I’ve just uploaded some lenghty (>45 minutes) video to YouTube, explaining how to use MT4 strategy tester to backtest and EA and optimize its settings. Enjoy.

I’m proud to announce, that with some friends we’ve finally launched Bid-Ask.pl – a new forex analysis site, with some sections related to MT4 Expert Advisors, chat and more. The site is in polish language at the moment, later we’ll try to expand to worldwide as well. Here is some screenshot:

Yesterday night I’ve got idea for very simple trading method. Over next 20 minutes I quickly coded first version and ran the backtest. Result blow my mind. The profits were so big that my jaw dropped.

Still, results were chaotic, big drawdown was here and there and so on. But since profit was very big, I decided to play with some money management code to reduce risk and maximize profits. Time went quickly, until it got really late in the night, but results were improving when I was adding extra features into code. So, for the night I’ve ran strategy optimizer to find better settings and went to sleep. This morning the results were even better – I’ve managed to control drawdown, get smooth equity curves and tons of profits. Unbelievable tons of profits, actually. After whole Sunday of backtesting now it is time to get the best params, open demo account and start watching it live. Fingers crossed

So, to give you the taste how good the results were, take a look at the 2 performance results below. They were done on about 3.5 years (2006.10.31  – 2010.05.20) on EUR/USD H1 chart. It was Alpari UK mini account. Initial deposit in both cases was $20. Yes, not $20k, just $20. First statement is fixed – all trades were done on 0.01 lots, for whole 3.5 years. The second statement is the same run, but with added compounding – as the account grew, lot size also grew. Do the math yourself.

Fixed one:

And the compounded one:

Due to file size restrictions I had to put the corresponding HTML reports into zip file. You can download it here: MALeveler_statements.

I’ve decided to give away for free one of my MT4 scripts – Screenshooter. It is an utility for doing screenshots of MT4 charts into gif files, and optionally ftp-ing them to some server, typically in order to display them on website.

You can download file from this link: Screenshooter.ex4.

Example result:

To install it, copy the ex4 file to experts\scripts folder of your MT4 installation and restart MT4. It will appear under ’scripts’ in your Navigator window, then you can attach it to chart.

If you set it to continuous mode, it will make a screenshot on every candle open. Otherwise, it will just do 1 screenshot and quit.

If you set up FTP in your MT4 options and provide ftp path, script will also upload the file to the specified location.

Also, sound can be played, if specified in parameters.

The width/height parameters do control the size of resulting file – size of your chart do not matter!

Please note, that I am not able to give support to all readers. Like it or not.

However, my existing customers can get the support anyway. Also, if you want some modification let me know, so we’ll discuss it.

Also, I have created very simple PHP script for displaying gallery of such images. I created empty folder on my website, put the php script there, then setup MT4 to upload screenshoots there. Result looks like this. The script is here: Screenshooter

]]> http://www.nopik.net/free-mt4-script-for-automated-screenshots/feed/ 1 http://www.nopik.net/wrong-idea-mt4-backtest-on-weekend/ http://www.nopik.net/wrong-idea-mt4-backtest-on-weekend/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 09:18:07 +0000 admin http://www.nopik.net/?p=274 Got few spare hours over weekend and want to do some backtesting of MT4 EAs? Bad idea.. the results are likely to be way off. I had such problem with Alpari MT4 today, most likely other brokers have similar problem.All this goes to spread. Yesterday (it was Friday), I was doing backtesting of new version of Libra all the day. Results were promising, credible and nice. I was doing it for whole evening, almost till midnight, after market close. Since tester optimization runs produced hundreds of passes, I’ve got the optimal one and just wanted to run the backtest on those parameters manually, without optimization turned on. And, I was not able to reproduce such results anymore.. no matter how I tried. Wtf? I asked. Does MT4 optimalization is so skewed? Maybe I have some bug in EA? But how could I insert a bug, which makes system earning 200 pips daily during optimalization, while losing 200 pips during regular backtesting? Moreover the optimization results were very close to my forward test observation, while backtesting were not. But, this problem stopped me out, and since it was almost a midnight and I was pissed off, I decided to give it a break and go to sleep.

Today morning I restarted my research to see what is wrong there – are the results of my whole day of backtesting invalid? What went wrong? So, after a short while I wanted to see the backtest visually. When I ran it and started to watch the chart, almost immediately I’ve noticed that orders are filled way of the chart. What the..? I drawn Ask line and Bid line and got shocked. Typically Alpari have like 2-3 pips spread on GBPCHF. But, my test was running on 15.4 pip spread! My system gets about 4-5 pips per trade on average, and is producing thousands of trades.. no wonder that it started to loose big with such spread. I went to symbol properties – yeah, spread is 154 points. I suspect it is the weekend spread.. so no more backtesting over weekend for me, I have to find another task to focus on We’ll see on Monday. So now I’m slightly relieved and hope back

Happy trading and watch your spread…

The thread, along with other thread on Forex-TSD forum, have like 4000 posts in total, but the system was interesting enough to take few hours off and go through all of it. Interestingly, very few posts was describing the math background of this system.. and I had many ideas So, I’ve put all of them and started new thread: http://www.forex-tsd.com/suggestions-trading-systems/25381-t101-basket-trading-system-math-analysis.html

I hope that you’ll enjoy it.. there is few variation, background math analysis as well as some new ideas to think about

You can see sample reports here: http://4xeagleeye.com/daily-outlook/spot-market/eurusd.html, also take a look on the sidebar widget.

Rework is a collection of short texts (almost like blog entries), 1-3 page each, and each entry describes some topic – precisely, and often shockingly. The topics are then categorized into chapters like “Productivity”, “Promotion”, “Hiring”, “Culture” and so on.

The main message of book is quite coherent, and it turn upside down all common knowledge how business should be ran:

• Remove features instead of adding them – it will keep your product in good quality
• Do not follow “Fail early, fail often” dogma – it doesn’t give you any progress
• Stay small, don’t hire without really good reason – small team is agile, big company have too much inertia
• Don’t make your team working more than 8 hours per day – or you will burn them quickly. Go for marathon, not sprint.
• Scratch your own itch – do product having yourself as a client
• No time is no excuse – people are making excuses like “I don’t have time”, or “I don’t have money”. But these are only excuses – even working few hours each evening will allow you to build something great.
• and so on, 1-2 pages for topic like that, topic by topic, for almost 300 pages.

They tell what not to do, what to do, and how to do it. And their way of telling it is full of energy – I got really motivated by the book, motivated to do better products and do it in a better way. For example, during last few months I’ve been running my own business, and I was worried that I’m alone and wanted to hire somebody as soon as possible. Now I understand that might not be the best decision, and it will be better to wait more and do more stuff alone.

In general, if you attend some seminar or read a book, and learn just 1 new important thing, it is worth to spend $20 on the book or $300 for seminar, just to had that single thought of inspiration. Rework will give you many thoughts like this, for only $13.20 (and few hours of reading). Will you pay such price for improving your business and getting more clients & audience? I did, and it was great deal for me.

Some backtesting results over 2009:

Visit http://www.stressfreerobot.com and start taking profits today!

PS. I do also accept affiliates, if you want to resell this robot to your clients, I will pay you back as well.