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  Numpy For Traders

Posted by: Hassam
03-23-2022, 05:31 AM
Forum: Algorithmic Trading With Python
- No Replies

Numpy is the backbone of python machine learning and deep learning libraries. Numpy is basically written in C and a wrapper connects it with python. Numpy is incredibly fast and it basically revolves around multi dimensional arrays. Pandas is also built upon numpy. Tensorflow is also built on numpy. Numpy is the main reason why python has become the defacto language for ai, ml and dl. Watch the video below I provide a brief introduction to Numpy.


Numpy is used extensively in building algorithmic trading strategies. Numpy is being used in cutting edge scientific discoveries. For example numpy was used in the detection of gravitational waves as well as the first image of the black hole. As algorithmic traders we use numpy a lot in building algorithmic trading strategies.

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  Is FXCM a scam?

Posted by: Hassam
03-21-2022, 09:27 AM
Forum: Forex Brokers
- No Replies

FXCM was once the largest forex broker. I don't know about it now. It got banned by Commodity Futures Trading Corporation (CFTC) in 2017 after taking positions against the clients and it was fined $7 million. CFTC also found that FXCM made false statement to National Futures Association. The decision to ban FXCM from operating in the US market. Before that FXCM has got a bail out of $300 million by Leucadia when it suffered heavy losses on the shock decision of Swiss National Bank to unpeg CHF from EUR at the 1.20 CHF to EUR for 3 years. This happened in January 2015. A number of brokers went bankrupt when SNB suddenly unpegged CHF from EUR. That included the famous broker Alpari UK. FXCM due to its lax risk controls had suffered heavy losses as a result it sought a bail out package of $300 million to stay solvent. Many CHF traders also lost thousands of dollars and even had their trading accounts blown out on that day in minutes.

I had opened a FXCM account and connected it with my NinjaTrader platform. I did this to get live data. After one year I started getting emails that I had not opened a trade and they will deduct the amount. I emailed back that since I had no submitted my tax statement I was not allowed to open a trade. Anyway FXCM support was cooperative. I made them understand that my account was only meant to get live data and I had only deposited $50 for that purpose. I have never traded live with FXCM. My deposit was $50 with them and that was only meant to open a live account and connect it with NinjaTrader. FXCM also provides with a python api that we can use to develop algorithmic trading strategies in python for trading on it. Now if you have any experience with FXCM whether good or bad, you should tell us about it in this thread.

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  AvaTrade Is A Well Known Forex Broker

Posted by: Hassam
03-20-2022, 06:09 AM
Forum: Forex Brokers
- No Replies

When I started trading forex some 10 years back, I came across AvaTrade. AvaTrade has been consistently getting good reviews. I have yet to hear something negative about this forex broker. But you are free to leave your comments below in this thread if you have some negative experience with AvaTrade. I remember the fateful day in January 2015 when one day suddenly the Swiss National Bank unpegged CHF from EUR. This was a cataclysmic day. Many traders lost thousands of dollars on that day. Many forex brokers went belly up on that day. Before 2015, Alpari UK was a well known broker that enjoyed good reputation. On that day Alpari  UK lost heavily and declared bankruptcy. Forex brokers have to follow strict risk management just like us forex trader. Alpari UK had lax risk management and that day paid heavily. But AvaTrade that day was unscathed. Why? Because it had a solid risk management system. I don't have any trading account with AvaTrade. I have been getting emails from AvaTrade Business Development Team to promote them. But this thread is pure and simple on honest reviews about AvaTrade. You are free to leave you honest comments and experiences with AvaTrade below. This will help other forex traders make right decisions when it comes to choosing forex broker for their trading account.

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  ICMarkets International Capital Markets Pty Ltd

Posted by: Hassam
03-19-2022, 05:19 AM
Forum: Forex Brokers
- No Replies

IC Markets is a forex broker that I have a good feeling. IC Markets have very good spread. Now let me make it clear. I have a demo account with IC Markets for now. But I am planning to open a live account on ICMarkets cTrader. I have been using their MT5 platform as well as cTrader to develop and test my algorithmic trading strategies. So my experience with this broker is just that.  I am starting this thread. Anyone can come and leave their real life experiences with ICMarkets. I was watching a youtube video review where the woman is accusing ICMarkets to be a scam. I have no idea since I have only a demo account with them. I got attracted to ICMarkets when I saw their advertised spread which are very tight. For EURUSD, GBPUSD and other major pairs the spread is 1 pip and for minor pairs like GBPJPY, EURJPY CADJPY the spread is 2 pips. Another attraction is the availability of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin, ripple etc. We have Stock CFDs and Bond CFDs metals plus stock indices. Australian Stock Exchange, NYSE and Nasdaq are covered. So you can find stocks like Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, Alibaba etc on their list of symbols. I searched but could't find Apple. Maybe it is there. But couldn't find it. The list of stocks listed on NYSE and Nasdaq available with ICMarkets is long. So if you are into stock trading CFDs, you are covered. Now you don't know what the reality is on the demo account. ICMarkets is an Australia based forex broker. Feel free to leave your comments below in this thread and educate other traders about the reality of this broker how much honest these people are.

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  C# Online Test Questions Before Job Interview

Posted by: Hassam
03-17-2022, 02:23 PM
Forum: C#
- No Replies

On and off I apply for C# Developer job. I do this to help my son who has recently done graduation in Computer Science. Applying for jobs give me the opportunity to test the job market for C# Developers. C# Developer market demand is high. When you apply for a job you have to pass an online test before you are interviewed. In this thread I will post possible test questions. This test question from TestGorilla asks you to add the even number elements in a list and subtract odd number elements and then return the total. We will consider 0 as an even number according to the question.

Code:
public static int Total (int[] number)
{

  int total=0;

  for(int i=0; i < number.Length; i++)
  {
    if(i==0) total=number[0];
    if(i%2==0) total+=number[i];
    else total -=number[i];

  }

  return total;



}

The second questions ask you to test a valid pin. A valid pin comprises 4 or 6 digits. The digits should be unique and the ATM PIN string is all digit. The method returns two string values The ATM PIN is valid or the ATM PIN is invalid. Below is the code for this method:
Code:
public static string ValidATMPIN (string ATMPIN)
{

  string message1="The ATM PIN is valid";
  string message2="The ATM PIN is not valid";
 
  //check that the ATMPIN is 4 digits or 6 digits
  if (ATMPIN.Length%4==0 || ATMPIN.Length%6==0)
  {
 
   //check that the ATMPIN contains only unique digits
    for ( int i=0; i < ATMPIN.Length; i++)
    {
   
      if ( ATMPIN[i] < 0 || ATMPIN[i] > 9)
      return message2;

      for(int j=i+1; j < ATMPIN.Length; j++)
      {
          if(ATMPIN[i]==ATMPIN[j]) return message2

      }   
   
   
    }
 
  return message1;
 
 
  }

Now I have coded this hastily. Go through the above code and if you find some error you can always leave a reply in this thread. The second question was meant to test your understanding of data structures.

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  Tensorflow Deep Learning Neural Network Model for Predicting Next Candle

Posted by: Hassam
03-17-2022, 07:19 AM
Forum: Deep Learning
- No Replies

Deep learning is very powerful. In the recent years deep learning has solved many artificial intelligence problems. Tensorflow is a open source deep learning framework developed by Google. Developing deep learning model can be easy. This is what most books says. Deep learning is supposed to read the data and find the features that can make the best predictions. But in reality we have to select the features and then use the deep learning model. Below I have made a video where I train a deep learning neural network model using Tensorflow and try to make prediction about the next candle. Now this is just a toy model I don't think we cannot use it in live trading. But as a first prototype we can play with this deep learning neural network model. In the future I will post more better deep learning neural network models. Feature selection is very important when building a deep learning neural network model. Financial markets are hard to predict. The main reason is non stationary nature of financial time series. Financial markets are sentiment driven now a days in short run. We have so much breaking news. Each breaking news has the potential to move the financial market a lot. So building deep learning neural network models for predicting financial markets is not an easy task. The important question is can a discretionary trader beat the market more or a deep learning trading system?

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  Is XM Global A Scam?

Posted by: Hassam
03-17-2022, 05:39 AM
Forum: Forex Brokers
- No Replies

I had opened a MT5 live trading account with XM Global Limited a few years back. I deposited $10. Now this is not a big sum. I just wanted to check the spreads which seemed to be more than other brokers and place a few traders and see their customer support. I didn't make any trade. After a few weeks, suddenly I saw that the $10 deposit has simply been deducted by these people. I emailed the support but only got a vanilla type reply without any satisfactory explanation that I am not opening any trades. I am not accusing anyone but this type of behavior smacks of unprofessional attitude on the part of the broker. I am starting this thread. If anyone can post in this thread their experience with XM Global Limited. Since I did not make a deposit like $1000 and frequently traded with this broker I cannot accuse them of any thing except unprofessional attitude. If I had faced problems in withdrawing the profits than I could have said that this broker is a scam. But it is always a good idea to have a forum where traders can give their honest opinion about brokers. This can be helpful to other traders who can then know what other traders had experienced with this broker. So the thread is open. Any trader who has got some experience to share about XM Global Limited can post their experiences in this thread.

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  Trading Journal

Posted by: Hassam
09-30-2021, 06:35 AM
Forum: Million Dollar Trading Challenge
- Replies (40)

On Monday there was a good EURUSD short signal. It would have been a 120 pip trade with 10 pip SL. On Tuesday, GBPUSD could have given 200 pips trade with 10 pip SL. So did NZDUSD and AUDUSD. In the same manner we could have a 100+ pip long trade on USDCAD with 5 pip SL. Looking at the charts daily after a few hours is a must if you want to succeed as a trader. I am starting this Trading Journal so that I can record my daily observations on the different currency pairs when I look at the charts of those currency pairs. BTCUSD is now hovering around $43K. XAUUSD is also in a good downtrend.

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  XAUUSD Gold Daily Market Analysis

Posted by: Hassam
11-21-2020, 06:23 AM
Forum: Commodities, Stocks And Indices
- No Replies

For thousands of years , gold has been used as a store of wealth. Human imagination has always considered gold to be a very precious commodity. Some primitive societies considered stones also as a store of wealth but overall human history has been revolving around gold and silver. Kings would demand gold as payments. Gold is considered to be a safe haven meaning when we have political turmoil, wealthy people tend to save their wealth in gold rather than US Dollar or for that matter any other currency. Today gold has very little industrial use but it is still used as a store of wealth. China and India are two countries that have massive demands for gold. Since COVID-19 started early this year, gold has been on the march. Take a look at the following chart.

   

Now as you can see gold technically XAUUSD has been on the rise for the past many weeks especially since the COVID-19 pandemic started. One of my friend phoned me and asked me how high will gold rise. He had heard from someone that gold will go above $4K. He was planning to buy gold. I told him give me a day. I looked at the charts. Gold had hit the high price of $850 in 1980 due to high oil prices, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and overthrow of Shah and the revolution in Iran.In todays dollars it is around $2800. In 2011, XAUUSD hit another high close to $2K before it crashed and went below $1K and then traded between $1K and $1.5K for some years. $2.8K is an important resistance level that gold has not broken in the last 50 years. So I told my friend gold price can go till $2.5K at most. Predicting a gold price of $4K is wide off the mark. Take a look at this XAUUSD chart.

   

In the last few months, gold has been rising due to COVID-19 fears and global political uncertainty. In the above XAUUSD H4 chart, you can see how gold fell on the announcement of COVID-19 vaccine by Pfizer.

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  NinjaTrader 8 Introduction

Posted by: Hassam
07-13-2019, 05:31 AM
Forum: Algorithmic Trading With C#
- Replies (1)

NinjaTrader 8 is a very powerful trading platform. If you haven't used it, you can download it and use it. You don't have to buy the license for now. Without buying a license, you can use NinjaTrader 8 for strategy testing. You can also code indicators for NinjaTrader if you have a good knowledge of C#. C# is a powerful modern object oriented programming language that is owned and developed by Microsoft Corporation. C# is their flagship programming language. NinjaTrader has been developed in C#. Learn C# can help you do a lot of other stuff that includes game development and android and iOS app development. So don't  hesitate to learn C# and the .NET programming environment.

When you compare MetaTrader4/MetaTrader5 with NinjaTrader 8 you can feel the difference. On NinjaTrader you have the option of many different types of chart styles like the tick charts, range bars, time bars, point and figure charts,  Kagi charts etc. In addition, you can choose custom timeframes. This option is not available on MT4/MT5. MT4 is single threaded. However MT5 is multi threaded and has some powerful features. NinjaTrader 8 is even more powerful and is truly multi threaded to the core. Of course you need to know C# and .NET well if you want to exploit NinjaTrader power and fury.

You get 30 days free data feed when you download NinjaTrader. After that you get End of Day data(EOD) from Kinetick. Coinbase also provides free cryptocurrencies data which is great. If you want to trade live on NinjaTrader, however you will need to buy a license. Without a license you can use NinjaTrader for strategy testing and indicator development but you cannot use it for live trading. For live trading as said, you will need a license. I would recomment using NinjaTrader for strategy testing. Its strategy testing feature is very powerful. Whatever trading strategy you have you can test it on NinjaTrader. But for that you need historical data. EOD day is available free. Cryptocurrencies price data for almost all crytpocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin are also provided free by Coinbase. If you are a currency trader,you can open an account with FXCM and use it price feed in NinjaTrader.

The list of brokers that work with NinjaTrader is not that long as compared to MT4/MT5 brokers. This is a drawdown when trading on NinjaTrader. Important brokers that are available are the Interactive Brokers which is a well reputed broker. But you need a deposit of $10K to trade with Interactive Brokers. TD Ameritrade is also available. As said above if you are a currency trader, you can open an account with FXCM and connect its price feed with NinjaTrader. There are many powerful features in NinjaTrader, that I would like to discuss in this thread so stay tuned.

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  1. Million Dollar Challenge