Zoro Live FXCM Test

I am in the process of setting up a Zorro test for a $200 dollar micro account. This is money I can afford to lose and I will keep the account active until the money runs out.
The Process will as follows.
-Open a FXCM account. (Done)
-Learn my way around the Zorro Platform. (Doing)
-Fund and link FXCM account to Zorro. (Pending)

You'll have to invest $2 margin per trade then. Let me know how this works. We have not yet tested Z1 or Z2 on a micro account - previously FXCM only offered mini accounts with their API.

I ll keep this space update with the info. I am looking at investing 200 dollars. Can I trade both Z1 and Z2 strategies simultaneously on the same account?

Yes, but you'll need two PCs for that. The FXCM API does not allow trading with two programs simultaneously on the same PC.

oh... can I combind the two scripts into one script for this one account?

I am assuming that Z1 was coded with a regular 1 standard lot in mind. But on the micro-account one pip is 0.10 dollars not the normal $10 pip. Will I encounter a problem because of the different pip values?

No, the lot size should not matter. I'm only worried because FXCM told me some time ago that micro lot accounts were not available with direct broker API access. Maybe that has changed meanwhile. Otherwise, you'd get an error message when logging in to your account.

Have you tested Zorro with a micro lot demo account?

I haven't done that yet...but Zorro can successfully log into my microlot account though. Still making my way through the manual. Hopefully I ll be done by the end of the week and unleash Zorro on the account from Monday

FXCM confirmed meanwhile that their micro accounts now also support the Zorro interface. We'll also open some micro accounts in short and will check if they work reliably.

Micro accounts are better for Zorro's original purpose, which is distributing money to the poor .

Yep. So one final question. When one runs Z1 and Z2 the capital needed is usually $2000 on a standard account. Does that translate to $200 on a microlot account?

Only when you set the Margin slider down to 2. With $20 margin you'd still need $2000, no matter the account. It would then just purchase more lots.

If you want to trade only one system, I suggest Z2. It is less profitable than Z1, but has a higher win rate and takes profits faster.

For being 100% on the safe side, you could decide to wait until we opened some micro accounts and tested them over some weeks. Theoretically there shouldn't be a problem, but maybe there's some unknown side effect of a very low margin. We had never run Zorro on a micro lot account so far.

Sounds like this can be solved if the risk slider incorporates 0.01 lot increases so we can trade 10 cents a lot. For the poor like myself

Unfortunately not yet. We have now tested microlot accounts and I posted a comment here:

http://www.opserver.de/ubb7/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=408036#Post408036

When you run Z1 or Z2 on a microlot account and set Margin at a low value such as 2, it will indeed trade a low volume with currencies. But with CFDs the lot size is still the same as for a mini account. So with Margin at 2, but required Margin at 50 for a CFD, Zorro will skip 24 trades and enter a full lot at the 25th. So you still need $2000 capital because Z1 and Z2 trade with CFDs.

We'll include a currency-only version of Z1 and Z2 in one of the next updates. Until then, I recommend not to trade with only $200 on your account. This money is at risk as soon as Zorro purchases the first CFD contract.

Seems the test has to be put on hold. Account is funded and as soon as I settle on a trading script, I will start my test. Wanted to start with Z1 but as it includes CFDs, I will wait till a forex only version comes through. Think I will add the HUCK trend catcher to the tut final script and trade that.

So I have decided to test the account with the workshop 6 script with a lot more assets, all forex. I will be doing a weekly review of my progress... So stay tuned. And with time I will be adding more systems to the script. So far it is just the two systems from the tutorials.

Looks like when I increase the number of assets in the tutorial script the profitability falls and the capital needed increases. I perfectly understand the need to more capital but the falling profitability needs more research. I have therefore decided to start with workshop_6 final script.

What about setting the CFDs in the .fac file to zero ?

You're absolutely right. I should have come up with that idea myself...

Edit z1.fac or z2.fac and set all investment factors of all non-currencies to zero, f.i.

Then this test starts on Monday sunday then.

Does Z1 and Z2 have an automatic retrain line? And a bit confused about the the margin and risk sliders. Does margin * risk give me the highest possible loss I want zorro to take or the minimum risk per trade (based on volume adjustment) ?

The highest possible loss is all capital in your account. Margin and Risk are for single trades only, not for the whole strategy.

Zorro has indeed a limit - it stops trading when you have less than $1000 remaining margin. Still, you can lose even those $1000 partially or totally when open trades go against you.

Then there might be a problem. Zorro might not trade as I have only 200 dollars in my account but this is a microlot accoutn.

I understand. We'll remove the $1000 limit for the next release, 1.01, which is scheduled for tomorrow. You can then trade with $200 on your account.

Thank you mate.

So is live trading of Z1/Z2 on a demo account also affected by this bug?

They should be not affected because they are compiled. Still, better don't trade them until the new release tomorrow. The bug might have some side effects because the wrong header caused random content of an internal variable.

So I start Zorro live on my microlot account. The strategy states it needs atleast 600 dollars to trade safely... so I will be topping up with time. Here is a link to the Myfxbook myfxbook for this account.

The test didnt go too well.. I have lost over 68% of the invested capital mainly due to my own negligence. I closed the platform on Monday so as to restart it but forgot to slide the Margin and risk back to low levels. As you can see from the myfxbook page, some trades did take huge losses... But one more thing I realised was that Zorro was opening multiple positions at the same price. This happened with 3 similar EURUSD positions and 4 AUDUSD positions. I hope JCL will look into this... I need to take a break now and wait for the update.

The multiple positions are ok. They happen when several strategies give a trade signal at the same time.

Oh, ok... that s nice. so when is the next release?

Hello, I'm sorry for my basic questions but I'm used with MT4 trading and trading with Zorro is quite different. I also would like to sum up some of the trading limits of the actual Zorro version:
-as I could understand, it is not possible to trade live on FXCM microaccounts with the actual 1.01 version, as the rollowers are not calculated in the right way. Is it right?
-I read that Z1fx and Z2fx don't have hard stoplosses in order to comply with the USA rules. Do the strategies use an internal SL for closing orders? Does this mean that in case of disconnections the trades are not protected and trading is more risky than with Z1 and Z2?
-Let's suppose trading a 5000 euro account with margin 30 and risk 10. In case I would like to trade a 500 euro microaccount equivalent, should I use margin 3 and risk 10?
-With FXCM micro it is not possible to use Z1 and Z2 at this moment, as the lot size for CFD are not calculated in micro, so we will have to use Z1fx and Z2fx instead. Is it still right?
-I backtested the 4 strategies with default settings (margin 30, risk 10) but I had different results as the ones posted in your website. I had the following results:
Z1: annual profit 502%, DD 567, capital 2019
Z1fx: annual profit 513%, DD 440, capital 869
Z2: annual profit 102&, DD 3333, capital 4053
Z2fx: annual profit 87, DD 2072, capital 2396
How do you explain this difference?

Thank you!

Wrong rollovers were used for training Z1 and Z2, so the problem has nothing to do with your account. You can still trade them, but the profits are about 15% lower than they should be, and the losses accordingly 15% worse.

All strategies use stop losses of course, regardless of the NFA rules.

The performance report simulates a micro lot account by default. Do not go below the displayed capital requirement. The default values are normally the best, so use a lower margin only when you really don't have enough capital. Run a test with any margin setting so that you see how much capital you'll need.

If you have access to CFDs, you should trade them with Z1/Z2 even with a low margin on a micro lot account. They improve the performance due to their lower correlation to currencies.

Backtest results depend on what you test. Different accounts, spreads, test periods, margin settings etc. will always give different results. So it's highly unlikely that you get precisely the same results as in the tests used in the manual.

Thank you very much for your support!