jcl, this looks AMAZING. I've wished for a multi-symbol walk-forward tester for ages. Your implementation looks a little unusual (no charting, interesting script language, etc) but it looks like you've put a LOT of work and professionalism into it. My hat's off to you.

All the mentions I've seen say to open an account at FXCM UK. For a demo account it probably doesn't matter much, but I assume opening at FXCM US will also work, for those of us unfortunates under the NFA's thumb?

Does a demo account have to stay under $7000? Most of them open at $25k or $50k.

I've seen several places say that NFA Compliance Rule 2-43(b) doesn't allow stops !? That's not true. I've placed hundreds of trades since the NFA crackdown and I use a stop on every trade.

gfx

You're allowed stops, you just can't place stops directly on the opening trade. Stops can be placed after the trade is filled.

I've DONE it on many trades, at several different brokers.

Thanks for the kind words. To your questions: Demo accounts have no limits, the $7K is for a life account only. NFA Compliance Rule 2-43(b) requires orders to be processed in FIFO sequence, which indeed forbids stops. The FXCM API refuses in fact any stop loss order on an US based account. If you try it, you get a lengthy error message.



The universal FIX order protocol also does not support stop loss or profit targets on orders compliant with that rule. However there are multiple ways to work around this limitation and most brokers use them. In most cases, a stop loss order is converted into two OCO orders (one-cancels-other) in a way that a stop is emulated.

Hm. Maybe so. I've never seen any mention of simulated stops at any broker, but I guess that doesn't mean they don't do it. PFG simulated hedging by settling it in the back office, and they didn't really document that either.

New questions: Zorro seems to do a lot "under the covers" without telling you about it. I generally do a fair amount of my own analysis on my trade listings and trade executions. I don't see any place to get a trade listing from the backtests I've done so far. Is that available anywhere?

I haven't set up a demo account yet, but I have a suspicion Zorro invisibly executes trades. Is there any way to know what it's doing so I can keep an eye on it? Do I just have to monitor it with the broker's tools?

Invisibly executing trades? I'd be curious how that could be accomplished .

Aside from the two trade listings in Excel and text format, you can see all trades in the message window when you're in [Trade] mode. Look for LOGFILE, VERBOSE etc. in the manual about how to set up the trade logs. You can also access the complete trade list by script or with an external DLL, using the for_all_trades macro defined in trading.h.

http://zorro-trader.com/manual/en/mode.htm

Note that the Excel trade log is a perpetual file, i.e. all executed trades are added to it. You must delete trades manually for removing them from that log. It's meant for your tax declaration.

OK. Guess I just need to explore more before I ask dumb questions. Thanks!