Showing posts with label Robotrader. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robotrader. Show all posts

Monday, 13 April 2020

6th day, no gain no loss…



As you can imagine after reading the title, it was a flat day. Actually, I made a small profit but it didn’t cover the commissions. Let’s see what happened during that day in the EUR/USD and GBP/USD futures:


British Pound


It was a directional day for the British Pound without any big spike or swings as we saw in the previous days.  This was explained by the increase of COVID-19 cases in the US and the expected approval of further help by the FED.

6B 06/20 


It raised almost without stopping until 14:30 where the price was ranging between 1.2387 and 1.2405. In one of these retracements, the algo was triggered and it sent a buy of 5 lots. I wasn’t sure about opening the position considering its morning trend and range. One of the best aspects of using algos is that we remove discretionary decisions and feelings. After entering in the position, like the most part of the times, the GBP/USD futures fell to 1.2374. After that, it rebounded breaking the highs of the day and it reached the 1.2429 level. It couldn’t breach these levels and it went back to 1.2400 where the algo closed the position.

6B 06/20 trade chart


This chart shows more detailed of what I explained in the previous paragraph.

6B 06/20 trade


In contrast with other days, the MAE ($437.50) is around 1/3 of the MFE ($1281.25) and this shows how well the market behaved for the algo I’m using. One of the problems is that the ETD is still high because the algo is not closing with a signal. Until now, the algo has closed according to the time configured.


Euro FX


The Euro vs the US Dollar didn’t have a clear trend. It was a total swing. It seems that the EUR was stronger in the morning while the USD took its place in the afternoon.

6E 06/20


As you can see, and as it was expected, the algo was triggered in a retracement. It performed well during the first hour. After that, the Euro dropped strongly but seems that the traders didn’t believe in this movement and the buying pressure took the price to the point in which the position was open. At this point, it continued to rise to 1.0909 where the dollar strength came back. The position was closed at 17:08 London Time

Trades and account balance


I didn’t get profit in both trades. I lost $398.75 in the EuroFX trade including commissions and I won $395.75 in the British Pound also including commissions.

08/04/2020 trades


I shouldn’t be upset… I made a profit without considering commissions. At the end of the day is not real money and this is good learning and I would like to remember that in my opinion the commissions and the slippage should be included when you are backtesting a system. In my experience, if the system is not good enough this will make the difference between making profit or loss.

Account Balance


One of the conclusions that I found in the first 6 days is that probably I should implement a fixed take profit or maybe consider a trailing stop. It’s early to say but probably I will run some tests to see if the statistic ratios are better than my current algo.

Thanks for reading this post!


#algorithmic_trading, #Trading, #Euro, #EUR, #GBP, #British Pound, #USD, #EURUSD, #GBPUSD, #Dollar, #performance, #profit, #loss, #FED, #COVID-19, #Robotrader

Wednesday, 8 April 2020

Robotrader2020, algorithmic trading competition


I decided to participate in Robotrader and I believe that is worth to share my experience here.

I consider Robotrader as one of the referents in algorithmic trading education in Spain. It offers a series of lectures or seminars with some of the best professionals in algorithmic trading, investment banking, and technology.  In addition, it holds a competition in which the participants need to create an algo to trade automatically for two months. This is the 10th edition and it’s been a great so far.

The main purpose is to introduce the world of trading and automatic investing to students and invite them to do it using different programming languages.
I think that it is a great initiative even if you have knowledge about investing in financial markets. It is very difficult to find professionals with knowledge in both areas. To be honest, it helps you to understand how difficult is to try to merge one traditional area like trading with technology. Obviously, it depends on each student, some of them will focus on high-frequency trading systems while others will focus in a more traditional trading system.  One of the things that I like the most is that it challenges you on the technology side. I mean, it’s not only programming the algo. It involves making research, try to understand how the markets move, designing the algo, backtesting, optimizing, choosing the right money management system, and putting this in production through a paper trading account. And when you think that you are done…  don’t forget to deal with connectivity because if you don’t connect, the orders won’t be sent to the exchange.



I will be sharing my experience during the competition. It started last week so I have a couple of articles to post.

Finally, I would like to thank the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (and everyone that is supporting this event) for this initiative.  Please see this link if you want to have a look:




Thanks for reading this post. 

8th day small profit that helps me to keep going in the competition

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