Last Thursday, Brian from FXLQ told me that they were going to have MetaTrader technicians from Europe in their offices on December 27th, 28th, and 29th. These specialized tech’s are supposed to install a final upgrade, which will include an upgrade to FXLQ’s MetaTrader server that should eliminate the execution problems we have been experiencing. He told me that the addition of liquidity providers to the platform is on track, so the price feed should continue to improve up until January 1st. I just want to make it clear that even though the system might allow us to trade by January 1st, the Forex market might not have enough liquidity during the first week of January (liquidity has been decreasing during the last week or so). Even though we will always be looking for trading opportunities, if trading is really slow - we won’t force any trades just for the heck of it. It has to make sense.

The new Currenex Trading System is also ready for trading with live funds. We should start trading with it sometime in the first two weeks of January and keep you posted on the results.

The future of day trading looks bright!

We tried trading again (see associated log in a new window) on the MetaTarder 4 day trading software. The MT4 logs show a few sell attempts on 5 lots of EUR/USD (and one 8-lot attempt). All trades were rejected with a “TradeContext: ping error” that took exactly 20 seconds to come up. FXLQ says that their programmers are looking into this issue. Apparently, the trade signal is not reaching the MT4 execution server correctly.

This will hopefully be corrected in a timely manner. Can’t wait to start seeing some trading action again. Forex market, here we come!

Today was the first day that FXLQ restored the institutional feed on the trading platform. From what Brian McMahon told me, FXLQ has only a few banks making up the feed right now, but will be adding more liquidity providers (banks, etc.) up to January 1st - when the feed will be “complete.” This should narrow spreads overall and give us access to more liquidity when we trade (at least in theory).Brian also said that a system upgrade performed by their tech guys should eliminate the drastic number of rejections we have been experiencing (the dreaded “off quotes” message).

As instructed by FXLQ, we will start day trading again (with limited size). You might see some activity tomorrow. The primary goal is to see if the trade rejections are reduced, even though the liquidity won’t be “optimal” until the 1st.

New Order Entry Program Passes Demo Stage

Nigel and I have been testing the new trading order entry program that was designed for us. It works great on demo mode and passed all my tests.

Even though we will constantly be tweaking it for “perfection” (if such a thing exists!) as we go, we’ll probably start testing it with real funds in the next few weeks (or possibly at the beginning of the new year).

By next week, the forex market activity might diminish significantly - not the ideal environment for successful day trading. This might FORCE all of us to take a vacation until the beginning of the year. We should anyway, right?

Our Internet provider experienced an outage and our phones were down for most of the day.Last week FXLQ told me that we might be trading again by Monday (12/11). Yesterday I was told that trading was pushed back to Wednesday (tomorrow) - and I’m afraid that it might be pushed back again to Thursday or Friday. Shucks!

We missed some great trading opportunities last week (especially on Friday), but let’s not look back - only forward!

Update on Customized Trading Execution Program

Since Sunday, I have been testing the new order entry application that our programmer has been working on and it works great. We are working on polishing it off before trading real funds on Currenex [with another broker], but I’m hopeful it will be a success. It should be much faster than our current set up. This might be ready for live testing within 2 weeks.

After an unbearable, multi-day period of silence, FXLQ spoke…

Actually, one of our clients who’s also a trader [you know who you are], took the liberty of contacting FXLQ to express his concerns about the little incident last Wednesday (11/29). Shortly after that, Brian from FXLQ replied via email.

He said that FXLQ is in the final stages of a new liquidity deal in which our “day trading on steroids” (scalping) style won’t be an issue anymore. He said that we could be trading again by early next week. Let’s see what happens next week.

I spoke to Brian later on during the day yesterday and he confirmed the above information. Nevertheless, our programmer continues to develop another option to allow us to day trade at other firms via Currenex in order to diversify. What happened last week was a good wake up call.

We can’t put all our eggs in one basket. If an issue arises that forces us to stop trading at broker A, we need to be able to trade at broker B. I have mentioned this to you in the past and will let you know when the second option is ready. We have big plans for the future.

Let’s keep our chins up and continue pressing forward. The future looks bright.

It’s difficult just to sit back and watch the forex market move without being able to take advantage of it.

The trader just sent me the log of Wednesday’s trades. I want to concentrate on a section of the log that shows 13 straight attempts to get out of a position! (one of the problems we’ve been having from day 1 - just look at the number of “[off quotes]” messages - log link below). Even though problems like these are unacceptable, you can’t stop a good thing. Despite difficulties, the trader was able to get out. Lets keep this in mind as we go forward. Yes; there will be troubles - but we WILL emerge victorious from the darkness! Keep fighting!

Click here to see the trading log.