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As a computer programmer I spend my evenings and weekends doing exactly as one may expect: writing computer programs. I believe that my latest project may be able to help all of us as a community.
<o> </o>One day back in March I was reading through the Journal Factory Forum. I read “My Trades by Dave”, “Tim’s Journal”, “Jeff’s Trades”, etc. And then it hit me: I want to see Dave’s, Tim’s and Jeff’s trading activity all in one place! Not spread all over separate pages! Heck, I want to be able to see THOUSANDS of traders’ activity all in one place! And so my latest project was born: FX Trading Stats (FXTS.)
<o></o>The idea was simple. Provide an easy to use application for traders to submit their trading activity to the ForexFactory.com community as well as view the trading activity of the collective community. I’ll break it down real easy. The program runs in your system tray (down by the clock on your computer) with an icon that looks like a little blue globe. When you click the icon you will see a grid displaying the following columns:
- Currency (8 different currency pairs are currently supported.)
- Invested Users (The number of FF users who currently have open orders in that currency pair.)
- Long (The number and percentage of users who are Long in that currency pair.)
- Short (The number and percentage of users who are Short in that currency pair.)
- Close (Displays no data. Click it when you close a position.)
*** See Figure 1***
You’ll notice that in Figure 1 some of the cells are colored blue. Those cells indicate which positions you currently have open. So when I took that screen shot (figure 1) I was short in USD/JPY, and closed in every other currency pair. You can also see from the screen shot that there is one other user (my test account) that is currently long in USD/JPY, long in EUR/USD and short in <st1:stockticker>GBP</st1:stockticker>/USD.
To register your trading activity you simply click the appropriate cell in the grid.
Can I select which currency pairs I want to view?<o></o>
Of course you can (or I wouldn’t have posed the question!) By right-clicking the grid you can perform several actions, one of which is selecting the currency pairs you want to view. There are currently 8 different currency pairs supported. They are:
- EUR/USD
- USD/JPY
- <st1:stockticker>GBP</st1:stockticker>/USD
- USD/CHF
- EUR/<st1:stockticker>GBP</st1:stockticker>
- EUR/JPY
- <st1:stockticker>AUD</st1:stockticker>/USD
- USD/CAD
*** See Figure 2***
<o> </o>Can I configure alerts on my desktop or via email?<o></o>
Yes you can. By right clicking the grid and selecting “Alerts” you can configure alerting by currency pair. So, for example, let’s say you wanted to get an email and/or have a little box pop up on your computer when at least 100 users were invested in EUR/USD and at least 80% of them were in agreement on position. You would simply right click the grid, select “Alerts”, click EUR/USD in the drop down box, set “Percentage of Investors” to 80, and Minimum Investors to 100. Then just check the “Active” box and save your changes.
<o> </o> *** See Figure 3***
<o> </o>Can I monitor only the trading activity of certain users? Namely users who are using my same trading strategy?<o></o>
I created Channels to accomplish this. Currently there are 3 channels created. They are:<o>
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- Scalpers
- News Release Traders
- Vegas Style Traders
<o></o>I anticipate having a lot more of these in the future, but these three should get us started. Please post back here with any recommendations for additional channels. When you join a channel you are effectively saying “I only want to see the trading activity of other users who are in this channel. Also, I only want to receive alerts based on the trading activity of this channel.”
While the General Area is listed as a channel, it’s not really a channel. All trading activity is displayed to the General Area regardless if the submitting user is a member of a channel or not.
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And that pretty much wraps it up. I paid the $8 for a domain name so you would all have somewhere to go and download the product. You can get it at ForexTradingStats.com.
So give me your feedback, is this something that can help us? Do you guys think we could benefit from this project? I welcome your feedback and questions.
Thanks and good trading!
-g
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