How many EAs should I trade?

[John]

Hi Everyone,

I currently trade 5 EAs in my live account and I replace the losers with good performing ones from my demo account. The problem is nearly all of them either start losing at the same time or the one that I replaced starts winning in the demo account but whatever I moved to my live account starts losing. I’m only trading with USD/CHF but my EAs use different timeframes and were generated with different acceptance criteria. If I’m only trading one currency, how many EAs would you all recommend to have on my live account so that I have a good amount of diversity?

Thanks,

John

 

[Petko Aleksandrov]

Hey John,

Welcome to the Forum. I would suggest you trade at least 3 currency pairs. And why USDCHF exactly?

What is your rule to move the EAs from Demo to Live and from Live back to Demo?

Most importantly did you check if you have the same results on Demo and Live? When you place one EA in the live account, do you keep trading it in the Demo, and do you see the same results? Do the trades match?

Let me know so I can give you some tips.

[mgunton2]

Petko,

I’m using Dukascopy and I’m not seeing a 100% match with the trades in the demo and live account.

The demo account is now unlimited as they’ve set that up for me.

I had quite stringent parameters and I’m still not seeing the results correlating…..too such an extent that either the markets are completely bonkers at the moment or more likely …. there’s something not quite right here…

I’d be grateful for some assistance here as the way this is going…even trading 0.01 lots…even trading gbp/usd, eur/usd & gold….I’ve only had 1 winning day and losing days since I started last week….

I just don’t see the point in spending ages testing on demo, get comfortable and then the moment real money is used it doesn’t match and you lose money!

Casing point….I have the same EA running on demo and live….it’s got a buy trade open in the demo (in profit) and a sell trade open in the live account (typically in loss!)….how can this happen if they are supposed to be identical???

Please help!

 

[Petko Aleksandrov]

Hello there!

Most probably the difference comes because you have placed the EAs at a different time.

I guess what you did is to place the EAs on a Demo to test and then you placed the winners on live?

Now, when you place EA in the Demo it starts opening trades. When you put it on a Live, it starts scanning for new signals. But during this time you might have a trade opening in the Demo. And in the live it will open a different trade. It could be with a different direction.

It depends on the strategy but sometimes it might take more than a week or the Demo and the Live to match the trades.

Cheers.

[John]

Hi Petko,

Sorry for the late reply, I have been really busy. Eventually I want to trade more currencies but I wanted to start generating a lot of strategies for one pair first. I chose USDCHF because I’ve manually traded it in the past and I’m a little more familiar with the pair.

Between my demo and live account, the results are close but not exact. It might be different because I have the demo account on a separate VPS which I’ve had about a month longer than my live account.

The way I have my accounts set up is I have a few identical portfolio EAs on both accounts. The EAs on the live account have all the exit and entry signals commented out except for the top 5 performing ones. I keep track of the accounts using FX Blue and when a strategy goes below 1.5 profit factor with at least 5 trades, I usually disable it on the live account and enable another one based on what is doing well on my demo account.

I’d be really grateful for any tips that can help me improve my routine. Also, what other currencies would you recommend to start trading with? I’ve had luck with EURUSD before the pandemic but sometime around March, all my EURUSD EAs quickly became unprofitable and I haven’t really tried trading that pair since then.

Thank you,

John

[Petko Aleksandrov]

Hey John,

I think you already have a good routine.

I wouldn’t focus on one currency pair because it brings a higher risk. For example, you can EURGBP. This way you will have 4 different currencies – USD, CHF, EUR, GBP.

It is important to keep equal exposure. So if you trade USDCHF, EURUSD, and GBPUSD, you will have a higher exposure on USD.

Now, if you want you can stick to USDCHF, but then I would suggest you look for risk diversification in different time frames. Try to create EAs for all time frames. Test them and see which time frame would work best for you.

Cheers,

[John]

Hey Petko,

Thanks so much for the reply. I’ll make sure to pick up some more currency pairs and try to balance my exposure a bit.

Regards,

John

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