Portofolio Trading in EA Studio

[Wayfarer]

Hi Guys,

I’m new to EA Academy and this forum as well as algorithmic trading although I have some basic experience of manual forex trading. I am just learning the strings of EA Studio at the moment and wanted to ask for some advise or resource that clarifies to me how exactly we load a portfolio of EA’s into MT4 and activate it for demo trading once we’ve downloaded it from EA Studio? Your help is much appreciated.

Thanks

[Wayfarer]

…and also how do we remove strategies in a portfolio on MT4 which are not performing well?

[Ilan Vardy]

Hi Wayfarer,

 

Once you have exported (downloaded) your Portfolio EA, copy it from the downloads location. Then on your platform, open the Data folder from the File menu, navigate to MQL4/Experts and paste it in the folder. Close the folder, then right click on Expert Advisors in the Navigator window, and once it complies, enable Auto Trading on your platform, and drag the Portfolio EA onto your chart. Make any changes you want to – lot size,  base numbr, etc. and you should be good to go.

 

You can remove the EA that is not performing well by loading the Portfolio EA into the Validator in EA Studio, loading the strategies and deleting any that you no longer want to use. Then repeat the process of attaching it to your chart.

 

Have a look at the user guides below

Portfolio Expert Advisor

Portfolio Summary

Portfolio Content

Portfolio Experts in EA Studio

 

Thanks,

 

Ilan

 

[Wayfarer]

Thanks Ilan for that! I have a few questions that have made me scratch my head a little bit:

– Inside MT4 how do we promote an individual strategy from inside a portfolio on a demo account to a real account? I know how this is done when we are NOT using a portfolio EA.

– On the ‘real’ account, how do we maintain risk diversity if/when most of the individual strategies we promoted from ‘demo’ are mainly from one asset (i.e. other assets might not have met criteria for promotion)? Do we need to maintain this balance of assets / risk diversity on the real account as well somehow and at all times?

– What is a good or recommended criteria to demote a strategy again from ‘real’ account when it’s not performing?

[Ilan Vardy]

Hi Wayfarer,

You can use the Validator in EA Studio. Simply load your Portfolio EA, remove all Acceptance Criteria, Robustness and Optimizer Tools, and hit the Start button. All of the strategies in the Portfolio  EA will load into the Collection. From there, delete the strategies you no longer want to use. Then, you can create a new Portfolio EA from the Collection of strategies that remain. Just remember to empty your collection beforehand if you have any strategies in it. You can also change the date range in Data Horizon, and select performance filters to check which strategies performed best during a certain time period.

To maintain risk diversity, as you say, you need multiple assets, preferably in the same quantity. If one asset performs better than the others, simply select fewer of the better performing asset. For example, if you have 4 EURUSD EAs that are performing well but only 2 EURJPY and 2 EURGBP, check which of the 4 EURUSD performed the best, and select the top 2, so you have 2 EAs in each of the assets. Petko and I are releasing a course in the next few days that addresses this in detail. We will show you the process I follow, and it will include the spreadsheet that I use, as a downloadable resource to make managing your EAs much easier.

Your third question really comes down to personal choice. Obviously, if an EA is in a draw down period due to market conditions, you should remove it. Again, this is discussed in detail in the upcoming course. Personally, on my accounts, if an EA has not reached a profit factor of 1.4 and at least 3 trades for a period of 7 days AND 30 days, I do not use it in my live trading account. Because the EAs that are currently on my live account all come from my demo accounts, I only monitor and analyze my demo accounts. Once I have selected the EAs I will be copying from my demo accounts to my live account, I delete all of the EAs on my live account, whether they performed well or not, and copy the selected EAs from my demo account to my live account, and ‘restart’ my live trading. I do this weekly.

Again, this is just the system that I currently use. It’s what I have found works well for me and the criteria I need to be comfortable. We are always testing new ideas and trading systems. But, risk diversification is vital, and you should always try to keep a balanced portfolio. The profits may be less if one particular asset does very well for a period, but it also (and in my opinion more importantly) lessens the risk.

 

Cheers,

 

Ilan

 

[Victor]

Hi Ilan, how are you?

Is the course you mantioned released yet?

I’ve already watched 3 courses of Petko (One with 5 robots, One with 30 robots and One with 10 robots trading USDJPY) and I am testing them on a demo account. Its been a great knowlege but I am looking for the most profitable set of robots. Which one or ones do you reccomend? In you personal opinion what are the bests?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Petko Aleksandrov]

Hey Victor,

yes, the course is launched:

MetaTrader 4 Forex Trading course + Weekly Robots

[jbcdk]

Hi,

If I load a portfolio with 10 strategies in the validator and uncheck “use of common acceptance criteria” I will only get 3 strategies in the collection. Why will I not get all 10 strategies in the collection?

[Petko Aleksandrov]

Hello Jbsdk,

In the collection, you get only profitable strategies. May be the other 7 were not profitable?

Do you recalculate using the same acceptance criteria?

Maybe you have something else stopping them – Monte Carlo?

[Marin Stoyanov]

Hello, I’m using trial version and I think it’s amazing tool. My question is about Portfolio function. When I calculate strategy connecting other strategies I receive the best one, diversified. Very good. If I would like to export it to the mt4 file (in paid version) will I receive one file with compiled all strategies? Or there will be lots of files (as much as strategies)?

[Samuel Jackson]

Hi Waldemar,

When you export a portfolio expert advisor there will be a single EA that runs on one chart but trades many strategies.

Glad you are liking EA studio, you are correct that it is an amazing tool :-)

[Marin Stoyanov]

Thanks, is there a way to test the compilation of many different strategies on different intervals and instruments together?

[Samuel Jackson]

Hi Waldemar,

You cannot do this in EA studio but FSBPro has this ability.

A recent update allows quick  and easy importing of EA studio EAs into FSBpro so checking it this way would allow you to do this.

This would require purchasing the optimal pack rather than just the EA studio only pack, which is very worth it in my opinion.

[Taylor]

Hi there,

I tried the ESA to create portfolio EA including 5 strategies for USDJPY M30 and with a calculated profit of  USD 8,134 for a 6 years period test in ESA. However, when I did the back test in MT5 for the same period and it only shows a profit of USD 784.3 . Did I miss something  in the setting and can you advise how to do it in portfolio set up ? Million thanks.

Best Regards & Cheers

Taylor

 

[Petko Aleksandrov]

Hey Taylor,

This is probably because you did not have that much Historical data on MetaTrader.

EA Studio offers data for 200 000 bars so your backtest there was for a longer period.

You can check how much data you have on MetaTrader if you press the home key and use the cross-hair to spot the first date.

So basically, you tested the strategies for a longer period in EA Studio and for a shorter period on MetaTrader.

[netbizint]

Hi,

 

I’ve created some portfolio EAs using Expert Advisor from Express Generator.

However no trades are opening. The journal says

 

order buy 0.03 GOLD opening at market sl: 0.00 tp: 0.00 failed [Not enough money]

The portfolio settings is using

Entry Lots: 0.03

Maximum Spread protection: 0

Maximum Open positions: 50

Maximum equity protection (currency): 10000

 

Account Equity is at > $ 15,000

Account Balance is at: $6143

 

The question is how does portfolio EAs open potisions and why and getting the above message in journal?

 

Thank You

 

[Petko Aleksandrov]

It depends on your leverage as well.

Try lowering the lot size to 0.1 and see if you will still see the same error.

[netbizint]

Hi Perko,

I tried to another live trading account with same broker and it works fine. The one with the issue is a MAM trading account. It has other trades, not related to automated trading. The requirement for this MAM with the broker is the issue. Even 0.01 lots won’t open trades. As am not closing these running trades. Will keep automated trading separately.

 

Thanks for your suggestion.

[Author]

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