Trade Chimp Update 3/3/10

[Trade Chimp Support]

Important Trade Chimp Update.
UPDATE 3/05/10 10:59 PM
This is several important announcements about the Trade Chimp EA . We will be discussing several items. First we will discuss the  performance and the differences you may see in your account from the performance account posted on the site. Second we will discuss the subscription and brokerage fees associated with the use of the EA ( This is Great news) . Next we will discuss the addition of new pairs to the system and the expected impact of them to the system. Finally we will talk about broker recommendations and changes. Please read all of the following very carefully.


Performance: We have had inquiries as to why the trades you may see in the performance account may not match the one seen in your account. There are several reasons why they may not match exactly we will go over them. Depending on whether you are on the managed or Semi Managed system there are reasons that will affect each.
              Managed Accounts: Please keep these points in mind for the managed account. The EA is run seperately on the perfomance demo account and the Live block account, this means they will trade a bit differently for some of the following reasons. The perfomance account is left to run continuously with out closing trades for news events, although it avoids opening new postions around news existing positions are not closed before the weekend or for news events. The Managed account is run a little different, sometimes it is left off for several hours around news events, even up to 6 or 8 hours sometimes, additionally postions are sometimes closed before news and before the weekend but not always, it depends on where the trades sit at the time. This can impact the number of trades you see from the perfomance account to your own live account. Now there is another reason for some differences as well and it has to do with the logic in the EA. The EA if left to run can accumulate up to three long postions and three short postions at a time, after it has 3 positions of one type open it will not open another order of that type till one of the 1st three is closed, additionally the orders are not allowed to be stacked closer than 15 pips from each other. If we close a postion or mutiple postions in the managed account than the trade spacing can change from the managed account to the Performance account, this can set off a series of different trades between the two accounts till they are both flat simultaneously and then their trades will start to resemble each other again, if they were left to run both untouched then the trades would be much closer. Keep in mind that this means that trades may be stopped out in the live account and not on the demo or vice versa, sometimes the difference can be only by a few pips, also trades can hit their TP on the live and not the demo or vice versa. So how does this affect overall perfomance  over time? Over time the two accounts can be expected to perfom similary, keep in mind though that we make every effort to keep Draw Down to a minimum in the managed account, this means we are willing to forego some trading opportunities if we can keep the Draw Down lower. We have been able to accomplish this as the DD in the live accounts has never reached the 23% that the perfomance account has. Overall the trading volume is close though, in fact the live accounts took more trades than the perfomance account with  600 trades in february whereas the perfomance account only took 492. Also note your perfomance will be affected by the time you enter the system.

             Semi Managed Accounts: Now for the semi managed accounts we have the related factors above mentioned in the managed accounts but we have additional circumstances that have affected some users as well. All of this leads us to a recommendation you will read later in this email. The semi managed has been traded with a 1.7 pip commision and it is traded on the boston technologies bridge. It is supposed to be traded on the RAW feed at FXCM, when you signed up through Back Bay Fx you received the log in to the special RAW feed, it has come to our attention as we emailed everyone a few weeks ago that not all users were actually logging into and using the RAW feed, it seems that some users were not set up correctly on the RAW feed and were trading on the regular feed from FXCM, this would have resulted in a drastic difference in trade volume and perfomance. Additionally the boston bridge handles trades differently than the ATC system does, it has to do with the way that pending orders are handled, at ATC the pending orders are queued on the FXCM server, this means when the price hits the pending order we are 1st in to get filled, the Boston Bridge works different, when the pending order is made it is held on the platform and not sent to FXCM as a pending order on their server so when price hits the pending order the order is filled as if it were a market order, this has resulted in slippage and missed trades. At first our testing showed that this was not a significant difference and could be tolerated, but we have seen more of this than we are comfortable with. This leads us to the recommendation at the bottom of this announcement.


Subscription / Perfomance fees: We are making the following adjustments to the subscription prices and the perfomance fees for the accounts. Going forward the subscription price of the EA will be reduced from the current $249.00 per month to $199.00 per month. To enable this change you will have to go your PayPal account before your renewal date and cancel your subscription, then visit our website and sign up for the new subscription at the new price. This price is active going forward and is not retroactive. Also the perfomance fee for the managed account is being reduced to 25% down from 35%. Additionally we have added another option for traders at ATC, if they wish they can trade with NO perfomance fee. We have another option where you can chose a 1.3 pip commission per trade instead of 1 pip and pay no perfomance fees. Please contact us if you wish to have your account traded with no perfomance fee.


More Pairs: Starting early next week we will be adding 6 additional pairs to the system. They will include GBPJPY, GBPCHF, EURJPY, EURGBP, EURCHF, and GBPUSD. We have scalpers running on the EURGBP, EURCHF, and GBPUSD. For the other pairs we are adding systems that trade around 4 times per week per pair. Our objective is to add a nice balance to the current system, we beleive that the new systems should complement the existing one and give us an improved equity curve. Traders using the Semi managed system will be able to chose which systems they wish to turn off or on. Traders using our managed system will have all pairs traded in the account and we will manage the pairs. IMPORTANT: If you have a managed account and wish the account to only trade the AUDNZD pair please contact us and we will make arrangements to just trade that pair in your account.


Broker Reccommendations: This is an important announcement: Considering the execution problems we have seen with FXCM through the Boston bridge we are recommending that users who are trading the semi managed option move their accounts over to the ATC solution, there you can trade with less commission only 1.3 pips down from the 1.7 you pay currently, however the system will have to be traded in a block account there and not with the EA, alternatively we have more brokers coming very soon that you will be able to use the EA with. If you do not wish to move you are free to stay where you are. Another option is to freeze your subscription till we add the other brokers and then your subscription will start new with the new broker. Please let us know what your choice is.

If you have questions please reread this announcement and then email us at:
Tradechimp@BestExpertAdvisors.com

[jcvr18]

with the managed account do u get more trades with the 1 pip spread & 25% fee or does it work out the same with th 1.3 pip spread

[Trade Chimp Support]

with the managed account do u get more trades with the 1 pip spread & 25% fee or does it work out the same with th 1.3 pip spread

Both managed solutions have the same trading volume, there is no difference between the systems just the commission.

[blitz]

The Performance Report shows a gain of approximately 500% in 6 months. What has the managed account produced thus far?
Thanks.

[Trade Chimp Support]

The Performance Report shows a gain of approximately 500% in 6 months. What has the managed account produced thus far?
Thanks.

They trade almost identically.