Thread: New updates

will ST ever include manual trading. (to include a DOM, entries and stops identified on the charts) The updates come at a painfully slow rate. ST is a wonderful charting pkge and would get so much use if it included manual trading.
If ST will never include manual trading can an API be written for Multicharts?

thx

Hi earlyred,

Thank you for posting. That would be a great feature. However, there won't be any update for ST in the near future.

Regards,
jpschan

What is FXCM's position on Strategy Trader at this point?

In recent months we have seen strategy capability with backtesting appear in TS2 (I haven't tried it out, but I've got to think it will not be up to what ST can do). We have also seen a resurgence in support for MT4, with the removal of the need for the Boston Technologies bridge.

These all seem like things FXCM wouldn't be bothering with if ST were still strategic.

I would like to understand FXCM's position on this because I A) think the ST platform is fantastic and don't want it to go away and B) have built several profitable strategies using it, and many useful indicators, some of which would be a MAJOR pain to recode in MQL4, making as they do heavy use of time series variables.

If FXCM have for some reason decided the ST experiment isn't working out, I would like to know that before I invest more time and energy in marrying my trading to the platform. Also, what would FXCM's recommended platform for live clients interested in auto-trading be at this point?

Mark

Hi Mark,

The alternative platform we suggest clients to use is MetaTrader 4. Below is the link with additional details.

Metatrader 4, MT4, Metatrader Demo, VPS, EAs, Forex Trading Platform | FXCM

Best,

Probinson

Thanks probinson, am I to take this as confirmation that ST is no longer strategic for FXCM? If so, I think that's a shame -- any insights into the reason for that decision?

Hello

This is a good question.
How is the way from StrategyTrader now and in future ???
End of Strategytrader was a terrible thought

b.r.

GTradeFX

Originally Posted by GTradeFX

Hello

This is a good question.
How is the way from StrategyTrader now and in future ???
End of Strategytrader was a terrible thought

b.r.

GTradeFX

....+1....

Originally Posted by GTradeFX

Hello

This is a good question.

Yeah it was a great question. What would be even better is an explicit answer from someone at FXCM!

Serious question -- are we all to take probinson's response to this thread as an instruction to move our trading to MT4? Is it the case that if we wish to stay with FXCM (which I do) then we have no choice? Or is that an overreaction? In short, what, if anything, is going on?

Moderators / FXCM tech people -- please weigh in, we are getting worried over here...

Mark

Also for me, I invested a lot of time on getting my first strategy to work. It is running live and I really do hope that FXCM continues the ST platform development.
I am currently designing two other strategies so I need to have a firm commitment that ST will not be cancelled by FXCM.

Porting my code to some other platform would also for me be a MAJOR PAIN!

I would of course not mind to see some bug fixes in the future, especially the bugs of order entries & exits, but for the time being I know how to work around these issues and I can do my trading with the ST platform.

It would be a real shame if this platform was not to be continued.

Cheers,
Martin

Hi All,

Thank you for your continued support to ST. We will continue our support on ST. But, as I said, there won't be any update for ST in the near future. We are putting more focus on MT4 for the time being.

Regards,
jpschan

Originally Posted by mstreck

Also for me, I invested a lot of time on getting my first strategy to work. It is running live and I really do hope that FXCM continues the ST platform development.
I am currently designing two other strategies so I need to have a firm commitment that ST will not be cancelled by FXCM.

Porting my code to some other platform would also for me be a MAJOR PAIN!

I would of course not mind to see some bug fixes in the future, especially the bugs of order entries & exits, but for the time being I know how to work around these issues and I can do my trading with the ST platform.

It would be a real shame if this platform was not to be continued.

Cheers,
Martin

Hi Martin,

Do you mind elaborating what the known bugs are, and what work arounds you employ?

Hi fxtrader123,

I have had a lot of trouble popping up with market entry and exit orders. I use IOG enabkled.

For single time frame charts, it looks to me that a 100% entry rate for market entry orders is only achieved if executed on a bar closing tick.
For market exit orders, there seems to be sometimes a problem on the tick of a bar closing.
So, I designed my code to always enter on a bar close and avoid exits on a bar close. This is a smart thing to do anyway, because the ST platform has a limitation that per tick, you can only execute one market order.
I have not observed any problem with stop & limit orders, but I have not written a test program to put them on bar closes or outside.

For a multi-time frame, there is another problem, because a bar close of a main chart does not always coincide with a bar close of a sub-chart of a higher time frame, i.e. they may or may not occur on the same tick.
If you try to place a market entry order on a tick of a bar close of a sub-chart, wherein there is NO bar close of the main chart at the same time (tick), then this order is always rejected.
This means that I place all order entries on a bar close tick of the main chart (this means you have to construct the bars of sub-charts time frames yourself because the price values of sub-charts are only valid on a bar close tick of the sub-chart, which is useless if the bar close of the main chart occurs on a different tick, same goes for indicator, but with the indicator there is a trick that you construct the indicator on the sub-chart, but put any necessary price inputs of the indicator from the main chart (which always correctly updates its price values on any tick)).

Check out my threads in the bug section. If you questions, let me know.

This has put my strategy very stable for the last three weeks using my real account, and I do not get any loss of price feeds anymore and no rejected or missing order entries / exits, and my strategy and myself are enjoying a nice bullish MACD divergence of the daily time frame at the moment;-)

Cheers,
Martin

Originally Posted by jpschan

Hi All,

Thank you for your continued support to ST. We will continue our support on ST. But, as I said, there won't be any update for ST in the near future. We are putting more focus on MT4 for the time being.

Regards,
jpschan

Thanks jpschan. I don't expect to be able to single-handedly influence FXCM policy here, but I just want to go on record as saying that having used both platforms for quite a while, and having done serious strategy development work on both, I believe ST to be a genuinely superior product to MT4. For me the 2 key advantages are the strength of the strategy development language (C# vs MQL4) and the backtesting / strategy reports, which are able to tell you much more about what is going on with your strategy than is MT4.

ST may have a steeper learning curve, there being less of a community around it than MT4 and the documentation being somewhat patchy, but once you get your head around it there is no doubt in my mind that I would rather work with ST than with MT4.

I hope we'll see ST get a new lease of life in the future; I for one will continue to be a user unless and until it becomes obvious support for it is being withdrawn. So thanks for clarifying FXCM's position at this point.

Mark

Originally Posted by mstreck

Hi fxtrader123,

For single time frame charts, it looks to me that a 100% entry rate for market entry orders is only achieved if executed on a bar closing tick.
For market exit orders, there seems to be sometimes a problem on the tick of a bar closing.
So, I designed my code to always enter on a bar close and avoid exits on a bar close. This is a smart thing to do anyway, because the ST platform has a limitation that per tick, you can only execute one market order.
I have not observed any problem with stop & limit orders, but I have not written a test program to put them on bar closes or outside.

I'm curious to discuss this further, as I have NOT seen issues placing market orders intra-bar (trading on daily bars here with IOG on, maybe that's got something to do with it, are you trading shorter time frames?). How specific can you be about the circumstances under which you have seen this happen?

Avoiding exits on a bar close is a smart way to avoid the Friday Close problem we were discussing in a different thread.

I'm also curious as to what circumstances would lead you to want to place more than one market order from a single strat in the same tick -- maybe I am being naive but wouldn't a better approach be to figure out what you want to do first that tick, and then do it? Rather than doing something and then modifying it somehow afterward. But maybe I'm missing your point...

Note my comments are confined to single time frame here, I have not spent much time working with MTF strats since FXCM did some work to fix some bugs in this area some considerable time back.

Mark

Mark,

I second your statement that I will continue to use ST platform, and do hope for an increasing user base for FXCM to continue the support of the platform.

Regarding your questions:
Here is a little bit of my design history which may help to answer your question. My strategy which runs live is a MTF using 60M, 240M, 1440M, and 1W.
I only use market entry orders on bar closes on all time frames. I first observed that sometimes entries of higher time frames from the sub-charts did not execute, and I did not have an explanation for it.
So I wrote a test program with 1M and 5M MTF, where I did prove that the entries of the 5M sub-charts were fine when the 1M and 5M bar close on the same tick, whereas the 5M entries were rejected when the 5M bar close was not on the same tick as the corresponding 1M bar close, which sometime happens in LIVE mode.
Then I started to test 5M STF, and I had some cases of missing or rejected entry orders when running constantly entries and exits outside of bar close ticks, while exits placed on a bar close tick did not always work either.
I have to report as well that the STF case was quite different on my Windows 7 Pro laptop. My Windows 2008 server running on a server platform did show less missing / rejected orders. Also, it appears to me that the situation improved recently for STF.
The MTF issue was confirmed by the FXCM guru in the big forum. Since I re-designed my MTF to the abefore-mentioned order constraints, I have a very stable platform running.

The multiple order entries are a result of two considerations:
1. I tried this in my first steps of multi-stage limit management as to handle two or three partial positions separately, which I do not try to do anymore.
2. In a MTF, there is situation in backtest, where two time frames trigger an entry at the same time, which may occur on the same tick if the bar closings occur at that same tick. That was an experiment as to allow two positions to open, as my strategy takes advantage of time differences of entry conditions across those time frames as to filter bad entries and amplify the good ones.

I now allow multiple positions to open but give priority to higher time frames of they occur at the same tick, since they yield more profit.

Cheers,
Martin