Grid Trading Development Invitation - page 2

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Szymon Palczynski #:
Good luck with your project. I used to think like you on that point. 10 years of experience in combined systems (grid and martingale) but am a lone wolf.

Hi Szymon

My understanding is that wolves do better hunting in packs.

Thanks for your good wishes.

Regards

Tim Wilson

 
Gerhard Beyer #:

Hi Tim Wilson,

it seems only Friends could write you a private message, so i send you an invitation.

best regards

Hi Gerhard,

Not sure what is happening here but I sent you a PM with my contact details

Regards

Tim Wilson

 

The Grid Trading Development Project- An Outline


I thought it might be of interest to anyone who is considering becoming involved to see an outline of this project and how it is proposed to bring team members together and get the project underway.

The Environment
  1. Metatrader MT4  - A demo account is all that is required
  2. R/RStudio - Current versions or close to it installed on a PC with reasonable capacity. Most PC's of around  5 years old or less should have no trouble running R and the sort of models I expect we will be looking at.
  3. Discord - Will be used for most of the team communication. We may also use Google Meet on occasions (nothing to install)
All three of these items are free and easy to install on a windows PC.

Skills
While technical skills are important, the ability to think constructively and solve problems is essential. While not every team member needs to be an experienced programmer, it is essential that everyone is able to run scripts, programs etc in the above environments.

The Plan
Step 1. In order to ensure that we are all on the same page, we will start with an evaluation of a basic MT4 Grid EA designed for trading in sideways markets. Part of this evaluation will include an interactive tutorial that can be run on MetaTrader 4 using the strategy tester.  This tutorial and subsequent evaluation exercises should illustrate the possibilities and potential pitfalls for this particular approach to grid trading.

Step 2. For the second stage we will evaluate another more sophisticated EA that uses what I regard as one of the more successful risk/money management techniques for grid trading  that can be found in the public domain. This EA will also be run and evaluated using the MT4 strategy tester.
We will then introduce R/RStudio to create a model based on this technique which will then be used as the performance bench mark for future development work.

Step 3. The third stage will use R/RStudio to demonstrate an interesting Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) technique that could set the direction for future ongoing development work.  While team members are not expected to have expertise in this area it is hoped that they will be interested enough to learn and gain an understanding of these concepts. This type of approach to trading systems can quickly become mathematically complex. I will do my best to present these ideas and develop our models and programs with the absolute minimum of math possible but there will inevitably be some.

The Next Steps
Where we go from here depends very much on the overall team response to the first 3 steps. The end objective of the project is to take the basic Grid EA that was evaluated in  step 1 and expand it to include the best money/risk management system we can find or devise. This may or may not make use of A.I. techniques, depending on what we discover along the way.

Opportunities 

There is still one place available on the team.

If  interested please PM me.

Regards

Tim Wilson


 
wilsonts #:

Hi Revo Trades,

I agree with you that the grid part is straight forward and the hard bit is managing the trades and the drawdown. While many grid traders finish up with huge drawdowns, I don't believe it is inevitable. On the contrary, some of my testing and investigation suggests that grid trading is possible with consistently very modest drawdown. If achieved, this then makes grid trading a very attractive proposition.

You also said that in your opinion, it is not necessary to develop a money management system as there are plenty of different ones available in the public domain. I am well  aware of this, but it seems to me that the money/risk management is the area where substantial improvements can be made and this is what we are aiming to do.

Regards

Tim Wilson  


i am in total agreement about the improvements and moneymanagement, however, if you think that you can keep your ea running 24/5.5 and all year round, then you should reconsider this idea. Drawdowns are inevitable, but they shouldnt be automatic blow up of your account. If you see a possible news event that will make your drawdown worse, than, you should consider closing your trades, no matter the size of the loss. I use grids and martingales with different styles of averge math to close out couples and triples of trade groups, and it works very well, but there is always a worse drawdown in the future. so long as you realise this, and prepare for this eventuality, when that does happen, then you are in a better position than you would be without your preping. 

And as i said in previous comment, imo the simplest form of grid is the most profitable in the long term, do not try to complicate or try to make the grid dynamic. The number 1 issue, imo, is the management of the trades that you do open, and when to "cut your losses", and accept the drawdown, and when to ramp up your mg. Instead of making automatic increasing of your trade size on each new trade, instead, use your indicators, the same ones that you might normally use to create signals for a trading strategy, to decide when and when not to do mg, OR to increase your mg faster.

But good luck. I will continue to peruse this forum thread and have it as a favourite.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

A number of people have contacted me privately with various questions. I have gone through all these and used them to create a FAQ list. There may be some duplication of information that has already been posted.

Q1. Who is running this project?

A1. The Melbourne Forex Trading Team (MFTT) is a small non commercial, peer-to-peer mentoring group based in Melbourne, Australia. The members of this group support and encourage each other in their trading and investment activities. Some members share their trading results with the rest of the group on a monthly basis. We also share trading strategies, custom software etc. The group was established in 2016. We currently have 9 members. I am one of the founding members.

Q2. Is it necessary to become a member of the MFTT to participate in the Grid Trading Development Project (GTDP)?

A2. No. This project is being run by but is independent of the MFTT.

Q3 How do I become an MFTT member

A3 MFTT Membership is normally through invitation by an existing member.

Q4. Are MFTT members involved in this project?

A4. Yes. For a start I am an MFTT member. There will be a mix of people from within and from outside the MFTT. All participants of this project group will have equal status within this group.

Q5. Do you normally recruit team members for these sorts of projects from outside the MFTT?

A5. No this is the first time this has been attempted.

Q6. Why don’t you just use your own members for this project?

A6. Not all MFTT members have suitable development skills. Some of those that do are currently engaged with other projects.

Q7. Have you had experience running projects like this before?

A7. Yes, since its inception the MFTT has run a number of projects. I have been involved in and led some of them.

Q8. How big is the team for the GTDP?

A8. Originally a team of 4 was envisaged. We have now met that target. There has however been more interest than expected and I am considering adding 1 or perhaps even 2 extra members to the team.

Q9. If I participate in the GTDP, am I required to sign a contract or a non disclosure agreement (NDA)?

A9. No. Apart from the fact that we would not be in a position to enforce any such agreement, we believe they have little if any real value. Obviously it makes no sense to go out and announce to the world at large what you are doing so hopefully team members will be discreet but concerns about protecting intellectual property, particularly from other retail traders are usually unfounded. There is so much misinformation and noise out there that it would be hard to get noticed, even if you really wanted to let everyone know what you are doing. On the other hand, if you start trading a system and consistently make a significant amounts of money you are going to be quickly noticed and investigated. The big commercial banks and their contingency of market makers and brokers etc have vast resources at their disposal and will eventually figure out what you are doing. It is their business to do so.

Q10. Aren’t you concerned that someone will join the project, not contribute and then steal all the intellectual property (IP) such as software etc?

A10 No. IMO this concern arises in some people who believe that trading success is all about finding the right strategy or technique. There is an old saying. “You can give an experienced trader any old system and they will make money. You can give an inexperienced trader the best strategy in the world and they will lose money”. With a project like this you tend to get out of it what you put in. In my experience, people with a short sighted “grab and run” mentality simply don’t “get it” and tend to do poorly at both trading and in life.

Q11. When will this project begin?

A11. It is planned to start this project on or about 1 stFeb 2022.

Q12. Will people be able to join the GTDP project after this date?

A12. No. People joining the team after the start date could be disruptive to the project.

Q13. How long will this project last?

A13. This is a research and development (R&D) project and like any other R&D project it is impossible to determine its duration since the outcome is unknown. People do however set targets and dates for R&D projects but these are usually little better than educated guesses. With that said I am hopeful that we will see some worthwhile results within about 6 months from the commencement date.

Q14. What level of commitment in terms of time and effort is required?

A 14. There is no specified level of commitment. Each of us work in different ways. IMO it is impossible to regulate or control creativity in this way. The first part of this project involves three interactive tutorials that will hopefully enable us all to get up to speed with the technology, understand what we are attempting to accomplish and get to know each other a bit. It is estimated that it will require something between about 10 and 30 hours to complete these tutorials depending on existing levels of skill and experience. This would include some online discussion time with other team members.

Q15. What happens if for some reason I am unable to continue with the project?

A15. This can happen for various legitimate and unforeseeable reasons. Other times, some people just lose interest and drop out. Ideally you should notify the project leader if you are no longer able or wish to continue. If someone appears to no longer be active, and has not contacted us we would attempt to contact them before removing their access to the project.

Q16. Do you have a project plan?

A16. Yes It was posted on both the Forex Factory forum and the MQL5 community forum.

Forex Factory- Thread title - Improve This Grid EA-

Link - https://www.forexfactory.com/thread/post/13853818#post13853818

MQL5 community – Thread title – Grid Trading Development Invitation

Link - https://www.mql5.com/en/forum/385682/page2#comment_27012412

Q17- What skills and facilities are required to participate in this project?

A17- As a minimum you would need

  1. The ability to think constructively and logically through problems.
  2. A MetaTrader 4 demo account with the ability to run MT4 scripts and use the strategy tester. MT4 programming skills, while highly desirable are not mandatory. It is not recommended practice to carry out testing or development work using a live trading account.
  3. R/RStudio installed and running on your computer with the ability to run R/RStudio scripts. R programming skills, while highly desirable are not mandatory.
  4. Discord (https://discord.com). Installed on your computer for team communication.


Q18. Will all development work and software used in the GTDP project be made available to all active team members?

A18. Yes

Q19. Is the goal of this project to develop a fully automated Metatrader grid trading EA or robot?

A19. No. I have studied traders for a number of years and have an interest and reasonable background in Artificial Intelligence (AI). My conclusion is that successful traders have developed the ability to utilise and coordinate numerous different parts of their mind in quite complex ways that enable them to make better than average trading decisions.

While A.I. has made leaps and bounds in recent years, there are still a number of areas where it does not perform well. No doubt this will change over time and the whole trading game will then change accordingly.

There may well be fully automated systems that can perform as well or better than human traders but I have yet to personally see one. On the contrary, all the automated systems that I have looked at or created have performed poorly compared to what I know good traders can achieve.

For the time being, I consider it better to use automated computation and A.I. to augment the human mind rather than to try and replace it. IMO many traders miss good opportunities that a hybrid approach could offer them because their focus is totally on "set and forget" automated trading.

Q20. I wish to put together a project team for my own project. Can you help me?

A20. Putting a team like this together is not particularly difficult but does require quite a bit of work. As a start you could read through the threads on the Forex Factory forum and the MQL5 community forum. Then adapt this approach to your own needs. Essentially all I have done is try and explain to people what this project is about and invite interested and suitably experienced people to join me.


Regards

Tim Wilson

 
We finished up with a  team of 7 good people which was a bit larger than I originally anticipated. We regrettably are not able to accept any further applications. I would like to thank everybody who participated on this conversation. 
 

I am in Queensland, enjoying a 39 degree C day today, love it. Crypto world has some very successful grid bots and I was researching whether anything similar operated in the forex world when your post turned up. I have several crypto bots running at the moment and they are performing very well for me so was toying with the idea of finding or developing something similar for forex. Too late to join the project it seems but I would like to stay keep up with your progess and perhaps beta test any ideas. One of the keys to a successful bot is to have trailing up and down capability and the option to turn that feature off and on. Currently I run SQX to develop my own forex EAs and that too is working OK (nowhere near the returns in crypto though). The key to SQX is to have the grunt to test millions of strategies in a reasonable timeframe, and to handle the necessary robustness tests.



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