Different behaviour between Live and demo account

• 12/15/2016 at 10:49 AM #18558
  kg6450

  Hi all,

  I was hoping that someone else has noticed this issue with their forward testing.

  I deal through IG and am currently forward testing a simple moving average strategy with a 50 point trailing stop on a demo account, my colleague is running the exact same strategy (with the exact same code as me) on his live account at the same time.

  The strategy opens a trade at the open of the daily bar and both of our strategies opened a short position on GBP/USD at the same time this morning. GBP/USD moved down 21 points which moved my colleagues stop down 20 points with it, before price moved up and closed him out for -30points (which is wat should have happened). My stop however didn’t move at all and is at the same place as where it opened, meaning I am still open and now in profit.

  I was wondering if anyone else has noticed this when starting their system live or comparing demo with live performance? What is happening shouldn’t be happening because now if this trade closes in profit, it will give me false data for my forward testing that makes the system seem better than it really is.

  

  kg6450

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  12/15/2016 at 12:12 PM #18568
  Nicolas

  Because backtests are only tested on history *with no connection to live market* , you may encounter differences with real live trading environment subject to spread enlargement, slippage, etc. If your stop hasn’t move, there must be information of an error into your orders rejected list you can consult with CTRL+O.

  IG orders list history may be also helpful!

  

  Nicolas

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  12/15/2016 at 12:15 PM #18571
  kg6450

  Hi Nicholas thank you for your response,

  I understand what you are saying, but I am not talking about back testing. I am running this system live on my demo account (it opened the position this morning) and my friend is also running it live on their real account.

  There is no recording of an error, in fact since GBP/USD hasn’t gone up 50 points since open, my position is still open. I have looked at my other open positions running trailing stops and they don’t actually move unless there is a very large movement in price (even though IG states that they move every 10 points)

  This means that the demo version and the live version of the same system are running differently to each other and can give very different future results

  

  kg6450

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  12/15/2016 at 12:20 PM #18573
  Nicolas

  Sorry for misunderstanding. But yes, you’ll encounter the same kind of differences between demo and live account. In this case, to know exactly what happened, you need to look into your orders history, this is the only possibility to check and adapt the code to have the same behaviour between demo and live trading account.

  

  Nicolas

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  12/15/2016 at 12:25 PM #18574
  kg6450

  Thats ok!

  But what can there be to change if the two systems are using the exact same code? (I wrote it myself and simply imported it to their computer) It is simply just a SET STOP pTRAILING 50 that acted completely differently for two accounts

  

  kg6450

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  12/15/2016 at 1:41 PM #18580
  Nicolas

  I’d like to help, but without knowing the reason(s) why the stoploss move hasn’t occurred, that’s quite difficult 🙂 Please provide errors/messages from the orders history.

   

  

  Nicolas

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  12/15/2016 at 6:27 PM #18618
  arcane

  The answer is simple.

  The demo account does not know how to use stop loss or stop trailing.

  The demo account is useless.

  You have to use the real account to learn.

  

  arcane

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  12/15/2016 at 7:48 PM #18620
  Nicolas

  arcane wrote:

  The demo account does not know how to use stop loss or stop trailing

  Ok, but why?

  

  Nicolas

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