ive noticed a great many of the accounts on myfxbook are demo accounts, testing strategies and robots and there overall performance.

any true trader would not be too concerned with equity growth, why? example:~ a scalper robot that uses large lot sizes can easily grab $100 for a 1 pip scalp trade, it is widely known that scalpers have a very, very, very high risk/reward ratio, one loosing trade can blow all the winning trades for the past week or more in one fale swoop, not good trading practice and very poor money management. second example, my own testing account, i'm actually -800 pips from account opening, but im in profit, why? high risk scalping to recover the account, this demonstrates why we all need the charts modified.

we have 2 charts outlaying balance and growth, both based purely on profit/equity and effectiviely show the same information. what should be present instead is one charting account equity growth and the second charting pip growth, this is the only way one can fully determine the efficiency and stablility of a manual strategy/automated trading robot.

this way, when we look at a traders performance chart, we can see not just the equity growth in percentage but also the pip growth in comparision to equity percentage, if both are following the same direction then your doing well , if your in profit but are still lossing pips( due to lot sizes) then that line will be going in the opposite direction. if we see big dippers(drawdown) in the chart we know your scalping with wide stoplosses or trade with poor money management i.e no stoploss and close the trade manually after you finally except defeat, your secret's out to public scrutiny lol.

but on a serious note, this is what i'd be more interested in, as we all often use differing lot sizes which capture varying amounts of profit/losses, equity growth is really a very poor representation of the true growth of your account, please change the equity growth chart to pip growth or have equity balance + equity growth + pip growth for a fuller picture.

this of course could mean tweaking your systems page coding, as the true pips v. balance should equate to who's doing the best, on the systems page we see accounts with +600%m but with 50% drawdown, high risk! but what would be better is that the systems page works out which account has the most pips+balance for that month, we'll know the pip value too.

i would rather see daily pips, then a growth of pips..as the growth will follow the balance and equity chart so there's really no point seeing the same graphs over and over again.

but maybe they can add both?

It is an excellent suggestion, many who push fraudulent systems wouldn't want it though.

ubernova,

If you are referring to martigale type strategies, then we may be in agreement. I look at these types of strategies with suspicious interest. I wouldn't throw them out the window but I haven't found one I trust sufficiently to trade live with.

That said, if your idea of good money management is fixed lot sizes then you have more to learn than what you think.

Many EA's use good, solid and more sophisticated money management than you could do as a manual trader, and there is nothing fraudulent about that.

I find it interesting that you say EA's don't work........I use only EA's to trade and I am making money(yeah, yeah stephanus, I know, I have open trades and some drawdown............heaven forbid!). If you look at the top performers in the systems(live accounts), it would appear to me that more than half are automated systems.

Perhaps the problem is not that EA's don't work, but rather people under-estimate the amount of time, effort, dedication and knowledge it takes to use them profitably. For me, it has been over a year now and there are still many things I do not understand.

At the end of the day, before you say that I am using a fraudulent system, you can have a look......my system is raking in the pips, so I stand by my statement that you cannot tell anything about my system and my money management by looking at a pips curve.

We need to see both (PIPS and Equity). PIPS growth is an indicator measurement of our trading strategy. Equity is a measurement of our wealth. :-)