Written by Barry Battista
Thursday, February 2nd, 2012
Before launching into my regular soliloquy, let me give you an update on the new version of the EA. I have been running it day and night, over and over, looking at results and changing/fixing things as I find them. In some cases I fix something and break something else. Such is the destiny of a code writer. Anyway, it is not quite ready for prime time yet but moving very quickly in that direction. The following list is an excerpt from the release notes that summarizes the changes. Some will have a great deal of impact and some are cosmetic.
– An option to close your trade if you get in before the news comes out
– An option to set a hard stop as tight as the broker will allow as soon as one of your orders goes live, and to remove the other pending order at that time.
– If you are in the wrong way on a safe trigger (you have a live buy on a safe sell trigger or a live sell on a safe buy trigger), your live trade will be closed immediately.
– Added a reverse buy and sell flag (if you don’t know what this means, you will never need it)
- Took out the “failed to delete” messages from the Experts tab
- Fixed a bug in the pending sell retry logic
- Prints the total profit/loss for the trade on the trading station in the upper left once the last order is closed (perhaps a mixed blessing)
- Prints the largest the spread got during the course of the trade in the upper left once the last order is closed
- Fixed logic that sets and moves stops to hopefully reduce or get rid of “Invalid SL or TP” messages (maybe wishful thinking)
- Cleaned up the Experts tab to try to make it much easier to understand and follow
- Fixed timeToLive which is used to take trades out when there is no data expected (the 4:28 AM trades)
- In the profit targets section, allowed the close volume to be 0.0, which means you are just moving the stops without closing anything along the way (another idea from Andrius).
That’s it. Will keep you posted and will get this out very soon, hopefully next week (I think I said that last week also). I want to be careful not to release it and then find some glaring issue. Testing is near impossible with this style of trading because no 2 news releases behave exactly the same way.
Anyway, for tomorrow we have:
4:28 AM Eastern
UK Services PMI – Level of diffusion index based on surveyed purchasing managers in the services industry
GBP/USD
To be perfectly honest, I’m thinking of staying in bed for this one. If you are up and want to take a whack at it, feel free, but setting an alarm and wrecking a perfectly good nights sleep to try to break even borders on foolish.
Perhaps I can offer some supporting documentation to substantiate my reasoning. Lets see …. in November this spiked -8 pips. In other words, a second after the release time it spiked down to take us live. Then it spiked up 15 pips. The data came out at -.7. Lost money on this one. Then in December we saw a 17 pip spike but instant full retracement. Then it popped up to the top of the spike within 2 seconds then fell back down below where it started and stayed there. The deviation, for what its worth, was 1.6. Lost money on this one. In January, hoping for new behavior in the new year, it delivered a 10 pip spike up and instant spike back down, once again taking in the buy. The deviation, which didn’t show up for 5 minutes, was 2.5. Lost money on this one.
Hhmmm…. there is one consistent characteristic of all 3 of these trades. It looks like staying in bed can be construed here as a good way to make money, as it were. So that’s what I’m doing. Maybe ought to stop posting it. If you want to try it, trade very lightly and use whatever settings you deem appropriate. Remember you don’t check the box for this one. If someone could post in the blog a little writeup on what happens (spike, behavior over the first couple minutes, deviation, …) I would appreciate it.
7:00 AM Eastern
CAD Employment Change – Change in the number of employed people for the previous month.
USD/CAD
OK now we’re talking. In November this came out at -69 and .2 with a spike of 52 pips. It retraced slightly and continued to 74 pips in 2 minutes. Very nice. And rare. This is a ridiculously high deviation. In December it came out at -38.6 and .1 with a 34 pip spike, 50% retracement, and continuation back up to about 40 pips total. In January it came out at -2.5 and .1 with a 22 pip spike. It retraced slightly and continued 28 pips in 7 minutes.
If we get a real big deviation, like say over 35, you may want to close part of the trade and see if we don’t get some continuation after the retracement.
ORACLE TRADER – I would try maybe 25 medium and 35 safe, trading 1/3 your normal lots on a medium and 3/4 on a safe.
STRADDLE V1.3 – try maxSpread of maybe 8.
STRADDLE PRO – I’d set Buy and Sell Triggers to 15 and check the box. I’d also use the trade management stuff to take out part of my trade after the spike.
8:30 AM Eastern
USD Non-Farm Employment Change – Change in the number of employed people excluding the farming industry.
EUR/JPY
In November we saw -15 and .1 with a 3 pip spike. Prior to this I advised not bothering to check the box because we never got a spike less than 20 or 30 on NFP. In December we saw -5 and -.4 with an 11 pip spike. This is like seeing a football score of 425 for one team and -35 for the other. The markets didn’t know how to react to this nonsense, so it thrashed up and down. In January we saw 45 and .2 with a 19 pip spike, 50% retracement, pushed back up within 19 seconds, then fell down well below where it started.
Obviously not for the faint of heart……
ORACLE TRADER – I’d go with 65 medium and 80 safe. Trade 1/3 your normal lots on a medium and maybe 2/3 on a safe.
STRADDLE V1.3 – try maxSpread of 8 or 9. I’d get out fast.
STRADDLE PRO – set Buy and Sell Triggers to 55 and check the box. Use profit levels or trailing stop. Get out after the spike.
