How to Auto-Trade with FXCM's Strategy Trader

Automated Trading is the art of using computer programs to place trades.

Let’s say that I like trading with Slow Stochastics on the hourly chart? I will spend many numerous hours waiting to get a stochastic cross so that I could have the privilege of manually inputting a trade. Hours and hours of waiting for mere seconds of fun (or work – depending on how you look at it).

And that’s just placing the trade; we haven’t even touched on the aspect of managing the trade once it’s entered.

This is where automated trading can help. We can set whatever criteria we want for the trades to automatically be opened for us and allow a computer to do the rest of the work. Like trading with RSI, only when the trend is up? That can be coded. What about agreement between 1 hour and 4 hour Parabolic SAR with entry triggered by MACD? Once again – a strategy can be coded to do exactly what you want.

Strategy Trader is completely written in C# - which is a universal programming language that makes it extremely easy to automate your individual trading strategies. If you do not have a programming background, that’s not a problem; you can certainly employ the help of the programmers at FXCM to put your ideas into code.

There are a plethora of freely available strategies available for traders at the FXCM Wiki page for Strategy Trader. No coding experience is needed to get these strategies into your platform. Please click on the following link to access the strategies.

ForexCodeSource

If you’d like a little help getting these strategies in the platform, the following video will walk you through the entire process.

Importing Strategies from ForexCodeSource

Once you have your strategy in Strategy Trader, setting it up to trade can be done in a few quick steps. First, we’re going to need to locate the strategy in the ‘Navigation,’ window.

Once located, simply click (left mouse) and drag onto the chart you would like the strategy to trade with. A ‘format Strategy Advisor,” window will come up, and after hitting ‘OK,’ you will see the system visually displayed on the chart.

One of the great parts about the platform is that once the strategy is applied, it will automatically be back-tested. This will show us how the strategy would have performed with the historical data on the chart. Profitable trades are indicated with green connecting lines, losing trades with red connecting lines.

We can see the statistics for how the strategy would have performed by going to “Reports,” and then “Strategy Performance Report.” This will give us a plethora of information as to the effectiveness of this strategy.

When it comes time to set the strategy to trade live, I can turn it on with the “Auto,” button located on the top left corner of the chart. This button will turn green – indicating that the strategy is scanning the market – looking for trades.

If you have any questions about the Strategy Trader platform, building strategies, or getting a live account set up so that you can auto-trade, please email Info@FXCM.com