Can you optimize "just like that" in MT4? Thats crazy, I use Sierra personally. Explain what it does when you are optimizing - what is it doing to your program or is it more hypothetical? I am having a hard time figuring this out.
I see you have about 100 trades for your sample size. Thats really not that bad, but it depends how you are trading. Like what is your method - volatility, mean reversion.. etc? That will unlock a lot of clues. In my ES MINI program I have 89 trades over or close to 4 years using 1 hour candles. I believe it trades on average once every 11 trading days. But I have quite a detailed or should I say unique way of going about my entries. It is all about how you trade. Let me know.
Well, my entries do have specific criteria, obviously right lol. I only trade signals at certain periods of the day due the increased volatility, if that answers your question. My programming ability is limited along with my funds so in order to robustly test my system I'd need a lot of money.
Mine is too, welcome to the world of non institutional trading. Start it in a Micro FOREX account, best bet. How many lots are you laying per trade? Just 1? Also how is it that your software can adjust for certain specs like max drawdown etc. Is it theoretical? To me it doesn't make sense - at least from where I am looking at it.
I'm running it now live on a micro account. Just started live last Thursday. Obviously I'm bumping up the risk tolerance a bit because the account is so small. As far as drawdown optimization. All i do is tone down the aggressiveness of the money management. Bigger returns equal bigger drawdowns right?
Regarding returns/drawdowns Bigger returns do not necessarily mean bigger drawdowns. It's about your entry efficiency. Are you using something technical as your stop or is it always a set number. For instance in one of my programs I use a stop when 2 moving averages are > than "x" away from each other. Trade it EXACTLY as you would in a regular account unless you are talking about size. How many lots does your regular program use?
I have a money management piece of code incorporated. For this posting tho i kept 1 lot at all trades. 1 lot= $1 per point or pip. $15k initial deposit $2415 Profit 16% Return So when i use my money management code, return increases as i am trading more "lots" as my account balance grows. double CalculateLotSize() { double lots = 0; int c = AccountBalance()/x; return (c*1); x value is what i play with to increase return or play with drawdown levels. So i'll put 5000 in if i want 5k equity needed per 1 lot. Stop is variable.
I see, stop is variable. And this was with risking no more than 3.x% per trade? I know what your max drawdown was, but was that your MAX OPEN POSITION LOSS? I guess I do not understand well enough what you are doing to comment anymore than I have. Just keep up on the micro. Get 3 years of backtesting - get 1 year at least of forward testing. If you are satisfied with that start talking to people like I have. I tried to go the institutional route right away and that is like hitting a needle in a haystack. Lot of doors slammed in your face, doesn't matter your return. Really. But risk mgt. is more important anyway. After you have been talking to some people you can start maybe running your program for real with OPM. Then you need to get ALL YOUR RESULTS AUDITED. This will allow your first step into the game of institutional money. Send me an email sometime if you progress or whatever etc. - hzang12345@gmail.com - later