Update...and other stuff

Hello...sorry for the lack of posts lately. Between traveling, backtesting and getting my taxes ready I haven't had much free time. Trades are going well this month. I'm on the plus side so that is always good.

My traveling will slow down over the next few weeks and it looks like I'll be home most of April. I'm looking forward to getting back in my office and start day trading again. In order to accomplish that I have two major goals. Backtest my day trading strategies to get my confidence up again, and finding the right broker.

As far as backtesting i'm going to state something that might be obvious for most, but it wasn't for me. I've come to the conclusion that you can't backtest on one tradeing platform (ie MT4) and trade live on another. For me the results are entirely different. The prices are different and the candles are different. I've talked to a few other folks that trade professionally and they said that they even found out that the strategy didn't work with some brokers and works well with others. Which will bring me to my next paragraph. Anyway backtesting is going well and I'm currently testing my 30 min strategy on GBP/USD. It doesn't produce a lot of trades a month, but it's consistant. I think most people give up on backtesting because they start and see their strategy missed a big move, so they adjust their method and start again. The cycle never ends. If you really want to know if your method will work go completely through your testing. Review the results and then fine tune if you need to. If you don't have a large enough sample you can't make educated decisions.

Okay now for the second goal finding a broker. I have two brokers i trade with we'll call them broker A and broker B. Broker A has a smaller spread that broker B, except during news or slow times. So what i've been doing is placing entry orders on both brokers (mini lots) this way I know i get in at the same price. Stop losses and profits are also set identical. What i have found thus far is that broker A is always a few pips against my trade. For example if I'm short their close pice is anywhere from 1-3 pips above broker B. If I'm long their always 1-3 pips under broker B. Now how's that possible if their spread is smaller? There has also been three times that my profit mark has been hit by broker B, but not broker A. Again I'll say how's that possible if their spreads are smaller? The has also been 2 times that broker A filled my position and broker B never did. Both trades ended up going against me and hitting my SL. Broker B's trade was never triggered. Again I'll say how's that possible if their pip spread is smaller?? I'll continue to do this for a few more weeks to get a larger sample size then I'll have a decision to make. The obvious decision is to move to another broker. That's a given. Right now i'm debating on whether to get one of my friends to open trades with against with broker A. I'll have them open a short while I open a long. When we do this his close price should be the ask and mine the bid, so we should see the true spread. If the spread is not what they display on their trading platform then we have a serious problem. Bottom line is it would be proof that they are misleading their customers. Anyway I'll keep you updating on my testing. I really hope things change and I don't prove what my initial beliefs are about broker A.

Trade Well......
Brent