[Simon]

Thanks Petko, I see now that there have been updates to EA Studio since the videos were made.

I understand about diversifying the risk, it makes good sense. For now, I am really learning about how the software works more than anything, so will focus on different assets when I am more comfortable with it’s capabilities.

I am finding it quite confusing that so many sections in the Reactor have the option for Acceptance Criteria and OOS, I have no idea what is happening if I have a combination of sections with one or both of them switched on or off! Is it possible to cause problems if you have either of them switched on in several places?..

Is there a video that you have done that covers the said Reactor queries?

Thanks, Simon

[Simon]

Thanks for the reply Petko.

I am looking now at the Walk Forward Optimization course, and trying to figure out which elements of that I could apply to the Reactor settings.

I have just finished watching the OOS lecture, which looks very useful, but I remember in another video that you said you weren’t a fan of it, so currently a little confused about what to try..

I really like the idea of having the Reactor do as much work as possible, being that I have another business to run, and family matters needing attention. What is your current view of a good chain of settings for it to generate and validate robust strategies that require no more work, other than testing in a demo MT4/5 account? I understand that you are not a fan of Full Data Optimization, but perhaps I should concentrate more on the OOS and Walk Forward sections of the Reactor? Multi-Market too?

For the sake of keeping it simple, I am just focusing on GBPJPY M1 at the moment, if I found a Reactor setup that works for that, would the same setup work for other symbols and timeframes?

Re the number of bars, I only used 200,000 this time because it allows the Reactor to run more quickly, perhaps I could increase it to 300,000 bars and go for 30% OOS, to give the Reactor a similar chance to generate strategies, with the OOS section there to simulate the trades on?…

Cheers,

Simon

[Simon]

Hi Petko,

I’ve been following the instructions as per the video: 12. The Reactor, and running it for nearly two days now, and have a collection of 100 strategies to work with.

Screenshots of the settings are as follows:

Historical Data settings

Strategy Properties settings

 

Generator Settings

 

Acceptance Criteria settings

Optimize Strategies settings

 

Monte Carlo settings

Monte Carlo results

 

Can you see anything I should have done differently?

Are the Monte Carlo results above acceptable? When are they not acceptable?

Should I now filter these using the performance filters?

Perhaps get the Maximum Stagnation percentage as low as possible?

Or, seeing that they have all passed the Reactors requirements, should I put them all of a demo account and see how they perform?

 

Thanks,

Simon

 

[Simon]

Thanks Petko.

 

I’ve been running the generator as per the course for roughly ten hours at a time, and rarely find any strategies, but I did find this one:

It didn’t look very nice, to be honest, but I followed the optimization instructions in video 09. FSB Pro – Longer time frames 1.1, and applied what I could to my strategy, given that it has different indicators, and honestly, I am guessing at what effect the parameters have on the strategy, and finished up with the following:

The Net Profit is better, and the equity curve has smoothed out a bit, but I don’t like that it is still losing money most recently. Would you bother testing this on a demo account?

I’m not sure if you can determine much from this screenshot, I entered the parameters into the Optimizer as best I could after watching the above video, but is there anything you would have done differently?

If I’m not able to generate many strategies, should I get rid of some of the locked logical conditions? They are as per your suggestions in video 04. FSB Pro – Longer time frames 1

I’ve had the acceptance criteria set to:

Minimum profit per day – 1

Minimum count of trades – 300

 

Is this too strict?

 

Cheers,

Simon.

[Simon]

Hi, I’m also wondering what to do about speeding up FSB Pro..

I currently have it installed on a desktop PC, but this PC is prone to crashing, not good for running the generator, so I am thinking about buying a new laptop dedicated to FSB Pro, but am not completely sure what spec I should look for to make it specialized for FSB Pro, can anyone advise?

I expect the processor will be near the top of the list, but what about RAM? How much of it?

Any other considerations?

I like the idea of a laptop, so that if there is a power cut, it could run on battery for a while…

 

 

[Simon]

Thank you for the reply!

[Simon]

Thanks Petko 🙂

[Simon]

Just wondering when the price of the course went up?

I have been trying to solve my problems with lack of historical data before I invest in some education, which I have now solved by finding another broker with better data to offer, and just went to purchase a course only to find it now costs six times what it did a month ago!

Looks like I’ve got more saving up to do.

Just can’t seem to get anywhere with this.

[Simon]

I think you can duplicate the installation folder for MT4 from the same broker on your machine, and run two instances of MT4 at the same time, having multiple accounts running simultaneously? I have done this on my laptop, seems to work ok… is there any reason that i’m missing why this would be inadvisable?

[Simon]

Hello Petko and Desita,

I will be happy to invest in the courses.

My trouble is that I only have data from 10th of January 2019. Until that problem is solved, I don’t think I can get anywhere.

What Petko mentioned above about possibly providing Ducascopy data in the future could be the answer, but until then, or I have had enough time to successfully accumulate seamless data to work with, the best I can do is familiarise with the software, I think?

In the meantime I have other things to consider, such as how I will go about running the generator for ten hours a day?, should I buy a dedicated laptop for that purpose or do I use a VPS for it?, how much extra will my electricity bill be if I use a laptop?, should I still use my VPS for actual trading with the strategies?, etc, etc.

I am sorry for all the questions, I have so many!

Thanks,

Simon

[Simon]

Ok, I have tried it with different quantities of bars of data, and the speed changes accordingly.

Is there a minimum quantity of bars that you recommend for creating a strategy?

If we don’t need to keep the strategies forever and will eventually discard them, can we get away with using shorter chunks of data so that the Reactor can work more quickly to find and validate strategies?

Thanks

[Simon]

Hello Petko,

Thanks for your reply.

I will begin saving my data using Excel asap. I suppose that even though we need it in .json format for EA Studio, we could import it into MT4 should it be necessary, and run the EA Studio script as normal.

When I have things organised, I will certainly look at buying a course. Thank you for all your help so far.

Kind Regards,

Simon

[Simon]

Hello Petko,

Thanks for your advice, I will look at strategies on other pairs and make sure there is a stop loss – what do you think about the lot size issue i mentioned? Does EA Studio know the difference between Micro, Mini and and Standard accounts? Increasing the lot size from 0.01 to 0.1 seemed to do the trick in terms of getting similar results in both programs?..

 

I saw a video at the weekend where you go over how you set up your Reactor, I will follow those steps as a starting point, perhaps just using the 0.1 lot size.

That is interesting about the Dukascopy data  you are developing, I will be pleased to look at it when it is available. In the meantime, I will begin saving my broker data on a regular basis. Do you have any tips for managing it? MT4 does start to cut off data after a while I think, so it would be more than a case of just replacing the previous file with a new one each time data is exported, so some work would be required in trimming off duplicate data and adding the new data to the old in chronological order, no? Or can it be managed with a spreadsheet somehow? Ideally, each timeframe for each pair would need to be kept in seamless chronological order in one file?

Thanks again,

Simon

[Simon]

HI again Petko,

With reference to the large spread on GBPNZD, I realise this, the spreads are much lower for other pairs with my broker, it’s just that GBPNZD moves a LOT of pips, and my thinking was that; if it can make really big moves, and EA Studio can make a strategy to work on it, even with the high spread, then it might be ok?..

I will also look at other pairs in any case.

Thanks,

Simon

[Simon]

Hi Petko,

Thanks for your reply, and for pointing out that the journal shows an error.. I looked up “mt4 ordersend error 131” and found out the following info:

Handling OrderSend Error 131 in MetaTrader 4

OrderSend Error 131 is a very popular problem that is usually encountered when testing MT4 expert advisors. What causes this error? It’s called ERR_INVALID_TRADE_VOLUME in the MT4 code. That means that your expert advisor is trying to send an order with invalid trade volume. On the absolute majority of the MT4 brokers setting some EA to open an order 0.123 lots will generate this error. But sometimes it’s generated when the EA, created for mini or micro accounts, is used on the standard account.

I am using a micro live account, could it be that the EA is programmed with the wrong lot size for the account I have? Or does the .json exported from MT4 file know all that stuff automatically?

Yes, I know my data is very limited.. it has been a huge struggle for me. My understanding is the the best data is the ACTUAL data from your broker, but here in the UK, not many brokers seem to offer MT4 that comes with data longer than a few months when you first install it.

My method to get around this, so far, has been to set up a VPS purely for the purpose of collecting data – I first started collecting it in January 2018, but very frustratingly (and I hold my hand up here for negligence), the VPS must have been rebooted by the hosting provider, possibly for maintenance or similar, some time in June 2018, because after a very busy summer/autumn with my other business, I checked the VPS  in Jan 2019 to assess the data it had collected, only to find it had not been doing so since Jun 2018. Hence using the small amount of data I do have, starting in Jan 2019, and looking at the M1 timeframe, as that is obviously the highest count of bars I have for getting the largest data horizon.

I read about people using services like Tickstory, but I just don’t see how it can be as reliable as ACTUAL broker data, do you have any thoughts on that?…

In any case, after looking up the ordersend error 131, I altered the lot size for the strategy to 0.1 lot, and tried again in the MT4 Strategy Tester, and actually got much better results, please see below:

(PS: this isn’t a strategy at all developed for trading, it’s purely for checking that my workflow process is being set up ok)

You can see that it has 410 journal entries… the MT4 Strategy Tester results tab as 440 results, although the times and prices of the trades don’t match up very well at the start of the backtest, but they do at the end… why is that?

Is it because EA Studio is not calibrated to the same timezone as my MT4?

The graph is similar to the graph in EA Studio, although it shows better results than in EA Studio..

I don’t know what much of the report tab means, but I’m guessing that the completely red bar at the top isn’t good?..

Thanks,

Simon

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