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| What is the difference between the RoboMiner II and the RoboMiner? |
| Here is the short answer: The difference between the RoboMiner and RoboMiner II is that the RoboMiner looks at price levels achieved to close individual orders at a 40 pip profit. It uses a TakeProfit setting to close its orders. It always has to close the latest order first in order to do this, so it does not work with FIFO. The RoboMiner II, on the other hand, opens all of its orders without a TakeProfit. It treats all open orders in the aggregate, and looks at their profit in the aggregate. In other words, it looks at the sum of the profit of all the open orders, instead of looking at individual orders. When a predefined profit level is reached (1 1/2%, for example), it closes all the orders at the same time and starts all over again. It might do this several times each month. So, because it closes all of its open orders at the same time, it has no problem working with FIFO. |
| Can the RoboMiner II take over my existing RoboMiner trades? |
| Yes, it can take over your existing positions if you wish. With FIFO set to true, the RoboMiner II will remove the TP from existing orders and start monitoring them for that 1 1/2% of profit in aggregate in order to close them all. Of course, the Magic Number must be set the same in order for it to recognize the old orders. |
| Are Trades Left Open Over the Weekend? |
| Yes. You can close your trading platform over the weekend, but all trades that are open are left open. When you re-open your trading platform on Sunday afternoon or evening, the EA will pick up where it left off as soon as trading resumes. |
| Can the RoboMiner EA be used to trade other currency pairs? |
| Up until recently, the answer would have been No. The RoboMiner is part of a complete trading system that was originally designed around the AUDNZD and nothing else. There is money management involved and we took into account the lowest and highest trading range of that pair. You could put it on a 1 hour or 4 hour chart, it didn’t matter, as long as it was on an AUDNZD chart. Recently, we added the ability to trade the EURCHF to the RoboMiner. This does require a higher minimum balance than the AUDNZD to keep this element of safety. Trading both pairs actually increase the safety of the whole system by creating a mini-basket. If you do decide to trade the EURCHF, you must use a different magic number setting, although it is recommended that the magic number still end with 1. Also, if you are a beginner, you may wish to begin with just one currency just to familiarize yourself with using the RoboMiner. Still, if you really feel that you need to try other currencies with this trading system, there is another more advanced EA called the GT-Shadow, that requires a lot more settings, but it can be used on other pairs. However, it’s not recommended for live accounts at this time and you really should have at least several months experience becoming comfortable with this system before you even think about trying to use this more complicated EA on other unknown pairs. |
| Do I Have to Keep the Metatrader Platform Running All the Time? |
| Yes. You must keep the platform on all the time for the EA to cause the trades to take place when they need to. Don’t turn the platform off (except on the weekend when trading is finished). And of course, you must be always connected to the Internet while the Metatrader 4 platform is open. Or No. Instead of running your trades from your home computer, you can have your programs running on the internet itself. You can log into your VPS service any time you want and log off, leaving your system actively trading even while you sleep. No internet connection problems, power failures, or security concerns. For a small monthly fee of $35 per month, your trading system can be housed on a commercial grade computer system design specifically for trading and directly connected to the internet for 24/7 available. With the added conveniences and safety, all serious investors should seriously consider this service. We currently recommend ForexVPS.com |
| Does the EA work better long term or short term? |
| Long term. You really need to let it trade for at least several weeks to a month before you get a feel for what it is doing. You can put it on a 1 hour or 4 hour chart, it doesn’t matter, as long as it is on an AUDNZD or EURCHF chart. But don’t try to nurse it every 15 minutes. It may be several hours to a day or so before it takes its first trade! |
| How Do I Stop the EA from Trading? |
| There are 3 ways to stop trading, you can remove the EA from the chart. You do that by right-clicking on the smiley face, and then selecting the choice to remove the EA. To just temporarily stop trading, you can click on the expert advisors button at the top of the screen and turn off all of the EAs (expert advisor) that way. You can also hit F7 to open the settings box and change “DoTrades” to false which will allow the program to remain active without taking any trades. |
| I loaded the EA an hour ago, but it still hasn’t taken any trades. Is anything wrong? |
| No. It is likely that nothing is wrong. It may be several hours or even a day or so before it triggers its first trade. As long as you have a smiley face, showing that live trades are enabled, and have the comments showing up to the left of your screen, and the do trades is set to true in the settings box, then the EA is working. The next trade will be triggered when the bid price reaches 1 of 2 predetermined price points. Look in the comment on the left side of your chart for the “Long/Short open for range X = x.xxxx” for the prices where you range will open a trade. Don’t forget to take the spread into consideration. This system averages between 1% and 6% return a month. It does not make huge amounts all at once, but if you let it be, it will make steady amounts as the days and weeks go by. In this case: don’t worry…be happy! |
| I do not have a “smiley face” . How do I fix this? |
| Click on the “tools” menu at the top of your trading platform. Then click on “Options”. Then, click on the tab labeled “Expert Advisors”. Make sure that “Enable Expert Advisors” and “Allow Live Trading” are both checked. Make sure that both check marks that begin with “Disable experts when” are both NOT checked. Then click on the OK button to save that and close that form. The main “Expert Advisors” button at the top of your trading platform should be on, and it should be green and not red. If that still doesn’t give you a smiley face, then press F7, and click on the “Common” tab, and make sure that “Allow Live Trading” is checked. But what you did earlier should have done this already. |
| I downloaded the FXDD platform, but can’t find the AUDNZD. What if my broker doesn’t trade the AUDNZD? |
| There are several brokers that don’t offer the AUDNZD, however it is more likely that you have to hunt down the currency in their trading system. For example, the AUDNZD pair is offered by FXDD, but you must right-click on the “Symbol” heading in the market watch window. Then left-click on “show all”. This will have the platform show all the currencies that are available. For further help on this, watch the instructional video that is inside the website. We know for sure that FXDD and any other recommended brokers offer the AUDNZD, since we not only trade that pair with FXDD ourselves but actually developed the RoboMiner using FXDD’s MT4 platform. |
| The Magic Number in the video is different than the magic number that is defaulted for the EA. Which one should I use? |
| Either one will work fine. I use 100001 myself, but there is no reason that you can’t use 510001. It is only intended to keep that EA different from any other one you may be using. The magic number is used by the robot to uniquely track the trades it has opens and needs to manage. This allows you to have more than one robot to open/close trades on one account without a second robot interfering. You can change the magic number, but if you have open positions that means the robot will no longer manage those trades. That can be useful if you want to manually handle the trades. When the EA is working, the magic number you set is actually only the first one out of 64 that the EA will generate. 510001, 510002, 510003, etc. But the EA handles all of that internally. Generally speaking, we recommend you DO NOT change the magic number if you have any open positions. |
| I have had an open trade that has moved from positive to negative territory. When will it close the trade? |
| It is a grid trading system. It is waiting for the price to reach a predetermined point before it closes a trade. If you study the back test data that is shown on the website, you will see that it is sometimes several days before a trade is closed. It is not meant to be nursed along waiting for trades. They happen when appropriate. Over the long term, you will see the profits build up as the trades close and accumulate their profits. We have studied the movement of this pair over a long term and it will eventually get there. But it is rare for a trade to close within a few minutes. What you are describing is very normal for this system. |
| Can I run the EA on 2 charts in the same terminal with 2 different time frames? |
| Yes and No. Let me explain. The EA can run on any time frame. You can run it on an H1, H4, D1 and even W1 chart if you wish. You can even change the time frame of the chart it is on while it is on the chart, and it will not hurt anything. It just doesn’t care about the time frame at all. If you are using the same terminal program, and wish to operate the EA on a different chart of the AUDNZD or EURCHF, you could do so as long as the two following conditions are met: 1. The magic numbers must be completely different. Once set could start with 100001 and the other set could start with 510001, for example. Each instance of the EA uses that magic number as a starting point, and then adds 1 internally until it has 64 magic numbers total. So the EA that is using 100001 is actually using all the magic numbers between 100001 and 100064. You cannot leave any conflict between the magic numbers of the 2 robots. 2. You must have a large enough balance to support trading the system twice. The system must have a minimum of $2000 balance to support trading .01 lots. More is better. By setting the BalanceFactor to 2000, you are allowing for that. But if you are adding another currency you cannot do that. In that case, you must have a minimum balance of $3500 and your BalanceFactor on each EA must be set to a minimum of 3500. This will cause each robot to trade .01 lots until you get to $7000 in balance, and then each will trade .02 lots, etc. We actually recommend using both Currencies if you have enough in the balance to protect your open trades. This is known as a mini basket and adds a certain amount of protection from margin calls. It is far more unlikely that both currency pairs would reach extreme areas simultaneously than it would be for just one pair to go into the extreme highs or lows. Which means that you should have a little extra balance to help protect the extra open trades that add to the draw-down from the pair that is not trading in the extreme area. |
| How do I find the information for my current trade in the RoboMiner comments? |
| If you want to read information in the comments about your current trade with the RoboMiner, such as where the order opened and where it will close, here is what to do: First of all, it will help you to show the comments for your current open order at the bottom of the screen. A big reason for this is that each order’s magic number is shown in the comments for that order. If you don’t have the comments showing in your orders at the bottom, here’s what to do. Your open trades are in a box at the bottom of the MeteTrader4. On the bar just above that is the headings of order, time type and size etc. Right click on any of these headings and click next to comments placing a check mark there. Now, as you look at the comments on the left of your chart, depending on where the price is, you may be looking at the information for the next grid higher than the grid of your current order. It is also possible you are looking at the same grid. You can tell by comparing the magic number in your comments at the bottom of the screen (if you have the comments showing) to the magic number in the chart comments. You can find the magic number on the chart comments in the lower area of the comments to the left of your chart. If it is the same as the magic number in the comments for your order, then the “Reverse Close” that is showing in the chart comments is the point where that sell trade will close. If your comments on the screen show that you are in grid 26, but your trade is grid 25, (very possible), then press F7 to open your settings, and replace the 0 with a 25 in the DisplayLevel setting. This will show you all the open and close points for grid 25. If your DisplaySetting is 0, it shows the grid settings for the current price level, but sometimes it is helpful to be able to see other levels, as in this case. For buy orders, the Forward Open and Forward Close items show the order open and close points. For sell orders, the Reverse Open and Reverse Close items show that. Orders are always triggered by the bid price reaching the predetermined level. Incidentally, the number after the words “Forward Open” and “Forward Close” is the number of the current grid that you are viewing. This matches the number in the magic number. For example, magic number 510025 is the magic number assigned to a trade for grid # 25, if you have your first magic number set to 510001. If you put a 25 in the DisplayLevel, so that you are looking at the data for grid # 25, you should see that if your sell order opened at 1.1650, it will close when the bid reaches 1.1610. Down lower in the comments, you should see that the buy orders end when the price reaches grid 21 and that the sell orders start at that point. If it is difficult to read the comments on the chart, try changing the time to the 1 minute tab. |
| What happens if the broker increases the spread, such as during a news event? |
| Most of the time, the size of the spread and slippage is not an issue, but during an unusual news event, it may become an issue. Whenever a trade is triggered, the EA looks at the distance from the bid price to the actual trade price that is about to take place. If a sell is being closed, then that would be the Ask price. If the spread is extraordinarily wide, due to the broker widening the spread during a news event, then the trade won’t be allowed to happen, and the EA will wait until the spread comes back into tolerance before it tries again. The reason I did this was due to one event that happened during our testing, when some news was released. The spread was widened from 8 Pips to over 36 Pips and the price moved really fast, just as a trade was about to be closed. Instead of being closed at 1.1608, while the bid was 1.1600, the spread widened and the price shot up so that the Ask price was 1.1663, and that was the price we got on a close that should have been 1.1608. In a determination to never let that happen again, I put in the special slippage test routine. The scenario where we needed it only happened once during months of testing, but that was enough to make me want to do something about it. The slippage function is there now in case it ever happens again. The normal spread is 8 Pips for FXDD and 11 Pips for IBFX. I set the slippage to 16, which means that it will still take the trade if the Ask is separated from the Bid by as much as 15 Pips, but cuts the trade off at 16 Pips difference. That allows some room for movement from the time the EA decides it needs to trade to the time it does the trade, while still protecting us. |
| Tell me about the GT-Shadow and how it trades |
| The GT-Shadow will open buy positions only below a certain price point, and sell positions only above a certain price point. Both those points are determined by the settings of the ForwardEnd and ReverseStart settings which set a grid level where the buying stops and the selling begins. This only makes sense when you realize that as prices rise to a certain level, they are more likely to retrace back down than to continue rising forever. And the same thing holds true in reverse. If prices are falling, once they reach a certain level, they are more likely to retrace back up than to keep falling forever. The GT-Shadow will trade on any currency pair, provided you program that pair in the settings. The default settings are programmed for only the AUD/NZD pair, but the settings are easily changed by the user, or through the use of a pre-set file. The AUD/NZD and EUR/CHF pre-set files should allow it to trade just like the RoboMiner. The ‘EUR/GBP-like GridWeaver’ pre-set file will enable it to trade exactly like the GridWeaver. Unless the user is experienced, I do not recommend they try grid trading the EUR/USD. They probably would be better off to stay with the presets until they have more experience with the EA. Also, please note that with the default settings, even if the EA is put on a EUR/USD chart, it will only trade the AUD/NZD. The EA does not trade a pair based on which chart it is placed on. It places its trades on the pair that is programmed in the settings. This becomes particularly important when a person wants to trade 2 currencies at once in a spread (hedge trading). You could put it on 1 chart, but with the settings, have it programmed to trade 2 currency pairs at the same time in a spread. There will be a learning curve associated with the GT-Shadow, due to the many settings. Do read the manual to understand what each setting is for, and experiment with the set files. In addition, there is a users group of GT-Shadow users at http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/GT-Shadow |
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