1 (edited by chief2000 2012-04-09 21:34:57)

Topic: FSB - Several questions

Hello,

I optimize strategy using H1 data and I completely removed Intrabar data.

1. After running Scanner I still see that scanning is not accomplished.
- Why?

2. I have data for all available timeframes - M1 - D1.
At some point I want to use only H1 and M30 with intrabar - how can I disable the rest without fisically removing other data-files?

3. During optimization I set number of parameters - min/max/step.
At some point (very often) I close optimizer in order to save strategy (FSB crashing sometimes..),
but when I re-open optimizer I see that all my parameters were removed..
EACH TIME I NEED TO DEFINE EXACTLY THE SAME - AGAIN AND AGAIN.
- How to instruct FSB to keep my parameters? I know better what are desired limits.

4. There are hard limits for SL / TP / BE with max value of 400 pips.
I don't want to limit optimizer by 400 pips of Profit, but I want to be able to optimize it.
- How can I remove your limits and use mine? (TP=2000 pips)
- Why FSB need to limit traders? (there other parameters too). Todays PC-s are strong enough.

5. In the generator's window there are lock and chain - what exactly they mean?

6. I tried to optimize Donchian with a step of 5 from 5 to 200 (your HARD LIMIT AGAIN! Why?).
As result I've got a value of "[5" , which is bug.

EDITED:
I just found out that it happens with step=1 too. New values will be accepted,
but result will be different and absolutely wrong.
Just a guess (not 100% sure) - it might happen if periods of two Donchians are optimized in parallel.


7. Some explanations are not clear at all.
For example, opening condition for Donchian: "Enter long at the upper band"
- What does it mean exactly? Cross? Bar open/close above/touch?
Or "The bar opens below the upper band" - there many bars open below the upper band.
And so on. If possible - please, make them more clear.

8. There are two possibilities when we open new position - use fixed lots or certain percentage.
- How to optimize lots for new orders in case when we use lots?
- Where to set desired percent if for example we need to limit 2% risk for each trade?


Thank you!

Re: FSB - Several questions

It is quite a learning curve to use FST, it takes a lot of experience and also a through knowledge of the program and its options.

There is a thread especially to request modifications to the program and the developer is generally quite accommodating for requests. Please add to the thread a complete description of the modifications you require, one per post, so that the request may be dealt with as appropriate.

Data can be in whatever folder you want it to be in and you can select what goes into each data folder, I have several data folders for different purposes.

Regarding scanning. you will have to post a screen shot and perhaps your data for someone to analyze that situation.

Keep screenshots of the optimizer results.

Use Strategy Properties to set your stop loss and take profit.

As you can see, your lack of familiarity with the features of the software is causing you some problems, please take time to study each area of this site and all of the documentation and that will resolve most of the difficulties you are having.

Anything that you feel to be an error. please write a complete description and enclose screenshots instead of saying something is an error....

You will find that with more knowledge of the software that most of your difficulties will disappear. There are thousands of users..., some of them are quite advanced in system development.... and they are having  great success with this software.

My 'secret' goal is to push EA Studio until I can net 3000 pips per day....

Re: FSB - Several questions

Blaiserboy wrote:

It is quite a learning curve to use FST, it takes a lot of experience and also a through knowledge of the program and its options.
. . .

It is the easiest way to say "you are not familiar"..
I specified 1-8 issues.
If you are familiar, please, reply on each issue separately, instead of mixing everything up.

Re: FSB - Several questions

Well, by your questions you have revealed that you are unfamiliar with the software, it is up to you to spend the required time to learn.

Trading is a very rewarding business, however, a trader has to put in the learning time. and if he wants to skip that part..... he will not see success long term.

I have answered your questions and explained how to submit requests for changes. the rest you will have to do for yourself.

My 'secret' goal is to push EA Studio until I can net 3000 pips per day....

Re: FSB - Several questions

4. There are hard limits for SL / TP / BE with max value of 400 pips.

Limit is 5000.

http://s15.postimage.org/s1s1smn5z/10_04_2012_08_44_03.jpg

Re: FSB - Several questions

3. During optimization I set number of parameters - min/max/step.
At some point (very often) I close optimizer in order to save strategy (FSB crashing sometimes..),
but when I re-open optimizer I see that all my parameters were removed..

Optimizer remembers +- step you use last. It doesn't remember individual values because it will be wrong if you change the strategy or some of its parameters. Or optimizer has to remember all strategies and its settings?

(FSB crashing sometimes..)

Lets first fix this. How FSB crashes, what is the crash message, what is the strategy, data and settings. How to reproduce the crash?

Re: FSB - Several questions

7. Some explanations are not clear at all.
For example, opening condition for Donchian: "Enter long at the upper band"
- What does it mean exactly? Cross? Bar open/close above/touch?
Or "The bar opens below the upper band" - there many bars open below the upper band.
And so on. If possible - please, make them more clear.

This is freeware and open source project. The documentation is also in open wiki. If you find some answers, please find time also to write them in the wiki.

Re: FSB - Several questions

2. I have data for all available timeframes - M1 - D1.
At some point I want to use only H1 and M30 with intrabar - how can I disable the rest without fisically removing other data-files?

Find FSB in GitHub, Clone it, disable loading of unwanted time frames, and build the project. If you want make options boxes for this feature. If it works properly, you can request it to be included in the official distribution.

If you want, you can ask or hire someone to make this for you.

Re: FSB - Several questions

Popov wrote:

4. There are hard limits for SL / TP / BE with max value of 400 pips.

Limit is 5000.

http://s15.postimage.org/s1s1smn5z/10_04_2012_08_44_03.jpg

The limit is 5000, but in case with 5 digits it is equivalent to 500 pips
(in the spread we see 40 pips => 4 pips).

10 (edited by chief2000 2012-04-10 09:00:58)

Re: FSB - Several questions

3. During optimization I set number of parameters - min/max/step.
At some point (very often) I close optimizer in order to save strategy (FSB crashing sometimes..),
but when I re-open optimizer I see that all my parameters were removed..

Popov wrote:

Optimizer remembers +- step you use last. It doesn't remember individual values because it will be wrong if you change the strategy or some of its parameters. Or optimizer has to remember all strategies and its settings?

No doubt, optimizer must remember the values set by user (for min/max/step).
The same principle works in MetaTrader and it is great that MT does not touch these values!
(even when user close and reopen MT the tool keeps all the values defined by user)
If somebody wants to let FSB to change them he could press the button.
But by default optimizer should always remember and use what user wants.

Re: FSB - Several questions

(FSB crashing sometimes..)

Lets first fix this. How FSB crashes, what is the crash message, what is the strategy, data and settings. How to reproduce the crash?

Crashes do not happen very often, but they are unpredictable and it is much better to save data from time to time.
I think they happened mostly (in my case) when I tried to use a full history of M1 (or M5?) as intrabars.
At the moment I use only H1, but still prefer to save the data.

Re: FSB - Several questions

9. I tried to add Moving Averages - same limit of max value = 200.
If user need to "simulate" H1 on M5 timeframe he will need to have upper limit of 1000-3000.
Like I asked - please, remove all the limits.
Users must know what they are going to do and the tool should not limit them.

Re: FSB - Several questions

10. My database has 5 digits. I tried to set 4 digits inside FSB, hoping that all values will become "normal" (like if I would use standard 4-digits).
For example, 40 pips spread will be 4 pips. But this did not happen, so I set 5 digits again.
Not sure what is the purpose of this option? (in the currency editor)

Re: FSB - Several questions

If you want a MA with period of 3000, you'll need 3001 bars in order to receive the first MA value.
FSB will need to limit minimum number of bars to 3002 to ensure that the indicator will be calculated properly at least two times and to can calculate the logic.

If you want to remove the limits, make a custom MA. It will take you 1 minute if you are familiar with the process or 1 hour to learn how to do it.

Re: FSB - Several questions

Popov wrote:

If you want a MA with period of 3000, you'll need 3001 bars in order to receive the first MA value.
FSB will need to limit minimum number of bars to 3002 to ensure that the indicator will be calculated properly at least two times and to can calculate the logic.

If you want to remove the limits, make a custom MA. It will take you 1 minute if you are familiar with the process or 1 hour to learn how to do it.


My historical database includes data from 2001 up to 2011, so there enough bars.
The problem is that every indicator has limits like that and it is practically impossible to create custom versions for everything.
What Generator will use in its initial optimizations?
It will take less time to program Expert Adviser for MetaTrader, while the purpose of FSB is to allow users to perform fast checks without knowledge in programming.

Re: FSB - Several questions

chief2000 wrote:

It will take less time to program Expert Adviser for MetaTrader

What are you waiting for then?

6. I tried to optimize Donchian with a step of 5 from 5 to 200 (your HARD LIMIT AGAIN! Why?).
As result I've got a value of "[5" , which is bug.

No bug, it's intentional.

Re: FSB - Several questions

footon wrote:
chief2000 wrote:

It will take less time to program Expert Adviser for MetaTrader

What are you waiting for then?

6. I tried to optimize Donchian with a step of 5 from 5 to 200 (your HARD LIMIT AGAIN! Why?).
As result I've got a value of "[5" , which is bug.

No bug, it's intentional.

Do you think you said something clever?
Yes, I'm using MetaTrader for programming Expert Advisers.
I just wanted to check if FSB can be usable for this task and if some old issues were resolved.

Re: FSB - Several questions

chief2000 wrote:

Do you think you said something clever?
Yes, I'm using MetaTrader for programming Expert Advisors.

Clever? Do you want to start an argument? You said it now yourself - you have sufficient knowledge of coding, this makes you far more capable than most of the users here in this forum!

Re: FSB - Several questions

footon wrote:
chief2000 wrote:

Do you think you said something clever?
Yes, I'm using MetaTrader for programming Expert Advisors.

Clever? Do you want to start an argument? You said it now yourself - you have sufficient knowledge of coding, this makes you far more capable than most of the users here in this forum!


What I meant is that FSB users should not be required to learn programming and look for complicated solutions, especially if the problems are obvious and can be easily fixed.

Re: FSB - Several questions

99% of Moving Averages using worldwide are with period of less than 200. If we make the period unlimited, we have to set such limits in the generator. If not, if you have 50 000 bars, Generator may choose MA with period of 49 998 and to leave 2 bars for backtesting smile.
If we set limit to 3000, only 1/10th of MAs will have period of less than 300. This will make it practically unusable.

FSB is intended to be easy for most of the users. Advanced users and coders knows how to adapt the software for his needs.

21 (edited by chief2000 2012-04-10 16:24:52)

Re: FSB - Several questions

Popov wrote:

99% of Moving Averages using worldwide are with period of less than 200. If we make the period unlimited, we have to set such limits in the generator. If not, if you have 50 000 bars, Generator may choose MA with period of 49 998 and to leave 2 bars for backtesting smile.
If we set limit to 3000, only 1/10th of MAs will have period of less than 300. This will make it practically unusable.

FSB is intended to be easy for most of the users. Advanced users and coders knows how to adapt the software for his needs.

95% of traders lose money..
If the issue would be only with Moving Average and only in Generator it would not be so critical.
But you force Hard Limits in Optimizer (and not with Moving Averages only), where only users should decide what parameters and limits are good for them.
In the worst case you could add a global variable in FSB and let users to chose desired limits (change it when necessary) and everybody would be happy.

The same problem with the amount of intrabars, but at least in this case the solution is simple.

Re: FSB - Several questions

There are other softwares for preparing Ea's, some of them are 'Point & Click' for the logic and they create the code for you.

Perhaps you should invest in a software of this type and that would resolve all of your difficulties.

My 'secret' goal is to push EA Studio until I can net 3000 pips per day....

Re: FSB - Several questions

WTF are we discussing here? All from this forum are happy but not you chief2000. I bet that you are also very pessimistic in your life ... smile I have an advice for you. Take it easy and admit that not everything in life can be 100% positive. You have to accomodate with this...

Re: FSB - Several questions

Every software available has its own persona, its own advantages and its own lacks, we have to learn to adjust to the software we are using, complaining is not productive.

We keep asking the developer to make modifications and he attempts to comply, there is soon going to be a revision which will add some great features for analysis... that is very important and useful to all.

Because this is an open source project, anyone can make modifications and adjust their copy of the software to their preference.... and if the modification will suit the community it will be added by the developer.


What more can we expect.?

Trading is a 'do it yourself' business and a 'learn it yourself' business. In this community are many people who have contributed some excellent ideas.

I am not too sure that there is another software that is accommodating as this...!!!

My 'secret' goal is to push EA Studio until I can net 3000 pips per day....

25 (edited by Blaiserboy 2012-04-10 23:28:14)

Re: FSB - Several questions

mentosan wrote:

WTF are we discussing here? All from this forum are happy but not you chief2000. I bet that you are also very pessimistic in your life ... smile I have an advice for you. Take it easy and admit that not everything in life can be 100% positive. You have to accomodate with this...

Who  are you to talk about me?


'Please refrain from abusive language in posts.'