Trading Articles

Why FAPTurbo trades differently

11
Jun

Written by Donna

Quite often i will open up my email inbox in the morning and see at least one email like this:-

“Hi Donna,

My FAPTurbo last night didn’t take the same trades as you? What is going on? Why did i have a loss and you had a gain?”

or in some cases emails like this:-

“Donna, why did you lose last night? I had a great night and gained 10%!”

Supplying answers to such a simple question is not a short one line answer, so here i hope to explain things in a bit more detail, as well as reassure people that there is not anything “underhand” going on behind the scenes. I’ll start with the most obvious reasons and move on to the lesser-known ones.

Check your Settings

I know this is very obvious, but please- double check your settings to ensure that they are exactly as you intended them to be. The reason why you are not getting the trades you expect may be down to a silly error/omission in your settings. I have done it myself a few times in the past.

Not all brokers are alike!

There is no one universal price data feed. When you trade the stock market you get a set price and that is it. In Forex it is very different and there is no centralised system for determining current market price at any one time. Different brokers will be using different data to source their prices from, depending on who their liquidity providers are (liquidity providers provide currency to trade with).

If you are receiving a different data feed, this means that your signals will be different also. The indicators used in scalping strategies can be quite sensitive, and a difference of one pip here, two pips there from one data feed to the next can make a big difference in whether a signal gets triggered or not.

Spreads

If your broker uses variable spreads then you may miss trades due to spread becoming too wide. Also variable spreads will have an effect on the data feed and draw a different chart.

Slippage

slipSlippage is the movement in the market between the price at which FAPTurbo tries to open/close a trade and the time at which it actually gets executed. Some brokers may have higher slippage than others. Also the size of your account may have an effect. Larger accounts are sometimes put onto “dealer referral” meaning that each and every trade you place has to be approved by a human dealer before it can be executed. This will lead to greater slippage. Having a lot of slippage when entering a trade can work both for you and against you. When it goes against you, this means that FAPTurbo may struggle to make up the extra few pips it needs to hit that take profit point.

FAPTurbo Custom Levels

If you do not understand what this is, see my article here.

If for one of the above ‘broker’ reasons, your trade has a slightly different entry point, then this could mean that insetad of hitting the take profit immediately the trade is left hanging around. When the trade has hung around for a long time custom levels will then kick in, meaning that the ‘better’ account will show a good profit but the ‘losing’ account may show a break even or small loss for the same trade.

FAPTurbo is programmed to not take identical trades on purpose!

FAPTurbo has a ’scatter’ function built in. All trades that are triggered are subject to ’scatter’ meaning they are placed randomly over a very short period of time (seconds). This is coded into FAPTurbo i believe after broker feedback. Brokers were struggling to cope with the huge influx of orders hitting their servers all at once, which in some cases could mean trades are subject to unacceptable slippage. Scattering the trades very slightly is an attempt to relieve this effect. I believe it has worked since we do not see anywhere near the number of delays now that we used to back in January.

Latency

People seem to put a high level of importance on this, but when you consider fapturbo’s scatter feature, latency does infact become pretty meaningless. Latency is the amount of time it takes your Metatrader to communicate with the broker’s servers. Some VPS companies like to use latency as a selling point. Yes, you too can reach the broker server a whole 50 milliseconds faster than the person sat next to you. In the grand scheme of things, 50 mili seconds really won’t make much difference. I thought i better mention it here though- it could i suppose add an extra pip on rare occasions. I wouldn’t worry about trying to get the microseconds down to ridiculous levels- i’d be more concerned about the overall health of my internet connection, if it is stable, consistant and if it is getting trades through in a timely manner- i think 2 seconds is a reasonable limit and well outside the realms of what people talk about often with latency.

————-

Taking into consideration all the points i have mentioned above, it is really not surprising at all that we have very different trades! Infact i am often surprised that we have the same trades at all. Above all though, don’t panic or worry if your trades do not match exactly someone else’s. Just keep an eye on it over the longterm incase there is an issue creeping in e.g. slippage which ultimately will result in you hitting losing trades much more frequently and so end up losing money. This is the kind of thing you can only look at on a monthly basis though, certianly not trade to trade or every day.

17 Comments

  1. Tryst says:
    June 12, 2009 at 8:00 pm

    Many thanks…I found FXDD and Alpari differ

  2. Alexis says:
    June 14, 2009 at 1:16 am

    But, is there still a difference between real account performance and demo accounts?
    I’m finding my results different with exactly the same settings.
    The real account always open in a slightly less profitable value: higher when It buys and lower when it sells.
    Why is this happening?

  3. Leslie says:
    June 19, 2009 at 5:46 pm

    I have heard that demo accounts are different than live in this exact way!

  4. Bill Wynn says:
    June 20, 2009 at 9:13 pm

    I have FapTurbo on 4 diff broker sites and all the results are different….I have been on the system for only 3 weeks now using demo accts. of varying sizes (from $5000 to $100000) I have seen profits on some and losses on others and none of the trading compares to what the website states as their results for the same time period

  5. Roy Ferguson says:
    June 26, 2009 at 5:45 pm

    Donna:
    Questions-I started my live account with IBFX & $2000 at the beginning of April, which resulted in a small profit. I added another $2500 2 wks. later. I upgraded my account to a standard acct. w/$10K and I’ve yet to see any profits. My acct balance this am is at $8450, so in looking at the whole picture it appears I’m upside down $1800+. The folks @ fapwinner have not given me real advice on a solution. I’ve decided to draw a line in the sand & shut this down given the continued losses. What am I missing, I’ve ckd & re-chkd the settings? Very dissapointed!!

  6. donnaforex says:
    June 28, 2009 at 7:43 am

    FAPT doesn’t work very well with IBFX at all- it’s in my top 3 of ‘worst fapt brokers’ (along with FXDD and Forexmeta). They are a good broker, just not for FAPT. Combine that with the recent performance of fapturbo, which has been bad for the month of June- and you will very likely have a big problem.

  7. Daryl O. says:
    July 6, 2009 at 6:27 pm

    Hi Donna, thank you for your time and effort here it is much appreciated! Do you have a ‘best’ broker? How is FXCBS in your opinion for FAPTurbo? Thx!

  8. chris in the uk says:
    July 6, 2009 at 11:36 pm

    i like the last comment from roy ferguson yes i too seem to have the same problem with fapturbo long term i have tried many strategies to get the thing to make some decent trades but it always insists on trading the opposite directions you would expect it to go, it sucks this month i got sick of it too in fact i did manual trading on the euro/usd and made more profit in one day than this thing could in a year, comon fapturbo guys lets see some real auto setting we can use that at least makes the thing trade correct.

  9. chris in the uk says:
    July 6, 2009 at 11:43 pm

    donna i have met you on the fapturbo live forum about 5 weeks ago i thought i would check out your website its great you decided to go on with support here seen as you are the one who has copy written the new fapturbo-version manual. i wish you great luck here with your website but i was a little concerned that alot of people who will join are just starting out and will have already paid out for the robot and fund an account, the point i make here is i think your membership is a little steep in price per month maybe you could review that.
    i am sure there are many people would like to be a member to find out more and at the most important time which is starting out hope you agree

  10. Steve says:
    July 22, 2009 at 10:37 pm

    Are there any EA experts who offer their services for a fee? I am brand new and I want to get an hour or two of consulting to set up the scalper strategies successfully. I’m quite confident that once I get this foundation knowledge, I will be able to utilize things like the FAP Turbo forums, the FAP Turbo Expert Guide that I purchased and your subscription service.

    Can you point me to any such resources? Thanks.

  11. weza says:
    July 28, 2009 at 7:39 am

    Donna, you say IBFX is in your TOP 3 worst FAPT brokers. What is your top 3 BEST FAPT brokers?

  12. ed says:
    August 17, 2009 at 9:35 pm

    Regarding Latency you need to do your home work, the difference it makes can be a better price in fast moving price action before its moved beyond the EA price that was actioned………

    Ed

  13. Ian Mackinnon says:
    August 21, 2009 at 1:47 pm

    Hi Donna I recall your excellent personal contributions to the FT webinars in recent months and your new support service has just been recommended to me byFTEvolution. I am disappointed with the very poor result of just $23 in the first week with my new Dukascopy live a/c of $10,000 following a spectacular 17% increase in the first week with their demo a/c, while I was waiting for the account to be set up. I did not alter any of the FTE Guide recommended parameters and traded only Eur/CHF & USD/CAD as recommended for max lots of 0.5 o/all. I’d really like to subscribe to your monthly service but feel the $60/mth added to the Forexvps service would exceed likely profits in these early stages. Would you consider offering a minimum basic service for beginners for a lower fee, say for the first 6 months or so?

  14. CHRIS BRIGHT says:
    September 1, 2009 at 1:30 pm

    HI DONNA, GREAT WORK, KEEP IT UP.
    I AGREE TOTALLY WITH WEZA AND WOULD LIKE TO KNOW YOUR TOP 3 BEST FAPT BROKERS

  15. Grady says:
    September 8, 2009 at 9:41 am

    Curreently disappointing results but have had a server go down which was a main issue

    Grady

  16. Alec in UK says:
    September 16, 2009 at 10:15 am

    Hi Donna,

    What are your thoughts on using FAPTurbo on a GBP account rather than USD? I have a real GBP account with FXCBS, but the performance to the dollar USD account is poor.

    Would it make a difference? Can’t get any response from FAPTurbo guys!

    Alec

  17. donnaforex says:
    September 29, 2009 at 5:22 pm

    I do plenty of homework thanks ;) . Latency is pretty much worthless if the broker receiving your trade at the other end then handles/orders your trade differently. (e.g. if the broker prioritises all large orders above small ones).

    Alec, You can use FAPTurbo on an account of any currency (broker allowing). It shouldn’t make any difference whatsoever as FAPTurbo money management factors it into the calculations.

    Donna

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