Simple Forex System Trading

Unfortunately, the time zone can only be changed from the server side, i.e., the broker.

Time zones used by the MT4 brokers:

Interbank FX:  GMT

FXCM & Forex.com:  EST  (GMT - 5)

MIG:  CET (GMT + 1)

Alpari:  CET (GMT + 1)

FXDD:  GMT + 2

Three brokers I am aware of are the U.S. based:  Interbank FX, FXCM, and Forex.com. 

I thought Interbank FX wasn’t bad as a MT4 platform broker.  Their spreads aren’t the best, not the majors are ok.  The spreads for Euro-Dollar, Dollar-Yen, and Euro-Yen are 2, 2, and 4 pips respectively.  They do widen the spreads during news announcement, but who doesn’t.

FXCM and Forex.com are also offering MT4 in addition to their own proprietary trading platforms.  However, their spreads on MT4 are wider than the ones on their own trading platforms.  In addition, their spreads are not consistent.  I don’t think I like the idea of spreads being changing all the time.  For example, on both MT4 with the two brokers, I have seen Euro-Yen spreads changing from 3 pips to 6 pips during non-news event times.

But the best way for you to find out which MT4 broker suits you is to test your strategy on their demo accounts.

On dukascopy.com, they actually provide the historical data in multiple formats and various time frames.

If you are using MT4, you can get the data directly from the platform.  First, open the chart of the currency pair and time frame you’d like to retrieve the data.  And then just select File / Save As…

We incurred another loss today.  The stop buy order of 117.93 was filled at around 7:45 GMT.  Unfortunately, the market turned south as soon as the order was filled.  It hit our stop loss about 25 minutes later.

So based on our trading plan, we’d only trade between the 1st and the 14th of each month.  Since 14th falls on Saturday, that means today is our last trading day of the month.

Both of our orders were filled today - one win and one loss.  It was a break-even day.  First, the stop buy of 116.47 was filled at around 7:37 GMT.  The market pushed to a high of 116.68 or so before turning south.  We took a 30-pip loss for this order.  And then the market began to drop fast.  Our stop sell was filled at 115.93 at around 8:35 GMT.  Within 10 minutes, we took in the 30-pip profit.

Bummer!  The stop buy order did not score a win.  We lost 30 pips today.  The market was in the consolidation mode and was moving in a small range.  Oh well, two more days before we stop trading for the month of February.  Hopefully, we can score a couple of more wins.

Today is another good day for us.  We were able to grab 30 pips of profit.  The stop buy order of 118.59 was filled at around 11:08 GMT.  About half an hour later, our take-profit target was met.

Finally!!!  We were able to score one winning trade.  The stop buy of 116.52 was filled at around 8:17 GMT, and the take-profit target was reached within 8 minutes.