review::PipForia Hedged Grid EA
an excellent discussion on PipForia :
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=6457269717&topic=3748
name of Expert Advisor : PipForia HGM v004FB
current tested version : v004FB
start date : 24th Dec 2007
current settings : customised setting files from the creator, tweeked for running the EA hands-off (100% auto), and lot sizes (ie. risk) optimised for a $10K starting capital.
pairs traded : EURJPY, GBPUSD on InterbankFX
manual intervention : none
live statement (updated every 10 mins) :
http://www.ckowyong.com/blog/statements/pipforia_v004FB/statement.htm
history :
i started looking into PipForia in early nov 2007…. and managed to get a trial of the PipForia Hedged Grid EA around 15th nov 2007. forward-tests were performed, but (according to the creator) they did not yield the expected results. the creator modified the EA and sent me a new copy (v004float) that should work better, but some intervention was necessary to avoid holding trades over the weekend. however, it did not work very well as my daily VPS reboots interfered with how the EA works when it was set to “hibernate” in order to close all trades.
finally in late Dec, the creator sent me a new version (v004FB) which was tweaked to run 100% hands-free, 24×5.5 without any intervention.
observations :
[30 jan 2008]
since version v004FB was put to the test on 24 dec 2007, the EA encountered a few periods of (on hindsight) temporal drawdown…. some lasting as long as 14 days. it’s only on 21 jan 2008 that we saw a marked increase in performance when it managed to close a series of open trades with a nett profit.
looking at the massive statement is quite daunting, as the EA has made 330 trades in about 6 weeks. although huge number of trades, but the lot sizes were small. trades were either 0.03 or 0.12 standard lots.
to help you understand the trades better, i have imported them into a spreadsheet and sorted them into chunks, which i will now refer to as CYCLES. please download this spreadsheet and have a look : http://www.ckowyong.com/blog/members/pipforia_trade_analysis_30_jan_2008.xls
according to what i see, this EA trades in CYCLES. each cycle is kept open until it can “close all” with a nett profit or a small loss. the colored chunks in the spreadsheet signifies the few critical cycles where the EA was in an extended period of drawdown.
borrowing the words from a friend, the Hedged Grid Management EA lays “a minefield of pending orders, with a line that seems good for a future trend, buy orders above and sell orders below that line. When the price zigzags through the minefield, positions will be opened (ie. begin of CYCLE). and when the trend begins and a certain profit in equity level is reached, the EA will close all positions (ie. end of CYCLE).
the spreadsheet shows that the EA is very efficient in opening and closing a cycle quickly for a profit. just look at 28 jan 2008 and you’ll see that it opened and closed 5 CYCLES within the same day for a tidy gain of +334 pips (got to do some calculations). 22 jan 2008 was also amazing with 7 CYCLES and +127 pips across the 2 pairs it was trading.
risk wise, i believe it’s all managed by the lot sizes. since the EA does not trade with a stop-loss (as far as i can see), it relies purely on hedging for protection. when hedged perfectly, the maximum risk of this EA would be when it enters a long period of drawdown which becomes so bad that it triggers a margin call. hence, i feel that the critical part of this EA is in the lot size settings in the EA. lot sizes MUST be calculated specifically for the size of the trading capital. over trade and a margin call is bound to come sooner or later.
with a gain of +23.58% in 6 weeks, i think PipForia Hedged Grid v004FB is doing very well.
visit the following link for an excellent discussion of this EA with the creator (David Robinson) : http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=6457269717&topic=3748
buy ck a coffee :O)
