The FXCM Limited MetaTrader banner promises:
No Dealing Desk Execution
Hedging Capabilities through FSA Regulated Entity
Spreads as Low as 1 Pip EUR/USD
Accept ALL MT4 Expert Advisors
The Trading Gurus are based in South West England, so we're not too unhappy about the idea of opening a live account with an FSA regulated forex broker based in the UK. Those bullet points sound exactly like the sort of brokerage account we've been waiting for, so I opened a demo account with FXCM UK, and fired up one of our Expert Advisors.
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I still haven't heard back from FXCM and/or Boston Technologies about the problems I'd been having getting one of our more complicated expert advisors working on their MetaTrader platform. I figured I'd try a very basic one instead. I fired up our second example robot, which enters the market at random with a fixed stop loss and profit target, and uses a Martingale style money management system. Or maybe that should be mismanagement? I digress!
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Whilst browsing around the Boston Technologies website idly looking for a technical support number to call I noticed that they were offering a "free, very promising, MetaTrader 4 Expert Advisor".
I know that there's no such thing as a free lunch, but in all the circumstances I couldn't resist the temptation to download it and do some backtesting. The first thing I noticed was that unlike us here at the Trading Gurus they don't supply the source code for their EA, only the executable version. That means you have to take their word for it when they explain that:
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I telephoned FXCM again about my latest problem with an expert advisor that was unable to place any orders. I eventually managed to speak to a very helpful lady with an American accent who is a MetaTrader specialist in their sales department. She'd obviously been asked this question before, and here is my understanding of her explanation.
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I've just put the phone down after a long conversation with George Tchetvertakov, head of market research at Alpari UK. We started off talking about the new NFA "hedging" regulations and their effects on the retail foreign exchange business. Eventually we moved on to discuss some other topics, including using hedging as a means of reducing risk, and George's opinions about markets in general.
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Prompted by a comment from Michael to a post about the hedging ban, here's some more information about regulated alternatives to over the counter retail forex.
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME for short) first introduced currency futures contracts back in 1972. These "full-size" contracts were traded using the venerable open outcry method, which involved traders gesticulating and shouting at each other across a trading pit.
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As you know, I was idly perusing the Boston Technologies website the other day when I happened across their very own MetaTrader robot, which seems to have developed an unfortunate habit of losing money rather than making it hand over fist.
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I took part in a discussion over at the Forex Magnates site, where some traders expressed the view that "Greed is Good" and "There is nothing wrong with greed. Greed means you want things". I disagree. I don't think it's that simple. I think that greed at the corporate level is not good, and that greed at a personal level is not good, especially if you're a trader. I'm not the only one.
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Here are our Forex MegaDroid backtest results for May. The distinction may not be obvious, and may even seem irrelevant, but nonetheless although these are backtest results, the data used for the backtest was acquired on a demo account moving forward in time and not from a downloaded MetaTrader history. This test was performed using exactly the same input settings as in our MegaDroid Backtest Results for April.
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Here at the Trading Gurus we've been testing our three example MetaTrader expert advisors with another month's worth of data. Things are still looking good for our dumber than dumb forex robots!
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