PracticalPips.com Signal

[PracticalPips]

Hi all, we're having some serious issues with our broker - we're taking our main signal account offline for the time being - USD based account should be operational shortly.
Apologies for the inconvenience to all!

[timo]

AFAIK you can setup a myfxbook with any acc currency

I agree, MyFXBook is dead easy to set up, and should work with any currency. I'm unsure why they don't have one, you'll need to ask Evan.

most people used to myfxbook, can't interpret too much mt4i

IMHO MT4i is miles better than MyFXBook, and far more comprehensive and accurate reporting.
It does have a steeper learning curve I guess, but worth it if you are interested in detailed stats.
Same dog, different sh$7

[arkoon]

AFAIK you can setup a myfxbook with any acc currency
most people used to myfxbook, can't interpret too much mt4i
thks

[timo]

Hey Arkoon,

They have MT4i - http://www.mt4i.com/users/practicalpips
For all intents and purposes it's the same as MyFXbook.

But you'll need to run a custom filter on it, and filter out everything after the 22/7.
That trade was taken at 100x the normal lot size, so unfortunately completely skewed the statistics (in a positive way).

It would be better for them to start afresh with a new USD account, which i believe they are doing as we type ... then they can hook up both MyFXBook and MT4i etc.

[arkoon]

Hello
Sorry to say so but for me impossible to see your performance without a working myfxbook...
You are missing many customers.

[bambolino]

is there a going to be a usd account with myfxbook in the near future?

[timo]

Thanks Evan,

Sorry to hear about the broker stuff ups. Good news you're moving to USD account.

And thanks for the re-assurances. These things happen, and it's a good reminder for everyone to have max lot size enabled as a failsafe. Thanks Will for that

We all dodged a bullet, and at the end of the day it was a nice trade. Very relieved.

Good luck with the broker move, and let us know when it's complete so we can adjust the risk multiplier before the next trade.

Cheers
Tim

[PracticalPips]

Hi Evan,

What happened with todays NZDUSD trade?

Why was it 100x your position size!!

And do you have new strategies in place? Or new traders?
I didn't know news trading was part of your strategy, as slippage is a big factor when trading news spikes.

Personally I was slipped -12 pips on the open.

I won't say you got lucky with the trade, as it was a very smart trade based on the jawboning out of NZ.

But you got extremely lucky with the position size.
According to your Mt4i stats, that trade made you a 135.1% gain. If that had gone against you by half that amount it would have resulted in a margin call.

I'm fortunate I had max lot size setting enabled in my control panel, but it still resulted in a position twice the size it should have.

This is a lesson to all subs to ALWAYS have max lot size setting enabled in your control panel.

Can you let us know what happened, why you kept the trade open after you saw the mistake? I was expecting you to do a partial close of the incorrect amount immediately.

Cheers
Tim

Timo,

The short of it is that we messed up. A longer version is that we've been doing some work with our broker to convert our account into being USD based, there has been a lot of testing backwards and forwards over it, and having to set, and reset orders. At some point through the day, one of our team members involved in the testing must have incorrectly reset the order, at the incorrect lot size.

I personally was traveling today and had limited access - only realizing what had happened once I was also in the trade, in my personal account. With the limited connectivity that I had, I set up manually and decided to monitor the trade to look for an exit. Apologies for the delay in posting in the forum, the connectivity I had was poor and the connectivity I had was dedicated to the trade. Given the movement during the Asian session our way, we made a team call to close at the normal pull back of Asia.

We will implement further checks and balances to make sure cannot happen again, our sincerest apologies.

Evan

[timo]

Hi Evan,

What happened with todays NZDUSD trade?

Why was it 100x your position size!!

And do you have new strategies in place? Or new traders?
I didn't know news trading was part of your strategy, as slippage is a big factor when trading news spikes.

Personally I was slipped -12 pips on the open.

I won't say you got lucky with the trade, as it was a very smart trade based on the jawboning out of NZ.

But you got extremely lucky with the position size.
According to your Mt4i stats, that trade made you a 135.1% gain. If that had gone against you by half that amount it would have resulted in a margin call.

I'm fortunate I had max lot size setting enabled in my control panel, but it still resulted in a position twice the size it should have.

This is a lesson to all subs to ALWAYS have max lot size setting enabled in your control panel.

Can you let us know what happened, why you kept the trade open after you saw the mistake? I was expecting you to do a partial close of the incorrect amount immediately.

Cheers
Tim

[PracticalPips]

We're going to be trading 2% of our capital per trade - expect variation in lot sizes

Hi traders,
While we've been feeling out the ConnectForex/SimpleTrader system, we've been trading the same fixed lot sizes (0.01). Our strategy is to risk 2% capital per trade, so we're moving back to that space, i.e., expect a bit more variation in lot sizes and please make sure your subscriber accounts are set to scale accordingly using the risk multiple. Also, we are in the processes of setting up a USD based account, as soon as its ready to go, we'll open it up and allow subscribers to move over to it.
Happy trading!

[timo]

Good weekend too you too mate

And a good long weekend to our USA buddies ...

[PracticalPips]

Nice start to the month Evan!

You're well on the way to a recovery

I especially liked how you closed out both positions prior to the news, and didn't expose us to unnecessary slippage during that mad news spike.

Thanks Timo!
Both pairs have been interesting to watch (if you're geeky like us) post NFP announcement. The GBPUSD has been on such a strong run, it quickly recovered and seems to be continuing its trend upwards. The EURUSD seems to be battling as it has been. Interesting once to watch, but today will be low volume all round given the July 4th celebrations in the US so we don't expect much to happen either way. No trades for us when our American friends aren't in for the day! Have a good weekend all.

[timo]

Nice start to the month Evan!

You're well on the way to a recovery

I especially liked how you closed out both positions prior to the news, and didn't expose us to unnecessary slippage during that mad news spike.

[PracticalPips]

A drawdown. What happened?

Our GBPCHF trade closed when it hit its stop loss yesterday. Right off the back of two losing trades of gold and silver respectively. Depending on your timing, thats either 3 losers in a row (or 4 if you include the USDSGD trade.) Have we changed how we trade? Are a row of losses like this normal? What's going on?

As with any forex strategy, you'll have winners, and you'll have losers. Our win/loss ratio over time stands at 70%. This means you can lose 3 -4 trades in a row. You could lose 3-4 trades out of 10, and then win the next 6. Its also possible to lose 30 trades in a row and then win the next 70! This is extremely unlikely - the probabilities of this happening are mind-bogglingly slim - but it is a possibility. This is true with any trading system. So, what changed on our end? Are we taking "bad" trades all of a sudden? Have we changed our methodology of trading? No, and no. Of course we take time to break apart each trade, winners and losers alike, but we know from experience that these things happen. A draw down every few months is certainly a possibility. Correct position sizes - risk and money management are what profitable traders rely on. So we may well end June down or flat on the month - a very rare occasion indeed for us, but not something thats going to change our long-term performance.

[PracticalPips]

Issues with gold and silver lot sizes/scaling

Dear traders,
We are aware that some of you have had issues with the recent gold and silver trades we entered into, with regards to lot sizes and scaling. It appears as if subscribers who used fixed lot sizes in particular were put into a position where the trade sizes were a larger than they should have been (somewhere in the region of 40% more than the normal risk we would be comfortable with). We do apologise profusely for this issue - we are still trying to get to the bottom of it with our brokers and the team at ConnectForex to understand what caused the issue and to make sure that it doesn't happen again.

In the interim, we will not be trading any gold or silver pairs. Unfortunately, sometimes these losses do happen, but we're confident that we will maintain our historical win/loss rate and look forward to some solid trading for the rest of the month.
Thank you,
Evan