Re: MT4 Sidekick - Demo Account Barometer

When adding a portfolio EA to a Real account there are input parameters that need to be set in order to enable Sidekick.  Otherwise the portfolio EA will trade as before.  Here is a link to the documentation -- scroll down to the section on "Live Account":
http://mt4tracker.com/documentation/mt4-sidekick-documentation/

Re: MT4 Sidekick - Demo Account Barometer

I did as according to the documents.  I set up both the PM EA and Side Kick, while the PM EA is still loading, there are a few trades that started to be opened, despite the fact that the Demo/Master account haven't started trading yet.  The PM EA I've turned the Side Kick On/True with a policy. 

The Side Kick was in Orange color.

Re: MT4 Sidekick - Demo Account Barometer

Could you send screen shots of both the Demo and Real accounts.

Also, could you send a screen shot of the input parameters for the portfolio EA running in the Real account.

Did you start Sidekick in the Demo account before adding the portfolio EA to the Real account?

54

Re: MT4 Sidekick - Demo Account Barometer

Hi Sleytus

according to license

1. how many times is possible sidekick to be installed in one pc? you say 5. But can i reinstall again in same PC and have 5 more?
2. can I install it in second PC also?

Re: MT4 Sidekick - Demo Account Barometer

GD wrote:

Hi Sleytus

according to license

1. how many times is possible sidekick to be installed in one pc? you say 5. But can i reinstall again in same PC and have 5 more?
2. can I install it in second PC also?


GD,

If I'm not wrong, you only need to install Side Kick ONCE.

Although Side Kick can allow you to install it's Side Kick EA and dll functions in MT4 terminals 5 at a time.  You can run Side Kick again (without the need to uninstall and re install) to install again in another 5 MT4 terminals.  You can keep repeating this process again and again till you reached your desired amount of installation in whatever number of MT4 terminals you want.

Alternatively, you can copy the Side Kick EA and dll files (3 of them in total) and cut and paste them in the respective MT4 terminals.  I would suggest using the Side Kick to install 5 at a time, it would still be faster.  However, I encounter some difficulties in one of my MT4 terminal and hence, I use the cut and paste method for this particular MT4 terminal.

56 (edited by hannahis 2018-04-10 06:32:01)

Re: MT4 Sidekick - Demo Account Barometer

Hi Steve,

I can't "recreate" the issue I encountered (orange color Side Kick) cos my Demo account has already been running since yesterday and hence collected "enough" trade history for my Slave/customer/live account to "turn green" color and trade accordingly.  In another words, I don't have the same problems I encountered earlier on (unless I restart the whole process again with a new demo account etc).

A few questions to ask...

1.  If my Demo account is using another external EA, Trailing Stop EA to monitor all open trades and change all the positions SL account to the certain trailing setting.  Will the Slave/customer/live account, likewise mirror/change the SL as according to what happened in the Demo account or the Slave/customer/live account will trade accordingly with the PM EA (which is without extral trailing SL)?

2. I use adding function such as Winner options for my EA.  So when my Slave/customer/live account open a trade by magic number 1 (with winner function add 4x), will it open a new trade (at the next signal as according to the EA) or does the next signal still check with the Side Kick whether the criteria has fulfilled etc?

3. I used Policy 4 (Win and Consecutive) in one of my testing.  I noticed that even though a number of EA didn't meet the Policy criteria (Win 50% and Consecutive win 2), the EA still was "allowed" to open trades. 

Attached here is the Expert tab in MT4 Terminal that shows some error messages such as Side Kick "failure"
https://s14.postimg.org/6li1p00l9/Side_Kick_failures.jpg

57 (edited by hannahis 2018-04-10 06:43:34)

Re: MT4 Sidekick - Demo Account Barometer

Hi Steve,

Can you add extra statistics into the Side Kick Stats?

Net Profit for 1) Recent Trades and 2) Total trades

The reason is some of my EA though have low win/loss ratio but it's overall positive Net Profit.

So knowing the Net Profit of both the recent and total trades enable me to "prune" or categorized my EA according and put them under the most appropriate policy settings.  So that if I noticed that there are a number of EA with low win ratio but high net Profit, I can then transfer these EA to another account, using a different win/loss policy for the Side Kick function.

And likewise, if I noticed there are some EA that despite having higher win/loss ratio but have negative Net Profit, I would then remove these EA out of the portfolio.

Re: MT4 Sidekick - Demo Account Barometer

Hello GD,

GD wrote:

1. how many times is possible sidekick to be installed in one pc? you say 5. But can i reinstall again in same PC and have 5 more?

When you install MT4 Sidekick on a PC that counts as one installation.  There is no limit to the number of MT4 terminal sessions on that PC that can use MT4 Sidekick.

GD wrote:

2. can I install it in second PC also?

There is a limit of 3 activations -- that is, the license key can be activated on a total of 3 PC's before the license server in the clouds begins to complain.  For each of those 3 PC's, you can have an unlimited number of MT4 terminal sessions running.

Re: MT4 Sidekick - Demo Account Barometer

GD wrote:

If I'm not wrong, you only need to install Side Kick ONCE.

The license key is activated once per PC.

For each Demo Account, you'll need to install SidekickEA.ex4 and SidekickEA.dll.

For each Real Account, you will need to install Sidekick.dll.  Portfolio Maker will automatically copy Sidekick.dll to the terminal session where you compile it.

However, if you later copy the portfolio EA's *.ex4 to a different terminal session then you will also need to copy Sidekick.dll to the ..\MQL4\Libraries folder.

In other words, SidekickEA.ex4 works in a Demo account and requires SidekickEA.dll.
Portfolio EA's work in a Real account and require Sidekick.dll.

Re: MT4 Sidekick - Demo Account Barometer

Hello Hannah,

Hannahis wrote:

1.  If my Demo account is using another external EA, Trailing Stop EA to monitor all open trades and change all the positions SL account to the certain trailing setting.  Will the Slave/customer/live account, likewise mirror/change the SL as according to what happened in the Demo account or the Slave/customer/live account will trade accordingly with the PM EA (which is without extral trailing SL)?

Sidekick does not alter anything in your EA.  Your EA continues to work exactly as before.  In your EA there is a function that Popov wrote called ActionTrade::OpenNewPosition.  This is the function that calls an MT4 API to open a new position.  However, just before opening a new position I've inserted some Sidekick code that first checks for 2 consecutive wins.  If the strategy has 2 consecutive wins then the OpenNewPosition function is allowed to complete -- otherwise, the function returns without opening a new position.

The Demo account does not send signals to the Real account.  The strategies in the two account execute independently.  The only difference is that a strategy in the Real account will check the database before actually opening a position.


Hannahis wrote:

2. I use adding function such as Winner options for my EA.  So when my Slave/customer/live account open a trade by magic number 1 (with winner function add 4x), will it open a new trade (at the next signal as according to the EA) or does the next signal still check with the Side Kick whether the criteria has fulfilled etc?

A Real account sort of mirrors a Demo account -- but not exactly.  There is a "disconnect".  You have a lot more experience than me when it comes to comparing how closely Demo accounts mirror Real accounts.

If a strategy in the Real account detects a signal, it will check the database for 2 consecutive wins.  The 2 consecutive wins would have occurred in the Demo account.

As you gain confidence with Sidekick, at some point in the future you might consider substituting a Real *micro* account for the Demo account.  In this case, the Real *micro* account would be the one that creates the database.  And the expectation is the Real *micro* account trades *exactly* like your Real account.

Hannahis wrote:

3. I used Policy 4 (Win and Consecutive) in one of my testing.  I noticed that even though a number of EA didn't meet the Policy criteria (Win 50% and Consecutive win 2), the EA still was "allowed" to open trades.

I recommend using Policy 2 -- 2 consecutive wins.

Hannahis wrote:

Attached here is the Expert tab in MT4 Terminal that shows some error messages such as Side Kick "failure"

This looks good.  The "Failures" mean those strategies in the Real account detected a signal but the signal was ignored because they had not yet met the requirement of 2 consecutive wins.

61 (edited by sleytus 2018-04-10 10:05:59)

Re: MT4 Sidekick - Demo Account Barometer

Hello Hannah,

hannahis wrote:

Can you add extra statistics into the Side Kick Stats?

No more stats.  Stats were used when generating / optimizing strategies and selecting which ones to add to your portfolio EA.  You can use MT4 Tracker on your Demo account if you want to "prune" strategies from your portfolio EA.

Once your portfolio EA is added to a Real account the only thing that matters is wins.  The idea behind Sidekick is very simple -- if a strategy is currently winning then let it open new positions.  Otherwise, it sleeps until sometime in the future when it demonstrates 2 consecutive wins (in the Demo account).

No more categorizing, pruning, ranking, analyzing -- whatever you want to call it.  If it is currently winning, then it gets to trade.  Otherwise, it sleeps.

62 (edited by GD 2018-04-10 12:04:59)

Re: MT4 Sidekick - Demo Account Barometer

Hi Hannah

I would like to add that
Sleytus needs  High win/loss Strategies, so after 2 wins you expect to have many wins
This explains what he says.
Your job is to create them.

Sleytus, is it possible to add the case of i.e 4 consecutive losses?
and leave number 10 as parameter?

Re: MT4 Sidekick - Demo Account Barometer

GD wrote:

is it possible to add the case of i.e 4 consecutive losses?
and leave number 10 as parameter

Do you mean 4 consecutive wins?  If so, the answer is yes.  Change the input parameter "Policy #2: Minimum ConsecutiveWins for trading" from its default value of '2' to '4'.

For input parameter "Which policy to use?" select "Policy #2 (Consecutive Wins)".

64 (edited by GD 2018-04-10 13:54:57)

Re: MT4 Sidekick - Demo Account Barometer

Hi Sleytus

1) I mean to have one more logic, to start trade after i.e.4 consecutive losses (which is an FSB pro result)
2) Is it possible to leave free as input parameter the number 10 of recent win/loss

Re: MT4 Sidekick - Demo Account Barometer

Hi GD,

Actually -- I'm thinking about moving in a different direction.  The next version of MT4 Sidekick will only have one policy -- "2 consecutive wins" -- and there won't be an option to do anything other than that.

I appreciate the feedback from you and Hannahis -- truly.  And for other tools (e.g. MT4 Tracker and Portfolio Maker) I've been pretty good about making changes as people have requested.  But MT4 Sidekick is different and I am not inclined to increase its complexity by adding more options.  I really like simplicity and MT4 Sidekick works for me.

It's interesting to me that even though I've mentioned "2 consecutive wins" as the policy to use probably about a zillion times, Hannah decided to use a different policy and you're asking about "4 consecutive losses".

If trading strategies in a Real account that are currently winning in a Demo account is not good enough, then your approach to trading will require a different type of application that can dynamically manage trades using more complex criteria and policies.

I don't mean to be rude -- please don't take it personal.  Your note to Hannah about high win/loss strategies and the burden being on users to create such strategies was perfect.  That's exactly it.  MT4 Sidekick does not make good strategies out of bad ones.  It simply decides which ones get to trade based on an observation that good strategies trade in streaks.

66 (edited by hannahis 2018-04-11 06:53:32)

Re: MT4 Sidekick - Demo Account Barometer

Revolutionary!!!

You can stop generating EA after EA, endlessly and keep deleting them when they are out of "sync".

The problem most of us faced is trying to search for an EA that is in sync with the market conditions (what the EA is "trained" for) and when that particular EA is not in sync with the market, it keep losing money and deplete our profits.  We don't know when to turn it on and off and Side Kick comes to into play.  In the past without Side Kick, we have to keep searching and keep developing better and better EA to make sure it is robust enough to fit all market conditions.  But now with Side Kick, it reduces the "strain" on us to develop an "all rounder" EA. 

So instead of either, keep using the EA but ended up with marginal profit (because it lose away our profit in between the market cycles) or throw it away.  And if we do throw it away, we found ourselves generating/developing endlessly EA after EA.  So instead of throw it away, run it in demo and let Side Kick filter out the "bad" trading periods and allow you to profit from the EA when it is in "sync" with the market.

Indeed, the responsibility to develop good EA still lies with the trader but Side Kick can reduce some of the "unnecessary" loses if only we understand a little better of our EA trading pattern (winning and losing patterns and use Side Kick policies to best suit your EA's characteristics).

Initially, I don't foresee myself using Side Kick because using Consecutive winning doesn't seem to fit into my EA's characteristics and hence, I still prefer to rely on my own trading understanding to use Opening/Closing conditions as my filter to tell my EA when to turn on and off trading.

However, being an "investigative" person by nature and an advocate of keeping one's mind open to new perspective, I decided to give Side Kick a try.

So I decided to try out 6 "filtering systems"

I set up 2 Master Accounts (account ending 84 an 85) and I tried 6 types of filtering systems.  Initial account $25k each


Here are the 6 different Filtering Systems

1.  Copy trade when position hit 2 pips floating profit (87 copy 84 when 2 pips profit, 88 copy 85)

2.  Copy trade when position hit 1 pips floating profit (89 copy 84 when 1 pips profit, 90 copy 85)

3.  Use Side Kick Policy 1: Win/loss ratio 0.5 (Use the Same combine EA of 84 n 85 for Side Kick policy) (Account ending 91)

4.  Use Side Kick Policy 2: Consecutive Win 2 (account ending 92)

5.  Use Side Kick Policy 3: Either Win/loss Or Consecutive Win 2 (account 93)

6.  Use Side Kick Policy 4: Win/loss And Consecutive Win 2 (account 94)

Attached here is my accounts, for 1 trading day (too early to tell but it will eventually help me make the decision which policy is best suited for my EA's trading characteristics and help me reduce "avoidable" losses.




Comparing the last 4 accounts (4 Side Kick Policies) in the attached pic, based on just 1 day trading, it seem like Policy 3: Win/loss ratio Or Consecutive win setting (account ending with 93) is best suited for my EA trading characteristics (of cos I won't conclude it till I've gather more trading days). 

I'll continue to monitor the results and then at the end of observation choose the policy that best suits my EA trading patterns.


So in conclusion, Steve (it's not that I'm not talking your advice seriously about using Consecutive win), different traders have different trading systems that may require different policy to suit their EA's trading patterns/characteristics.  As I pride myself as an independent thinker and an investigative person, I can't just adopt a trading policy such as Consecutive win just becos I'm being advised to do so (with all due respect).  I need to find out for myself which policy is best suited for me.  Furthermore, I'm using 1min Time Chart EA and hence, I have different EA (characteristics) as compare to others who use higher Time Frames Chart as their trading platform.

It was you who triggered me to try out Side Kick (out of respect to you and also you told me to take my sunglasses off, and so I did and give Side Kick a try and I'm glad I did, there is great potential in Side Kick, don't clipped it's wing by making it simple).

Making Side Kick "simple" would have restricted the different types of EA that one can use in Side Kick and hence limit Side Kick revolutionary prospect of aiding traders to reduce "avoidable" loses.

I am especially fond of the Win/loss policy.  I noticed that it seem quite suited especially for EA with low Win/loss ratio or low PF.  Although I use 0.5 Win/loss setting (for the most 10 recent trades), it means that it will only start trading when my EA is starting to win again and shut off trading when it is losing.  Because low win/loss EA tend to trade very frequently, without any long streak of winnings, Win/loss ratio seem like a better option.

NOTE: Trading Tips

Imagine you have an EA with a 0.4 win/loss ratio (remember this is the overall win/loss ratio) but this EA has "moments' of winning that makes it's win/loss ratio higher (such as 0.7 during good trading periods) but then because it started to loss again in between these good trading periods, it's overall win/loss ratio dropped to 0.4

Hence, using the Win/loss ratio policy, you are turning on your EA when it is trading better than it's normal times (normal, overall is 0.4 and good times is 0.7 and hence when you set your policy to 0.5 you are "catching" the period whereby the EA win/loss ratio will "grow" from 0.5 to 0.7 (during good trading times).  I hope you readers understand what I'm driving at.

This is extremely good news to those people whose EA has low PF or Win/loss ratio.  Use Side Kick Win/loss policy#1 Win/loss Ratio.  Find out what's your EA average win/loss ratio (use Fxblue or MT4 Tracker or any other statistical tools) and use that ratio for the Side Kick Win/loss setting.  For example if my EA Win/loss ratio is 0.55, then set it either at 0.55 or slightly higher 0.6

What's the implication?  It means that you are turning on your EA when it begins to trade better than the average times, when it's win/loss ratio begins to reflect that it is in a winning market conditions.  You can change the setting slightly lower if you are willing to take more risk and want to catch the trend at the start, such as using 0.45 or 0.5 (cos you already missed out the 10 most recent trades that is need to tabulate the win/loss ratio). 


I would urge most users to give Side Kick a try.  We spent so much efforts and money (either by losing them in live trading or investing in trading products) and if this Side Kick can help you cut down your loses by avoiding those "unnecessary" loses, then it is an small investment that worth the savings.  Now with Side Kick, I don't have to keep throwing away EA whenever it's out of sync.  Just continue running it in demo account till it kicks back into action.  Soon enough, you will then stop churning and generating EA anymore (once you have gather a diverse amount of EA), you will have a pool of EA sitting and waiting for the right market to start trading. 


PS: Can you allow us to change the setting for the recent trades counts?  Instead of the default Ten.  Imagine if one is using D1 EA and the EA only trading once in a couple of days, by the time it gathered 10 trades, it would mean the trader have to wait for a couple of weeks before Side Kick statistics is made available to be operational.  so allowing different traders to change the "recent trade count" would allow us to make full use of Side Kick to suit different trading style/patterns.  Furthermore, some scalper or intraday EA has shorter trade cycles and Ten recent trade counts may be too long/short for certain EA.

Re: MT4 Sidekick - Demo Account Barometer

Hello Hannah,

This is great -- thank you for your post.

Don't worry -- I won't remove the win ratio policy.

hannahis wrote:

Can you allow us to change the setting for the recent trades counts?

The win ratio is calculated from the most recent trades -- but it does not wait until 10 trades have completed.  In other words, if there are 100 trades then it calculates the win ratio using the 10 most recent.  On the other hand, if there are only 1 or 2 or 3 trades then it calculates the win ratio using those.  If there are 0 trades, then the default win ratio is 0.51.  So, if you want the strategy to begin trading immediately then select the "win ratio" policy and specify a win ratio of 0.5 (or less).

68 (edited by hannahis 2018-04-11 10:20:46)

Re: MT4 Sidekick - Demo Account Barometer

sleytus wrote:

The win ratio is calculated from the most recent trades -- but it does not wait until 10 trades have completed.  In other words, if there are 100 trades then it calculates the win ratio using the 10 most recent.  On the other hand, if there are only 1 or 2 or 3 trades then it calculates the win ratio using those.  If there are 0 trades, then the default win ratio is 0.51.  So, if you want the strategy to begin trading immediately then select the "win ratio" policy and specify a win ratio of 0.5 (or less).

That's good.  Thanks for your clarification.  I think it's a brilliant idea (I remember reading you mentioned it somewhere about default 0.51 , however my idea was fuzzy...I kept searching for it in Side Kick documentation and can't find it.  Thanks for highlighting it here again.  Can I suggest you put this comment in your documentations for easy reference, thanks)


Still it would be nice to allow users to change the default number to select a "trade cycle" that is most suited to their trading patterns.  It's your call, you are the boss.  I'll respect whatever finally decision you make.

Re: MT4 Sidekick - Demo Account Barometer

https://s14.postimg.cc/o56y9onh9/side_kick_results.png

Here is a visual comparison of different Side Kick Policy's. 

Need to test it for a at least a few more weeks to see which is the best overall policy that best suit my EA's trading characteristics. 

At least for now, Policy 3 is the "least restrictive" policy and hence best suited for my portfolio as they contain very high performing EA to start with.

Re: MT4 Sidekick - Demo Account Barometer

hannahis wrote:

Here is a visual comparison of different Side Kick Policy's.

Thanks for sharing your results. 

It should be emphasized that if a portfolio EA includes high-quality strategies then it is likely the Net Gain in the Real account will be less than the Demo account.  This is because only a fraction of strategies are allowed to trade in the Real account at any one time, whereas all strategies are trading in the Demo account.

The benefit with MT4 Sidekick is that profitability goes up -- i.e. the Profit Factor.  So, just like everything in life, there is a trade-off.  With MT4 Sidekick Net Gain could go down, but Profit Factor goes up.

Re: MT4 Sidekick - Demo Account Barometer

Hi Steve,

Yes I agree with you that if the portfolio already contain rather good EA, Side Kick may reduce the overall net profit instead but may reduce the overall Max DD.  Good EA already has inherent characteristics built into it's rules that reduce "unnecessary" loses.  So may not benefit the use of Side Kick to it's fullest. 

However, as I mentioned, Side Kick may be a good news to users who have low PF or win/loss ratio and hence the benefits and implications of using Side Kick may be more significant and evident in such cases.

Re: MT4 Sidekick - Demo Account Barometer

My strategies have  80 % win rate when I start and surprisingly some of them get caught by SideKick.

I am having a look at those to improve them. So the benefit of Sidekick to me is to see some flaws in my ea's.

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

Re: MT4 Sidekick - Demo Account Barometer

Blaiserboy wrote:

My strategies have  80 % win rate when I start and surprisingly some of them get caught by SideKick.

MT4 Sidekick can use one of two policies to filter signals -- "Win Ratio" or "Consecutive Wins".   For myself, I've found "Consecutive Wins" works best for my style.  However, if your strategies are winning at a high rate in the Demo Account then you may want to consider using "Win Ratio" instead.

Consider the situation where there are 20 trades and your strategy wins 80% of the time.  It makes a big difference where those losses occur.  For example:
1. 16 consecutive wins, followed by 4 losses
2. Every 5 trades it loses the 5th trade
3. Every 10 trades it loses the last 2
etc.

In other words, the pattern of Wins / Losses may make a difference as to which policy ("Win Ratio" or "Consecutive Wins") works best.  Or, with such high performing strategies it might be there will be little benefit to using MT4 Sidekick -- I don't know.  But then again, perhaps a couple months from now your 80% may fall to 45% -- and then what?  Blaiserboy -- I know that would never happen to you, but it would happen to me...

Re: MT4 Sidekick - Demo Account Barometer

hahaha  U funstering me.....

I have some pretty weird looking strategies with many variables... I am sure  they are over fitted and will be in trouble as days pass.

Using the sidekick cuts down on the optimizations I have felt obligated to do.

Actually, I feel I can confidently increase position size thereby cutting down on the number of strategies.

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

Re: MT4 Sidekick - Demo Account Barometer

If / when you have doubts or questions why MT4 Sidekick made a decision to accept or ignore a new signal, you can easily check the "database" since it is implemented as a file system.

Here is a link to the documentation:
http://mt4tracker.com/documentation/mt4-sidekick-documentation/

If you scroll down to the section "Database" you'll see that each strategy has its own text file.  Using the 'type' command (or a text editor) you can see the contents of the file -- i.e. win ratio, consecutive wins, and last 10 trades.