We get questions about managing the iLi Academy Forex AutoTrading software. I will give some guideline and helpful tips here.
Manage Your Equity
You don’t need to manage individual trades or make trade decisions with the iLi Academy Forex AutoTrading software. You can however manage the entire account for success. I recommend a 3- 5% equity reset. What does that mean? This mean when your account has gained 3-5% equity (not balance growth), you should consider closing all open trades and starting fresh. This will eliminate any errant trades from running forever on the account. This will also ensure that your account is growing at 3 – 5% every time you clear the slate. An empty slate means your new trades will populate quickly and regularly. Your free margin will allow you to take the max amount of trades. Keep track of what your balance is when you reset. Maybe pick up a small notebook and jot it down when you equity reset.
Fund Your Account
One of the single greatest mistakes traders make is to make an initial deposit and make a mental promise not to deposit anymore until they get something back. This is society at larges view of investing, but it is clearly a detriment to your trading account.
Think of it like this:
You and a friend decide to go on a road trip for the weekend. The benefit is relaxation, fun and good company. Your friend picks you up and off you go. When you get to the highway and the car accelerates, you notice it doesn’t sound quite right and doesn’t seem to have the power it needs. You mention this to your friend and the friend says “I don’t bother with tune-ups because its expensive. I paid good money for this car and it should just run.” Ok. You are making it just fine to your destination, but a couple of hours in you see the gas light on. You say we need to stop for gas, but your friend says “Gas is expensive. They should have made this car run further on less fuel. I didn’t plan to buy gas.” You start to wonder when the last time the tires where rotated or changed…
What would you think in that scenario? I can’t imagine you would be comfortable knowing you haven’t reached your destination and still have to ride back with your friend. Your trading account isn’t different. It comes with maintenance in the form of deposits. You wouldn’t risk your entire vehicle over the cost of an oil change or tuneup.
The benefit of trading is the ability to make money from home. Expecting to make a single deposit and miraculously get rich is crazy. It can happen, but 99.9% of the time your account will need maintenance just like your car. Adding money to your account to preserve it is important. It’s literally the right decision and because its more money going out, traders consistently don’t maintain the account and then blame everyone and everything else for a failed account. Don’t leave the engine sputtering. When the account requires funding, fund it. Better yet, make deposits regularly until you reach a good amount.
That good amount is dependent upon your goals. I think everyone should strive to hit $1000 minimum over time. $100/mth for 6 months to a year can be workable for most people. Commit to it and maintain the account like you would your car.
Closing Out Trades
The iLi Academy Autotrader program is designed to close your trades automatically. There is more than one way it will exit the trades – both via profit stoploss orders and opposite signal exits. Our goal is to let the trade run as long as possible while still gaining pips. That will require patience. Traders tend to get antsy and want to close out trades by hand. In rare circumstances this can be necessary. We recommend that you let the trade run until the software closes it, but recognize that traders have control of their accounts and will close trades manually. Closing them manually doesn’t affect the algorithm or the functionality of it. The system will just recognize that the trade no longer exists.
To maximize profits, letting the trades run from end to end is best. If it meets the profit stoploss, that is fine too. Ultimately, we want to add to the balance and equity. When we prematurely close out trades, especially losing trades, we are cutting into our profits. There is no guarantee that we will make up that loss. We are also ensuring that the trade cannot return to profitability. Either way it normally turns into a losing situation because traders get comfortable cutting trades at a certain dollar or pip amount and the account just doesn’t grow, or worse yet, declines. We should be cutting trades strategically, which mean only when it is in our favor to cut it. When we have achieved a certain level of equity growth, then we can protect that level of growth and cut anything above that level. We ensure the account grows with this approach.
Broker Account Notices
From time to time we will receive account notices from the broker. If you get a notice that something is wrong, please let us know the same day. It is common to get a margin notice when we have accounts less than $5000 and with 50:1 leverage. With Oanda, we have 2 days to bring the free margin back above zero. So, we don’t need to panic. If a trade closes out, we will gain free margin. If we don’t have a trade close out by 2pm the next day after receiving the notice, then we may need to close out a trade ourselves if the free margin hasn’t return to above zero. Each circumstance will be different, but generally we should be able to act accordingly and carry on.
A suspension notice can be received if you have more than one lot of the same currency pair and the broker doesn’t average positions. US accounts must follow the FIFO (first in, first out) rule.
Here’s and example. You have 2 EURUSD positions. The one that was opened first, must be closed first. If you send an order to close the second position first, you are in violation of the FIFO rule. The autotrade won’t recognize first and second position at this time. So it may try to place a stoploss that would violate FIFO. Or, the system may try to close the trade automatically and get rejected by the broker. If that occurs, we may not recognize it right away. If we don’t catch it very quickly and act, the broker may suspend the account from trading. We cannot close or open new trades from MT4.
The process to remove the suspension is simple. We need to:
- identify the issue
- turn the autotrade button off on MT4.
- make a decision on cutting the first trade(s)
- contact the broker (OANDA can be done via chat on the website).
- Let the broker know that we have resolved the issue and will bring the account into compliance
- They will unlock the account right away.
- We will carry out the trade closures to fix the issue and then turn the autotrader on again. We are all set.
It should be rare that we get this notice. If the magic numbers are changes in the software, the software won’t recognize there is another trade on the account for the same pair. This could result in a duplicated order on a pair. If you manually place orders on the account in addition to the autotrades, it could put the account into this position as well. Other than that, we should not run into this issue.