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Hi Kalin,
Did you resolve your original issue with the multiple EA tabs? Was it that you were running EA on separate tabs rather than separate browsers as I expected? It’s good to clarify for anyone else who may come on the forum looking for an answer to a similar problem :-)
Setting up a vps is pretty straight forward. It is essentially just a remote computer close to the brokers server which will run your MT4 terminals 24/7 and reduce latency (your order signals will be faster).
It is definitely worthwhile. There are many forex specific vps options (will find on google easily) with free trials. Just sign up for a couple and see what one you like best, it’s more about the cost per resources you want (number of cores, ram and hard drive space) which is dependent on how many MT4 terminals you intend to run. Also when choosing an operating system use windows 2012, it uses less resources and is better for this purpose in my experience.
Hi Kalin,
Okay so it sounds to me like you have each EA studio in a seperate tab on the same browser rather than on seperate browsers? If so then that is the problem. The several hundred will just have been generated in the brief moment that the tab was active. Can you confirm if this is the case or not?
As for the portfolio, stick to 100 at most I would say personally. Do you have any great need for anymore than this? If so can you give a little more detail on your system?
100 per portfolio will be absolutely fine (optimal is possibly dependent on how many positions open at the same time but I would need to test this, however don’t feel its really necessary).
Hi Selim,
3.71% loss is pretty measured, and yes it was a tough month.
That’s a shame that your buddies are most likely not gonna continue. Good to see you are though.
You seem to enjoy this method of trading – As do I :-). My opinion is this is probably the most important factor in eventual success. Profits aren’t gonna jump into anyone’s pocket, I have been doing this a while now and although my results aren’t quite where I ideally want them to be (yet) there has been very significant continual improvement ongoingly with occasional leaps. The harder I work and the longer I persist and deepen my knowledge the better my results get (Funny that!).
An enjoyment of the tools and trading style is a such a major key in persisting and improving so we are both very fortunate to have found that! I’m honestly obsessive at times, constantly having ideas to try popping into my head – it keeps me very busy and I love it haha
Keep doing what you are doing and sharing your results and I’m sure we will get some good discussion points that will be to all our benefit :-), tracking things as you are doing is very important so off to a great start.
Are you running any other systems alongside the 12 EA’s?
Happy trading week also! This recent week has been pretty poor for me personally but the two before it were great, cant win all the time ;-)
Hi David,
Well done on your perseverance! Glad you getting everything to tie up nicely now, I don’t doubt you learned a massive amount in the process although I know it can be a headache.
Actually, now that you mention it I do remember a while back having some mis-match issues with the trailing stops. Since then I have avoided them out of habit. I didn’t investigate too thoroughly though as I had no strong reason to use them anyway. Its best I did forget to point straight to this though as you will have learned WAY more in getting to the bottom of it as you have done ;-)
If you do want to use the trailing stop then I would suggest formulating a clear email to Miroslav Popov with all the information he would need to quickly and easily replicate the issue and if there is a problem rather than just our misunderstanding (In my experience its almost always the latter!) then he will fix it promptly.
I’ve also found in breaking down and explaining what I think might be a problem for POPOV I usually solve the problem myself before needing to send the email :-).
It actually a really big step to get everything to match like this in my opinion David. I am pretty sure you will agree now that you have done it that it is valuable to continually check all three match and that confirming that the EA studio is similar to MT4 backtester (I am pretty sure that for the trailing stop EAs the MT4 backtester will match the real results but an initial comparison of the EA studio backtester vs MT4 backtester would have raised a red flag right?)
Totally agree with you Petko, there has been some hugely valuable information in this thread for beginner algo traders!!
Hi David,
Well done on your perseverance! Glad you getting everything to tie up nicely now, I don’t doubt you learned a massive amount in the process although I know it can be a headache.
Actually, now that you mention it I do remember a while back having some mis-match issues with the trailing stops. Since them I have avoided them out of habit. I didn’t investigate too thoroughly though as I had no string reason to use them anyway. Its best I did forget to point straight to this though as you will have learned way more in getting to the bottom of it as you have done ;-)
If you do want to use the trailing stop then I would suggest formulating a clear email to Miroslav Popov with all the information he would need to quickly and easily replicate the issue and if there is a problem rather than just our misunderstanding (In my experience its almost always the latter!) then he will fix it promptly.
I’ve also found in breaking down and explaining what I think might be a problem for POPOV I usually solve the problem myself before needing to send the email :-).
It actually a really big step to get everything to match like this in my opinion David. I am pretty sure you will agree now that you have done it that it is valuable to continually check all three match and that confirming that the EA studio is similar to MT4 backtester (I am pretty sure that for the trailing stop EAs the MT4 backtester will match the real results but an initial comparison of the EA studio backtester vs MT4 backtester would have raised a red flag right?)
Totally agree you Petko, there has been some hugely valuable information in this thread for beginner algo traders!!
Hi David, best practice would be to find a more reliable computer to trade on or vps. Crashes should be very rare and you should turn off automatic updates and do them manually on the weekend when the market is closed.
This is not an issue I ever have but in this instance what you could do is run the metatrader backtester and see if the trade would still be open or closed and take appropriate action to remain in accordance with how the EA would have traded if no interruption occurred.
If there is a trade open with the magic number of an EA that has auto trading enabled then the EA will manage that trade according to its rules. Im sure you can easily confirm that with a quick test also.
Hi David,
Totally agree that things need to be in the right ballpark between demo trades and either mt4 of EA studio backtester.
However from a quality point of view if MT4 backtester isn’t matching the EA studio as you have shown then mistakes have 100% been made and that is the easiest place to start.
Haha, yup I would say trying to do too much again, but I understand the habit ;-)
Also David, is the backtest quality in EA studio showing as 100%? I personally don’t use M1 timeframe but it could be an ambigious bar problem (I doubt it but we will investigate)
Honestly, don’t be depressed or dispair David. I assure you that there is no issue with EA studio and I will help you get to the bottom of the mismatch so you can move forward. Also I am sure Petko will chime in soon to help also.
If needs be you can even send me one of your EA’s and I can repeat the test for myself (I’d need more than just the screen shot above however as I dont know all the inputs for indicators)
I am also not saying you shouldn’t check 20 strategies etc. But focus all your efforts on a single one for now. You are trying to do too much too fast (Which I completely understand as it is my habit also!!)
Hi David,
First of all well done for your efforts. I can see that you have put in some work and the results are no doubt frustrating!
Firstly I have some very good news for you. You may have read on the forum that I will be releasing videos on Pekto’s new YouTube channel. For my first couple of video’s I will be addressing this very issue and will walk through the comparison of MT4, EA Studio and then a demo account.
You can expect the first video within a couple of weeks from now at the latest.
Do not despair, I assure you there is no issue with EA studio and that there is a mistake somewhere in your working.
You are also trying to do way too much at once which will further be clouding the issue.
As per my initial recommendation was to first only compare MT4 backtester and EA journal, only then move onto comparing demo results but you have tried to do everything all at once (less haste more speed).
While you are awaiting these videos lets take a look at things anyway as I can feel the frustration 😉
So firstly I suggest you focus your matching efforts ONLY on your strategy 101002 for now. I can see that in that case all the times of trades match but the prices don’t. (In fact between the MT4 tester and ea journal that’s actually the case for all of them except the 101001). Let’s completely forget the reality for the time being and address one issue at a time.
So I can see that all the trades are opening and closing at the same times which is great. The profit not matching of course is not so great.
Here are the first few obvious things to check:
1 – Are your swaps matching both for EA studio and MT4 at the time of performing your tests? Remember they change so make sure you check when you test
2 – Have you used the same spread for both the MT4 and EA studio backtest
3 – Do you have commission included in EA studio? (To match with MT4 backtest you will need to turn off the commission as it doesn’t include it – but obviously EA studio is the more accurate check in this case and turning it off is just for comparison purposes)
Hi Daniel,
First a couple of obvious checks.
1. If you click Tool > Options > and then export advisors are any of the “disable expert…” options checked. If so then uncheck them.
2. Right click on the chart with the expert advisor and then select the common tab and ensure that the allow live trading is checked
It also could possibly be a compilation issue. Is the .ex5 or 4 file showing in the Experts folder. You could try opening up metaeditor and compiling it manually and seeing if any warning shows up.
It sounds like it is just not opening trades? Are you positive that the entry conditions have been triggered?
Hey David,
The first and most important check really shouldn’t take any time to collect data. Just grab an EA from EA studio and compare the trade journal in EA studio (using the imported broker data) with MT4 backtester open prices – certainly cant doubt MT4 backtester. Should only take 10-15 minutes to do that really. This first check should definitely quickly put your mind at ease regarding EA studios backtesting quality (Which is honestly absolutely excellent ;-).
Then you can set that EA on demo and wait to see how it compares with the backtester in a weeks time for the second check.
Hi David,
If you have imported data from your broker and not applied any specific time settings in EA studio then the time of your trades made on your demo and shown in the EA studio journal should match. Also start of course by checking using the MT4 backtester on your broker MT4 as discussed also.
As you say the time isn’t that important if no time settings are applied and especially over a large time period (It could be significant for only a weeks results but will be insignificant backtesting over a couple of years for example).
Also, I honestly just don’t think there is any need for different data for generating strategies with EA studio other than the premium data\historical tool. I heard of some people optimizing strategies for their broker data but personally I think a simple check that your strategies equity line is similar between premium and broker data over the same time period (i.e. for 6 months if that is all the broker data you have) is sensible enough.
As for the concern over the two live servers giving different results, that does seem odd. What are you comparing exactly? Do you mean that you have put identical robots on two separate IC market live accounts with different servers and the results are very different? Or are these checks within EA studio. Seems like a different issue, possibly due to using a short time frame and poor latency (Although in that case I would only expect the actual profits to be different but the times of entry an exit should mostly be close, could be a bit different for stop loss and take profit exits though of course). What latency do you have with your broker? I am assuming you are trading on a VPS?
There is a lot being discussed here actually which can always be a bit confusing. For problems like these I would always advise breaking the problem into as small pieces as possible and avoid trying to solve too much at once.
But I am still sure all will become clear to you once you work through the steps as discussed :-)
Hi Selim,
I am just going to expand on your points to make things clearer for David but they are very good points!
For Point 1:
I also suspect a time issue which will become clear when David compares the trades between MT4 backtester and EA studio as it will be easy to see if all trades are shifted by a set amount of time. Additionally when only checking a week the fact that EA studio only starts trading after 100 bars needs to be accounted for to get the best match which will also become clear to David when he is working on this.
However this only really applies for the premium data as when importing the broker data as David has done the time will match and does not need to be set.
Have you set any specific time settings in EA studio David or is the 00:00 – 24:00 applied?
For Point 2:
What David has done is actually correct in using the broker data to compare rather than using premium data that has the settings applied.
When generating strategies we should use the premium data with settings adjusted because as you say there are no missing bars and we can get this data for. The two main issues with the broker data for generation is missing bars and the fact that there is not enough of it usually (Sometimes they just give a month even although most give more sensible amounts).
But what David is doing is just comparing a weeks live trading results (although will be demo going forward :-) with EA studio (and MT4 backtester also until things matching up) and in this sense it is definitely best to import the broker data to EA studio and check using that. In this case David will have collected the broker data himself with the MT4 terminal real-time so isn’t even downloading a chunk of data from their server really. Always check the data quality using EA studio s Data statistics which is super quick and easy to do.
Also the historical data tool/premium data is all we need for generating good strategies in my opinion, you really wont be getting anything by paying for additional data. You can even download free tick data from Dukascopy directly if required but again that is free so there should be no need to pay for anything.
Oh also, if you are trend following then M5 wouldn’t really be a good time frame for that. Might be an idea to stick to higher timeframes when starting out but that’s a whole other discussion.
Hi David,
You are welcome regarding my response. Could empathize with your desperation as losing money certainly isn’t fun!
Yes of course you need to see it with your own eyes. I would expect no less! But if you follow those steps a lot will clear up I am sure.
And actually I would suggest starting the suggested tests with a normal stop loss rather than a trailing stop as its clearer in MT4 comparison because of how MT4 handles the trailing stop.
I actually tend to avoid trailing stops for this reason and I haven’t seen much benefit, but I understand that they are useful for trend following approach and all should be well if you use them but keep things simple to start. You will be able to check with portfolio and trailing stops after you have followed those steps through but definitely start simple first as it will make everything clearer and easier.
It sounds like you are targeting a trend following approach with the trailing stop and and no TP, is this correct?
Yes, you can absolutely rest assured that this is fantastic software that has clearly had many years of time and passion put into it. If there were actual mismatches that were a genuine bug then Popov would certainly want to know about it, but I very strongly do not believe what you have shown is evidence of this and needs to be broken down into smaller steps for you to get to the bottom of it properly.
Also if you do find any legitimate bugs you can email Miroslav Popov directly and he will respond and fix them very quickly. But in my experience often these are almost always our own mistakes or misunderstandings as it is highly polished and quality software.
Happy troubleshooting :-)