An update on some ideas:

CRUCIAL
- Implement more robust methods of checking over-optimization such as Monte Carlo simulations and sensitivity analyses (as they existed in FSB for example). Also, when optimizing, enable an option to choose parameters when they lead to stable results, while discarding parameters that lead to unstable results (this is related to the sensitivity analysis).

VERY USEFUL
- Devise strategies for more than one instrument at the same time (e.g. SP500 and NASDAQ) - aka portfolio   Strategies that perform well in more than one instrument are much more robust.

USEFUL
- When live trading, find a way of tracking the performance of a strategy and check whether is deviates too much for the backtested results. If it does, it's a warning sign!

- Devise strategies using custom data sources such as VIX, Advance/Decline numbers, or economic data (more difficult or impossible to auto-trade though)

Best,
Nuno

There used to be a panel on the right hand side which gave statistics, both long and short for the straegy... has that been taken away...... or. how do I get to see it..?

OOOPs, found my error. it is located as 'Additional Statistics' in the VIEW menu...

The limit of FSB Pro is 5 points (0.5 pips for 5 digit quotation).  I don't think you can set lower levels in MT4.

If you send an order with SL and TP, the expert will check the minimum allowed distance and will correct it.

You can test it with sending a manual order. You can set there SL and TP of 1 point.

I buy 0.001 lot at 1.35914 with SL 1 point (1.35893) and TP of 1 point (1.35924). I have 20 points spread.

The expert checks the minimum span and corrects the order accordingly:

SL to 1.35864 and TP to 1.35924.

It seems that the minimum SL and TP for Alpari is 30 points.

The best thing that I have found to avoid over optimization is an equity curve over several years. I quite agree that many systems look brilliant and then they are found to be crap. I. personally have made many of those only to be disappointed.
I would like to be able to use many more bars in FSB, however, processing is slow when I get over 100,000 bars, I do not know how to overcome that.

Thanks for the article....

daveM

There is a software called 'SQ EA Analyzer' that I use to check my Ea's..... and Popov is going to implement some of the features of that program into FSB Pro when time allows, but he has a huge 'to do' list.

I'll implement many of the SQ Analyzer functions in FSB Pro.

We can use 'Entry Time' and if you want a few different periods we can use Logical Operators.

One very useful feature in Strategy Quant Analyzer is the 'Stagnation' marker in the equity chart.

I am wondering if you can include this in future and have it included in the repository criteria.....

My thinking is that the desirable quality of an ea is continually increasing balance without significant drawdown.. stagnation reveals this quickly and would be most useful

Thanks for considering

daveM

Super......  thanks..!!

This absolutely doable. I think to implement it before the final release. I'll add an additional page (below Comparator page) where a user may select all (or some of) symbols from the current Data Sorce and FSB Pro will load and backtest them one by one. I think to add a common chart (as in Comparator) for all symbols and also separate statistics and balance charts for all symbols. Even we can think for a Red/Yellow/Green fitness semaphore for visual representation than can  depends on the discrepancy percent. Lets say Balance discrepancy < 20% Green. 20 < Delta < 30 - Yellow and >30 Red.

In a way, we already have that capacity, in that we can build an EA in one instrument and then load the data for the other.

By using the Collections and using similar parameters we can develop pretty close to actual solutions.

What I have observed from the high priced packages is that they get a good solution once in a while, just as we get a good solution once in a while.

Some of the packages are much slower to develop solutions and require huge amounts of processing time compared to FSB Pro to arrive at similar results.

I have a good collection of software for purpose of developing ea's and I am pretty satisfied with what FSB Pro turns out in comparison with others.

Once the stagnation chart is available we will be able to compare many instruments and therefore know the robustness.

Hello Ahmed, this will not be a priority work now. You can make a console batch script for renaming these files.

See here:
http://www.howtogeek.com/111859/how-to- … ple-files/
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr … 15353.aspx
http://superuser.com/questions/16007/ho … party-tool