Risk 24 means that this trade can lose up to ~24 EUR, and "ts" means "trailing stop".

-> http://manual.zorro-trader.com/trading.htm

Oh. Sorry I overlooked this. I never saw the ts and thougth it would mean 'thousand' :-)

The risk is then very low. 24€. Mmmhhhh.

Hi Sundance,

The s is Stop and the t is Trailing. Got me too the first time I saw it, but it's in the manual...

Hi all,

As some of you know, I've been demo-ing z12s since last May. For much of that time they have been on phantom, but initially for a month or 2 they were not. I also recently removed phantom on upgrading to 1.2 as both were healthily in profit Not sure that was wise, but I am testing!

1) FXCM demo spreadbetting account / z12 / started with 50k / margin 50 Risk 10.

Current Balance: 50,616
Current Equity: 50,517
Lowest Balance: 47,000 approx
Max Balance: 51,600 approx

This was a bit of a rollercoaster, but calmed down when I put phantom=1. Not good over Dec. I'd never have put 50k in but I'd be relatively happy on 1.5k over an 8 month period if I did have 10k down.

2) Alpari demo spreadbetting account via MT4 bridge / FX only as commodities and indices are futures / z12 / started with 10k - margin 50 Risk 10.
Mostly on phantom only moved off phantom at 1.20. Worst period of drawdown has been last 6 weeks or so, possibly related to removing phantom until then it was very smooth.

Current Balance: 12,543
Current Equity: 12,597
Lowest Balance: 9,900 approx.
Max Balance: 13,600 approx.

This installation has given me exactly zero problems compared to the FXCM API where I've had issues of can't close and the persistently annoying equity display.

@acidburn - 2.5k on 10k in 8 months would make me very happy on an automated system :-)

BTW At end of year my discretionary trading was up 41.5%. I'm very, very happy with that, even with a peak to trough drawdown of 15.5% (numerator was $drawdown denominator was peak balance). I usually trade at 0.5, 1, 1.5 or max 2% risk of my opening balance each quarter, so I'm very traditional in my risk management and lot sizing.

I have been learning from zorro however, and recently analysed my performance as if I had been using phantom trading of my own equity curve as a discretionary trader. I would have increased my return to 88.4%!!!!! If I can do that in 2014, its bye bye day job!! Now for the discipline to sit on my hands and paper trade when I'm out of synch with the markets!

Hi swingtrader,

thanks for your post. So what do you think? Should I enable Phantom trades on my Z12 account or not. I'am not that convinced...

Considering you have real money invested I'm uncomfortable giving advice, but I'll happily tell you what I'm doing with my demos.

I'm going to give them some time off phantom to see how they do.

My initial logic was no phantom as it reduces overall profitability, but I was not comfortable with the drawdowns using my logic at the time. I then decided to enable phantom to see if the balance could build up. It has, so now I'm back with phantom off.

For me it is too early to say definitely phantom on or off with the z12 robots because they are trading for income, using optf for position size and without reinvesting of profits. I'm still testing.

I'm sure it is of benefit for my discretionary trading for capital gain, using % balance risk per trade i.e. reinvestment of profits. Discretionary traders always go through periods of being out of touch with the markets, the phantom mechanism would have kept me out of the market entirely in those phases, leaving me much less drawdown to trade my way out of to get to growth again.

This might make more sense in context of my post in this thread:
http://www.opserver.de/ubb7/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=425296&page=19

Hi swing,

thanks for your answer!!

sincerely yours
Sundance

@jcl:

1. Can you tell me when the next Zorro Version will arrive?
2. Can you confirm the last two trades my Z12 real account does?
(BUY NAS100 and BUY US30).

Thanks in advance
Sundance

Zorro 1.22 is ready, we're just generating new parameters for the Z systems and doing some final tests. I think it will be released to the beta forum by the end of this week, or next week the latest.

The last 3 trades from my Z12 instance have been SPX500, US30, and USD/JPY, all long.

Thanks for the info jcl. Nice to see further improvements.
I have no error messages from my Z12 Zorro instance. Why are there different trades to yours?
I will also check if there has been any differences in the config files.