General advice please?

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Hello all,

I put my main job on hold and have dedicated all of my time to technical trading and making EA's for the last 8 months non stop.  As I don't know anyone who also does this I would love to ask some of you more experienced people who work with EA's just a few questions if you would help please..


1. For how many years should an EA be profitable on backtesting before you would run it Live with real money?

2. What average annual profits in % would you expect to have before you traded it with real money?

3. If you need to have DLL files in your EA to import info from external sources, how is this dealt with considering the VPS servers dont allow DLL? (as far as I know)


I am analysing about 5 EA's I have had made and testing them all in hundreds of ways as there are so many variables and markets it is taking me forever and is very slow progress working this alone.

Any advice regarding the above or anything else is greatly appreciated, thank you.

 

I don't run real money right now, but I would say atleast 3 years of back testing results. Avg annual profits probably like 10%. Number 3 I don't know . For me analyzing also takes long but ofcoarse I use a smaller sample of a years data first for testing, then 3 years data so it is kind of like in sample and out of sample. Then try more and more ideas to get the D.D managed better and better.


Other thoughts: using your EA if it makes small and stable profits on some popular investor (copier) sites will make you very popular after a few years and you can make a nice income with that so don't always try to get the most profitable EA, the safest EA is good too. Last thing, forex markets are mostly random so beware of good results in a small sample. Something like the dow jones though is biased to the buy side and it is less random and has an advantage for the buy side.

 

Thanks Brian for your comments..

It is nice to hear from other like-minded people..

I was thinking anything less than 30 % per year average isnt worth risking capital on.. but its hard to achieve.. i only have a small capital to start with so that makes it harder to justify the effort going into it..

I had one EA which made ridiculous amounts of money but then realised the spread was wrong and when i adjusted it to be correct it lost alot very quickly.. very dissappointed.  I have loads of work to do in several EAs now...

Thanks and any more comments welcome...
 

I know what you mean, this is why I mentioned to manage other peoples money. All those high profile investors that manage other peoples money also cant achieve 30%, do you think that will stop them from managing money? They getting rich. Even 7% is fine for these investors, as long as there is no scary drawdown they will love you.


What happens every time is whatever profit my good EAs make they always make an equivalent drawdown, if they really good they will make half the drawdown of the drawup eg. 30% d.d and 30% profit or 15%d.d and 30% profit. This is with me trying my hardest and testing hundreds of EAs with many different settings. However as time goes by I still learn new things. Safer EAs should have the ability to make crazy profits on aggressive settings.

 
Hey Brian.. what is D.D?  Draw down?
 
Stephen:
Hey Brian.. what is D.D?  Draw down?
Yes I mean drawdown. What type of EAs do you build?
 
All sorts atm.. some based on time frames..  some candle shapes.. some taking volatilty daily...i have so many ideas and improevments to build onto them.. but the analysing and tweaking variables takes so much time i feel like i need a team of admin to help me..

Also i have a top spec pc but i find it so slow doing back testing its frustrating..
 

Yeah I also come up with lots of new ideas, but not necessarily to predict the market but just to try smoothen out results.


My laptop is quite slow to start with 4gb ram and intel Celeron but I still overload it with 2 metatraders open like 10 webpages and 2 MQL metaeditors one for mql4 and one for mql5. Testing is slow for all computers if my understanding is correct, but there is the option to use other peoples PC resources I cant remember now what it is called and don't know it works.

(But yes, having 2 metatraders open, means two testers, so double the testing work is possible at once)


It is called agents. It can be seen on the left menu from your profile page.

 

Hi , i would like to share my opinion base on my personal experience, and what i am currently doing .It's no necessary do as i do just other suggestion that might help you. 

"1. For how many years should an EA be profitable on backtesting before you would run it Live with real money?"

Answer: i think at maximum 1 year backtest is more than enough. but you have to know that backtest that store in data centre is not the exactly same data as the real live account. So even the backtest good many of the time the live account test isn't. So after back test good i will normally test on demo account for at least 2 week. If it good then continue to test on reel live account with small among of money like 100-1000$ for at least 3 month. 

" 2. What average annual profits in % would you expect to have before you traded it with real money?" 

Answer: You have to be realistic  , at least i trying to be. Getting around 10-30 percent a year is more than enough for me. I saw some get 30% a month for a couple month then after that they all gone. Have you see anyone with that much return ? Their maybe someone but it really not normal. It's just propaganda  it irregular. When come high return it, it's also high risk. So if it were me i settle at around 10-30% APY provide that you not losing it is enough. 


"3 If you need to have DLL files in your EA to import info from external sources, how is this dealt with considering the VPS servers dont allow DLL? (as far as I know)" 

Answer: Yes you should use VPS, use the one that said VPS for forex trading should be better. i checking one of mql5.com right now. it seem good. 


Hope this help a little ,  best. 

 
Stephen:

Hello all,

I put my main job on hold and have dedicated all of my time to technical trading and making EA's for the last 8 months non stop.  As I don't know anyone who also does this I would love to ask some of you more experienced people who work with EA's just a few questions if you would help please..


1. For how many years should an EA be profitable on backtesting before you would run it Live with real money?

2. What average annual profits in % would you expect to have before you traded it with real money?

3. If you need to have DLL files in your EA to import info from external sources, how is this dealt with considering the VPS servers dont allow DLL? (as far as I know)


I am analysing about 5 EA's I have had made and testing them all in hundreds of ways as there are so many variables and markets it is taking me forever and is very slow progress working this alone.

Any advice regarding the above or anything else is greatly appreciated, thank you.

1. At least 3 years.

2. 100% is ok.

3. There are VPS services allowing DLL imports, check comefx.

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