this is 0.1 so I am seeing a few flags of odd settings.

[Anonymous]

Hi Samuel,

Yes I know.  Like I said in my post I am working my computer processor very hard today.  Normally I do get a lot of strategies in a few minutes like you said.  I should have run EA Studio on my other laptop but I didn’t.  It’s ok though, as I am just trying a few things today.  Another reason I may not be getting as many strategies collected is that I am just collecting strategies for the London Session.  This is the first time I have tried to collect strategies over a certain session period so I am thinking that this is why I am not collecting as many strategies.

 

[Anonymous]

I closed all the windows and started with two Chrome windows open on two monitors.

I used the same settings as above and generated over 400 000 strategies overnight.

I will continue with this method as it seems to be more stable.

I am testing the strategies it found from last night, so I will leave them in a demo account for a few weeks to see how they perform.

 

 

 

 

 

[Anonymous]

Gareth,

Happy to hear EA Studio is now generating thousands of strategies.  Question:  Did you leave the Minimum Profit at $10.00 in the Acceptance Criteria, or, did you remove it?

[Anonymous]

Hi Alan,

I changed Minimum Profit to the Minimum profit factor using the values 1:2

[Anonymous]

Hi Gareth,

Sorry, I used the wrong verbage.  What I was wondering was if you changed the “minimum net profit of $10.00” to a smaller amount of did you delete this filter?

[Anonymous]

Hi Alan,

These are the settings I am using at the moment. I am testing various combinations to see what settings provide the best results.

Using the settings above  I  am getting results like this.

I am running these EAs on my demo account to see how they perform compared to the backtest above.

 

 

[Anonymous]

Nice filtering. nice balance line!
I think the problem you were having when EA Studio was not collecting many strategies was that you had too many things going on at one time on your PC so that the computer processor was working too hard.  Also, in the future, use a separate web browser, not just a tab of the current web browser you are using, but a completely different chrome browser, as this will also help to increase the EA Studio collection of strategies.  When using multiple EA Studio’s use a different web browser for each EA Studio to maximize strategy collections.

[Anonymous]

I will do that.

 

Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Hi Gareth/Alan,

Definitely running too many reactors can slow things down but it depends on your hardware. My rule of thumb is a browser for each computer core works well so I run 8 on my 8 core computers.

However in this case I believe the issue was not this but that the browser was inactive and simply stopped churning.

You can easily test the slow down effect by doing the following:

Set a single reactor running and then time how long it takes to generate 1000 strategies (generate not collect), then open a second reactor and set running and time again. Continue doing this until you see a large drop in generation speed and you will know the optimal number of reactors for your computer.

But it’s important is making sure the browser is active so it keeps running.

[Anonymous]

I am going to run this test this weekend!  I did a similar test when I was first starting to use EA Studio but it will be interesting to run the test again and to determine current results.

[Anonymous]

Here is the results of my EA Studio speed test.  This test shows the results of how long it takes to generate 1000 strategies.  In order to properly generate strategies each EA Studio must be opened in a separate Chrome window as shown in the figure below.  Opening one instance of Chrome and opening each EA Studio in different Tabs of the same Chrome window will not allow EA Studio to collect strategies.

This figure shows opening multiple instances of EA Studio is separate TABs of one instance of Chrome.  The only EA Studio that will collect strategies is the one selected.  All other instances of EA Studio will not collect strategies.

 

This figure shows the proper way to open several instances of EA Studio.  Each instances of EA Studio is collecting strategies.

 

This graph shows how long it takes to collect 1000 strategies.  The graph shows that when only one instance of EA Studio is running it only takes about 11 seconds to collect 1000 strategies.  However, when there are 10 instances of EA Studio running it takes each EA Studio 60 seconds, or 1 minute, to collect 1000 strategies.

 

 

[Anonymous]

Good Job Alan, this is exactly right.

You can see that for 1 reactor you are getting 6000 generations a minute but between 5-10 reactors your combined generations is 10000. So I would suggest that 5 is pretty optimal for you. Although 3 is getting 9000 generations per minute total which is also pretty good.

You must have good hardware, I find if I keep increasing the reactors then at some point I get a pretty drastic slowdown.

This is good info because it lets you save some resources for other things and also dont need to work the computer hard unnecessarily

[Anonymous]

This chart shows the optimum number of EA Studio’s to be used on one computer.  This chart shows that with three EA Studio’s running at the same time the total number of collections for all three instances of EA Studios is ten thousand.  The chart also shows that with all ten EA Studio’s running at the same time the total number of collections for all ten EA Studio’s is also ten thousand.  This then shows that there is no advantage to running more than three instances of EA Studio at one time.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks, Alan and Samuel, I will keep this in mind.

I am only using two windows to see if that improves performance. Where can I find a copy of the software to measure the speed/performance of my generations?

On a positive note, my demo account is in profit today for the first time since I started using the software. I am pleased with this, and I look look forward to learning how to amplify my results.

 

 

 

 

[Anonymous]

Gareth,

There is no software to speed test how fast EA Studio collects strategies when using multiple copies of EA Studio you have to manage this yourself.  Here is how to do it:

F

First open one instance of EA Studio.  Click the Start button.  The Start button will change to a Stop button.  Next monitor the Collected strategies.  When the Collected strategies hits 1000 then click the Stop button.  Record the time.  Now click the Start button again and let it continue to run and do not stop it again.  Add next instance of EA Studio.  Click the Start button.  The Start button will change to a Stop button.  Next monitor the Collected strategies.  When the Collected strategies hits 1000 then click the Stop button.  Record the time.  Now click the Start button again and let it continue to run and do not stop it again.  Add next instance of EA Studio and repeat the process until you have 8 or more instances of EA Studio running.

What I did next was to enter all the recorded times into an Open Office spreadsheet, did some math, and then generated the graphs.

[Anonymous]

Hi Gareth/Alan,

Yes the steps above are how its done. I would add that I have noticed that certain hardware can be different so its a good quick and easy test for anyone new to do to optimize for themselves. I personally do get benefit from more that 3 reactors but it is diminishing returns. The main reason I run more is just because I run each on a different symbol. Its good to have an understanding of all this so the user knows how best to optimize depedning on what they are doing.

For example if you were just developing strategies for 1-3 pairs then it would be pointless to try to run more reactors (and in some cases would be slower as it is on one of my computers).

[Anonymous]

Hello everyone,

logged with my credentials on https://studio.eatradingacademy.com/ it does not generate any strategy.

If I open a session in incognito mode, instead, it works!!

Very strange, please help thanks!

Angelo

[Anonymous]

Hi Alan/Samuel,

I was testing generating strategies in Internet Explorer and found that it was generating a lot more strategies and faster compared to Chrome.

Both have been updated to the latest version so I was surprised to see IE was a lot faster when I set the test and measured it for a full hour by generating 10 0000 more strategies than the Chrome version.

 

 

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Gareth,

Interesting! According to the EA Studio About tab the developer says Internet Explorer is not supported and will not work!

Alan,

[Anonymous]

I was surprised too, with 4 tabs open on IE it is generating between 15 000 and 20 000  strategies per hour. There is nothing else open or running on the PC. I will leave them running overnight to see the total result.

[[email protected]]

Hi, I’m thinking whether the methodology is ok?

In top 10 robots, the average balance growth is about 1.4x in 5 years, which means about 8% simple rate per annual. I think such return is below my expectation.

For the industry, I think the average return should be lower than 8%. However, for top performers, I think the 8% compound rate per annual could be the median (my gut feeling).

That caused my thinking, whether the methodology (i.e. relying on EA studio to generate strategies, testing them, selecting them, creating portfolio, demo account then live account) works or not?

Otherwise, I run the trial version for couple of days for EURUSD and XAUUSD, with (1) risk factor above 1.2x; (2) fixed SL 10-1,000 pips. Less satisfied strategy (actually none) was generated. For EURUSD, 5-year mark up was about 1.02 (deposit 10,000, 200 return). For XAUUSD, 5-yr mark up was about 1.10 (deposit 10,000, 1,000 return). I wonder whether my criteria is workable or not.

Combining the trial and 10 top robots performance, I am confused what I am doing is workable or not.

[Author]

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