Looks like I may have started a new trend

It seems that since I started selling the AME Cross Trader, some of the other ATC2008 contestants have started doing the same...

• PrizmaL - 2nd place winner
• abeiks - 3rd place winner

Even the first place winner, Liliput, chose to auction a single copy of his EA and donate the money to charity!

Also, it turns out that some scumbag has taken advantage of this fact and has put up a scam site, offering to sell illegal copies of my EA, other ATC2008 contestants EA, and about 200 other products. I suspect the site has been up for quite a while and the ATC2008 products were added recently.

• www.bookdepartment.info/ea-champhionship-winner/cat_17.html

Either way, be careful when looking for trading robots because you might run into a site like the one above.

Can you say "OUCH!"?

January turned out to be a horrible trading month for me. My account went from $1000 to just over $500 in January. My target is $3000 before I make my next withdrawal, and I am determined to reach that target. I will not diverge from my trading style to get there. Some loss is expected. I know my strategy works, but sometimes knowing *when* to stay out of the market is the most important part of a strategy. This is where I failed in January. I even recommended to a few of my customers that they stay out of the market until February. I wish I had taken my own advice.

Also, getting very familiar and comfortable with the currency pair you are trading is of utmost importance. I have been experimenting with EURCHF and GBPCHF, because GBPJPY had started behaving differently at the end of 2008, but I have not had enough time and experience with them to say that I know them well. This may have been part of my problem also. There's a good chance I will be trading GBPJPY again soon, so maybe that will help me reach my next goal of growing the account to $3000.

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.