I think if the broker takes your money, it's obligated to give you service.

I do not believe because you make money the BROKER losses money, I think somebody else loses the money. Come on. The broker just brokers, it doesn't even have to trade against you to make money, it makes money on the spread. All a broker does is line up buyers and sellers it gets it's commissions.

But to be honest, I may not know as much as you do about how brokers operate. I thought they just brokered, they don't HAVE to bet against you to make money. There's trillions out there doing that. But they may want to bet against you, you know take a chance like the rest of us, but they can always rest on their commissions.

"In short, the companies are required BY LAW to strive to be profitable. And if their business model requires their clients to lose for maximum profits, that is what they are "encouraged" to do. At least, that is the modern reality of things today."

The charter "requires" by law that the company be profitable. But does the charter "require" the company take any speculative risk to do so? Not that I know of. I'd tell the company to stop taking speculative risks if it cannot do so "profitably". I wouldn't say go steal it, that's larceny and that's against the law.

Stay with the business of collecting commissions, THAT'S profitable!

That's some good advice, only thing is, with ECN's you get variable spreads, so most EA would not be reliable. Unless ECN's operate so efficiently that they consistently maintain 3 pips spreads for the majors. I wouldn't know, but from comparing brokers, I see that some offer fixed spreads (bucket shops) and some are variable, (ECN's)

I think your idea is good and that's what I'll do when I get the required minimum to open an account also.

I have provided an article on how to bridge meta trader to an ECN for anyone who may want to look into it further.

Connecting MetaTrader 4 to an ECN Broker | Alan's Forex Blog

Load the EA onto your chart then press 'F7' the EA settings will open, click the "input" tab then browse down the list to find "lots". If it does not read 0.1 lots then edit it to 0.1

You should now be able to trade .1 lots. If it still doesn't, click the tools tab in Meta Trader, then options, this will open a multiple tabbed panel. Click the Trade panel, look at size by default, it may read "last size used". You can select default and change the size to .10

Then try trading again. If that doesn't work, ask your broker

Hello Rahman,

your Thunder_4WD is an wonderful EA too. I've done some backtesting with it and found the following:

In the years 2004, 2005 and 2006 the EA showed an unbelieveabe performance with many thousands of trades each year. But then in the years 2007 and 2008 performance was not so good as in the years before. There were only 1200 - 1800 trades each year and more loss-trades than in the years before. Is there any reason for this behaviour ?

(Don't understand me wrong: the performance is also very fine but in comparison with the years before ....)

best regards

Juergen

I don't have the Thunder_4WD EA, but I've tested scalpers similar to "Lucky" and they have the same type of performance. They do great as far back as I tested (1999), but not nearly as good or consistent starting in 2007.

They still perform well enough for me to consider trading them, though.

Dude...b4 i even ask anything..THANKS alot for you job, really thanks alot for taking the time creating this EA and giving it out for all of us...you are a good man.

and honestly I just want to know if this is the last version of the Your_Lucky...I see it sayd Update 01/09 but just wanted to be sure

The answer: No two years are ever the same.

The EA is capitalizing on a particular characteristic of EURGBP.... when the market changes (there is no reason for it not to change, right?) then the software still trades the same pattern, but doesn't adapt to the new "shapes" on the chart.

In short, no software is ever smart enough to predict the future. The best it can do is try things that worked well in the past. An EA is gambling, whether you are profiting or not.

It all comes down to being able to identify WHY the trade is a good one. And with EAs, you trade pure charts, which is definitely not a science.

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Ideas are not trade advice.

Pipguard I see you are relatively new here and I gathered from your posts that you are not completely familiar with the retail forex business model. Get on the phone and call any retail forex dealer, and ask them if your trades actually enter the forex. The answer is always "we take the risk." That means all orders are hedged against each other, and outstanding orders are put into the real market with a reverse trade. Stats show the majority is at a complete disadvantage due to their lack of knowledge, greed (400:1 leverage is there to arouse newbies,) and finite capital (the psych-out after losing a huge chunk of the account)


By the way, ATC Brokers (to Hotspot) and MBTrading offer native MT4 interfaces to ECNs, so there is no need for a 3rd party bridge.

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Ideas are not trade advice.

Your probably right here, but I thought you were saying something totally different bordering criminal behavior. They still profit from the spread so I'd like to know what "risks" their taking? I'm relatively knew to forex, you are right, but I'm not new to trading. I've been involved in markets for 10 years and I know commission is their real bread and butter. Any "risks" they take in trading is outside the company charter as far as I'm concerned.


I have visited hotspot and see that they are working with MT4 but they have one of the highest minimum account balance requirements around.

ECN's I think is our ticket to getting away from bucket shops. The problem you and I are discussing is about a broker closing your account or prohibiting trading. Too me that's denying service. They should return his money.

Of course we don't know everything that is involved, there might be a legitimate mechanical problem. Maybe he was scalping to the extreme, 1 pip every 2 minutes or something? But criminal behavior must not be tolerated from our end. Stealing is stealing. Also maybe his broker isn't regulated.

Thanks for your input.

About the EA and changing price action, I think this EA is based on changing price action. It tests profitably back to 1999, that's pretty robust. You want a trading system to do well with over 1000 trades for it to be robust.

Spreads and volatility is where the damage comes in, with that I agree with you. In the future the asian hours might start being volatile, this ea operates in a ranging environment.