I have not unzipped & loaded the MT4 file yet. If I do will that allow me to run additional demos with other brokers that MT4 works with? Instead without the need for a VPS or another computer, broker dll, API, etc.?

The 90% mean using the MT4 bridge. But this is unrelated to the need for a VPS - if you have no reliable PC at home, a VPS is highly recommended.

I signed up with Amazon AWS. I don't see VPS mentioned anywhere. Is this the correct service, and if so what should I look for to get a VPS set up?

thanks,


Geeeeez! I hope this isn't it. You've got to be a programmer to make it work! Where's the easy version??

Amazon calls it "EC2" - it is already the easy version .

I think that users might get a little intimidated by the EC2 setup procedure, but in fact it's quite straightforward. You can have your VPS set up and running in 5 minutes. I've added a short description to the manual how to run Zorro on a VPS:

http://manual.zorro-trader.com/brokers.htm

thanks,
I'll give it a try again.

I somehow screwed up my robot. My original tests had very high AR's and low UI's. I'm not sure what I did, but the test results got worse, so I thought perhaps I didn't unzip the history files properly, so I tried again.

Well, the results got much worse, for both Z12 & Z3. The last Z3 test gave an AR of 56% and UI of 24.5%.

I decided to totally clear the history file and try extracting the zipped files again. That just made things worse, because now I am just getting History missing errors & and the test can't even finish running.

Luckily, we are on vacation this week with my brother-in-law who's a programmer. Maybe he'll be interested in Zorro enough to help me some. If not, I'll get back to it myself next week.

Thanks jcl for the new section on the vps.

It took me ages on amazon, all the language was so unfamiliar, but if you persist it is achievable for non techies like me.

I do have a question re securing the server. In general, are firewalls, antivirus, anti-spyware etc. handled by the provider, or do I need to install and configure all that stuff as on my PC at home.

Firewalls are normally handled by the provider, antivirus and antispyware is up to you. Because only you can upload files - at least when you don't use the VPS to browse the Internet - it's normally not required.

thanks jcl

I like the looks of these guys:



Very low spreads.

You can find lots more broker examples from here...

LMAX news time...

LMAX up to $125 billion per month of forex volume

LMAX’s David Mercer THINKING BIG

Very quickly and roughly estimated, LMAX turnover is about fourth of the FXCM one. FXCM, being the biggest US forex broker. Not too shabby.

I don't know what to think about changing customer profile towards institutionals. Although, that was their intention from the beginning (for example, they require quite steep $10000 deposit from retail customers). Maybe they'll stop taking up retail traders after a while? Still, there are lots of introducing brokers that require much smaller capital to trade with LMAX. I will sumarize them in the next post.