SL moved for AU

USDCAD ended with only 1 pip profit. I have moved SL for AU short to the entry level plus 1 pip.

2nd trade for today

I went short on AUDUSD @ 1.3650 with SL 1.03900. For the 1st trade on USDCAD I moved the SL to 0.99830, which is the entry price plus 1 pip.

 I'm normally a bit hesitant to add a position when I already have an open trade, but once I moved the stop loss of the 1st position to the positive level, it doesn't matter.

Lost Big

I've done a mistake and lost most of my account fund in all accounts I have. For now, I just would like to have fun doing a manual trading with a tiny fund left on one of my accounts.

I've taken long on USD/CAD @ 0.99820 with SL 0.99650.

CNS VPS working fine.

It's been a couple of weeks since I started using CNS VPS (Commercial Network Services). I've been monitorin the server using Wembot with the frequency of 5 minutes. Except it's down a bit during the scheduled maintenance during weekend (where forex market is sleeping), it has no down time.

What makes CNS outstanding is their software called Autoboot. It prevents double-login, and it restart MT4 terminal as soon as the server is recovered from down time.

If you put the terminal.exe into Start menu, re-booting the terminal is done quite easily. But then you would highly likely to experience double-login when you duplicate the server connection, which may allow an EA to open duplicated lots, meaning it could over-trade unintentionally.

CNS's Autoboot can prevent it, and it's quite useful!

M-Trader Forex Trading System

I've downloaded a demo version of M-Trader Forex Trading System from eBay. The vendor is http://automatedforexea.com/.

The demo was supposed to run for one month, but when the floating drawdown started to be big, the demo suddenly expired, saying "This version has been expired go to automatedforexea.com."

This EA piles up winning trades very quickly, but it uses martingale, and it would blow your account some day, all of a sudden. I think that the vendor knows it and he modified the demo version intentionally so that all demo users don't see their accounts are being blown up.

The vendor suggests it should run in a range market, or in a trending market with buy only or sell only setting. But who knows when the market change its direction! You never be able to predict it!

This is the vendor's website.

I was lucky I didn't purchase this item.

Will not make 150%

If you found this EA on eBay, do not buy. It won't make 150% a month. It will take up to 3 consecutive losses, and if it's not successfully recovered by the time, the loss becomes so huge that it takes  successful trades to get recovered.

It uses semi-martingale strategy, and it multiply the initial lot by 6, and tries to recover losses 3 times. So if your initial lot was 0.01, then the second trade takes 0.06 lots, the third trade takes 0.36 lots. Each time it takes a loss you lose 30 pips while winning trade brings you 5 pips.

1st loss: 30 pips

2nd loss: 180 pips

3rd loss: 540 pips

total loss: 750 pips

You must get 150 times of 5 pips winner to get this huge 750 pips loss recovered.

Even if this EA has a very high winning ratio, you'll give away all your profits suddenly some day. This EA is NO GOOD. Actually, really bad. Do not buy.

Alpari NZ flooded with error messages

I had been using Alpari NZ for the past several months, but today it started to get "Old tick" error messages again and again, almost every second.

It caused one of my EAs place 16 orders in about 5 minutes. I've closed all the position. I'll close the account and never trade with them.

This was the second time I got MT4 error or server problem. The previous one was EXNESS.

EA claiming to make 150% a month

One of the EAs that I bought claims that it makes 150% per month. Normally, this kind of statement makes me feel very dubious. But after trading it on two of my live accounts, I changed my mind a bit.

Because it trades on 1M chart, you can't get a reliable backtest because backtesting on 1M chart is very innacurate (modeling quality is very poor). But the author says it works on a live account. So I did. I don't trust a demo account. There's no slippage or any execution problem on demo. Live trading is the only way you can find the true results.

It takes positions around the clock. In the past 14 hours, it took 30 trades and the winning rate is very high. Once it takes a loss, it tries to recover the loss by increasing the lots on the next trade. But it's not a typical martingale style of EA because such multiplying of lots is limited up to three consecutive losses. Once it finds it can't recover in three losing trades, it start over from the initial lot amount. So it's not a dead-or-alive type of EA.

It's too early to tell, but so far, it lost only one and got recovered on the next trade. On the other account, it took two consecutive losses and recovered on the next trade. The difference comes from the difference of spreads on each broker. Since this EA chases only 5 pips (stop loss is 30 pips), tighter spread is much better for this EA.

The werid thing is that the max consecutive losses is set to 2 by default, the EA multiplied the lots by 3. I don't know if it's a bug of the EA and it continues to multiply the lots forever till the account is brown up. I never know until I see more trades.

The author suggest to run this EA on $1,000 account (with 0.01 lot trading). If you test this EA on a nano account like IBFX Australia, you can start with only $100. I think the author suggests very safe setting.

Can you really make 150% per month? I don't know. I guess it's a bit exaggerated. I think making about 10 to 20% or so is realistic expectation for this EA if it worked as statad. If you start this EA with lower capital like $200 to $400, then maybe it is very possible. According to the author's blog, he started trading this one with only $70. If you start the EA with such a small amount, then yes such high percentage yeild is very possible. I personally think that you at least need $500 on a micro account or $50 to $100 on a nano account.

This is what I know by now. But I need more time to evaluate this EA. I think the way this EA trades is very interesting, but I don't know how big the drawdown would be and how risky or profitable this one is gonna be. I only know the 14 hours results.

Additional EAs

I've found two interesting EAs and added to my portfolio. Those are dubious EAs found on eBay. One of them is really funny. The way it takes position is something I've never seen, but it's very interesting. I bought one from Germany, the other one from Bulgaria.

SL on StepsOfGlory4

I've experienced the first SL with a blackbox EA named StepsOfGlory4. It was about $100 loss. But I'm quite relaxed.

Negative 700 pips

Open positions on my StepsOfGlory are currently more than 700 negative pips. The floating drawdown is huge. But the dollar amount is only negative $7.00 or so because I use nano lots on IBFX Australia.

It seems to be weird to have negative 700 pips, but this EA survives every time even after it has more than $100 drawdown.

Current Results

Misteriously, StepsOfGlory4 is still alive. It occasionally gets about $100 floating drawdown on my IBFX nano account. So if you have about $500 I think this EA would be fine. If you trade with micro, not nano, you would probably need $5,000 to run it safely.

My other bots, Wallstreet and Oddbot, are still underwater.

My new VPS provider, CNS, is running fine after a week. Hope they keep good work.

Database Mart went down twice

My most favorite VPS provider Database Mart (or HyperV Mart) went down twice recently. I had been using them quite a while and trusted them very much, but I now decieded to move to other VPS provider.

Can't stay with them any more. I don't want to risk my accounts.

Risk on StepsOfGlory

A couple of hours ago, the floating risk on IBFX account running StepsOfGlory has reached about $100, which means that if you run this bot on $1,000 account your account must have been blown up.

My acccount still survived as the balance is about $237, but if it was $100, it must have been blown.

My IBFX account uses nano lots, but if you run this bot with a micro lot acccount, $1,000 is still too less to run this one.

Time has come to EXNESS

I think this is a common fate for any bucket-shop broker. After I made my account 1800% from the initial deposit of $100, EXNESS has started something. These days, EXNESS MT4 disconnects very frequently and it's now beyond my acceptable level. It's simply risky.

Several minutes ago, my EA failed to close the position due to the connection problem. And this was the second time.

I think now is the time to leave EXNESS. Like I wrote on "About Me" section, every bucket-shop broker starts to block profitable traders. Happy days with EXNESS is over.

I'll move my money from there.

StepsOfGlory Survived For Now

Tons of positions accumulated with StepsOfGlory were closed at once. This was a pure surprise. Now it's up 50 percent.

I had been wondering if this one is steps of glory or steps of disaster. My question is still unanswered as it's been a week or so since I started running it. But 50 percent in a week is absolutely fun to watch at.

I would like to see if this one is a time bomb or a miracle.

StepsOfGlory with IBFX

I use IBFX Australia to run StepsOfGlory because IBFX allows nano lots. The author of the Ea recommends $1,000 deposit to start trading this EA, but with nano lots, you can trade this EA with only $100.

BUT! It keeps placing tons of nano positions like below.

Is it an account-blower? Or steps of glory?

Oddbot

I've purchased an EA called Morpheus Oddbot. Many people say that Oddbot is a direct rip-off of Wallstreet Forex Robot. But I don't really care. If you go to check Melly Forex, you'll see her Oddbot account is doing pretty well. So I've decided to use the special parameter she's been using. It's just one day since I started running it, but so far I like it.

For me, I don't evaluate things with the originality. I evaluate with performance. I'm not a critic. I'm an ordinary consumer.

StepsOfGlory

I've been running StepsOfGlory that I bought on eBay for some days now on IBFX Australia tiny account. It has achieved 30% in just five trading days. It looks fantastic, but I'm not too excited about it.

This bot is a deformed type of grid trader I guess. Honestly, I'm not too familiar with grid trading, but this bot just keeps adding positions when the market is not moving on its favor.

So my curiousity is when it blows up an account. I've used this type of EA called PID SP4 in the past. Although it kept doubling my account every month, it has blown the account in a matter of day or two.

As you can see from the picture below, it keeps adding tiny 0.01 lot again and again and wait for the market to move in favor. I'm not sure how far it can go.

Two Day Duration on EXNESS

I've experienced very weird thing on EXNES. I run Wallstreet Forex Robot on a couple of different brokers, but the one on EXNESS kept a long GBPUSD position open for 2 days while the other same long positions were closed earlier.

I managed to close that position manually in positive, but if I hadn't I would have taken a loss.

Other than this position, everything is fine with EXNESS. So I'll keep it running on EXNESS and see how it goes.

StepsOfGlory

I purchased an EA called StepsOfGlory4 on eBay. I've put it on my IBFX AUS nano account. Let's see how it goes.

Nationalism

One of Japanese actors expressed his dislike of Korean TV drama and Korean pop music so-called K-pop on twitter. He candidly said K-pop should go home. These days so many Korean pop singers are seen on Japanese TV. And Korean drama has also become popular here in Japan.

I hate narrow minded people. I hate biased nationalism. I hate discrimination.

In the era of World War II, some people called Japanese "Jap" or "Yellow." I'm sure people in those days must have felt anger or sadness. Now, one Japanese actor considers no foreigner should enter Japan.

Japan exports lots of products overseas, and heavily dependant on other countries for food and other natural resources.

He is like saying that a man in a small town shouldn't go to the neibourhood town, and that's absolutely non-sense.

Some Japanese win in a Olimpic game. Some Japanese are criminals. But are they something to do with their nationality? Should we judge people by their nationality?

EU hiked

Ironically, after my positions had been slashed, EURUSD was hiked very nicely. But that's the real life. My stop loss levels were shallow, so I'm not seriously hurt.

Still having fun

My long positions were wiped out due to news driven moves. But I'm still having fun trading manually. I'll keep trading manually. It's just fun for me.

Having fun trading manually

I'm recently having fun trading manually. EURUSD has broken a triangular range to the upside. So, technically, I guess there is a likeliness that the EU pair goes up.

But I know things are not that easy. There comes big events like UK Retail Sales, US Unemployment Claims, and Bernanke speech. So, fundamentally, there is a possibility of hesitation in the market until those big events take place.

With that said, I already have one position open, and set another buy trigger, just to have fun.

Recently, a good friend of mine gave me very nice indicators for manual trading. My trades above are nothing to do with those indicators, but I also expect some good potential on those indicators he has given me.

That friend gave me an encouragement when Japan, where I live, was suffering the Great East Japan Easthquake. I was grateful to him very much at that time.

Anyway, I just would like to have some fun trading manually for a while now. Right now, EU is just at a resistance. Breaking it upward could make a good move, but again, there is an uncertainty on the fundamental aspect.

Wallstreet just in dormant

Wallstreet Forex Robot has been just dormant, or making small ups and downs.

This is due to the lack of trend. You can confirm it just by looking EURUSD, GBPUSD, and USDJPY charts. Any trend follower EA can't perform well in such situation.

I think this is very natural. So I'm not worried about it at all. It'll catch up when there appears to be a strong move in the market.

Giving up MDP

I decided to give up MillionDollarPips. I used the vendor's suggested ThinkForex Standard account, the default setting as the vendor has been using on his Myfxbook, and CNS NYC VPS.

The vendowr suggested to check the VPS latency. So I've done a chat with CNS, and they conducted a real time latency check. It was super fast 1ms latency.

ThinkForex said their MT4 server was always running smoothly although I experienced very slow execution when I tried manual trading several times.

I had been comparing my results with the vendor's Myfxbook account. They never even get closer. Losses are always biggger, winners are always smaller. Winning ratio is worse.

I'm not saying this EA is good or bad. But it's extremely difficult for me to get good results with this one.

Difference with the vendor's account

Don't know why. My profits are considerably smaller and losses are bigger than the vendor's Myfxbook account.

The same broker, the same account type, the same settings, and faster VPS can't be wrong. I'm missing something. Or something is wrong with the broker. Or the info the vendor has given me has been dishonest.

Not sure.

MDP kicked in

I just found that my MDP fired up and got 4 consective wins in a row just about 5 hours ago.

This is the first trade ever since I changed from v1.1.1 to 1.1.5. Here is my settings:

Broker: ThinkForex Standard
VPS: CNS NYC
MDP version: 1.1.5
Parameters: Default except FIFO false

This EA is highly sensitive to brokers and VPS. So be careful if you are interested.

Million Dollar Pips on CNS VPS

Ever since I lost some decent amount of pips with Million Dollar Pips, I had been wondering what was wrong. I used vendor's suggested broker, ThinkForex, but it didn't work well.

After reading some comments on DonnaForex Forum, I found someone is dowing well with the combination of ThinkForex Standard account and CNS VPS (NYC: 8ms). So I tried the same, but it was a kind of so so.

Then I emailed MDP support and they say they are using the latest version of MDP with the default setting on ThinkForex Standard. So I decided to do the same.

After that, nothing happens. MDP is just sleeping. I'll keep monitoring.

NFP day again

Here comes NFP day again. As usual, I shut down my EAs.

I personally don't trade on NFP and bank holidays. While skipping just a day or two doesn't hurt your equity curve very much, why you have to risk your equity itself by trading on such days on which prices tend to be pretty indirectional?

Market is always there even if you are absent on NFP day. Trading opportunities never die. If your EA is a traditional trend follower, you may want to take a rest on NFP and bank holidays simply because the market tends be indirectional and sudden disruption of price actions may be expected.

Pepperstone Razor

I've tried Pepperstone Razor ECN account on live. Although it offers extremely tight spreads like 0.5 to 0.8 pips on EURUSD, when you use stop trigger, it'll slip about 2 pips.

If you are relying on an EA that uses pending orders, Razor will not be a good option.

Wallstreet Forex Robot on EXNESS

I have put my stats for Wallstreet Forex Robot on EXNESS. Because the vendor sells 3 licenses at a time, I set one of them with extremely high risk on EXNESS. And now it's about $1,100 starting from about $160 at March 24.

If it hits a full stop, the equity would be down to a half of the existing equity, but I can stand it because my initial deposit was just about $100. I don't care if this account is blown up.

Last December, a friendly man named James Phuc from Vietnam whom I met on a discussion forum sold me an EA for $1,000. Later, I found out it was just an existing EA created by others that he took somewhere and renamed it in order to sell it with much higher price. This EXNESS account was prepared to run that stupid EA at that time.

So my risk is only $100.

My Recent Situation

I was unable to update my blog due to a bug of bloggger (probably). Now it seems fine. So I'm gonna start posting my comments again.

I've still been using Wallstreet Forex Robot, and it's still working great. And I purchased a new EA called Million Dollar Pips. Let's see how it works.

FOMC

I've stopped my EAs ahead of this comming FOMC. I normally stop my EAs on FOMC, NFP, and bank holidays. Extremely volatile situation would widen spreads possibly causing an EA to malfunction. Also, on bank holidays, market tend lose a proper momentum, which may also cause an EA to malfunction.

Market is always there. I won't regret if the day I stopped my EAs would have been a successful day for other people who kept their EA running. The risk for such days is way too high compared to what I would have gotten.

IrisFX

I've stopped trading IrisFX. This bot is too risky. It would be very difficult to find a right broker.

Here are some suggestions regarding brokers.

IrisFX doesn't work with GoMarkets. Although they offer tight spread, I've tried their demo account and it kept winning and losing again and again. It just doesn't go anywhere. So, 1.5 pip spread is still not good enough.

I've tried FxOpen. It slips frequently, giving you bad fills for IrisFX. No good.

MB Trading offers one of the tightest spreads like 0.9 pip, but it sometimes slips. Not as bad as FxOpen so it may work well, but because MB Trading is based on FIFO (no hedge) rule, you have to have two accounts, one for long only and the other for short only (this bot places pending orders on both end by default). It will make your progress very slow. Plus, this broker offers only 1:50 leverage, making your progress even slower.

I haven't tried IrisFX on FXCBS, but in my past experience, FXCBS always slips at least one pip. Their execution is not reliable. So I don't even want to try IrisFX on their demo. For this EA, only 1 pip slippage makes it difficult to get a good result.

You must find a broker with one of the lowest spread, and every execution has to be almost no slippage or very small slippage. Otherwise, it'll keep losing. Actually, you must be prepared to lose your money with it. So be careful.

New EAs Added

I've started trading Wallstreet Forex Robot and Forex Growth Bot.

At a grance, Wallstreet Forex Robot seems to be woring extremely fine that's because I run it with very  high risk setting which means if it takes a loss, it would take a big loss as the default stop loss is said to be very high.

Very detailed, helpful review about this EA can be found at Brit's EA Review.

The results of Forex Growth Bot seem to be mixed depending on brokers or each person. Besides, you sometimes have to intervene and close some of open positions manually. So my recommendation is that you use the same broker as the  author and monitor what the author's EA has been doing and follow it as a guideline. The author's stats are found here.

IrisFX is still working fine after I changed my account. This EA is extremely broker dependent, and it's very tough to find a compatible broker. The hints are the broker must offer extremely tight spread and extremely fewer slippage.

Transfering Account

After making about 18% in about half a month, I've decieded to move my fund to a new account at the same broker that I use. I used a referrel link to open a new account with the same broker I've been using IrisFx because I could get 0.3 pip better spread using the referral link. So I would have to start the Myfxbook stants again from the beggining. But I believe that 0.3 pip better spread would definitely be helpful for IrisFx as this EA is very spread and slippage sensitive.

Reverse Osmosis Unit

As many of you might have known, there had been Great Tohoku Earthquake in Japan. I was far away from the most devastated area, but the damaged nuclear plants keeps emitting radioactive substances in the air and water (to the ocean and groundwater).

Last week, government reported that municipal water in some prefectures were radiation polluted and the quaity of tap water has exceeded the safe level for babies. After this announcement, everybody rushed to buy mineral waters and it has become harder to obtain water in stores around Japan.

In my area, tap water hasn't exceeded the safe level, but since we have two-year-old baby, I was worried about drinking water quality in my house. So I've decided to purchase reverse osmosis water filtering unit from a store in the U.S.

RO unit that I ordered costed about $300 (shipping to Japan costed additional $150!), but the investment would be much cheaper than regulary purchasing bottles of water in a long run. Besides, it's now very hard to purchase water bottles here in Japan. With a RO unit, you can turn unlimited amount of purified water.

Particles of radiactive substances can't go through filtering membranes of RO unit. So it's gonna be very safe. Also, I like purified water very much. It tastes much better than mineral water.

It's said that the problem of nuclear power plants last some years so I believe this investment would contribute the health of our family. Of course, the best solution is the stop of radioactive emission from the plants, but we have to do whatever we can do to manage our health.

IrisFX

I've started running IrisFX from EM Innovations on my live account about a week ago, and it is so far looking very good.

Actually, I've tested this EA on four different brokers and found it didn't work well on three of them. The EA is very broker sensitive. Because  this EA places stop buy or stop sell orders and wait for the orders to get filled, the bigggest obstacle for this EA is slippage. If the broker frequently slips, the EA doesn't work well.

With FxOpen, slippages always happened and the account just didn't go anywhere. With MB Trading, although the spread was extremely tight and the commission was fair, it slipped some times (not as bad as FxOpen, though). With FxPro, I don't know why, but the stop loss had been weirdly wider than other brokers. I guess something is wrong with the EA or the broker, but since such wider stop loss level was unnacceptable to me, I stopped using FxPro (more than twice the ordinary stop loss on other brokers).

It has made about 20% in about a week, and I know it's just too good to be true. I'll have to see how it goes in a long run.

My Favorite Broker and EA

Having tried so many different brokers and EAs, I now like one broker very much. I think they are among the best in this industry. The beauty of them is that they never stop you no matter what kind of strategy you use. They offer no limitation in trading duration, and no limitation on TP or SL pips distance.

I don't like mentioning the name because I want them to keep offering this good trading environment. So I don't want them to be famous. As long as I'm one of few winning trader, they don't care.

Like this broker, I use one particular EA that majority of people believe uselesss or junk. But for me, the conbination of this EA and the broker is a perfect match.

But again, I don't like mentioning the name of the EA. I need to protect my trading environment. FapTurbo has one become very famous around the globe and it became a loser after several months because brokers had to protect themselves against Fap traders.

My bot is neither Fap nor derivation of it. It uses much less stop loss and much better winning ratio. So it's much more stable and safe.

About a couple of months ago, one guy named James Phuc from Vietnam sold me a derivation of Fap with very high price. But after a couple of months I realized it was Traxxon. If you happened to talk to him in person, never buy anything from him. He just changes the name and appearance of EAs and sells it to people. You can get the same thing with one tenth of the price he offers.

Luckily, I found a better bot and no longer use that modification of Traxxon. The EA I currently use is commercially available, but nobody believes it works.

Expert Advisors

I've replaced my main scalper EA to another one. The previous scalping EA occasionally takes huge stop losses and it started deteriorating my account.

I now use two different scalper EAs with which SL are not that big.

Who's EA is it?

At the end of last year, I happened to meet a friend from South-East Asia on one of forex forums out there. He told me he can sell his private EA for $3,000. It was expensive, but he said it can earn 10 to 30% every month so it would be a good deal.

Since the amount I could invest at that time was $1,000, I asked him a burgain and got the EA for $1,000. After more than one month, yes, his sales pitch seems to be right. But I found a commercial EA that trades exactly the same manner as his so-called private EA. I placed the EA on two platforms from the same broker and monitored what both EAs trade. Suprisingly, those two EAs opened and closed positions exactly at the same levels.

I found I could have paid less if I directly purchased that commercial EA. He changed the appearance of the EA (what you see on the chart), but the codes are the same. So I paid my tuition again.

After that, I've found that commercial EA might not be the original. People has been saying the EA was a clone or a slight modification of another EA and charged much more than the true original EA.

So, in summary, one EA was developed a few years ago. One programmer has took the source and silightly modified it, and started selling it with much higher price. Here comes another man who took that modified EA, renamed it, and changed the chart display appearance, and started selling with much, much higher price. He even started taking his own clients to manage their accounts.

I happened to meet that guy on a forum and paid $1,000.

So whose EA is it?

Exness

I have been using Exness, unregulated Russian broker, for a while. But I recently realized that they have increased their spreads. Until recently, they are like scalper's heaven, but they probably noticed that if they kept providing such extremely low spreads, they would have to pay for so many winners that use scalping EAs.

Now, I'll have to change my EA on Exness.

Hyper-V Mart Deal

I've been using Hyper-V VPS from Hyper-V Mart or Database Mart (same company) for quite a while. As I wrote before, this VPS provider has been the best.

I have spoken to George from Hyper-V Mart and got a very good deal. If you order their Basic Hyper-V plan, you can get additional CPU so that your VPS is dual core.

I had already been running 9 MT4 platforms on their Basic Hyper-V plan, but with dual core CPC, you can run 11 MT4 platforms on the desktop at a time! If you run multiple forward tests or have multiple live accounts trading different EAs, then their VPS server would be a perfect choice. As far as I know, you won't be able to find such a competent VPS anywhere else. Normal VPS, like the one from VPS land, allows you to run only 2 to 4 MT4 platforms max.

So if you happen to read this post and want to get the very best VPS, just send me a message using a form mail on this blog. Then I'll talk to George about the deal you can get.

I get no referrel fee or something. I just want you to be happy like me.

Cheers,

Price Manipulation?

I would like to write about price manipulation.

Recently, I've gotten a very useful info from one of the brokers I use. A couple of days ago, I placed an order manually and set TP and SL. After a while, although my price had touched the TP, it didn't close in profit, but after that, my long position hit the SL when it's slightly above my SL level.

I took screenshots for both cases and sent them to the broker. They explained to me that the price information you see in Market Watch or the bar below Terminal window is Weighted Average Price, which means that the price shown on MT4 could differ about 0.3 pips from the actual price you get.

In other words, the price info you get on MT4 is slightly smoothed and it doesn't acurately reflect very fast, tiny fluctuation of the real price that brokers get.

This explained very well about the past experience I got with other brokers. If you were not happy with such filling of or non-filling of your position, then you would have to search for different brokers all the time because such up-to-0.3 pip difference can take place everywhere.

This applies scalpers only. Swing traders will not care such tiny moves.

Many slcalping EAs nowadays don't use hard TP and SL, and they place internally programmed TP and SL somewhere in the course of trading. They insist that such internal program was designed in order to avoid stop loss hunting. Yes, that makes sense, but by letting the EA close its position as if it's done manually, such EA can avoid such unwanted no-fills to TP or fills to SL.

I don't think brokers monitor every traders' trading activities all the time. So if you encountered similar cases as I did, just remember my post.

Skagen

I have purchased a wristwatch from Denmark. The brand is Skagen. The picture below doesn't do justice. It looks very sophisticated and cool.

Although I own a luxuary watch from Bell & Ross that costs around $3,000 or more, I like this $130 or so Skagen better.

Shocking Fact about Forex Brokers

In the past, I had been an IB or Introducing Broker of a small forex company. The company owner explicitly said to me that they don't like winning traders and no broker likes winning traders.

I was like "Why? Traders win or not, you earn you profits from spreads, right?" He said no. At that point, I learned what the OTC or Over the Counter broker was. If your broker is offering Over the Counter trading service, then they are not  actually trading in the market. Many people might believe brokers actually deal currency pairs according to our orders. But it's not true. They don't have to make any deal in the real currency market. They just show prices to customers.

So why brokers can make huge profits? Because they collect money from traders around the globe and accumulate it in their bank. Because they know, as you know, more than 90 or 95% or even more traders lose, they don't actually need to trade for customers. Once one of the clients lose his money, then his deposit would become broker's profit. You see? Brokers eat up deposits and gets fat because they know everybody will lose!

Ok, now, suppose the situation is different. What if there is one winning trader? Then, yes, they have to pay for him from the broker's bank account. Because they are not dealing real money in the market, they have no way to pay him unless they pay from their pocket.

That's the reason no broker likes winning traders. This is a fact.

At that point, I suddenly understood why brokers tried to kick me out when I had been doing News Trading and kept winning. They love novice traders, losing EAs, and anybody who don't know how to trade. They even give you great amount of bonus when signing up, so that they can finally get more.

See? I quit to work with this f*cking broker with bulls*it owner. This broker prohibited scalping  because, according to the owner, scalpers would win. I had to keep saying to my clients like "excuse me, sir, you are doing scalping and your account may be closed if you don't follow our guideline." I was sick and fed up to say such nice comments to others (of course, ironically, because it can never be nice).

[EDIT on May 22, 2012: I had been misunderstanding the term, OTC. About four years ago, I was an IB of a broker and knew almost nothing about Forex, and my comprehension of market maker was misplaced with OTC at that time. The term "OTC" above should be replaced with "market maker."]

Super profitable EA blew up my account

So after I had to stop News Trading, I waisted my money for many paid and free trading systems and EAs. Someone told me it was called "tuition," but many of you may already know that the tuition would not pay off.

I think forex drives people crazy. Many people start trading forex as an easy business, but the reality is only a handful of people, maybe 5% or maybe 3%, are profitable and the rest keeps losing over and over with a vague wish of getting rich someday.

For me, the tuition I kept paying hasn't been paying off. But after quiting from News Trading, I started doubling my money every month, again, this time trading with an EA. This Expert Advisor kept doubling money every month like I did by doing News Trading, and again I thought I would buy an ocean front home in a couple of years.

But after some months, the EA completely blew up my account. I had been running the same EA on different accounts. The EA had blown up all my accounts in a matter of one to two days. I was really shocked that time. Including this EA, I had no luck with any trading systems, manual or automatic.

So I had to get an ordinary job, again, to support my family. I took some translation jobs and did some other stuff.

If I were asked what the forex business is, I would answer it is a huge business for the sellers of forex-related materials, but real traders who benefit solely through trading are rare. So, for me, the definition of "forex business" would rather be dealing forex-related things, buying or selling, NOT dealing currencies. Since most of the traders can't get what they want in exchange of the amount they pay, I'm not sure if I should call it a business.

But this is what I do.

A bit more about News Trading

So, as I wrote on my previous post, I had to give up News Trading.

During the time I had been doing News Trading, I had been using a specific service. I think there are mainly three news trading service providers, but please know that they mostly don't tell you the difficult side of dealing with news.

If you do news trading, you have to deal with bad slippage, widened spreads, requotes, bad conflicts, ignorance, and rude comments from brokers, etc. The most important thing is brokers don't like news traders. They do anything to block news traders. Even with such down-side, you have to pay somehow expensive fees to such news trading service providers.

As some of you might already know, those FX trading service providers earn their money, not by trading for themselves, but selling products or services to as many people as they can find, and doing so is much more profitable than trading on their own.

Another down side is, news trading is not mentally healthy. My hands were always shaking and I was sweating all the time during news as I was so much scared to lose my money instantaneously. If you were not too much leveraged, and used an EA that could automatically place a stop loss for you, then you should be fine. But at that time, I was really overly-leveraged as I was really intoxicated.

News Trading

Back in five or so years ago, I quit importing and selling surfboards and started using all my fund earned from surfboard business for trading forex, especially for News Trading or Spike Trading.

New Trading during those days was very lucrative. I had been doubling my money every month. I was using a special software called Auto-click. Auto-click gets certain figures sent from major news providers and automatically clicks buy or sell button of a trading platform. The speed of the click was lightening fast, and I could get into the market than most of human traders.

So, for example, right before one of the major news releases, such as Non-farm Payroll, UK Retail Sales, or CAD Employment Rate, was released, I used to sit in front of my PC, do certain configuration, and wait for the news release numbers are released. After some seconds, there would be a huge spike like 50 to 100 pips in a matter of seconds, mostly within a minute. When I successfully closed my position at the peak of the spike, I could easily earn a big profit in about one to five minutes or so because I was really high leveraged.

Sitting in front of my PC for about five to fifteen minutes, trading news events twice or thrice a week, was enough for me to double my money every month. For me, it was like a Holy Grail.

I thought I would be buying another house around the coast line in a couple of years. But, unfortunately, after several months, brokers started behave weirdly. Some didn't fill at all. Some slipped like crazy letting me in the trade right at the peak of the spike and it caused me a significant loss due to very fast pull-back of the spike. Some insisted that I had been doing manipulation or something, which all you know impossible to do. Some banned my account completely.

Finally, almost all brokers obviously or silently kicked me out. I tried many brokers, but only after one or two attempts, brokers noticed me and stopped me trading with them. The golden era of news trading was over.

How I happened to meet forex

When I had been doing translation as my main profession, I had been doing surfing as my favorite sport, and I found if I imported surfboards myself, that could be a profitable business because back in these days surfboard prices here in Japan were quite expensive while those in other countries were less expensive.

So I started importing surfboards. After a couple of years importing and selling surfboards, I found that how huge foreign exchange market could affect on my business. It was so surprising, only 1 yen difference could hugely affected my profit. When Yen became 1 Yen lower, I had to pay much more to buy a board. When Yen became 1 Yen higher, I could buy a board much cheaper. I was frustrated very much about the currency market because no matter how hard I tried to sell my boards, sometime my profits were eaten up like crazy.

Finally, I had to learn how to deal with currency market. After a while, I wire-transferred my money to surfboard shapers when Yen was significanly weaker. That helped me import boards easier than before. So I startede monitoring AUD/JPY chart almost daily. I had been importing surfboards from Gold Coast, or so-called Surfer's Paradise, in Australia.

After a short while, I've noticed that very small number of people are making huge amount of money dealing with currencies alone, without the need of buying or selling any goods or materials. Or even without making any conversation with others, which seemed to me that they were making money doing nothing.

I rushed myself to browse the Internet struggling to find a way to profit from forex. And I found a trading method called "News Trading." That moment, my life was changed. I would like to write about it sometime later.

VPS for MT4

I've used VPS brokers including Easy CGI, VPS Land, etc. Of all the VPS providers, my best choice is Database Mart (Hyper-V Mart is the same company).

I've never experienced any down time with Database Mart. And resources such as CPU and RAM are guaranteed.

For those of you who don't know what the Hyper-V server is, I give you some info. There are Virtuozzo VPS and Hyper-V VPS. Although Hyper-V is a bit costly, it guarrantees its resources and usage are completely separated from others, while Virtuozzo server is always affected by other shared users.

So, Database Mart (Hyper-V Mart) is not the only Hyper-V providers, but I like them. Because of all the Hyper-V providers I used, Database Mart is the most stable one, and they are the only provider that has no down time so far. Not only that, if you search on the Internet, you'll notice it would be very hard to find a Hyper-V VPS plan with such good CPU and RAM for the same cost.

Even with the cheapest plan, Express Hyper-V Server ($29.99), you can run 5 to 6 MT4 platforms, and they are still stable. For the same 512MB RAM, VPS Land offers their Virtuozzo VPS for only $19.99. But you can run only one or maybe two MT4s maximum, and it's not as stable as Database Mart.

Also, with Virtuozzo VPS, some of the execution files doesn't work. With Hyper-V, you can install anything. So there is a big difference.

I'm not an affiliate of Database Mart, but honestly, if you want to run your MT4 on the most stable server, I would like to recommend Database Mart (or Hyper-V Mart).

http://www.databasemart.com/
http://www.hyper-v-mart.com/

About me

Hi, This is Yas, the owner of this blog. First, I would like to introduce myself.

I'm a 39 years old man who has more than 5 years experience in forex trading. For the very first year in forex, I had been doubling my money every month using news trading or spike trading. But after several months, no broker allowed me to do that method. Then my funds went down badly and I could no longer profit from forex. I tried so many different trading methods and expert advisors, but nothing worked fine for me.

After some years, I started doing news trading again using straddle EA, and got some profits, but again I got troubles with brokers and found the method didn't last long.

I'm currently using some EAs. If I can find some nice friends to talk about forex together I would be happy. Unfortunately, I can't fully disclose what system I use. I would appreciate your understanding.