review::DoublePlay EA
name of Expert Advisor : DoublePlay
current tested version : v3.5.2
start date : 28th Aug 2007
current settings :
SL=50*, TrailingStop=20, TakeProfit=100*, Lots=1.0, MaximumRisk=5.0
pairs traded : EURUSD, H1 on InterbankFX
manual intervention : close out trades and disable Expert Advisor prior to news (at least 12 hrs prior) and weekends.
*changed on 5 nov 2007
performance :
Sept 2007 : +277 pips (see testing history for details)
Oct 2007 : -83 pips … so far (see testing history for details)
live statements (updated every 10 mins) :
http://www.ckowyong.com/blog/statements/doubleplay/statement.htm
http://www.ckowyong.com/blog/statements/doubleplay_fxdd/statement.htm
testing history :
28 aug 2007 : demo with v3.5 started with 25% risk which resulted in a 5-lot trade. decided too much and brought it down to 10% risk after closing the trade manually for a profit of +22 pips (not included in the performance figures above)
31 aug 2007 : trade held over a weekend and was stopped out on monday. 1st indication that holding a trade over the weekend is not a good idea.
19 sept 2007 : upgraded to v3.5.2 and set new risk to 5%. attached it to USDCHF by mistake and had to manually close out the USDCHF trade with a +8 pip profit (not included in the performance figures above). new version only trades the EURUSD as before.
26 sept 2007 : DoublePlay doubled the demo account, from $10,000.00 to $20,077.62 within a month. i commented in the blog that if this was real money, i would immediately with draw 50% of the profits to protect capital, and leave the other 50% in there to help the account compound.
28 sept 2007 : decision was made to disable and close open trades prior to news and weekends. reason for this has been posted in the blog.
12 oct 2007 : was supposed to stop DoublePlay on friday (12 oct 2007) when there were no open trades, but for some reason… it kept running. a buy was triggered on 2007.10.12 13:00, and the trade was carried over the weekend. since i’ve advocated that trades should not be held over the weekend, i’ve closed that trade on monday morning (15 oct 2007) for a -32 pips loss. i will ignore this trade and highlight it in the ‘DoublePlay Risk and Performance Simulation’ spreadsheet. members of my mailing list will know where to get this spreadsheet. if you would like a copy, please look for the ‘Join now :O)‘ button in the blog and join my mailing list.
15 oct 2007 : Fed Chairman Bernanke is going to speak tonight. i don’t really like to be in the market when he does that… so i have disabled the DoublePlay forward-test on IBFX and kept the RFXT demo running for the sake of seeing what could have happened. naturally, my DoublePlay on my live account is also disabled, together with the RobinHood forward-test too.
16 oct 2007 : it’s now 1:30 hrs after the scheduled speech by Bernanke (7pm EST?). i’m not sure if he has already completed his speach, but i’ve got to leave home for work now and won’t have easy access to start the Expert Advisors up. hence, have just turned DoublePlay and RobinHood back on. fingers crossed :O)
17 -18 oct 2007 : drawdown after drawdown!! 3 in a row!! since the forward-test started on 28 aug 2007, this has got to be the worst week. i’m going to play it safe from now on. with Bernanke speaking again on friday, i’ll make sure DoublePlay stays disabled. results : -150 pips for the week.
25 oct 2007 : some wins, some losses… overall, DoublePlay is still up +32 pips this week. with friday approaching and all trades closed, i’m retiring DoublePlay early for the week to play safe.
29 oct 2007 : enabled DoublePlay early monday morning for the new week #10. FOMC statement is on wednesday and NFP on friday… i am still contemplating to leave it running or not… since it did really well on 22nd oct when the EURUSD moved down -170 pips. will seek Hal’s advise.
3 nov 2007 : DoublePlay was left running all week, which allowed it to make a few losses again. i’m very sure that Hal is fully aware of what has been happening… i’m just curious what Hal is doing in the background.
4 nov 2007 : Hal finally replied… acknowledging that he has been busy working on how to avoid the drawdowns that DoublePlay has been hitting recently. he had studied the data and discovered that a wider stop-loss could have saved a couple of the losses. and he assured, very confidently, that “the experiences of the past month will be used to make DP4.0 that much stronger”. ladies & gentlemen… we are witnessing the evolution of an Expert Advisor right now. and with the list of *unofficial* improvements that Hal is planning for the new version, the better optimised DoublePlay v4.0 will be one that i’ll be anticipating to test very very much!! :O)
5 nov 2007 : i pondered on Hal’s comments and did a bit of my own analysis… and have decided to continue running the demo, but with a little adjustment… i’m increasing the default stop-loss of -50 pips to -60 pips. this is going to be purely a test. it will probably require a good month with this new setting to be able to tell if it makes any significant difference at all. so for the record, SL is now -60 pips as of 5 nov.
19 nov 2007 : finally… an email pushed me out of my ‘procrastinating’ state. i’ve been somewhat slack in keeping the blog updated lately… not because of laziness… but more because of the mounting emails that i’ve been getting lately. a lot of things are also happening in the background which i will be blogging about later.
now… back to DoublePlay : a few winners since 5 nov after increasing the SL to -60 pips! it’s nice to see some wins after all those losses :O) but did the 10 pips increase in the SL turn it around? looking at the trades carefully, i think the change really did it!! if the SL was left at -50 pips, we would have seen only 4 winners instead of the 6 consecutive winners that we have now. the trade on 2007.11.08 07:20 went as far south as -58 pips, and the latest trade on 2007.11.16 06:17 was -55 pips at it’s worst.
consider this : the 2 would-have-been-losers (ie. -100 pips loss) had become winners with a combined profit of +37 pips. in comparison, the 4 other winners combined came up to +70 pips. looking at the pips, the little adjustment had effectively turned the past 2 weeks into a +107 pips profit instead of a -30 pips loss. (ie. [+70 +37] vs [+70 -50 -50] ) please note that this is still experimental… but i think it’s clear that the new -60 pips SL is already making some impact to the overall P&L of DoublePlay v3.5.2.
[update on 19 Nov 1900 hrs] : just realised that the demo that i was running has expired. i’ve just attached my LIVE copy of DoublePlay onto the demo account to keep it running. i’m not sure if this has resulted in any missed trades…. so just putting a note about this for the record. settings are now StopLoss=60, TrailingStop=20, TakeProfit=150.
20 Nov 2007 : started a new demo on FXDD to see how DoublePlay performs on these 2 brokers. sam settings of StopLoss=60, TrailingStop=20, TakeProfit=150
1 dec 2007 : looking at the last 5 trades on IBFX and FXDD, it seems like FXDD and IBFX are quite comparable. entries and exits were at most 1 pip apart. however, like we have seen before when we were testing DoublePlay with RFXT some time back, this 1 pip difference could mean a missed entry or exit. hence, differences in trades are expected between brokers. however, if an Expert Advisor is highly proftable on one broker but making losses on another, it should affect your decision on which broker to go LIVE with.
since the demo on FXDD was started on 21 nov 2007, it has gained +33 pips. in the same period, IBFX was down -45 pips. it’s still too early to make any conclusions…. but it’s interesting to have 2 brokers to compare side by side :O) - FXDD vs IBFX spreadsheet. if you really scrutinise the first trade in the spreadsheet on the EURUSD/H1 chart, you will see that the trailing stop in FXDD did not trigger as expected. this attibuted to the bigger profit as compared to IBFX. i’m not sure what’s going on… so let’s just keep both running for now.
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11 feb 2008 :DoublePlay has been upgraded to version 4.0. LIVE forward test with the new version was stared on 12 dec 2007 with a starting capital of $10,000. since the, the demo account had grown to a high of approx $11,600, but sustained losses from 21 dec 2007 onwards which continues to this day… reducing the account balance to $8,832 on 11 feb 2008.
it seems like the new version was optimised well but did not last long. i believe the continuous stream of announcements and events in jan 2008 did not help too.  DoublePlay v4.0 is currently not performing very well.
*** more to come ***
buy ck a coffee :O)
