Can Signal Providers handle Cluster Trading?

[resalin]

I am curious to know if the system that I have been using is too unorthodox for signal providers?

I am no expert, so please bear with me on this. I am seeking answers from those of you who have much more experience and expertise, as I would welcome your advice.

The system that I have been using has these characteristics and I think that signal providers cannot translate what it does, hence my concern:

Here are the features that it has:

1) It places stoploss and takeprofit points on every trade when they are first opened, and it adjusts them on every tick -
These stoploss and takeprofit points are not for the sake of trading strategy, but for the event of loss of internet connection with broker - so if the EA is no longer in control, then the account will have some protection until connections can be restored. Actual profit taking decisions are controlled internally and has nothing to do with the stoploss/takeprofit points being assigned to all of the trades on a tick by tick basis.

2) It uses multiple charts always (usually a minimum of six) at a time.

3) It trades in what I call "clusters of trades", not sure if that is even a forex term or not, but what I mean is that all of the trades across all of the charts are considered to be intertwined such that if certain profit targets have been met, all of the affected trades will close together as quickly as possible. In some instances, just the trades pertaining to a particular chart may close together leaving the trades in all of the other charts untouched. It all depends upon trading conditions.

4) The money management features control the activities across all of the charts as well as the individual lot sizes for each trade and when each trade closes.

Because these trades are being treated as a "cluster" and, as far as I am understanding, signal providers permit users to modify lot sizes and stoploss points, etc. to match the users degree of risks, available capital, etc. I also think that, in some cases, users are permitted to skip opening a particular trade, if they so choose.

My thinking is that, if I am not mistaken about all of that, the results from the system I use would be thrown "totally off" if someone modified lot sizes or modified stoploss/takeprofit points, skipped trades etc.

Actual profits, in this system, are controlled totally by the money management sections, such that when the "clusters" are closed out, the total result is a profit gain, even though some of the individual trades may be closing with a small loss. Since, all of the trade sizes, stoploss, takeprofit, profit taking, etc. are controlled internally - wouldn't modification of signals or lot sizes, etc. cause problems to anyone doing that? So, that is my question.

Thanks for your insight.

 

[Pharaoh]

If you adjust SL and TP on every tick, you'll be sending huge amounts of traffic to the broker's MT4 server. From personal experience, I can tell you that some brokers will tell you to not do this or face having your account locked down.

 

[resalin]

Hmmm! Thanks. I understand exactly what you mean. Every tick is a bit much, now that you mention it.

As far as users openly modifying lot sizes or skipping trades, changing SL & TP points, etc. and because profits are computed across all of the open trades, wouldn't you expect users results to not remain in "sync" with what the master account is really doing? My concern is that modifications like that distorts what is actually happening within the master account.

Thanks.

 

[Pharaoh]

One idea you can use to test this.

Set up demo accounts at several brokers and get some trade copy software. There are bound to be some slight price differences between the master account and the other accounts, so you can use this method to at least get some sort of idea how badly things might get out of sync.

 

[resalin]

Thanks, I like that idea a lot. This way, I really should be able to actually "see" the effects of any variations, etc. Great suggestion. Thanks again.