Why a journal
This is my first journal and first live automated system I have ever launched. The main purpose of this journal is to record my experiences associated with implementing, refining, and managing an automated system. I already have a system I hope will be as profitable as it is in backtesting, so I plan to keep it focused on managing issues and making decisions which hopefully lead to profitability. Backtesting results and statistics only paint a partial picture, I imagine thoughts and feelings change when your equity curve isn't living up to your expectations.
Broker/Platform
I set up a separate Forex account with MB Trading and will be funding it with an initial $500 this week. I selected the no commissions plan but may change this in the future to their pay for limits plan. I have been using Multicharts since last summer and have created a very simple automated system which shows promise. Multicharts will be running on a VPS with the hopes of one day just sitting back and collecting the checks.
System/Backtesting
The system is based on a single moving average with less than 40 lines of EL coding. When I first started with automated systems I set a goal to develop 3 systems a week. I would try to come up with a system based on one chart pattern I witnessed that day and quickly backtest and optimize to see if I should keep working to develop an edge. Some I could never get to be profitable, others only with very specific values - obviously not something I could trust. When I put the MA system together it was profitable without optimization and with similar results on several currency pairs. Over the past 6 months the average trade is just over 8 hours with a total of 75 trades. I would like to backtest with a larger sample but MBT data only provides 170 days of minute bar history. The system Market orders in and Limit orders out, size is 10K = $1/pip. Backtest below includes $3 slippage per side.
I had some routing issues (on the sim account) at the end of last week and I plan to use Monday and Tuesday to make sure everything is OK.