News Trader and Session Trader Testing DEMO Diskusia

Lessons Learnt News Trading.

1/ Be wary of news releases where there are multiple releases of data for the same country at the same time. GBP example industrial vs manufacturing data release (one good and one bad - causes whipsaw). This can trigger trades in both directions even with a OCO setting as the movements are so fast that the pending orders fail to get deleted due to server busy. Can make money in both directions but more likely that the server will be busy when trying to close orders so make loses in both directions. Run on demo for these releases to keep monitoring impact but don't run live unless this assumption proves false with more data. Other risk is when you have CAD and USD data both being released concurrently don't trade the CAD / USD pair as if you have positive data on both and released split seconds apart you get another whipsaw. You can still trade the USD data on the USD/JPY pair and the CAD data on a EURCAD pair (manual setting)

2/ Ensure use the BE setting and trigger for BE as this does at least produce positive trades albeit small, beats a negative trade.

3/ The TP setting of 100 pips is rarely met, some of the gains are being given away, use a tighter trailing SL on the TP100 setting to lock in more of the gains. Is a lower initial TP setting of maybe 50 or 60 pips (still a very nice gain) better for the initial pending order so once triggered there is no need for the order modification to have the trailing SL to lock in the gain (as these trades are often only 1 second long)? I think worth trialing both settings at 1/2 risk to see which does better...

4/ Don't use 3 settings (i.e. TP100 (Scalp), TP300 (Trend) and TP350 (high risk). Just use 2 settings TP300 to lock in moves like the move in NZDUSD today on the NZD rate cut (i.e. was a move of 175 pips), so set a trailing stop to lock in these gains.

5/ Global Prime / IC Markets / FXPro all did well on demo, however the slippage on live account made these brokers unprofitable. They don't have tight enough liquidity tiers around news releases.

I have heard from several traders now that Pepperstone DMA Razor account is working well in live accounts for news trading. Next broker to try. FXPig DMA (is also on list to try - set up a demo next, then if all goes well try with small live account).

The session trader EA that is running in this account (tag blue) is profitable and not subject to slippage issues so safe to run live.

https://www.myfxbook.com/members/aeronthomas/global-prime-demo-news-trading/1162053
https://www.myfxbook.com/members/aeronthomas/ic-markets-demo-news-trading/1162581

These accounts show the average pip gains after news releases. and the SLs (which have to be set to allow for spreadwidening around news release time). They can't be too low or will get more trades triggering SLs just due to spreadwidening. However need to trial other settings to see if can get down to maybe SL20 (monitor spreads on Pepperstone Live Razor account during news releases on majors and then decide if can reduce SL to maybe 20 instead of SL25/30 levels.

Still working out best broker for news trading... researching how much each broker widened spreads during Michigan Consumer Sentiment June 12th, and for June 11th Jobless Claims US. Results below:

Admiral Markets Prime 1.6 (consumer sentiment) 4.5 (jobless claims) total 6.1
Activtrades 2.2 / 4.0 total 6.2
FPMarkets 2.8 / 6.5 total 9.3
FXCM 2/12 total 14
FXPig 2.2/4 total 6.2
FXPro 2.2/3.2 total 5.4
Global Prime 1.4/4.5 total 5.9
Hotforex 1.1/2.4 total 3.5
IC Markets 0.6 /2.4 total 3
LMAX 5/20 total 25 (terrible)
OANDA 7/14 total 21 (terrible)
Pepperstone 0.8/4.5 total 5.3
Rubix 0.8 / 4 total 4.8
Synergy Hybrid 2.7 / 10 total 12.7 (terrible)
Tickmill 0.7/3.6 total 4.3

Spread is only one factor to consider slippage and speed of execution is the other, and regulation. Brokers tested live this strategy so far that have failed are IC Markets, Global Prime and FXPro (terrible slippage).

Still working out best broker for news trading... researching how much each broker widened spreads during Michigan Consumer Sentiment June 12th, and for June 11th Jobless Claims US. Results below:

Admiral Markets Prime 1.6 (consumer sentiment) 4.5 (jobless claims) total 6.1
Activtrades 2.2 / 4.0 total 6.2
FPMarkets 2.8 / 6.5 total 9.3
FXCM 2/12 total 14
FXOptimax 1/13 total 14
FXPig 2.2/4 total 6.2
FXPro 2.2/3.2 total 5.4
Global Prime 1.4/4.5 total 5.9
Hotforex 1.1/2.4 total 3.5
IC Markets 0.6 /2.4 total 3
LMAX 5/20 total 25 (terrible)
OANDA 7/14 total 21 (terrible)
Pepperstone 0.8/4.5 total 5.3
Rubix 0.8 / 4 total 4.8
Synergy Hybrid 2.7 / 10 total 12.7 (terrible)
Tickmill 0.7/3.6 total 4.3

Spread is only one factor to consider slippage and speed of execution is the other, and regulation. Brokers tested live this strategy so far that have failed are IC Markets, Global Prime and FXPro (terrible slippage).

Others above that have been ruled out due to spread widening are FXCM, LMAX, OANDA, Synergy. Others above ruled out due to lack of regulation and not available to Australian investors: Tickmill.

Others being researched further Citiindex.com.au (part of Gain Capital Market Maker but does allow price tolerance (slippage protection), Tradedirect365, IG Index, Divisafx.com

Divisafx.com is NZ regulated so wary of them, not the best reports online. Activtrades the same terrible feedback on donnaforex forum. Shortlist to try is Pepperstone, Admiral Markets Prime, FP Markets, Hotforex, Rubix.

another lesson learnt today, AUD/USD is much hard to trade news as the liquidity it lower during asian session and whipsaw occured due to rather benign minutes from RBA. Lesson trade at reduced risk AUD news, and trade rate announcements (rather than minutes of meetings) less chance of whipsaws.

Easyforex I am now trialing on demo. They have guaranteed SL on mt4 during news events it's 36 pips, outside news events it's minimum SL of 12.5 pips. For pending orders these must be placed 8 pips away from current price (my strategy is currently using 16 pips so that's fine). Currently been using SL of 20 or 25 will see if can cope with 36 pips, if it means less slippage and losses of 45 pips like was getting on GP with slippage. They have fixed spread also of 1.8 to 3 pips depending on account type for majors. There are no commissions or other fees (except swaps).

Easyforex made 3,5,5 pips on the GBP trades yesterday versus this Pepperstone test where the SL of 20 kicked in (too low, easy forex was set at 36). There was potential to earn even higher but the protective setttings of locking in profits with BE in case of whipsaw took trades out on EasyForex when price continued to drop for another 47 pips (the trades also closed at 1 second before scheduled news release on Easyforex (after entering 10 seconds before), Pepperstone activated 8 seconds before and taken out 1-2 seconds after release of news.

I have set up a demo for Cityindex.com.au and input price tolerance (ie. slippage control at 4pips). Will see if this stop trades from slippage i.e. getting poor entries however it may not close our trades also which means will have to be manually closed out or when slippage reduces (after initial news announcement momentum has faded). Interested to see what effect this will have on the strategy. the fixed spreads on cityindex.com.au are also much lower than easyforex although they don't have guaranteed stops. neither have any commissions.

FOMC provided a good opportunity to see how spreads widened on IC, Pepperstone. Citiindex and Easy Forex have fixed spread so they didn't widen.

Ic Markets vs Pepperstone
EUR/USD 11.5 vs 21.9
GBP/USD 19.3 vs 28.0
JPY/USD 6.7 vs 16.1
AUD/USD 10.0 vs 16.6

In all cases the spread was higher on Pepperstone during release of FOMC, this is in the demo platform for Pepperstone, Live account for IC Markets. The next test will be slippage in live environment trading very small 0.01 lots to test the waters. Perhaps the plan will need to be to just avoid the very big news releases like FOMC and NFP to avoid too much slippage and trade the other releases...

Issue with Easy forex was that you can't set a BE with a SL only 5 pips away from current price at least during news release (although seems to have worked minute after release so need to check with them what was going on). One trade also hit the maximum SL of 36 pips (which is a guaranteed SL -ie no slippage). Cityindex also had a trade hit the SL of 36 pips (there is no minimum SL on this provider so could be set much much lower (changed to 15 pips) and won't risk spread widening triggering the SL, as fixed spread). The issue could be slippage with this broker will trial demo bit longer with lower SL, and then trial small live account to check slippage.

Just got the spreads for Pepperstone REAL of myfxbook compared with others below during FOMC.

JPY/USD
IC Markets Vs Pepperstone Vs Global Prime Vs Admiral Markets Prime Vs, Tickmill Vs ThinkForex Vs TradersWay
6.7 vs 12.8 Vs 9 Vs 9.7 Vs 6.3 Vs 12.5 Vs 5.8

GBP/USD
19.3 Vs 28 Vs 18.7 Vs 17.8 Vs 14.9 Vs 15 Vs 23.5

Total
26 (Ic Markets) Vs 40.8 (Pepperstone) Vs 27.7 (GP) Vs 27.5 (admiral markets) Vs 21.2 (Tickmill) Vs 27.5 (Thinkforex) Vs 29.3 (Traders Way)

Conclusion

Ic Markets did the best except for Tickmill (not available Australian clients). Spreads for Pepperstone are their Razor account. Also Admiral Markets is worth a look maybe consistently lower spreads, and autochartist for free.

Just checked ASIC Regulated XM it was 10.3 JPYUSD and 12.7 GBPUSD during FOMC. total of 23 lower than IC little higher than Tickmill. Interesting to find out about execution speed and slippage for them versus IC.

Pepperstone Vs IC Markets Real spread widening in latest CAD news USDCAD was 18.6 versus 7.6, this spread widening is enough to trigger trades although in this case prices did move just over the 16 pips trigger set 10 seconds before news release. The citiindex demo lost 1 set of 3 trades not 2 sets of 3 trades so only one set triggered reducing losses, or did OCO work better on that broker, more research...

My I ask what is your settings for Session Trader? If you do not mind. Also, your NZD / USD is much much better than mine :)

regards,

Sure plexy Session trader I have been using default although I may have had the pips away setting at 2 pips instead of 1 at one stage earlier on (as I was finding that it sometimes just touched outside the rectangle then reversed and by setting 2 pips away it avoided those bad trades), I now have it back to 1 pip away, as I found the locked in pips of profit was higher on this demo than my real live account with IC Markets was getting. The only NZD/USD trades would be from news trader or the daily high low (which I think is on default settings anyway). I did get a bad GBPCAD trade yesterday and with a 100 pip loss, I think the high low candle EA would benefit from having a pips away setting like the session trader that I could set to 1 or 2 pips away.

Hi Ozzie,

Are you still measuring the brokers (accounts) spreads at news event? Do you have the Quantina Straddle or After News trader? It has spread and latency meter, I would share with you my results on Pepperstone and FxPro accounts. (live) :)

thanks,

Plexy

Hey Plexy, I have both of those I haven't been using them much lately, except a few occasions used straddle trader, seems to work well, and a couple of times the news trader (both more manual than the newstrader 3.5 ea (which pulled the news events automatically). I have been more manual trading lately using VSA techniques. I will start both back up again on a fresh small $2K account for monitoring. I have accounts at fxpro and Ic markets. Which of the brokers is working best for you? what have your results been so far? which news events are you picking out to trade each month? cheers ozzie

Hi Ozzie,

I would be appreciate if you can give me correct information of IC markets :) .. I was very planning to open an account with them again. (years ago I'v got account on IC but at news time their servers was freezing... , however I know that they 'got new server and connections) :) ... so I'm thinking about it. I also have FxPro but cTrader is faster and more accurate than MT4 by FxPro... so I'm just using cTrader with them.

Pepperstone: MT4 server 3 and server 5 are fast enough and not freezing. All the rest are 1..6 are .... :D ...

Straddle Trading : If there is a big different of news data released , yes it's perfect , but if there is no any change--> actual = forecast, I'm always loosing. Doesn't matter if it's NFP , CPI, or just simple GDP news :( , seems like a gamble me.

After News Trader: I pretty like it, but this strategy is too new even for me... need more statistic, practice, data, etc. But, I'm telling you it will work :)

Now, I was asking you about brokers and accounts because I want to get back to trade with News Release and Fundamental strategy.
Need a simple VPS and a correct broker. Also, there are a few AutoClick software, even Quantina (my partners) is going to release their one soon. But, there is FNG.exe too for free.

You were asking me:
'which news events are you picking out to trade each month?'
I'm going to trade all the news events what Central Banks are focusing, CPI, GDP, Unemployment etc, depends of the country.

I'm inviting you to join us for sharing your experience regarding news trading strategies as we do, including a few my friends.
I'm actively going to trade again on News Events. We have a PreNews-, Straddle-, AfterNews- and Fundamental with autoclik strategies. Our plan is to use all the above strategies depends of news events.

I'd like to ride this year with great monthly profit :))

regards,

plexy

I am also finding that platform is freezing with Ic Markets now on news releases, it's hopeless for news trading. Even normal scalping is near impossible as every 15 minute candle the platform freezes for upto 10 seconds. They gave me direct IP for the server in NY I have 1.7ms latency, but still having this issue. I am on server 5, do you know the name of their new server perhaps I can ask my account to be moved to it to see if solves the issue. I am starting to suspect they may be using a virtual dealer plugin, or b booking me.

I used to have an account with Pepperstone so may start again there, on one of the servers you set out above. I am also going to move manual trades to ctrader if scalping , or doing shorter term trades. I just saw quantina released their autoclick software I like it's available on monthly rental so will give it a try. The after news trader looks like it has promise, I am going to restart up itrend ea also. I have nearly all of their products. do you have a forum for this group? cheers ozzie.