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.

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?

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"

Hello GD,

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.

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.

Hello Hannah,

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.

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.

I recommend using Policy 2 -- 2 consecutive wins.

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.