GBPCHF approaching 200MA on H4 chart

A quick look at the GBPCHF 4-hour chart reveals that the price is about to touch the 200 period moving average. The previous two times this happened, over the last two weeks or so, provided opportunity to capture some serious pips. Nearly 400 pips on the first touch and over 700 pips on the second. The AME Cross Trader would have easily captured most of those during this time period.

Now it looks like another bounce can happen again. Look at the chart below and you'll see what I'm talking about. If you turn on the EA right now in anticipation of either a bounce or a break through the 200MA, there is a good chance you'll make a few bucks over the next few days or even weeks. Note that the AME Cross Trader will not place any trades until that 12MA is between the 200MA and price, which should be happening in the next few days. So now would be a good time to turn it on and let it wait for the opportunity to come.



Here are the parameters I am using on my chart.

minTradeSize = 0.1 (0.01 for standard account)
scaleDivisor = 100 (1000 for FXDD)
stopDollars = 1000
shortMaBars = 12
longMaBars = 200
stopBars = 6
useLimit = 1
limitPips = 10
useMM = 1
aggressiveMode = 1
slippage = 10
panicMode = 0
maxTotalLots = 1000

Also, note on that chart the short consolidation period that happened right before the price started moving towards the 200MA. Unfortunately, I took some pretty bad losses during this time. Part of it was a manual trade that I placed which went against me. But overall it was a confusing period for the AME Cross Trader. If you look at the 12MA, you'll notice that it is nearly horizontal and the price crosses back and forth over it. This is the worst time to trade, but I ignored my better instincts and let it go anyway, and it cost me all of my profits and a little more.

Now I have some catching up to do. Oh well.

Look what I found!

I found this blog (in japanese?) where someone took the AME Cross Trader and optimized it for every currency pair on FXDD live server. The site includes backtest reports AND .set files for every currency pair, optimized from 01/01/2008 to 12/31/2008!!!

This was clearly alot of work and I am most grateful to the person who has done this. Unfortunately, I cannot read the language of the blog (is it japanese?) so I have no way of knowing who to credit for this work. If you can read the language of the blog, please see if you can find a contact person and leave a comment here with their info. I really would like to thank this person for this great work.

Check out my trading log

I have been keeping a log of all of my 2009 trading activity in a myspace group that I am an active member of. It's a great group for beginning traders, with a wide variety of people with a vast range of experience in trading. Click here to check it out. Or click the "2009 trading log" link on the right.

Note that this same information can be found in the "Recent Account Statement", but the trading log has commentary with each post. Also, there is feedback from other group members in there as well.

I think I like the 200MA

I decided that since the 200MA has been kicking me in the crotch lately, I should get on its good side. So I tried optimizing for InterbankFX, using the "ame-cross-trader-h4-mini-full.set", but instead of optimizing the "longMaBars" I simply set longMaBars=200 and left it out of the optimization. I got some interesting results. Not necessarily great results, but one thing that I found is that those combinations were rarely hurt by the 200MA. In fact, I also found that using shortMaBars=12 produced some nice results in a few currency pairs.

If you're feeling experimental, try optimizing some currency pairs but leaving shortMaBars=12 and longMaBars=200. Optimize all the other parameters that are already checked in the preset file and see what you come up with. Also, run backtest in visual mode so you can see exactly how the MAs affect the trading. I think I might be on to something good here.

Anyone experiencing this with FXDD?

I have set up a demo account on FXDD and have been running the AME Cross Trader on GBPCHF for a few days now. It seems like I lose my connection repeatedly throughout the day. I have other accounts on InterbankFX and Metaquotes. These accounts rarely lose connection, but FXDD loses connection all the time. Have you experienced this? Are the live accounts this unstable? Please leave a comment and let me know. I am very curious about this.

The AME Cross Trader ONLY places trades, sets take-profit and moves trailing stop within the first 60 seconds of a new bar forming. On the H4 this means if I lose connection, say, for 2 minutes, causing me to miss my window of opportunity, then I have to wait FOUR HOURS for the next opportunity. On the D1 that time increases to TWENTY FOUR HOURS. This makes me never want to open a live account on FXDD. Someone please tell me I'm wrong.

Are you using FXDD to run the AME Cross Trader?

I just created standard AND mini demo accounts on FXDD (because some customers were having difficulty running back tests) and learned some disturbing things...

• From what I can tell, the only difference between FXDD standard and mini accounts is the minimum deposit amount.
• The smallest trade you can place is 0.1 standard lots. On xxxUSD pairs that means 1pip=$1. To use the AME Cross Trader with $500 starting amount, you need 1pip=$0.10 minimum trade size. A factor of 10 difference!

My advice to anyone running the AME Cross Trader on FXDD is this...

• Start with at least $1000
  
• Set minTradeSize=0.1
• Set scaleDivisor=1000

Doing these things will let the EA run with the same level of effectiveness as a *true* mini account. There are just 2 main differences...

• Your initial risk is $1000 instead of $500
• The EA cannot scale trade sizes as effectively. For example, with $500 on InterbankFX, your trade size will grow from 0.05 to 0.06, 0.07, 0.08 standard lots, etc. each time your balance increases by $100. But on FXDD it will grow from 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 standard lots, etc. each time your account balance increases by $1000.

Anyway, I'm just putting this info on here so that you know what you are in for.

GBPCHF is looking very promising now

I was running the optimizer on all different pairs and one that stuck out for this last month is GBPCHF. Here are the optimized parameters for InterbankFX mini account with $500...

• minTradeSize=0.1 (0.01 for standard account)
• scaleDivisor=100
• stopDollars=1000 (or set to 1 to disable panic mode)
• shortMaBars=18
• longMaBars=90
• stopBars=6
• useLimit=1
• limitPips=20
• useMM=1
• aggressiveMode=1
• slippage=10
• panicMode=0
• maxTotalLots=1000

This combination produced 300% gains in a single month. Here is a graph from a backtest...


Anyway, it looks promising and I might try it in place of EURCHF, which I have been experimenting with but I'm not too happy with so far.

Preparing the AME Cross Trader for live trading

Apparently, it is not obvious how to optimize and prepare the AME Cross Trader for use on a live chart. So I made a video as an answer to one of the most commonly asked questions.



The original video was over 13 minutes long and had to be edited down to 9 minutes in order to comply with YouTube restrictions, so the ending is kind of abrupt. Sorry. Also, at the end I forgot to set the chart to H4 instead of the default H1.

Also, it might be easier to watch in full screen. :-)

GBPJPY looks like it's ready to rock!

Click on the chart below and you'll notice that GBPJPY has the longer of the two moving averages going through the last bar. This is the ideal time to turn on the AME Cross Trader on this chart.


It doesn't matter if the price goes up or down. If it goes above both moving averages, eventually the EA will start placing buy orders. If it continues the downtrend and goes below both moving averages, then it will start placing sell orders. Either way, the outcome will likely be some serious profits. This is not 100% guaranteed, but the likelihood is very high.

First testimonial: AME Cross Trader

One of my customers, Jeremy from USA, has sent me this awesome testimonial...

"What a week, I followed your directions down to the letter, and my first time around it worked!!! I started the EA on EUR/USD on monday... the long term average was crossing the bar. This morning when I checked, my account had went from 507$ to 1527$!!! I closed all positions because i was following strategy #2 (triple and withdraw)."

Please note that "this morning" in the note above represents Friday, not even a week later. These results are not typical by any means but it does happen once in a while. However, tripling your account in a month is not uncommon at all.

So, here's my response to Jeremy...

"Congratulations! Remember, as soon as your withdrawal is processed then you are trading risk-free. Not only that, but it looks like you made enough profit to cover the cost of the EA as well!. So now you have a free account and free EA, and a good working knowledge of how to continue the momentum. Good job, my friend!"