Trading Articles

FAPTurbo “Custom Levels”

22
May

Written by Donna

I have had a lot of emails lately from people asking me what the custom levels setting does in FAPTurbo. 

usecustomlevels

As you may already be aware, FAPTurbo has quite a large stoploss and a fairly high risk:reward profile.  Despite that it still wins (usually!) enough times to recover any losses and more. To mitigate some of the potential losses however we have the ‘custom levels’ setting.  (Scalper_UseCustomLevels).

What Custom Levels does is essentially cut the trade at a loss if it has been open for a very long time. FAPTurbo does this gradually over a period of time. For example:-

Custom Level 1: After 60 minutes FAPTurbo decides not to aim for its full take profit and to settle for a take profit of 3 pips instead

Custom Level 2: After 140 minutes FAPTurbo decides to settle for a profit of 1 pip.

The levels continue until finally after 240 minutes or more of having an open trade hanging around FAPTurbo tries to exit for a 4 pip LOSS. 

What custom levels does is allow us to avoid the large stoploss on some of the trades which are weaker and so might not make it to their full take profit.  From a technical analysis perspective it is also a good idea. In technical analysis it is widely known that there are lines of “support” and “resistance”. These lines are not physical lines on the chart but can be drawn by eye. They are usually drawn horizontally across the tops and bottoms of price bars, representing imaginary ‘barriers’ which price has trouble getting through. When price has trouble going through a line to the downside this is a line of “support” (since the line is “supporting” price) and when price has trouble rising through a line to the upside this is a line of “resistance”. 

supportresistance1

These lines of support and resistance are not fixed but fluid and dynamic. For instance, when price drops through a level of support, it often gets transformed into a line of resistance. So, when price breaks through a line it can have trouble breaking back through in the other direction too.

This is where i come to the point- and tell you that custom levels takes good advantage of this phenomenom. It catches a weakling trade at hopefully its strongest point, right where it is trying to break back through a line of support or resistance. 

Why Turn CustomLevels Off?

If you are altering the FAPTurbo strategy from it’s original defaults then it may not be necessary to use custom levels at all. For instance, if you have reduced the stoploss on EURGBP, as i have (and indeed the FAPTurbo team themselves have now) then we do not need to take these extra precautions anymore. Infact it may be much more profitable for us to just swallow the extra stoploss hit sometimes and instead leave the trade alone to see if it hits our take profit level.  The stoploss is no longer devastating and is much easier to recover from. Note that with custom levels turned off the only time you will get exited from a trade is if the take profit or stoploss is hit.

As with all settings changes, this should be backtested and researched carefully before going live. 

 

26 Comments

  1. EAtrader says:
    May 22, 2009 at 5:21 pm

    Great Donna,

    One of the riddles solved.
    Page x in your new book? LOL

    Good to have it out of the forum.

    one tip: if you use Black on white charts it is better to see and to print

    keep writing on the ins and outs of fapturbo!
    EAtrader

  2. Brian says:
    May 22, 2009 at 10:31 pm

    Donna,
    Very helpful explanation on this important topic. I noted in your newsletter of May 17th that you planned on changing from the default setting to ‘false’ on the Eur/Gbp. How did that work out for you?
    Brian

  3. admin says:
    May 23, 2009 at 6:16 am

    Brian,

    It is working well, but i think it needs to be used in conjunction with the “one trade” setting to make it safer.

  4. Terry James says:
    May 23, 2009 at 7:15 am

    Thanks Donna.

  5. Joseph Kuyong says:
    May 23, 2009 at 9:09 am

    Donna,

    I altered the default setting on my Eur/Gbp as recommended by you. The result was positive and good. Please do continuously share with us any new setting you have in the future.

    Thank You Donna.

  6. Rosslyn says:
    May 24, 2009 at 12:41 am

    Donna, love your site and forum, great clarity and easy to understand descriptions & explanations :)
    Regarding Scalper Use Custom Settings, can this function be turned on or off during a trade or must it be set prior to exicution as some times I see a lengthy trade heading in the right direction only to be stopped out prematurely
    Rosslyn

  7. Raymond says:
    May 24, 2009 at 4:06 am

    It is working well, but i think it needs to be used in conjunction with the “one trade” setting to make it safer.
    OK, I bite. what should the “one trade” be to make it safer?

  8. Colin says:
    May 24, 2009 at 4:59 pm

    Am I correct in assuming that to reset to the original default settings (I am talking about Version 47, although this applies to all versions), it is sufficient to turn off the EA, remove it from the graph and then re-attach it to the graph and re-start it?? Or is there some other simpler way of getting back to the default values?

  9. Brian says:
    May 25, 2009 at 3:44 am

    Okay, thank you.
    Brian

  10. donnaforex says:
    May 25, 2009 at 6:26 am

    Rosslyn, You can turn it off during a trade but it is not a great idea to do so, in some cases it may make FAPTurbo ‘forget’ that it has a trade open. It is best to NOT change anything if a trade is open.

    Raymond, “scalper_onetrade” should be TRUE to get only one trade per day.

    Colin, to reset to defaults just click on the smiley face on your chart and hit “reset” (button next to the list).

  11. Popko Nieboer says:
    May 25, 2009 at 8:50 am

    “For instance, if you have reduced the take profit on EURGBP, as i have (and indeed the FAPTurbo team themselves have now)”

    Don’t you mean Stop Loss instead of Take Profit?

  12. Peter Davis says:
    May 25, 2009 at 11:48 am

    Did you mean reduce your TP or your SL Donna?

    “If you are altering the FAPTurbo strategy from it’s original defaults then it may not be necessary to use custom levels at all. For instance, if you have reduced the take profit on EURGBP, as i have…”

  13. admin says:
    May 25, 2009 at 11:50 am

    oops. I will correct, thanks.. it is ’stoploss’ but, take profit could also apply – i intended SL tho!

  14. alrob says:
    May 25, 2009 at 11:01 pm

    Hi Donna. As a newbie to Forex I feel very privileged to be a member of your forum. Your responses and explanations relating to questions are just brilliant. You have a great talent for teaching – I’m at last starting to understand a little about this game! :-)

    Just want to let you how impressed and grateful I am.

    alrob

  15. Steve H says:
    May 26, 2009 at 2:28 pm

    Thanks for all the info you share – it is much appreciated!

    Keep up the good work!
    :)

  16. Larry R says:
    May 28, 2009 at 6:52 am

    Hi Donna,
    My first visit and I like it – your format is the easiest to read of all the websites I have visited in months of viewing. Happy to be on your list now!

  17. Tom says:
    May 28, 2009 at 6:37 pm

    Hi Donna,
    thanks for sharing.
    I saw your excellent performance at mt4stats.
    Would you mind to share me the set file for fabturbo?
    Thanks so much
    :D

  18. Roger says:
    May 29, 2009 at 11:33 pm

    Donna,
    What should we set the SL to be? I haven’t seen any mention of exactly where it should be – just to change it. I’m new to this, so maybe I missed it.

    Thanks,
    Roger

  19. Rick says:
    May 30, 2009 at 5:55 am

    Hello Donna,

    I would love to see your recommended settings in something other then .set format since I can’t open up .set files, I would love this so I can look over them and compare them with some of my own… I know .set is to easily download into the EA but a text file or word file would be just awesome… can I find that anywhere?

    Thanks so much for all your amazing and hard work,
    Rick

  20. Mike says:
    June 5, 2009 at 9:05 pm

    Hi Donna
    Many thanks for all your tips and tricks for the Fapturbo robot, I am now setting mine to match your settings as you seem to be doing well.
    My experience with the default settings and particually EUR/GBP pair on Alpari u.k have not been good so far and I am down £80.00 and now fighing my way back up! they will not beat me or take my cash!
    It’s a shame we in the u.k have little choice for a broker, unlike the u.s.a who have many brokers to choose from.
    Alpari u.k were o.k untill they put up the night time spread for EUR/CHF which as you say seems to work best.
    Keep up your good work!

    Regards
    Mike.

  21. Gavin says:
    June 9, 2009 at 12:08 pm

    Hi Donna

    I have a live and demo account currently running with the same scalper settings and come across this article last night and implemented it on my demo account with the result that the demo made a decent profit on a EURCHF trade and the live A/c with custom settings = true did not and closed out the trade for 0 profit where as the demo A/c hung in the trade for a good profit so very interesting result. By the way since FAPTurbo have changed the stop loss values did you update your LRR spread sheet? I tried to and change the stop loss value but got some weard results so not sure what is going on there.

    Cheers
    Gavin

  22. ken burpitt says:
    June 15, 2009 at 4:12 pm

    Hi Donna.
    Could you please tell me what data/information you use in order to come to the settings listed on your weekly update? Do you have some form of optimization programme?- if you do is it available the public?. Like the site and I’m personally more than happy to pay a monthly subscription for specialist help and advice.
    Regards Ken

  23. Grady says:
    June 19, 2009 at 12:47 am

    Hi Donna, I have just loaded Fab Turbo a demo account and On Screen in each pair has Fap Turbo 47_build224

    My Questions is Having read the above letters which seem to be from May mainly. Does the Updates get included in this Fap Turbo 47_build224??

    If not where am I best to get those updates from?

    Best Regards Grady

  24. Sandra says:
    June 30, 2009 at 11:18 am

    Hi Donna,

    The idea behind “custom levels” is very good, but often when a trade remains open into the next day and with the higher day-time volatility goes back to where it started from, FAPTurbo will close it at a small loss and then the price continues in the direction of the initial trade — so without the custom levels active it would have finished in profit… I’m not sure if this is clear, I had it happenning to me twice in the last two days (trading days) and I was wondering if there is anything to do about it — manually (by turning the custom levels off) or otherwise (tweaking the robot a bit more).
    Hope for an answer to this.
    Best regards,
    Sandra

  25. David says:
    July 2, 2009 at 5:47 pm

    Dear Donna,
    I have been trying to backtest to try different stop loss values on FAPTurbo but although all seems to run okay, downloaded values, strategy tester, start but I get no graph or results but a modelling quality of 90%. I have tried this on two different accounts (live and demo with different providers) but the result mentioned above is identical.
    Hope you can help,
    Kind Regards,
    David

  26. Charles says:
    July 17, 2009 at 12:19 am

    Hello Lovely Donna,
    Thanks a lot for the way you gently and clearly explain this gmt issue. I have battled furiously over a long time on it. I have a problem:
    I use Alpari-uk demo, according to your way of calculating gmt, it should be +2, however, it has been performing well on +1 and not so well on +2. What should I do?
    Thanks once again,
    All the best in all your trading,
    Charles

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