forextester, Author at Smart Forex Tester

Live Forex Signals By Smart Forex Tester

Live forex signals can be generated for free with our Smart Forex Tester.

When we run the Tester on real-time market data feed, we can trigger automated forex signals every time when our day trading strategy is entering or exiting markets.

Signals are short sounds. They can be turned on or off in the Tester GUI, and the tunes can be configured for each of the market events.

Live Forex Signals By Smart Forex Tester — Sound-button turns on live Forex signals

The live data is sent to the Tester by our Forex Simulator, which in its real-time mode supports 10 main currency pairs. This short video shows how the Tester and Simulator work together. (The signal is at 3.10)

Alternatively, the Tester can receive live market data from a Metatrader client terminal via a special Expert Advisor. This EA you have downloaded together with the Tester.

The automated day trading strategy is also included in the Smart Forex Tester download bundle. It uses our unique algorithm to detects market pivot points in real time.

How accurate are the signals. The current version of the strategy works the best on the rangebound markets. However, it can also generate profitable signals on moderate trends. We are working to adapt the strategy for the trending market.

The Tester GUI provides you the controls to change the main strategy parameters. So you can experiment with them to adjust to the current market situation.

Want to try yourself how accurate these live Forex signals are?

Subscribe for free to download Smart Strategy Tester and Forex Simulator.

Smart Strategy Builder

This page is deprecated. We switched to C++ strategies.
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We have developed the first version of Smart Strategy Builder.

Currently we are testing the prototype and will make it available to our subscribers soon.

The Builder reads a trading strategy file and makes it all the strategy parameters visible and editable in the Builder GUI. There you can also edit and save the strategy file itself.

Smart Strategy Builder seamlessly works with our Smart Forex Tester.

You can test the changes in the strategy or its parameters by clicking a “Run” – button. The Strategy Builder launches the Tester and executes the strategy test on the previously selected test data. The results are returned to the Builder and shown in the GUI.

The Tester GUI is also shown during the test and also some configurable time after its completion. All Tester functionality is available. You can analyze the trades in the GUI and also in the log, as usual.

The current values of the parameters are saved in a temporary file. So the Builder can restore them on the next start-up.

Smart Strategy Builder Development

When completed, this tool will take our automated trading strategies development to the next level.

Later releases of the Builder will extend our strategy format. While still using the standard state machine for routine trading operations, the Bulider will support the arbitrary code for market signals.

This way, the Builder will make the first steps to support the EA syntax as a strategy definition.

Download Smart Strategy Builder.

Forex Strategy Optimization – How To Do It?

Forex strategy optimization is a must before using it in real trading. How exactly to do the optimization?

A standard practice is back testing on the historical market data. As each strategy has a number of parameters, we need to repeat tests for different parameter values and find out the values that make the most profit.

Parameters are independent, so the number of available combinations can be substantial. Consequently, solving such a problem of finding a multi-dimensional maximum can take a considerable time. Especially if tests are run on a long data interval.

To complete tests in reasonable time, it makes sence to test first those parameters combinations, which are believed to have the most influence on the risk level. Using market patterns, e.g. trending or rangebound market, is another way to reduce the computing time.

Another problem is – how much historical data should we use? What is the minimum data interval to test on to be confident in our strategy? There is no correct answer here.

In our example, our automated trading strategy was optimized on one month of data for Asian trading sessions. Asian trading is the least volatile and easier to trade. Still, for the next month the same parameters resulted in losses.

Back testing can’t guarantee success – Forex market is unpredictable. Does it make sense to test at all?

Our approach is to monitor the market in real time, and adapt the strategy to current market conditions on-the-fly.

Forex Strategy Optimization In Real Time

Strategy optimization with back testing can be called static, because the outcome of the tests are some fixed set of parameter values that is used unchanged in future.

Our approach we can call “dynamic” optimization. Contrary to static approach, here the tests are run in real-time on the latest market data. and so the test data always changes. We are working on an algorithm for adjusting the strategy parameters on-the-fly.

Dynamic optimization is an important part of our strategy development toolkit, which already includes a real-time pivot point detecting algorithm. Which generates trade signals at market tops and bottoms. As you understand, optimizing the detection process in real time will have an enormous profit potential.

Read more …

Forex Simulation In Real-Time Is More Efficient With Time Shift

By Forex simulation we usually understand back testing. While “real-time Forex simulation” sounds more like a demo-account functionality.

The advantages of testing on historical data are evident. You can practice at any time, and don’t have to wait for the market to open. And you don’t have to depend on the market action, either.

So does it make sense to try simulation in real-time? The answer, in our opinion, depends on the tools.

With a regular demo-account, the only benefit is practicing on live – i.e. unpredicatble – data. However, with a specialized tools, the real-time simulation has more advantages.

One of the main benefits is in so called “time shift”. This is what is supported in many modern DVR devices, where you can put your live TV broadcast on pause while answering a phone call.

The DVR continues saving the signal so that you can resume watching later from the moment you paused – or jump to the current moment.

The main advantage of this is many cases you can very quickly catch up with the current broadcast without losing too much – e.g. by fast forwarding slower scenes of completely skipping commertials .

Same idea can be fully implemented in Forex simulation. You can resume practicing with delay, and then gradually catch up by fast forwarding the slow moving markets.

Our Forex Simulator supports the real-time mode starting from the release 1.1. You can select of 10 main currency pairs.

Forex Trading Simulator 1.0

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Forex Trading Simulator – Vote For New Features!

Please do give us feedback and select the features that you would need the most!

If something you want is not listed, or you would like some change in existing functionality, please leave a comment on this page or just send us an e-mail.

HOW TO VOTE:

select up to 3 options
click on the “VOTE” – button
don’t navigate from the page before you see the vote results

Many thanks in advance!

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Forex Trading Simulator – Most Needed Features

As we posted already, we are working on the Forex simulator software. We would like to ask your opinion – what is the most important to you? Please vote for the features – see the poll below. Leave a comment if your wish is not listed in the poll. Thanks in advance!

In our opinion, Forex trading simulator must be very simple to use. However, it must also simulate the real Forex market with absolute accuracy.

To achieve that, we designed the simulator to only use real tradeable historical tick-by-tick data. No interpolations. Another important factor is high productivity. The time difference between ticks during simulation must 100% match that on the real market. Our software works fast so the tick feed accuracy is 1 millisecond.

The simulator works in Windows as a stand-alone application. The GUI is intuitive and self-explanatory.

History tab has a trade register as well as the exchange log with trading server.

Please help us to make the simulator as good as possible! Select 3 features that are the most important for you. If we forgot some cool feature – please leave a comment on this page.

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Many thanks to all who gave their vote or left a comment!

Expert Advisors To Define Forex Trading Strategies Under Test

Expert Advisors will be supported as a means to define Forex trading strategies under test in the next major release of the Smart Forex Tester. We are already working on that important new feature.

To give you some background, Smart Forex Tester is natively working with trading strategies defined as text-based state machines. We have developed a simple price action strategy example that illustrates how it is working.

But for some users, expert advisors are more familiar tool so it makes sense to add such option to the Smart Forex Tester. How can we do that?

First of all, let’s note that we can’t use the Expert Advisors in binary format (i.e. .ex4 – files). This is virtually prohibited by the Metatrader’s license. Without doing reverse engineering (which is out of question, of course), we can only test binary EAs if we have access to a Metatrader server. Which is just too costly for this purpose.

Fortunately, this is not a show stopper. If we define our own strategy that we want tested, we must have access to the source code. This is doable.

Expert Advisors Put Into The Sandbox

We will be using Expert Advisors normally in their “native habitat” – Metatrader. But we will replace all function calls that manipulate quotes and orders with our own functions. Other functions can work with Metatrader normally.

Expert Advisors In Smart Forex Tester — How Expert Advisors can be used with Smart Forex Tester

So we can see that Expert Advisors will be sand-boxed. After that, you can run the trading strategy tests like you normally do.

How to prepare the Expert Advisor for the test? You can open it in any text editor and made a context search-replace. We might also provide a simple tool for doing that.

Subscribe to be updated on the current development status.

More details will be provided at expertadvisortest.com.

Automated trading strategy tested: 132 pips in one day, 60% winning trades

Quick link: Download Smart Forex Tester

You are probably aware of the sharp drop in the EURUSD on October, 21. Following the ECB announcement, the Euro fell over 2% against the Dollar.

It happened so that on that day we were testing the latest version of Smart Forex Tester. This upcoming release of our software will support forward testing – i.e. test the automated trading strategies on live data feed. For that, we have developed a special Expert Advisor that sends tick data from Metatrader.

So, we were running the stability test. We were using our automated trading strategy (comes bundled with with Smart Forex Tester). We left the tester running on its own. When we checked it the next day, we were stunned. Not by the fact that the tester was still up and running (this was expected).

automated trading strategy Real Time Test with Smart Forex Tester — Smart Forex Tester runs automated trading strategy in real time (click to enlarge)

What came as a surprise was that our automated strategy absolutely crashed it! It did 27 trades, out of which 60% were winners. And it raked 132 pips profit!

Automated trading is the way to go!

This test convinced us again that automated trading can be made profitable. We understand, that for this simple strategy that we were using, we had a bit of luck. The reason being that this strategy doesn’t yet have a trend following algorithm. We are only developing it.

But still – as we have written on many occasions – we see not a single reason not to use automated trading. E.g. ckeck our post comparing Smart Forex Tester with manual Forex trading simulator.

Our line of reasoning is simple. First, to be successful, a Forex trader must have a clearly formalized strategy. Second, this strategy has to be strictly followed. No room for emotions. Now, if we have done the former – guess who will be more successful in the latter – a person or a computer? The answer is obvious.

If you are interested – stay tuned! Download Smart Forex Tester and wait for the announcement of the latest release.

Smart Forex Tester Supports Forward Testing

In addition to back testing, Smart Forex Tester can also test trading strategies on live market data – in real-time!

For this functionality to work, you need to download the latest version of Forex Data Recorder, which receives real-time quotes from Metatrader via a special Expert Advisor (included in the download bundle).

Smart Forex Tester Reads Ticks From Metatrader

The figure below schematically shows how forward testing works.

Smart Forex Tester Supports Forward Testing

The EA box inside the Metatrader client terminal is a specially developed Expert Advisor.

Forex Data Recorder receives the ticks from the Expert Advisor and re-translates them to the Smart Forex Tester. All communication is implemented with the help of Windows messaging. This is fast and reliable method of data exchange within one machine.

Forex Data Recorder can save the received data to the file for later use for back testing. This is done in parallel with casting. In addition, the software has inbuilt test data generator which is useful for debugging purposes during the time when Forex markets are closed.

Download Smart Forex Tester.

Download Forex Data Recorder.