Phoenix 6 - Development, Download, Bugs - See Post#1 - page 7

 

Mr. Daraknor,

Please put your health first. We look forward to your wisdom in the future.

 

Just found and studied everything you are doing

Hi all,

I'm Matt, and I have just spent the last 2 full days reading everything posted in the 4 main threads on P5, P6, and Chimera development and testing results, as well as all the handy manuals you have posted and EASY etc.

I have been trading for over 2 years, but am not a programmer...am trying to learn the basics quickly. I believe that I can add to your team through testing, money management principles, and maybe the odd strategy suggestion to assist development.

It was very interesting as I was reading through all the excellent work that you have been doing the past few months. I think that you are really onto something, and that with some fine tuning that exceptional results can be achieved through a combination of Phoenix and Chimera on a single account.

Daraknor - I hope you make a speedy recovery, and are able to return to this project which you show a clear passion for.

PContour - As I was reading through all the material, I was looking for someone to really have a good attempt at money management. Keep up the great work there. Optimising money management is more important to the system, than trying to optimise the trade parameters based on past data.

I have a suggestion for your issues with losing trades due to trending markets, and have what may seem to be a very simplified solution, but could save a number of losing entries, and would hopefully get the all important win ratio up.

When the system signals to buy on the 15 min chart, the following conditions should assist:

Entry price > MA100 (=1500 mins = 25 hours = roughly 1 day)

and > MA500 (=7500 mins = 125 hours = roughly 1 trading week)

The reverse should apply for a sell condition.

While this will reduce the number of entries, it will stop you from trading against the prevailing trend of the past day and week.

Further conditions could be added so that if the entry price for a buy was > MA500 by > 100 pips, then the entry could be made with a TP of 999 pips (as suggested by another forum contributor) with a trailing stop (maybe 100 pips or so). This could then be used as a way to get a longer term trade entry, which is in the same direction as the prevailing longer term trend, but with a relatively small stop of 82 pips. I believe that this would be a great addition to the system, where rather than limiting to within a range, and fighting against prevailing trends, it utilises this information to catch longer term trends for greater profits.

I believe that due to the nature of GBP/JPY, as a carry trade, that by setting these conditions, large profits could be achieved where previously the currency pair has produced losses. (GBP/JPY tends to rise slowly, and decline quickly, so the entry may be fine, but the win size /loss size ratio needs to improve significantly, and in the long direction only).

Could anyone look at the coding for these improvements, and backtest it?

Unfortunately I currently don't have 24 hour access to a reliable internet feed so can't do testing, but expect to have it available in about a month's time. I am trading with ODL Securities, so will be able to add results from a different broker for comparison.

Anyway, thats enough for a first post, I look forward to discussing more with you guys in coming months.

Cheers,

Matt

 

PContour - Money Management

I was meaning to ask PContour, does your decreasing factor operate on a currency pair basis or on all trades? If it currently works on all pairs concurrently, i.e. a loss in GBP/USD means a reduced trade size in USD/JPY if that is the next trade, then this should ideally be changed to reflect the losses made in that pair only.

 

Hi matt, welcome and thanks for the suggestion. But with daraknor out of the action, we're down to just Pcontour for coding, so I don't know how soon your suggestion can be tested, but welcome nonetheless!

 

Carry Trade

mattnz and everyone.

My idea on Carry Trade, is this: Why should we make any trades that do not give us the interest advantage, however slight it is. Note that we would only trade half the time if you program for Carry Trade in this way. You may want to run multiple currencies and may wish to increase concurrent trades to make up the difference. This is a feature that could be add to any EA. The community may not be interested in having this in the code, but for me this is a feature I will add to any EA that I use for real trading. MQ4 doesn't factor the value of Carry Trade into our simulation results so we can't measure the difference except in real trading. If the market is trending, Carry Trade should be predominantly working for or against us, and not neutral. Mattnz, your idea of longer term trades is at odds with Phoenix as it exists. Phoenix is a profitable EA, so we want to tweak it not rework it for Carry Trade. A separate EA just to do Carry Trade would be a good thing. I'm not taking on a new EA for Carry Trade, we have enough going on, but I would not be averse to making a version that uses my idea of carry trade forward, just for private testing with no public release of the code except in Phoenix 6. At some later date I might get into a Carry Trade EA.

At the moment we are trying to consolidate and finalize with 5.7.4 and move on to using Phoenix 6. Any change to parameters means changes to settings files and no-one is keen on changes to settings files as this time. We should be planning on new features being released within Phoenix 6.

Any new private code will have to wait while I update the Phoenix documentation to 5.7.4. If anyone has a 131 error with mode 3 and can reproduce it, please let me know. I haven't been unable to deliberately cause one, in order to test a fix. If I can fix this 131 error in mode 3 that is all that is in the works for a version 5.7.5.

 
mattnz:
I was meaning to ask PContour, does your decreasing factor operate on a currency pair basis or on all trades? YES - because the whole EA worked with multi-currency already before I touched it.

I read both your notes. The following Idea is of interest. Note: Phoenix is a counter-trending system based on short term trading, and it already has 2 or 3 signals based on moving average. Will this help or not? I don't know. The following should be easy to try, however. Send me your email ID in a private message and I'll give you a version that you can try out based on Phoenix 5.7.4. Perhaps it can be tried with Chimera as well, at some later date.

I have a suggestion for your issues with losing trades due to trending markets, and have what may seem to be a very simplified solution, but could save a number of losing entries, and would hopefully get the all important win ratio up.

When the system signals to buy on the 15 min chart, the following conditions should assist:

Entry price > MA100 (=1500 mins = 25 hours = roughly 1 day)

and > MA500 (=7500 mins = 125 hours = roughly 1 trading week)

The reverse should apply for a sell condition.
 

Carry trade

Hi PContour,

I wasn't actually trying to focus on carry trading, but more pointing out that the price action of GBP/JPY is the reason that a counter-trend system struggles in it's existing form. Basically a pair such as this or NZD/JPY moves up reasonably consistently on daily charts, and has a sudden large reversal that continues for long periods.

Because of the price action on higher time frames, (recognised by MA100 and MA500), as long as the short term action on a 15 min chart is working against the longer term trend, it will be unsuccessful. This has been found to be the case in your forward testing of GBP/JPY. I am more pointing out that the fact that GBP/JPY is used as a carry trade, and the price action that results is the reason that it was not as successful as other pairs. If however it was only used in the same direction as the longer term trend, especially in the long direction, and given greater freedom to move with larger TPs, then it could easily deliver very good returns. The fact that it picks up additional interest would just be a bonus rather than the reason to enter into such a trade.

Regarding the system in general rather than carry trading:

If the MA100 and MA500 conditions are met, then the entry becomes not only a counter trend in the 15 min time frame that is successful, but also an excellent long term entry in the direction of the trend, while still using an 80 pip stop. There would be fewer entries, but far less stops hit, and greater TPs could be targetted.

For example in mode 3, when target 1 is reached, a stop could be placed at 1/2 the target for one trade and at break even for the other. The one with a break even stop, could then have a trailing stop following at 200 pips. This would only be if the entry was > MA500 +100 pips indicating that the long term trend is very strong. Then on the retrace in the 15 min time frame we pick the reversal, to again move with the trend. This gives us the opportunity to pick up large moves of 500-1000 pips for 1/3rd of the position with no greater risk.

I imagine that such a system would be relatively easy to programme with the existing 5.7.4.

I hope this clarifies.

Best regards,

Matt.

 
mattnz:
Hi PContour,

I wasn't actually trying to focus on carry trading, but more pointing out that the price action of GBP/JPY is the reason that a counter-trend system struggles in it's existing form. Basically a pair such as this or NZD/JPY moves up reasonably consistently on daily charts, and has a sudden large reversal that continues for long periods.

I hope this clarifies.

Best regards,

Matt.

Interesting to read the comments from someone who knows the GBP/JPY personality. I think your comments are very constructive. It is now all about priorities as we all need other pairs producing regular profits for diversification.

 

Pcontour told me to place this suggestion here:: Re: bad bad fundamental announcement

I am new to Phoenix and Forex trading. I am testing Phoenix 5.7.4, seems to be very good work but I see where fundamental announcement can be problematic.

I have a suggestion:

1. Create another user signal that allows for setting the times for fundamental announcements daily

2. when the announcement time arrives, Phoenix will set a OCO say 10 pips above and 10 below the current price (or the user can decide on how many pips)

3. A stop loss and take profit can also be set

4. if a previously open position is going further in the red due to this announcement the close it without waiting for it to hit the stop loss

5. once the stop los is hit, look set another OCO

6. once the peroid has passed then let Phoenix operate as normal

Pcontour....hope you get the last bugs out of P6 soon

 

thinking and thinking and thinking

Hi there,

After my little vacation I had a true war against my Internet connection and stayed out of the forum.

As I told you, I read almost 7000 posts about Phoenix and Firebird threads and separeted the main points to think about the trade system, the channel model, and so... well, I'm still thinking. I really don't know if the trade system is a solid one. It seems to be so fragille to make trades based mainly in the price variation, even considering the main movement of the market.

Well... I hope to find the way before to get crazy. After 1 year working in this EA, I'm really afraid to reach some conclusion that will force myself to give up the project. I'm feeling like lost in the darkness.

Reason: