About Me

My name is Daniel Fernandez PhD (view my linkedin profile) and I am an experienced forex trader and mechanical/automated trading system designer. I have been heavily involved in forex since late 2007. My formal education as a doctor in chemistry trained me to have a rational and analytical approach towards the phenomena I want to study and forex trading was absolutely no exception. By analyzing the market I was able to come up with very simple, yet robust and reliable trading strategies that I used to trade the currency exchange market. More importantly I seek to analyse trade results and constantly learn from my experience in order to reach new conclusions and answer new questions in algorithmic trading.

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My approach to trading is therefore very analytical, focused on simplicity, adaptability, capital preservation and the reliable use of analysis tools to obtain accurate estimations of possible future risk and profit scenarios. I attempt to understand mechanical trading strategies, their basis and their potential as deeply as possible, spending a large amount of time each week analyzing and designing new trading systems. My efforts through these areas of development have not only been used for my personal success but they have been shared with many others through several different efforts, especially through the publication of several of my strategies in Currency Trader Magazine (which was one of the most well respected online publications about forex trading, sadly it is no longer available).

I have also released a free trading system – Watukushay FE – showing a good example of how I like to develop and analyze strategies with the hope that many people could use it to understand the difficulties and challenges surrounding success with automated trading and how in fact it is possible – yet extremely difficult – to live from such a trading approach. I have also published the only currently available free open source automated system generator (openKantu) for those interested in the field of automated algorithm generation.

I have also created a website – Asirikuy.com – to attempt to educate new traders as well as to develop new and exciting mechanical trading strategies with other experienced traders. In Asirikuy not only will you be able to have access to many trading systems developed with sound concepts, simplicity and adaptability in mind but you will be able to learn about many relevant aspects of automated trading and all the important problems that are found within the road towards long term profitability using algorithmic trading strategies. Asirikuy currently focuses heavily on the establishment of a full trading methodology that encompasses everything from automated trading system generation, data-mining bias measurements, portfolio building and system monitoring and removal. We currently posses the only GPU based trading system generation (which can test billions of systems every day) as well as collaborative cloud mining efforts.

Of course, this blog is also a very important source of information where I publish many of my findings as well as many different tips, suggestions and educational material regarding automated trading and the development of this type of strategies. This blog is updated everyday so make sure you subscribe to the RSS feed and share it with your friends if you like it :o)

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71 Responses to “About Me”

  1. james chidolue says:

    hello daniel,

    I am James Chidolue, a regular visitor to your website-mechanicalforex.com.
    I ‘m really amazed at the quality of free information that you dish out to we,your ardent readers.
    I never thought that I could find such info for free.Thanks a lot and May God continue to bless
    the works of your hand.
    I have a system that i believe is quite profitable in the long term.It is based
    on the 4 hour chart.Entries and exits are also based on the 4 hour chart.
    The problem i have is that i am from a 3rd world country-Nigeria specifically
    and i can’t afford the monthly subscription to asirikuy.com.Is there anyway you
    could be of assistance to me?
    I would give a full disclosure of how the system works to you.Any information that you would need
    to facilitate automation of my system,i would gladly give.
    Thanks in anticipation of your reply.

    • admin says:

      Hello James,

      Thank you very much for your comment :o) I am glad that you find my website and the information provided within it useful. I will continue to do my best to share high-quality information !

      Regarding the 4 hour system you propose I encourage you to perform a full 10 year evaluation of the system before you consider it profitable in the “long term”, sadly I cannot help you right now with the coding, etc do to my current commitments but there are many forums on the internet dedicated to automated trading systems where you can share your system and get help with the programming if that is what you intend to do. Thank you very much again for your comment,

      Best Regards,

      Daniel

    • fvforex says:

      Daniel, i want to use that pivot breakout system you had in currency trader Dec 2010 issue. I want to try it with different pairs. But how can i get it to trade automatically for me? Because i want to use it with many different pairs it is hard to monitor & do manual trades so that’s what i am trying to make easier.

      • admin says:

        Hello FvForex,

        Thank you very much for your comment :o) Certainly you can automate the strategy using MQL4/5 if you are interested in using it in an automated fashion on different currency pairs (you could also use TradeStation or Ninja trader if you use these platforms). However I would advice you to carry out careful evaluations of this strategy using long term data on other pairs as I only carried out my research on the EUR/USD (as it says on the article). Without long term reliable simulations it would be very dangerous to assume that the system would work on any other pairs. Thank you very much again for your comment,

        Best Regards,

        Daniel

  2. Manuel says:

    I have some questions:

    1, If I am a member do I have to pay extra for your programmed EAs? How much?

    2, What is long-time trading for you? How fast could you live from your monthly earnings? How big should be your account?

    3, What is your profit target per month for your long-time trading system?

    4, Are you only trading your EA systems or are you still trading manual?

    Many thanks for answering these questions!

    Manuel

    • admin says:

      Hello Manuel,

      Thank you very much for your comment :o) I will now answer your questions :

      1. There is no extra fee for the systems, the membership includes all of them.

      2. I trade for a living so for me long term is 10-30 years. In order to live from automated trading it will depend on how much you would expect to earn per year but a safe bet would be about 5 to 6 times your expected yearly salary, which should be about 200-300K account for most people on first world countries. However it might take you about 2-3 years to live from this while you truly get an understanding and learn how to do this. Bear in mind that NO sound long term profitable system produces a “stable monthly income” and draw downs in the order of even 100-300 days will happen. However large amounts of capital can be built from small amounts in the long term with only modest compounding yearly rates.

      3. There is no profit target per month, a focus on such short term results is unrealistic as short term outcomes are for the most part random. All systems can have months with profits or losses and expecting every month to turn out a certain value is an exercise in futility. In Asirikuy we keep our focus on longer term results.

      4. I trade manually for long term positional trading but that is perhaps only 5-10% of my current income. Most of what I earn is derived from the trading of Asirikuy systems.

      I believe that you may be looking for the wrong thing here. Asirikuy is NOT an EA selling website in which you can just get a “set and forget” solution and live from it, if you approach the website with this mind set you will most likely be extremely disappointed as HARD work and understanding are NEEDED to succeed in automated trading (as in manual trading) Asirikuy focuses on teaching people how to create, build and use automated trading systems successfully. It teaches how to evaluate systems, how to know if a system is robust, how to over come psychological obstacles, etc. Asirikuy is a good choice for people looking to TRULY LEARN abut automated trading and gain an income through a LOT of effort. There is no magical “set and forget” solution (if it existed we would all be rich) and if you do not want to put up years of hard work and effort then probably the approach within Asirikuy is not right for you. If you want to get realistic profit and draw down targets, learn how to fully understand automated trading and succeed through an in-depth understanding of automated trading systems and their logic then Asirikuy might be the right choice for you, otherwise joining might not contribute to your goals.

      If you are preparing to spend several hours each week learning, develop an in-depth understanding of the logic of the systems and walk a path based on evidence and understanding towards long term profitability in automated trading then Asirikuy is the right choice for you. I hope this has answered your questions :o) Thank you very much again for your comment,

      Best Regards,

      Daniel

  3. Tom says:

    Hi Daniel:

    I read through you ebook and test your EA Antinalla FE. While the problem is that the performance of Antinalla is not as good as I expected especially compare to the EAs that I am using now. The performance here I mean 10 years backtest. In my backtest, Antinalla has a larger DD with comparatively lower profit.

    What I am worrying about is that we pay $160 for a crappy EA eaven with out any refund. In the world of scams, I am afraid this is a ‘advanced’ trick in tricks that sell simple EA in the name of membership. I have no offensive here and I am sincerely looking for a place that can learn and discuss automatically trading.

    I am expecting your explain and If necessary I can provide my test results to see weather there are something wrong about my tests.

    • admin says:

      Hi Tom,

      Thank you for your post :o) Regarding the tests, Atinalla FE was tested on data obtained directly from a contact in Alpari UK (10 year data with no holes) using the Asirikuy spread changer tool to set a fixed spread of 2.0 pips through the whole testing period. There are many things you could be doing wrong on your tests and several things that may make a difference (you may be using bad data, very large spreads, etc).

      About the website, Asirikuy is NOT an EA selling website and it shouldn’t be approached this way. If you are merely interested in finding an EA which you can use to trade your accounts then it might be best for you to look elsewhere. There is a video in the main page of the website that clearly explains what the website is about and what its contents are, if you do not like this then please do not join. Asirikuy is an educational website geared at helping people understand automated trading and help them achieve long term profitability it is NOT an EA selling website and should NEVER be approached as such. If you feel uncomfortable in anyway about the website or its contents then please abstain from joining :o) Thank you very much again for your comment,

      Best Regards,

      Daniel

  4. Moyano says:

    Don Fernandez,

    Wow, what an interesting and different path you chose from our career. I don’t need to say ‘good luck with all this’ because I know that your approach will succeed, as your readers say, is really smart and very well focus.
    It was nice to hear from you, I hope that everything is going good all around.
    All the best,

    Daniel

  5. tomas porhajas says:

    Hello

    We are preparing a new brokerage which will have the PAMM feature. Would you be interested to be included in the database for potential clients?
    If yes, please don’t hesitate to send me a message to my email tporhajas@axiory.com
    Cheers

    Have a great day

    Tom

  6. Tariel D says:

    Hello,

    I have installed both Atinalla and Watukushay and all seems OK (I use one or the other of course). However, nothing happens, i.e.no trading.
    Is it because I am using a demo account or…?

    Regards

    • admin says:

      Hi Tariel,

      thank you for your post :o) Please post these issues within the Asirikuy community forum where we will be able to help you in a much better way.

      Best regards,

      Daniel

  7. ruth says:

    Hi Im intested to advertise on your site http://www.mechanicalforex.com. Kindly send me your media kit to my email mruthdayao@yahoo.com

    All the best,
    Ruth

    • admin says:

      Hi Ruth,

      Thank you for posting :o) I do not sell advertisements directly but you can advertise on the website through Google AdWords,

      Best Regards,

      Daniel

  8. Simon says:

    Hi Daniel,

    I have read through your blog and visited Asirikuy.com and watched your introduction video.

    Having recently sold my business I am looking to learn about FX trading as an alternative career path. I would be glad to invest my time, energy and money in knowing that I am approaching this new career/venture in an intelligent and professional manner, which hopefully will result in a process of working that produces real results in future.

    My initial question is whether Asirikuy is right for someone like me, who is ready to put in the time & effort but has no programming knowledge at all. Just a genuine desire to understand the strategies and techniques involved

    Does one need to learn the programming side of things or is this something that one can get by with out? I like the idea of thorough back testing of multiple strategies and combined strategies but I am cautious that this may be for the more technically minded people out there!

    Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

    Best regards,
    Simon

    • admin says:

      Hi Simon,

      Thank you for your comment :o) Although you do not need any prior knowledge about programming to start learning from Asirikuy it is true that you will need to be willing to learn programming if you do consider algorithmic trading a serious career path for you. Certainly knowing how to program will allow you to explore your own ideas and it will also allow you to independently improve the ideas we currently have and further improve/develop your own evaluation tools going forward. Bear in mind that the idea of Asirikuy is to help you gain an in-depth education and understanding about automated trading in retail forex trading so that you can make this work going forward, so definitely having the willingness to learn to program is of great help. Obviously you must be open to learn a lot of new and probably challenging things (programming, statistics, etc) , which of course are necessary to really achieve long term success in this business :o) I hope this helps!

      Best Regards,

      Daniel

  9. Anthony says:

    Daniel-

    I have recently discovered your blog and website and am very impressed. I am a long time professional forex trader and your site is the first I have come across to share such comprehensive, valuable and highly practical information. I have been a reader of currency trader magazine for many years now as well, and enjoy your work there as well. I am a member of your site, however, I have not been able to sign up for the forum. I do have some specific questions regarding systems and other tools on the site, but I have not been able to find the answers to these questions. Is there a way to join the forum, consult with other members, or get your feedback? Please let me know what communication methods you prefer. I am eager to also provide to the community and help advance the work you are already performing. Thank you.

    • admin says:

      Hi Anthony,

      Thank you for your post :o) I am glad you enjoy my website, articles and blog! You should have received the forum login information along with your regular account information when you first joined the website (please search for an email with subject “Your Asirikuy Membership Information”). If you are unable to find this email please send me an email to ekans_@hotmail.com so that I can help you regenerate this information. You certainly can ask any questions you have about systems/tools within the forum :o) Thanks again for your post,

      Best Regards,

      Daniel

  10. Sarbelio Jaime says:

    Hello Daniel:
    I am subscribed to Currency Trader Magazine and I saw the reference to your blog which looks very interesting to me.
    But I see that you mechanical strategy works more in MT4 or MT5, but I would like to know if you have some mechanical strategy for another kind of platafform for example FXCM.
    Thank you so much for your comment and keep going with the good job!.

    Best regards.

    • admin says:

      Hi Sarbelio,

      Thank you for posting and for reading my Currency Trader Magazine articles :o) The strategies I develop are implemented mainly for MT4 but we are currently working on versions for JForex/MT5, we will however not work on versions for FXCM as the potential usage for these strategies would be too reduced (only FXCM uses their strategy trader). Thanks again for your post!

      Best regards,

      Daniel

  11. Bryan Saunders says:

    Hello Daniel,
    Great Website. Last week I tried to sign up for asirikuy.com. I succesfully piad for the subscription though Paypal however I have not yet received my password. I believe I may have accidentally misspelt my email address when signing up. I have my payment reference from paypal, which I provide as proof of payment. I was unable to locate any kind of help section or “contact” feature on the asirikuy.com website so i thought I may give this a go.

    Look forward to hearing from you soon Bryan.

    • admin says:

      Hi Bryan,

      Thank you for posting :o) I have already sent you a reply to your corrected email address with your login information. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any other problems,

      Best Regards,

      Daniel

  12. Karamos says:

    Hello Daniel,

    Your website is very interesting! I would like to ask you if you have developed currencies or futures trading strategies using Matlab? I am looking for a sample Matlab code for carry or momentum strategies.

    Thanks

  13. Harry says:

    Hi, I came across your site and wasn’t able to get an email address to contact you. Would you please consider adding a link to my website on your page. Please email me back.

    Thanks!

    Harry

  14. Hi Daniel,

    Nice job this blog. I read you have been in Spain for your research in Chemistry…are you still round here? I am from Spain and have recently discovered your amazing blog. Will like to contact you, so if possible send me and email.

    Best regards,
    Jose

  15. Ronald says:

    Helo Daniel ,
    I am from India. I wanna know more about EA.I am a student and I have 500 $.I wanna know if through your EA I can generate enough money to take care of my stuff every month?

  16. Eddie says:

    Its interesting,I searched around the web for some quant material and dropped in here.

    Dan, do you agree that the financial market charts are simply chaotic per se? That is, a transend principle to be used for avoiding misbehavior?

    Ed

  17. Andrei says:

    Hi!

    How can I get the 4 Week Breakout Strategy EA?

    Thanks.

  18. jerry says:

    Hi,
    Where is this Alpari 11yr data toward downloading that you speak of as reliable? Do I need contact Alpari? Is this reliable data only from AlpariUK? If so I suppose I’m out of luck as I recall one doesn’t qualify to be brokered by them if living in USA……if so then what do I do apart from moving to UK?
    I discovered a highly polished & professional genetic EA creator that I am using in trial, but it appears no use in buying if this data issue isn’t handled, certainly seems from your website you look ay well. Hope you can help.
    Thanks, Truly,
    Jerry

    • admin says:

      Hi Jerry,

      Thank you for your post :o) I get this data through a personal Alpari contact, as far as I know they don’t make this data available publicly but you can try contacting them as well. The data is for Alpari UK (as my contact tells me) but it is in theory a consolidated data for their live servers, with the data having a GMT +1/+2 offset. I hope this helps,

      Best regards,

      Daniel

  19. papa says:

    hi

    what is the best email to contact you?

    thanks

  20. Rapheal says:

    Hi Daniel,
    I am not sure you can read my comment about Kantu but I have some questions on the demo software.
    1) How do we verify the price pattern which is generated by Kantu? Without the exact rules of the price pattern, it is different to know it is correct.
    2) How do we combine different price pattern/ system generated to combine different strategy?
    3) Can we combine different fx pairs to have a complete portfolio?
    4) By the way, is the project Watukush FE still alive or in any live trading?
    Thank you
    Regards,

    • admin says:

      Hi Rapheal,

      Thank you for your post :o) Here are the answers to your questions:

      1. You will need to buy the full version in order to be able to see the price patterns generated. The demo only allows you to look at the system generation capabilities and the overall features of the program. I don’t know what you mean by “correct”, all price patterns generated are simply comparisons between OHLC points on a chart, there is no definition of “correct” here.
      2. You can generate different systems and then trade them together, or modify the generated MQL4 or F4 code so that you open trades on several patterns, there are many ways to do this. Kantu allows you to get price patterns with historically profitable results, you can then play with their code in whatever way you wish.
      3. Yes, you can generate systems for different pairs as well (you can load data for any pair you want). If you want to get simulated performance of a portfolio of strategies then I would recommend you join Asirikuy so that you can get a deeper understanding about this process.
      4. Yes, it’s still alive, check the Atinalla FE page for two live accounts trading portfolios of Watukushay FE strategies.

      I hope this answers your questions :o)

      Best Regards,

      Daniel

  21. Rapheal says:

    HI Daniel,
    Thank you for your reply. Can I customize the price pattern without programming? I am not a programmer and have not experience to change/create any code. Can I add additional rules (e.g. indicator) into it without programming?
    It seems Watukushay FE only trades EU and still ‘survive’. Why don’t we use it to trade all fx pairs?
    Regards,
    Rapheal

    • admin says:

      Hi Rapheal,

      Thank you for your post :o) Let me now answer your questions:

      1. You cannot customize the generated patterns without programming, the generated patterns are included within the code but you’ll need to add any additional rules manually if this is something you want to do.

      2. Adding any indicator rules will require you to program. Please remember that Kantu explicitly avoids indicators to avoid trading parameters and optimization problems.

      3. Because this system doesn’t work on all pairs. Run some back-tests to get an idea why.

      If you’re new to algorithmic trading then it would be better for you to join Asirikuy instead, where you get a complete education in automated trading. Thanks again for posting,

      Best Regards,

      Daniel

  22. PeterG says:

    Hi,
    Your website is quite informative for those looking to succeed in forex.
    I am looking at following you so that I can get to another level as my trading doesn’t seem to move.

    Please let me know whether the ATR trailer can be used in manual trades and only activated to follow the trade once entered manually. your advice will be highly appreciated.

    many thanks,
    PeterG.

  23. Michael says:

    Daniel,

    Thank you (…) Your site and free materials is the ONLY place I know that tells the TRUTH about trading systems !

    If you could please help me with one thing…

    I am designing my forex mechanical trading system for a D1 timeframe.

    The system should be long term trend following, with 1-2 trades per month, wide stop at roughly 4*ATR(20), and I want to take profits at 1.5 to 3R (times the stop distance). I do not want to trail the stop, I want to “set & forget” the trade.

    I am backtesting it in Amibroker and I plan to execute trades manually, end-of-day, each day, plan to trade top 6 pairs EURUSD, GBPUSD, USDJPY, AUDUSD, USDCAD and EURGBP.

    Does it make sense so far? :-)

    A system with Buy = CCI(14)>240 and risk 1% equity per trade, and 4.5 ATR stop and 1.5R TP gives roughly 8% CAR and max DD 16%. Nice. Similar results with C > HHV(H,60). Breakouts.

    This is my initial candidate to trade.

    As I backtest it on 10 years D1 data, it takes just about 200 trades… is it not too few for a statistical significance?

    Shall I optimize it separately for each currency pair or a good trend following sys should work on ALL pairs with the same parameters? (today I optimized for all 6 pairs, and portfolio equity curve is beautiful, but individual currencies’ results are very mixed, even negative! )

    I will really appreciate if you could share your comment.
    Thank you Daniel!

    Michael

    • admin says:

      Hi Michael,

      Thank you for your post :o) Let me make a few comments about your idea:

      – 4.5 ATR and 1.5*4.5 ATR are very wide targets which will probably take weeks/months to fill. This means that you should be careful about open drawdown scenarios as well as accurate historical swap rates within your simulations. Having trades accumulating negative swaps or having large floating drawdowns can be prejudicial for your system. Your max drawdown is probably deeper than 16% if you take into account open losses.
      – Do a cross-pair optimization to find the CCI value that minimizes the variance between symbol results. Not optimizing is not good (underfitting) while fitting each symbol to something different can lead you to over-estimate your expected results.Do not maximize performance but reduce differences between instruments.
      – Do not trade symbols with historically losing results (why would you?).
      – I would say that 200 trades/pair would be Ok. However if you have just 200 trades in total (the whole portfolio), your results are going to suffer from significance problems.

      I hope this helps you out Michael :o) Thanks again for posting,

      Best Regards,

      Daniel

      • Michael says:

        Daniel, thank you for your very helpful comments!

        You are right, I did not account for swaps, I cannot do this easily in Amibroker, but I simulated a larger comission to reflect this.

        I simulated a stop loss at a broker, so there will be no open DD larger than 4.5 ATR… indeed quite large anyway, for microlots only ;-)

        I am still working on this… hurdle at D1 timeframe is too few trades per pair to make it significant. And as I was looking for parameters where pairs variance is small… it is hard to find such…

        Now, another project, I have 10 years of H1 data for EURUSD from FXCM, and:

        I wrote, this time in MT4, something as simple as this:
        – open long at market if CCI(14)>230 (reverse for short)
        – SL at 1.3 * ATR(20) (very close, sometimes gets stopped out next bar)
        – TP at 6 * SL distance (anything between 3 to 8 works, higher numbers give higher profit but strings of 20+ losses, too). 6 TP has 20% winners.

        This sys took 800 trades in the past 10 years of backtest… worst period was 2 years before a new high on equity curve, max DD 8% (assuming 10,000 capital and using equal 100 dollars risk per trade, the net profit is 24,000).

        I experimented with a trend filter using MA, but it does not make it any better, it seems.

        Optimization graph shows beautiful green “island”, many similar paramaters work. I used spread 3 pips (30 using 5 digits) but it is profitable even with 50.

        I started it on demo on my VPS today… and I am tempted to trade it live if I see the code working OK… what do you think? 10 years, 800 trades, stable parameters… looks SOLID to me :-)

        I also quickly backtested it on GBPUSD, without any optimization, same parameters, and the equity curve is beautiful, actually it has a new highest ever right now: this is very promising, isn’t it?

        I will very much appreciate your input, especially if you see some error.

        I would be delighted if you share your e-mail address with me so that I could contact you directly. Would you look at my mt4 code?

        Thank you so much!

        • admin says:

          Hi Michael,

          Thanks for your reply :o) Take into account that the swap is not like a commission because it gets charged/credited at a precise time everyday and you get 3x on Wednesday. This means that a system can be curve-fitted due to a swap related inefficiency (especially on the lower time frames, not on the daily obviously).

          About your system, you’ll notice that a huge variety of trend following systems on the EURUSD give good results on the 1H, long term (even 25 years). Atinalla FE has a CCI based component, as well as a BB and an RSI component. Whether this is “solid” or not depends on many different factors ;o). About my email address, I only provide support in system building, etc to members of my trading community (asirikuy.com). If you join I’ll be glad to provide my insights into your developments (I am sure you will also enjoy all of system development/analysis tools).

          Thanks again for writing and for reading the blog,

          Best Regards,

          Daniel

  24. Justin says:

    Hi Daniel,

    I am happy I found Mechanical Forex. For the past year or so I have been developing technology similar to Belo and Barbosa’s machine learning autonomous trading agent software, on which you wrote an article in March. After reading your articles, I think you would be a great person to talk to about the merits of machine learning in the foreign exchange market and I would like to show you our trading software. Please shoot me an email if you are interested.

    Best,

    Justin

  25. Philip says:

    Hi Daniel,
    first of all, thank you for the contribution you give to the algorithmic trading community through your work.
    I read your article regarding the C/Python Backtester for the F4 Framework.
    I am currently developing a new MT4 EA and need to optimize it on a more powerful software than Metatrader, because I need multi currency, and deeper analysis tools, but I’m not very clear how the C/Python Backtester works, and how I can get it (for example, would it be included in the subscription fee?).

    Thank you very much
    Philip

  26. Fabs says:

    Hi Daniel,
    thanks a lot for your effort in providing quality research results to the public in a non selfish way. That is rare :-)
    I was wondering one thing: you put a lot of effort in validating your strategies in backtests. Why dont you go for 99% quality data as it is provided by Dukascopy for example? That would give it even more credibility over 90% data…

    Greetings

    • admin says:

      Hi Fabs,

      Thanks for your post :o) Modeling quality in is a meaningless number. You can have strategies that can be modeled very accurately using only end-of-day (Open/High/Low/Close) data and you can also have very inaccurate simulations using tick data (what some people refer to as “99% modeling quality”). What determines your real modeling quality (how well your historical simulations would have matched actual past live performance) is not how “fine” your data is but whether the data you’re using can accurately simulate your trading strategy. You therefore cannot know if a simulation is accurate unless you know the strategy being simulated and the data resolution needed for that strategy to yield accurate results. For this reason do not focus on the MT4 “modeling quality” but focus on what data resolution is needed for your particular problem. In my case, I always build strategies using only information from bar open and wide enough exit values to warrant very accurate simulations on even “Open Price Only” simulations (what MT4 would call “N/A modeling quality”).

      Long story short, it’s very important to understand what you’re simulating and what type of simulation and data you need to get accurate results. If you design your strategy to get accurate results on 1H (OHLC) open price only simulations (only a few seconds per test), why waste computational power doing simulations on tick data when this will not give you any higher accuracy? It’s all about strategy design, for some strategies tick resolution isn’t even enough to get an accurate result. I hope this answers your question :o)

      Best Regards,

      Daniel

      • Fabs says:

        Thanks for your quick answer – you are right of course. If ticks do not matter to your strategy it does not make sense to overcomplicate the process. I wondered about another thing while reading your compiled ebook. In the concept of mathematical expectation, did you ever consider to approach the problem from the other side? i.e. instead of building a rule based system and calculate the expected mean profit/loss in the next x bars, why not set a min profit / max loss in the next x bars yourself. Then collect all bars where this condition is met followed by computing features on this bar (or preceeding priceaction / logreturn the last x bars). Then you do unsupervised clusteranalysis on this big pile of positive samples. If lucky you will find similar groups of samples. For this group you then find corresponding negative samples in your data (e.g. one class classification running through historical data) once you have the negative samples you proceed with methods for standard binary classification trying to find differences between positive and negative samples (depending on number of classes / skewness certain countermeasures have to be considered)

        What do you think?

        Fabs

        • admin says:

          Hi Fabs,

          Thanks for your reply :o) Sure! Finding a set of entry rules that meet a required exit is something we are doing now. However we’re doing it through data-mining using Kantu, rather than with cluster analysis as you suggest, but your approach is equally valid as well. Thanks again for posting!

          Best Regards,

          Daniel

  27. Zoltan Kormos says:

    Hallo Daniel!

    When You have a little time, please write me!

    I need Your help!

    In 2010 You wrote about the EA. Forex STF.

    Please help me find the source code. The STF site was deleted.
    I will test, can these EA. work on the new MT4 Build 600, or not!?

    Thank You!

    kozoli

  28. michal9 says:

    Hi Daniel,

    You may find this interesting.

    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378426613002549

    scientific analysis of adatpive market theory.

    Michal

  29. Nicolas Mondragon says:

    Hola Daniel,

    Soy Nicolas de Medellin, hablamos el año pasado por telefono y te conté que estoy operando Forex hace varios años ya. Estuve leyendo uno de tus posts donde afirmas que un sistema que pierde consistentemente puede no ser ganador si lo opero de forma inversa.

    Llevo casi 1 año operando este sistema y aunque solo tengo historia de myfxbook de 2 meses, el año entero ha sido similar.
    http://www.myfxbook.com/members/mondra723/hes-fxcm/848184

    Puesto que el sistema no hace scalping, tiene una expectancy amplia y consistentemente pierde, no crees que el edge de este sistema realmente sea negativo?

    Es una duda que vengo pensando hace tiempo y quería compartirla contigo. Espero tus comentarios.

    Saludos,

    • admin says:

      Hola Nicolas,

      Gracias por tu comentario. Es muy poco tiempo y muy pocos trades para decir cualquier cosa. Ejecuta una simulación de 10-20 años e inviertela, seguro verás que no hay ningún “edge negativo”. No caigas en este juego de tratar de “invertir perdedores”, mejor busca ganadores. Porfavor también escribe tus comentarios en Inglés en el futuro para que mis demás lectores puedan saber de que se trata,

      Un saludo,

      Daniel

  30. Francisco says:

    Hi Daniel.

    I am very impressed with your work.
    I wish to know if asirikuy is still active, and if exists some way to access free for a little time, to see if it’s what I need.

    I am Computer Engineer, so I want to dedicate all of my time to Algotrade.

    Regards from Chile.

    • admin says:

      Hi Francisco,

      Thanks for posting, it’s still alive and active! There is no free trial so feel free to email me any questions you might have before joining,

      Best Regards,

      Daniel

  31. Mark says:

    Hi Daniel,

    Will the Watukushay results be updated for for mid-2010 to mid-2014?

    It will be extremely valuable to know if the performance has been stable over this period as well.

    I checked the myfxbook charts and it shows only to end-2009.

    Many thanks,

    Mark

    • admin says:

      Hi Mark,

      Thanks for posting. I have no plans to update the results showed for this system, however you can run back-tests using the code if you wish to see performance up to date. I will probably also remove this strategy as the code is quite old and has many problems that we’ve fixed through the years at Asirikuy. Thanks again for posting,

      Best Regards,

      Daniel

  32. Archibald112 says:

    Hi Daniel,

    How can I contact you by email?

    BR,
    Archibald

  33. Robert Bazil says:

    Dear Daniel

    I have read your fascinating article of 19 March 2010, regarding the calculation of support and resistance (http://mechanicalforex.com/2010/03/calculating-support-and-resistance-my.html).

    In the article you stated that you would be developing an indicator that could display the important SR levels and their respective widths.

    Would you kindly let me know if you have indeed developed the indicator and if it would be possible to use it.

    I have no other way of contacting you so I have left this post on what is after all an old section of the blog.

    Many thanks for investing your valuable time in reading this.

    Kind regards
    Robert Bazil

  34. Camilo Arango says:

    Hi Daniel,

    I have a question that may be you could help me with. I want to trade COPUSD (COP=colombian peso). Do you know of any broker that carry that parity? My objective is to hedge against currency moves…

    Thanks and greetings from Colombia!

    Camilo

    • admin says:

      Hi Camilo,

      Thanks for writing :o) There are currently no brokers who offer you USDCOP for spot FX retail trading, the high spread, low liquidity and volatility for this pair are really too much. However you can trade 1 or 4 month USDCOP futures in the Colombian stock exchange (TMZX instruments) although the minimum size is quite large (160 million pesos the last time I checked). Let me know if you have other questions,

      Best regards,

      Daniel

  35. Nidhi Garg says:

    Hi Daniel,

    I have an opportunity for a content writer in an e learning company that develops courses on algorithmic trading in Mumbai. Do you think this would be an opportunity you would be interested in?

    Best,
    Nidhi

    • admin says:

      Hi Nidhi,

      Please send me further details to dfernandezp at unal.edu.co, I will let you know if I’m interested after reviewing things further,

      Best Regards,

      Daniel

  36. Nidhi Garg says:

    Thanks Daniel. My colleague Deepak would get in touch with you shortly.

    Best,
    Nidhi

  37. Hello Daniel,

    With much enthousiasm I read the script on 1M historical Oanda data.
    However, in Python (v2.7) i’m constantly running into an error (*** non-default argument follows default argument”, at line 30)

    (def get_historical_data(symbol, endingDate=”2015-01-01″, tokenValue):

    Am i doing something wrong, or is there a specific way of calling the script?
    I already modified the tokenValue.

    Best,
    Matthias

    • admin says:

      Hi Matthias,

      Thanks for writing. You should not remove the “=” from the tokenValue argument. It should be like this:

      def get_historical_data(symbol, endingDate=”2015-01-01″, tokenValue=YourTokenValue):

      If you do not want tokenValue to have a default value then you need to change the order of the function arguments and consequentially the order of the arguments on your function calls. If you continue to have problems then please send me an email to dfernandez at unal.edu.co with the exact script you’re using and I’ll see what might be wrong. Also next time please post on the article where you found the problem – that way I can look at the source and see if there is any issue – instead of posting on the general “about me” section. Thanks again for posting,

      Best Regards,

      Daniel

  38. pierre basson says:

    Hi Daniel
    Interested to join your community, but not sure if it will be directly helpful. My team spent a year developing an EA that consistently trades well in bi nary op tions in to 300 seconds only. It uses probabilties an relies on big database resulting from several years on 1 minute back testing. It uses machine learning. It is not regular forex trading which is what you appear to focus on.
    My question is the relevance of your strategies tools and tools to help me grow my learning to improve my EAs?

    • admin says:

      Hi Pierre,

      Thanks for writing. Well we don’t trade using binary options so you won’t find anything specific to this domain within our site. However we do have done many developments in machine learning, automated system mining, etc, which you might find useful if you’re interested in these topics. A good hint might be to read some of my blog posts, if you read several and find them interesting and would like to learn more then joining our community would probably be a good choice. In any case don’t hesitate to ask if you have any specific questions you would like to ask before joining,

      Best Regards,

      Daniel

  39. David says:

    Good morning,

    Is it available teh book “An introduction to Automated Trading” in Spanish? Thank you

    Best regards

  40. inam says:

    Hi Daniel

    In your free ebook, you mentioned that by paying $30 for the first month and $7 everymonth, I can become member. Is it this way now?

    I want to learn more about automated trading. After a long long search I was able to find some reliable information about automated trading

    And your ebook An Introduction to Automated Trading is eye opener

    • admin says:

      Hi Inam,

      Thanks for writing. This offer hasn’t been available for many years. Right now to get access to the ebook contents – which are now contained within a wiki at Asirikuy.com – you need to pay 292 USD for the first year, then 161 USD per year after that. An Asirikuy membership also has many benefits besides this content. Bear in mind that we no longer offer monthly memberships. Let me know if you have other questions,

      Best regards,

      Daniel

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