Mine has traded the EUR/USD, USD/JPY, & USD/CHF

USD/JPY only right now.

Since it's not betting much money per trade I decided to move the Margin slider up from 75 to 100. Maybe it will place larger trades? Risk is at 24. Maybe I should slide it up too, but I'll wait to see if the Margin adjustment makes much difference for a couple of days.

Glenn,

If you are only testing, I would caution you against moving the sliders at all.

The question you are trying to answer is whether the backtests are sufficiently reliable, not curve fitted, in live trading to warrant investing real capital. You then know whether your live performance (either real or demo) is within the parameters to be expected or not. If yes, back tests are valid then continue, if not within parameters, then you need to investigate why and either adjust parameters to account for the new reality or stop.

If you change the sliders you are invalidating the question, as you are no longer evaluating like with like.

I am leaving the sliders at 50 10 and evaluating the performance live against the saved backtest. It should then deliver returns, drawdowns, max margin employed comparable to the backtest. If it does perform within parameters over a prolonged period, I'll trust it enough to try a microlot account, If the microlot also proves that the backtests are a reliable indicator of margin required for x return, I'll concern myself with correctly sizing the sliders for the account size I wish to trade.

Hmmm?

Well, I did run a series of tests using a variety of slider positions before starting the demo.

I noted the results and found that Margin-76 & Risk-24 produced the highest annual return. Z2fna produced +196% / +39807 (capital required $2277)

Margin-100 Risk-50 produced +192% / +51216 (capital required $2980)


I don't know about the parameter ratio details, that you mention. But I was just hoping to give Zorro a "little prod" to start buying larger trades. I read that it begins slowly, but I don't quite understand why.

Actually, I don't really know the $amount that is being traded. On the FXCM platform there's an "Amt" column. Now it says "1" for the USD/JPY trade that's open. I've never seen it over "3" for any trade yet. My "Usable Mr" is 99.96%, so I don't understand why Zorro doesn't use more.

I wish the demo could be set to work with $7,000 like the Zorro restriction, so I'd have a better idea of what to expect with an account that size. I'm a bit confused about how it compares.

Glenn,

I think that at the slider settings 76 - 24, the maximum at risk per trade is 76*24 = 1824 of whatever currency you are trading. There are a few caveats to that and I suggest reading the manual to clear it up. Few if any trades will actually put that amt at risk, as margin is allocated based on performance of the pair and internal algo, I think Z2 has 4-5 algos per trade. Rerun the backtest with the same settings on a new instance of zorro, and read the performance report, it will give the max margin at any one time and I'm sure it will be a small fraction of 1824.

The key figure is capital required at 2277. According to the back test you only need 2277 in your account (I think this is at the end of the period to safely continue the strategy) to get an annual return of 196%.

The bit I currently don't understand fully is whether your current balance ever feeds into the lot sizing. i.e. the 196% return is calculated on the margin you put at risk over the period, and the capital required is based on historic margin required and max drawdown. I think not, but it may be possible that there is some limit on lot size linked to balance or equity independent of your max risk per trade setting of 1824.

As I previously stated, for now all I'm interested in is the accuracy of the back tests in calculating returns and capital required. If accurate I'll be investing in an unrestricted Zorro S and upping the numbers, but remember the logic of trying to force Zorro to put on bigger trades defeats the whole idea of Z1/Z2 which is trying to manage the allocation of margin to only the most profitable asset/algo combinations without reinvestment.

Z1fx here has an open position since 2013-05-29, short USD/CHF @0.96149 size 46k. It is currently $1362 in profit. Unfortunately, I don't remeber what settings I had for margin/risk when the position was initiated. But, I often see trades of that size open. Typically accompanied with a few much smaller trades (9k, 10k).

My Z2nfa demo just isn't making any progress. It lost a lot on the GDP/USD yesterday, and is having trouble so far today with the USD/CHF. I will continue to be patient for another week, or so.



I'm in the US and need to use the "nfa" version, but it looks like the manual says I can use the "fx" versions also. Is that correct? If so, maybe I will switch to one of those.

Hiho guys,

Amazon offers a VPS for one year free. So you can run Z1/2 24/7 :-)

(Just one of the links you will find when searching the internet: link )

I by myself have running Z1 for some days. Till now only loosers... But those strategies need time i think and a winner should outperforme a looser. So i wait...


happy new week...

Excellent link Sundance thank you!

I could do with an idiots guide on how to setup and run zorro on a vps though, this stuff is hard!

Can I create multiple server instances on that free offer and run z1 in one and z2 in another all on demo accounts and not violate either the zorro terms or amazons and start to incur charges?

Today my Zorro2 finished the day at 50058. Not sure how long it should take to begin making profits, but I'll keep watching it run.


In the meantime I'll keep reading the manual & learning Lite-C.


I noticed that Z3 info has been posted, so I will probably switch to it when it becomes available.

Thanks Glenn for the head ups about Z3. (Can you show me the post? Can't find it... )
The manual says that most strategies including Z1/Z2 will start with some loosing trades. So i'am not concearned at all.

@swingtraderkk: You get an VPS with Microsft Server 2008 operating system. You can do whatever you would do with your local computer. But remember the RAM ist only 640MB. At the moment i have Zorro and one MT$ instance running. MT4 runs only cause of updating my MT4i account.