Metatrader Connection Problems.

Metatrader is one of the platforms that allows you to trade on the Foreign Currency Exchange. It's a great tool, especially as you can automate the trading process.

I leave Metatrader running in the background most of the time, and have occasionally lost the connection to the broker. It's usually not a problem, unless you happen to have some open trades! I wrote a simple Expert Advisor that would periodically check the connection and email you if there was something wrong. You can read more about it, and download the EA, from this thread in the PipCop forum.

Forex and the MetaTrader Platform

The MetaTrader platform allows clients to place buy/sell trades on the Forex market. It's quite a nice product, but is it 'fair'? There is a plugin, shown in this thread, that allows the broker to 'tweak' the settings on their side to, possibly, rob you of your cash.

So, if you see some unexplained spikes, or wonder why every trend just hits your SL before reversing, then maybe your broker is using this plugin.

Forex EA's (2)

Here's a site with a decently written EA ;)

Forex EA's

Yet another forex Expert Advisor I've developed based upon an indicator that shows great trend following capabilities in hindsight. Needless to say it's not very good at generating profits. The code is great though :)

I've slowly amassed a library of Metatrader trading methods that simplify the writing of an EA. This EA above took 2 hours to write including testing and debugging. Hmm, I could make a career of this ;)

Forex Factory and Enthusiastic Admins

I like Forex Factory, a place to post trading related questions and start trading related threads. I've started a thread on trading using Inside Bars, you can read it here.

But for a while now things have started to smell a little off. Threads and people getting binned and banned for, seemingly, spurious reasons. Mostly it's due to trying to sell stuff, which is funny in a way as that's what Forex Factory does, it sells advertising and makes money by having an active community. Nothing overly wrong with that, just a little 'double standards'.

What really bothers me though is that there seems to be a concerted effort to ban people who use certain indicators, specifically ones written by Avery T. Horton, Jr. aka "The Rumpled One". Avery, or TRO as he is known, has a strong following and you either love him or hate him. He's been banned on virtually every forex forum going. If you want a closer look at the typical reasons, then go to BabyPips for this explanation. TRO can be found posting at this site.

Now, I've been chatting with a user on Forex Factory called Money4Nothing who was banned, it appears, because he posts stuff with TRO indicators on them. If that was all he was banned for, then shame on Forex Factory.

Interestingly though, in researching this blog comment, I've noticed that some of the users banned, including Money4Nothing and Toddfx, have very similar posting styles. Both use TRO indicators and embed large images in the post by IMG tags, rather than the more common way of using attachments. This was a feature used by TRO on the BabyPips site, referenced earlier. Hmm, makes me wonder if these users were indeed TRO in disguise and it's not the fact they're using TRO indicators that got them banned, but more a case of this being TRO himself. If that's the case, then perhaps TRO should vary the way he posts :)

Forex Trading using Inside Bars

There are a few good threads on ForexFactory.com that use Inside Bars.

See this and this.