Dear Leon,
You Cheer My Day
Thank you for your words of encouragement. It's having people like you that cheers my day and let me know that my efforts are worth the while. I'm not discouraged by different views, in fact I think it's good to have different views and approaches to be shared freely in this forum. I'm disappointed when opposing views or different perspectives can't be tolerated or appreciated. I wish there are more rooms given to people the freedom and space to find their own styles and approaches to take with them in their journey, be it long or short cut, in whatever way deem useful and helpful to that individual.
Keep An Open Mind, the key to open many doors (of knowledge)
I've a curious mind. I love to hear perspectives...I may not have to agree but that doesn't prevent me from trying to see and understand their point of views, and try to sieve out the gems from their sharing. There are always things to learn from different perspectives, all have it's own merits and limitations. The more perspectives we have, the wider our knowledge. I may put them aside (but not discard it), when it's not applicable to my current circumstances and come back to it when it's appropriate to the current stage of my learning curves. There are always values we can learn from one another...as the saying goes, "we bond/connect through our similarities, we learn from our differences". If everyone in this forum "talk" like me, I learnt nothing. Hence, different views, approaches, methodologies, etc are most welcome, cos I never want to stop learning.
My own EA development Journey
As for my own EA development journey, I think some may be surprised if I say that I learnt to develop my success EA main via observing how the indicators "behave" in the MT4 charts. I put several types of indicators and observe them and eliminate those that are too "complicated" and finally, I found a set that would help me make sense of the market/price movements. Once I got this picture (from the indicators on the MT4), everything becomes crystal clear to me. It gives me great confidence and this confidence is very important because I would still go ahead to put my EA to test even when it failed the Monte Carlo, multi test (why? I don't know and I can't explain) and henceforth I don't rely on Monte Carlo and multi test to make the decision for me (at least at this stage of my journey, I would use it for other stages of my development later). This confidence is necessary so that it gives me the strength to go now despite all the ups and downs till I finally found the key combination of the opening conditions that would make my EA having excellent results.
I Love Charts!
That's why I love to look at charts and whenever someone share they indicators and parameters used, I would try to put it in the chart (if I can find the indicators) and see how it looks. I can see the potential behind some of the sharing and I feel they just lacked the skills to transfer them to FSB and maximise the use of LTF to help them materialise these concepts into profitable EAs. Some times I try to capture what they share and put it in EA and upload it to the forum to give people an idea on how to work on it further, but if what people expect, is that the EA would work perfectly the moment they install it in MT4 and start making money...then sorry, that's not my job, to perfect their theory. It's like asking me to start my EA development journey all over again for their theory...I don't have such energy and time.
Eureka!
I am extremely glad when I found the EA analysis website. Finally, I could truly see the results of my EA based on statistical performance such as profit factors etc and now just based on my own estimation or observations. I think I found this website so "late" and not earlier is a blessing in disguise. If I have found it earlier, I would have been contented with my results, i.e. having a profit factor around 3. The irony of not finding the website earlier, was that, during all these time of working to perfect my EA, I managed to pushed my EA performance way beyond profit factor 10 and some of them having 100% win rato. I'm surprised myself and I'm relieved to know all these years of efforts have not gone down to waste. My tenancy has paid off.
I'm Glad to Help
Leon, I would be glad if I can help you and others in their own EA development journey. Do feel free to ask any questions. I would be glad to share some trading tips like LTF and trading perspectives. But please let no one ask me for my trade secrets (and forgive me when I deliberately ignore these questions). I don't believe in giving my trade secrets away (especially to those who didn't labour for it). Asking me for my trade secrets is like asking Popov to give away his FSB company to someone else, after all these years of efforts. I don't think anyone would have such audacity to make such request, likewise, I hope no one would do that to me. By giving away, I cultivate poor trading disciplines and promotes greed (wanting something without paying the price for it, just the way some users treated Popov/FSB). I'm not as generous as Popov, when it comes to giving away my trade secret. And as Pradeep said, "Popov generosity is highly misplaced". That I fully agree.