FSaF Version 1.09 is in the works

Version 1.09 of Forex Set and Forget is in the works and should be available no later than 31 October, which coincides with the end of an experiment I am currently conducting. Ten or so participants have agreed to run FSaF version 1.08 from 01 September until 31 October and provide me data and feedback about the experience (install, operate, manage, etc.). This will enable me to enhance the usability, reliability and discover any bugs that need to be fixed before version 1.09 is released. So far the response has been positive and a few have already seen some very nice profits. The feedback I am getting has been priceless and has prompted this "extreme makeover" from version 1.08 to 1.09.

Version 1.09 will be priced significantly higher than 1.08. Right now I'm thinking the price will be at least $249 but that price is not carved in stone. However, you can buy version 1.08 now at $99 and then upgrade to 1.09 for free when it becomes available. You have just a few weeks to take advantage of this situation before it's too late and the price goes up.

Check out these stats

This the same FXDD account that was running Forex Set and Forget on 10 pairs simultaneously, and had a steadily declining balance. Then I put version 1.08 on it to try and recover the losses. At this time the losses were recovered and the account is at break-even. Version 1.08 is proving to be quite the steady gainer. Yes there is drawdown but over the long term the profits outweigh the drawdown.

Here are some graphs showing stats from last month.





Balance vs. Period




Pips vs. Period



Pips vs. Orders


Remember when you go to the mt4stats site and look at the summary, it's not a pretty picture. The account was down about 10% before I put version 1.08 on to rescue it. So you're not looking consistent gains from start to end. What you are looking for is the recovery over the last month.

Version 1.07 was working beautifully...

..right up until there was a connection failure or a computer failure while trades are open. I had a few trades where the trailing stop was not handled properly after a system failure (when my dedicated trading machine tried to commit suicide recently) and noticed the potential for not only huge losses, but missed opportunities for entry because some trades that were supposed to be closed actually remained open. It was very discouraging.

So now there's version 1.08, which recovers beautifully from connection failures, system failures, any kind of failure (besides operator error of course). It has much improved trailing stop logic and fixes some obscure bugs that could only be caught when one of these system failures occured. The Preset Files for version 1.07 should still work but with one exception. Change useProtectiveStop=1 to useProtectiveStop=0, or you will get alot of break-even trades that will eat up a large percentage of your gains, and may even cause your account to be losing instead of winning.

Looking for testers!

Wanna be one of my testers? Go here for details...

• http://millionaire-maker.org/special/

This thing ends on sunday so you need to act fast if you want your chance to participate in this project. Tell all your friends too! I need as much traffic to the site as possible.

Thanks!

FSaF rescue project

I have been running FSaF on 10 charts on the same demo account since mid-June. Each chart is one of my 10 pre-optimized currency pairs. I didn't expect much out of this account except to see what problems would arise as a result of running the EA on multiple currency pairs. And believe me there were lots of problems in the first versions. Mostly caused by synchronization problems between charts.

Anyway, that account started with $10000 and over the next 6 weeks had gone down below $8500. This did not concern me because I was not looking for gains on this account. I was looking for problems to show themselves for me to fix. Click the image below to view full stats and trading history...


Now that version 1.07 addresses most of the problems found during this test, I decided to use it on this same account to recover the losses that occured during the test. You can tell when I started using version 1.07 because the lot size is different on the trades. Previous versions placed 10 trades of 0.01 lots. FSaF 1.07 places 3 trades of 0.03 lots. From August 3rd until now (Aug 12) it has recovered about $500.

So hopefully, FSaF will not only recover the original losses, it will provide nice steady gains on the account from here on with (hopefully) little drawdown. Even so, I thought it would be interesting to see how it does. This is why I put that particular account on mt4stats.com.

Wish me luck!

NOTE: Since these tests I discovered another problem with the protective/trailing stop logic that only occurs in some cases when MetaTrader is closed improperly, such as during a power failure or hardware crash. This has been remedied in version 1.08, which should be available either end of August or early September.

New Preset Files are now available

I decided after a rough trading month that instead of optimizing Forex Set and Forget for a month at a time, I would go back much further and try combinations that withstand the test of time. What I ended up doing is optimizing 10 pairs from January 1 2009 to August 1 2009 and taking (mostly) the combinations that had the highest reliability factor, which is calculated using the maximum drawdown over the time period and comparing with the ending profit. The higher the profit and the lower the drawdown, the higher the "Reliability Factor". A Reliability Factor of 2.00 or higher should be sufficient for consistent long term profits. As you can see in the chart below, all but one of the pairs optimized produced adequate, and in some cases exceptional, Reliability Factor.

Symbol	Profit	Drawdown	#Trades	Reliability Factor
USDJPY	117.10%	9.67%	54	12.11
EURGBP	108.40%	13.00%	99	8.34
EURJPY	145.70%	18.06%	219	8.07
USDCHF	68.60%	10.81%	51	6.35
GBPCHF	86.50%	13.72%	132	6.30
GBPUSD	98.60%	18.91%	228	5.21
GBPJPY	99.90%	29.40%	201	3.40
CHFJPY	55.30%	19.43%	213	2.85
EURUSD	58.40%	25.73%	114	2.27
EURCHF	11.30%	18.67%	30	0.61

Backtest results from January 1 to August 1 2009

Full backtest reports are available now on the Forex Set and Forget site. A new minor version has been released with all of the new Preset Files, and a slightly enhanced AME Support Resistance indicator. Grab your updates now by opening up the "Check for Updates" icon in your FSaF installation directory (or ZIP file if you deleted the directory).

Version 1.07 is now available!

If you haven't noticed, Forex Set and Forget version 1.06 has been performing very poorly during the month of July. July was a strong ranging month for just about all pairs, which means support and resistance were relatively close to each other and price, for the most part, was bouncing back and forth between support and resistance.

Forex Set and Forget 1.06 suffers when this phenomenon occurs because it tends to place buy orders right at resistance and sell orders right at support, which are almost guaranteed to be losing trades. Because of this, July was not a good month for Forex Set and Forget (FSaF).

Version 1.07 introduces a new custom indicator called "AME Support Resistance", which tells FSaF what the support/resistance levels are. This new information is then used to decide if it is wise to place buy/sell orders at the current price levels. The new indicator can also be plotted on your charts and is very handy for manual trading, even day trading on the 5 and 15 minute charts.

However, as a result of the new indicator, FSaF tends to place alot less trades now. Sometimes going weeks without trading. This is especially true when the support and resistance levels form a narrow channel that does not give FSaF enough room to capture the minimum profits in a trading round. Because of this, I have greatly improved FSaF's ability to run on multiple charts simultaneously. I know how you traders think. If your EA is not in a trade then you get nervous. :-)