A few weeks ago, the new version of Doubleplay, which is version 4.5, was made available for download to all Doubleplay customers. I received the new program with both excitement and a little bit of concern as Doubleplay's money managment system was changed for a supposedly better one.
Backtesting results of the new version, available at halcyonfx.com (which is the developer's website), show the expert advisor being tested on the GBP/JPY pair for a period of 2 years. This backtests somehow increased my concerns. Even though the equity curve does seem much cleaner than before, with I have to say, increased profitability, there is an obscure risk factor surrounding this new money management system.
The system basically builds up position size as losses are incremented, which clearly makes recovery from losses much faster. But I cannot help to ask myself, what if the expert suffers too many continuous losses ? Will the expert drive the account to a margin call ?
The tests did show this troublesome issue to some extent, on all of the test, Doubleplay did experience periods of sharp draw down, that, although not available in the presented data, amount to almost 50% of the account by visual inspection. The ea did recover all losses and drew a nice equity curve on all of the graphs but... What if the market conditions had been worse ? Is the expert going to cause a margin call ?
I have never considered an expert with such a high level of draw down acceptable, so I should not consider Doubleplay v 4.5 as one merely because of this fact. I must say, I have run Doubleplay v4.5 on a live account since March the 17th and it does show me a clean advance with a gain of almost 5% on my account until now.
But what about those dark market times ? The ea seems to kind of protect itself by limiting the scaling of positions sizes with a top, but this does not keep me from worrying about such a high draw down in bad market conditions. I would have to say, there are other options, better options, out there right now. As always, time will tell if the expert has a high enough win:loss ratio as to keep our accounts safe from a kill. Don't forget to check out my ebook that explains expert advisors and reviews several commercial experts !
Backtesting results of the new version, available at halcyonfx.com (which is the developer's website), show the expert advisor being tested on the GBP/JPY pair for a period of 2 years. This backtests somehow increased my concerns. Even though the equity curve does seem much cleaner than before, with I have to say, increased profitability, there is an obscure risk factor surrounding this new money management system.
The system basically builds up position size as losses are incremented, which clearly makes recovery from losses much faster. But I cannot help to ask myself, what if the expert suffers too many continuous losses ? Will the expert drive the account to a margin call ?
The tests did show this troublesome issue to some extent, on all of the test, Doubleplay did experience periods of sharp draw down, that, although not available in the presented data, amount to almost 50% of the account by visual inspection. The ea did recover all losses and drew a nice equity curve on all of the graphs but... What if the market conditions had been worse ? Is the expert going to cause a margin call ?
I have never considered an expert with such a high level of draw down acceptable, so I should not consider Doubleplay v 4.5 as one merely because of this fact. I must say, I have run Doubleplay v4.5 on a live account since March the 17th and it does show me a clean advance with a gain of almost 5% on my account until now.
But what about those dark market times ? The ea seems to kind of protect itself by limiting the scaling of positions sizes with a top, but this does not keep me from worrying about such a high draw down in bad market conditions. I would have to say, there are other options, better options, out there right now. As always, time will tell if the expert has a high enough win:loss ratio as to keep our accounts safe from a kill. Don't forget to check out my ebook that explains expert advisors and reviews several commercial experts !
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2 comments:
I've also been running DP4.5 since 17 March and am down 8.6% in that period. While this by itself doesn't overly concern me I am interested to know why you are up 5% and I am down 8.6%. I used Hal's settings exactly, with no changes. I'm running a demo account on IBFX. I share your concern regarding the Martingale-like money management sytem but am happy to see it through (especially on demo!) to see what happens.
Hello Recoil,
Well, when I wrote the post I was 5% up, now I am down as well. The exact same thing I was worried about happened, 5 consecutive losses. Never a good idea to compound losing trades ! But well, I want to see how long it takes for it to recover.
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