Great question!
If you’re looking at some stellar results on mt4stats, you may think the results are too good to be true!
3 Things, 2 Pages, 1 Fallacy…Then, It’s Time for Pie!
First things first:
- MT4Stats is a 3rd party website. Windsor Park does not own/control/influence/etc. any content there (We also do not endorse any of their ads). They provide all mt4 users worldwide with 3rd party verification and give honest, live results straight from the mt4 trading station.
3 Things to pay attention to while reviewing results on mt4stats:
- Equity
- Duration of the account
- Open Orders
- Equity is the most important indicator. It is how much money you actually have in the account if you stop the EA and close all open trades. You can find the account’s equity at the bottom of the Statement page.
- Duration of the account is how long the account has been running. This will help you determine how stable a strategy is. This is also available on the Statement page.
- Open Orders will effect the balance of an account, positively or negatively. Therefore, Account Balance doesn’t matter nearly as much as Equity does. You guessed it: Statement page.
2 Pages: Statement and Analyses
There are two tabs at the top of an mt4stats webpage.
- Statement shows every trade (closed and those still open), as well as the account Equity at the bottom of the page.
- Analyses, yes the plural of Analysis. The Analyses page shows the total number of trades (P/L), as well as a pie chart at the bottom of the page showing the distribution of profitable trades among the different currency pairs you are trading.
The Fallacy of Gain in %
On the Analyses page, you’ll notice “Gain in Percentage”. This number can be close to the mark, but unless there are no open orders and the account is “flat”, the gain in % is incorrect. Gain in % is based on Current Balance divided by Initial Balance. You’ll remember from earlier that Equity is the most important indicator of the amount in your account. Therefore, in order to determine the correct gain in %, you must take the Equity and divide that by the Initial Balance. This will provide you with the correct gain in percentage.
Example: Current account equity of $12,000 divided by the $10,000 initial balance (12,000 / 10,000 = 1.2 or 20% profitable increase).
What Time of the Day is My Strategy Working?
Here is a graph showing the total amount of orders opened during the 24 hours of the day. The correct way to read this is: since the beginning of this account, on April 4th, the account has opened an order in the 2100 hour about 27 times. This is a great help to those people who run multiple strategies on the same account. It helps them determine when they can safely run a different strategy, while not losing the benefit of running Smart Trader 1 Pair.
A Pie Chart of Stability
In the first pie chart below (ST4Pair), notice that the two Japanese Yen pairs, (EURJPY and GBPJPY), account for more than 2/3rds of all the trades placed. Compared to many other strategies (King’s Cross shown below), this is a very well balanced strategy. Watching ST4Pair for weeks showed that the four pairs fluctuated from 38%/31%/16%/15% to settle at 32%/32%/18%/18%. Very stable.
And you can see that the Kings Cross 1 strategy is heavily weighted toward the GBPUSD, not only in lot size but also in the amount of trades placed. King’s is still an excellent strategy after all these years, but Windsor Park is always on the lookout for other strategies with great returns, low risk, and good stability. We’ll keep you posted!
And don’t forget, you can get your own FREE mt4stats page for your demo or live accounts (even a vps account)! This allows you to share your own results with your friends.
- Jordan4x