Thread: 1 - Automated Trading for Dummies

This forum is put into place to help you automate your trades and strategy. No prior experience or any prior knowledge of how to program a computer is necessary. Don't worry if the material seems a bit complicated at first as we will walk you through each step to setting up your computer to adding strategies to test and trade. If you start by using a strategy from our library, then you could have your computer set up and your demo account ready to receive signals in a matter of minutes.

There are two types of accounts needed to automate your strategy. The FXCM demo (where your trades are executed) and the FX Intellichart Desktop Demo (the software that scans the markets for trades).

We have a short video to walk you through setting up demo accounts for FXCM and for FX Intellichart Desktop. Additionally, we will show you how to add a strategy from our library of strategies so you can generate alerts and/or trades.

Short Video to open demo accounts.

Click on the link below to open an FXCM free practice account.



The FX Intellichart Desktop software is a 3rd party software that can generate audible/email alerts and automatically place trades in your FXCM demo account. Click on the link below to register for a free FX Intellichart Desktop Demo.

FXTrek Desktop Trial

You will need both FXCM and FX Intellichart Desktop demo accounts to get started and have signals automatically generated by your strategy. After you have opened your demo accounts, proceed by clicking onto :

HOW TO SET UP ALERTS (2 - How to Set up Alerts)

Feel free to use any of the strategies already provided in our STRATEGY LIBRARY.

Jeremy, I am really looking to get into automated trading, but with limited trading capital, I am trading on micro account, and i would want to trade demo account automated for a while to get a good hang of it since i am new and don't know how to program strategies, or even use the software, it wouldn't be reasonable for me to spend 50$ a month on auto trading software. Ultimately however, i only have two questions, 1) will there be software that will be free to use attached to fxcm platform to automate strategies at some point in the future ( if so do you know when)? 2) What would you suggest a trader like myself do, who is trading on a micro account and would want to demo autotrade for a rather extended period of time (up to 1 year)? Where should i start?

Originally Posted by Sheila4x

Jeremy, I am really looking to get into automated trading, but with limited trading capital, I am trading on micro account, and i would want to trade demo account automated for a while to get a good hang of it since i am new and don't know how to program strategies, or even use the software, it wouldn't be reasonable for me to spend 50$ a month on auto trading software. Ultimately however, i only have two questions, 1) will there be software that will be free to use attached to fxcm platform to automate strategies at some point in the future ( if so do you know when)? 2) What would you suggest a trader like myself do, who is trading on a micro account and would want to demo autotrade for a rather extended period of time (up to 1 year)? Where should i start?

Hello Sheila4x…

That is great to hear you are interested in trying out automated trading. To specifically answer your questions :

1) FXCM has designed a platform which can be used for automated trading or for self trading called Strategy Trader. This platform is scheduled to be released in July. The username and password you use for the FXCM Trading Station II can also be used in the Strategy Trader. Since it is FXCM’s platform, there is no charge to use it. The only requirement is that hedging is disabled on your account. So any 10k standard account or micro accounts in FXCM US can have hedging disabled. Micro accounts in the FXCM UK entity cannot use Strategy Trader because hedging is automatically enabled on all of those accounts.

2) The downside to the Strategy Trader is that creating and coding the strategies is a bit more complicated than what you see here in these Automated Trading threads. You will need some programming experience to code your own strategy in Strategy Trader. FXCM does offer programming services for an hourly fee. The upside to using Strategy Trader is that if you have a strategy developed, you can back test your strategy for several years. That will give you an idea of how the strategy performed in a hypothetical environment.

Other forums may advocate using MT4. However, you will run into the same programming issues as you have with Strategy Trader. There will be some free strategies included with Strategy Trader so you can try tinkering with them, but again it will require more experience to crack the code.

Essentially, you’ll have to decide whether to invest a few hundred bucks into our programming services to turn your strategy into code the computer and understand. Or, whether to keep the few hundred bucks in your trading account and try to grow your account to a point where you can pay for programming services to help.

There will be more information coming out over the next month regarding Strategy Trader and it won’t cost you anything to download it once its available. You can use it even with an FXCM LLC (US) micro account.

Best of luck in your trading!

Hey guys, for you experts i probably sound like an idiot but what i'm doing actually works. I use MACD indicator with charts on 10-30 minutes. When lines cross on MACD it means that it will go up or down according to trend. On the first occurence chart was moving down when lines crosed and voila, it starts going up. Bought 5 minutes after the lines crossed and made a killing.

Originally Posted by fxtgenius

Hey guys, for you experts i probably sound like an idiot but what i'm doing actually works. I use MACD indicator with charts on 10-30 minutes. When lines cross on MACD it means that it will go up or down according to trend. On the first occurence chart was moving down when lines crosed and voila, it starts going up. Bought 5 minutes after the lines crossed and made a killing.

Fxtgenius, that is great to hear you are having some success with your strategy. Keep in mind that strategies move in and out of favor in the market. Even though you are experiencing success now, I would suggest against betting the farm. At some point, that method will experience losses and if you are risking too much of your account, then you run the risk of wiping out a significant portion of your equity.

As you develop a strategy, it is important to also include where are you getting in the trade, where are you going to exit, and what trade size are you going to make. In our DailyFX Plus Trading Course, we discuss some of the money management techniques as well as other techniques to help in developing a strategy.

In the strategy library are some strategies you can use to play around with to come up with your own trading criteria.

Good luck!

Originally Posted by Jeremy Wagner

This forum is put into place to help you automate your trades and strategy. No prior experience or any prior knowledge of how to program a computer is necessary. Don't worry if the material seems a bit complicated at first as we will walk you through each step to setting up your computer to adding strategies to test and trade. If you start by using a strategy from our library, then you could have your computer set up and your demo account ready to receive signals in a matter of minutes.

There are two types of accounts needed to automate your strategy. The FXCM demo (where your trades are executed) and the FX Intellichart Desktop Demo (the software that scans the markets for trades).

We have a short video to walk you through setting up demo accounts for FXCM and for FX Intellichart Desktop. Additionally, we will show you how to add a strategy from our library of strategies so you can generate alerts and/or trades.

Short Video to open demo accounts.

Click on the link below to open an FXCM free practice account.



The FX Intellichart Desktop software is a 3rd party software that can generate audible/email alerts and automatically place trades in your FXCM demo account. Click on the link below to register for a free FX Intellichart Desktop Demo.

FXTrek Desktop Trial

You will need both FXCM and FX Intellichart Desktop demo accounts to get started and have signals automatically generated by your strategy. After you have opened your demo accounts, proceed by clicking onto :

HOW TO SET UP ALERTS (2 - How to Set up Alerts)

Feel free to use any of the strategies already provided in our STRATEGY LIBRARY.

Hi Jeremy

I am new to trading and have just been playing around with the Trading Station/Marketscope. I have a micro account and have also set up demo accounts. I am trying to set up my strategy alerts and wonder if you can help. I have searched the forums for similar postings without any success.

(1) I have managed to set up MACD cross over, for the EUR/USD for example. How can I set the same strategy for all currencies, ie I want the system to scan all currencies for me and alert of potential trades that meet the criteria. Is there a short way of doing this or would I have to copy the strategy I have set for each of the currency pairs? If this is the case then I would have thousands of strategies!!!!

(2) I can't get my Strategy report to work. It shows the number of ticks simulated BUT shows no other values on the report. I see from the Marketscope help it says I must set the parameter "Allow Trading" to YES.....but I can't find where this parameter is.

Thank you in advance.

is that FX Intellichart Desktop only work for demo account or it will work for the real trading station account, like just placing the strategy into market scope then it will auto trade for you ?

I think maintaining healthy SL/TP values is very important to one's overall success as well, might seem like a given but a lot of people truly never think about it.

Originally Posted by ForexLozenge

I think maintaining healthy SL/TP values is very important to one's overall success as well, might seem like a given but a lot of people truly never think about it.

yes it is completely true!!! I was losing tons of money before I understood that

Originally Posted by ForexLozenge

I think maintaining healthy SL/TP values is very important to one's overall success as well, might seem like a given but a lot of people truly never think about it.

oh.. I see.. SL/TP makes an important role now I know.. thanks for that.

This is very helpful to us as beginners...At least with I just known that SL/TP plays an important role.

Originally Posted by ForexLozenge

I think maintaining healthy SL/TP values is very important to one's overall success as well, might seem like a given but a lot of people truly never think about it.

What do you consider as healthy SL/TP values?

For a total beginner like me. Well, i turn to be in this business. And at least I'll have this a good to note down as one to consider. Browsing all along to give me ideas.

Hi Jeremy, I have a standard acct. and have downloaded the strategy trader. the forum won't let me post my questions there so I apologize for using this forum.
I have tried to download one of the the free indicators (donchian channels) from the forexcodesource.com and was able to get it
installed in the tradestation platform (and I use it) but have been unable to download it to strategy trader. I get several error msg
line #1 namespace does not directly contain numbers such as fields or methods
#42,43,44 expected class delegate,enum,interface or struct.
#43,44 namespace <global namespace> already contains def. for "?"
Does this make sense to you?
Otherwise I followed the instructions for downloading in the FAQ section and came up w/the above.
Thanks in advance,
kdigs