Smart Live Markets - Spread Bet on MT4

I have to say i think SLM are being a bit unfair in this case. With an EA you can either get the server to work the order (if its a simple Entry, SL, TP type) or if you use a BE or trailing stop logic you have to code this in the EA. In this case the simple type would be unaffected but any logic that needs to be performed by the EA would fail.
While i accept it is your responsibility if you run EAs to take all possible precautions (Use a VPS, get the EA to email you so you know it is in a trade etc) in this case i don’t think that would have made any difference.
Since the price feed was totally dead i cant see what the poster could have legitimately done. He couldn’t move to BE even if he phoned because he wouldn’t know if he needed to. Same for closing. He wouldn’t know before phoning if he was going to close at a profit or a loss and that is not his fault (unless SLM suggest all clients get their own independent price feed to compensate for its own Inadequacy).
 
Mata Nui said:
I have to say i think SLM are being a bit unfair in this case. With an EA you can either get the server to work the order (if its a simple Entry, SL, TP type) or if you use a BE or trailing stop logic you have to code this in the EA. In this case the simple type would be unaffected but any logic that needs to be performed by the EA would fail.
While i accept it is your responsibility if you run EAs to take all possible precautions (Use a VPS, get the EA to email you so you know it is in a trade etc) in this case i don’t think that would have made any difference.
Since the price feed was totally dead i cant see what the poster could have legitimately done. He couldn’t move to BE even if he phoned because he wouldn’t know if he needed to. Same for closing. He wouldn’t know before phoning if he was going to close at a profit or a loss and that is not his fault (unless SLM suggest all clients get their own independent price feed to compensate for its own Inadequacy).
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http://www.mt4i.com/accountmonitor.aspx did email me ~10 minutes after the prices stopped. I was driving at the time and by the time I finished, the price had moved.

I fully accept any losses from the operation of the EA. But (and I write EA's) the EA needs ticks. Every tick of the relevant price is sent to the EA's start() method so that it can look at the price and apply its strategy. If you stop sending prices the EA is also frozen.

What SLM are saying I think is that they can do anything with the price (freeze it whenever they wish) and anyone with an EA is fair game.

SLM - I think you should not be supporting EA's.
 
There is one person I know that did not have any problems with SLM this morning. Many Many people all had issues - see FMT thread for a start! I am a member of a private forum and they all use SLM at least as a price feed. Not sure if they will now.

As I said - I have got http://www.mt4i.com/accountmonitor.aspx running on my account.

6:48 AM New alert on account ****: The MTI Live data for this account is more than 10 minutes old. Your copy of MT4 may have lost its broker connection or its internet connection.

7:07 AM Alert CLEARED on account ****: The MTI Live data for this account is more than 10 minutes old. Your copy of MT4 may have lost its broker connection or its internet connection.


7:47 AM New alert on account ****: The MTI Live data for this account is more than 10 minutes old. Your copy of MT4 may have lost its broker connection or its internet connection.

7:57 AM Alert CLEARED on account ****: The MTI Live data for this account is more than 10 minutes old. Your copy of MT4 may have lost its broker connection or its internet connection.

If it was my VPS then I think the monitor would not be sending me emails.

(all times are UK times)
 
magicdogsbrain said:
http://www.mt4i.com/accountmonitor.aspx did email me ~10 minutes after the prices stopped. I was driving at the time and by the time I finished, the price had moved.

I fully accept any losses from the operation of the EA. But (and I write EA's) the EA needs ticks. Every tick of the relevant price is sent to the EA's start() method so that it can look at the price and apply its strategy. If you stop sending prices the EA is also frozen.

What SLM are saying I think is that they can do anything with the price (freeze it whenever they wish) and anyone with an EA is fair game.

SLM - I think you should not be supporting EA's.
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No that is not what we are saying at all.
We are not responsible for what your EA may or may not have been trying to do.
We honoured all orders in MT4 which should have been filled, and quite rightly too.

Otherwise we would have everyone coming on saying "oh hello, while your prices were down my EA was trying to buy £100 at the dead low and then it would have sold them at the dead high". .... Really !!

However grieved you may feel at this morning's events we fully stand by our response.
All orders that should have been filled were.
We were fully staffed on the phone at the time providing full back up service.

If you cannot understand or accept these facts then I am sorry.

Regarsd
SLM
 
Smart Live Markets said:
No that is not what we are saying at all.
We are not responsible for what your EA may or may not have been trying to do.
We honoured all orders in MT4 which should have been filled, and quite rightly too.

Otherwise we would have everyone coming on saying "oh hello, while your prices were down my EA was trying to buy £100 at the dead low and then it would have sold them at the dead high". .... Really !!

However grieved you may feel at this morning's events we fully stand by our response.
All orders that should have been filled were.
We were fully staffed on the phone at the time providing full back up service.

If you cannot understand or accept these facts then I am sorry.

Regarsd
SLM
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I can see your point but ...

1) This EA is the only one running on my account (and only ever this EA).
2) There are examples in the account history showing the move to BE at 20 pips.
3) There is a forum full of people saying that they got BE (trade2win TMT forum)
4) I was (until now) a loyal and fairly good customer that (until now) quite liked your service.
5) It was your feed that broke
6) I only ever queried a price once (to my knowledge) in three months

You are saying that anyone with an EA that does not specifically put down the SL and TP onto the trade is on their own. You can do whatever you want with the price and all those "fancy" EA's are fair game.

You keep implying that if we would have called at the time you would have done something. the whole point of an EA is that it trades automatically - and can only do anything when it is receiving price ticks from the chart.

Like I said before - a great shame :-(
 
BTW - I spoke to other brokers about this.

They said if there were examples of the same behavior on my account (trades at the same time of day moving to BE at 20 pips profit) and the price did move to that level - they would have compensated.

I know they would say that - but I think I believe them.
 
magicdogsbrain said:
From what I gather - it should be income (trading in forex as opposed to investing in long term positions) but most part time traders assign it to capital gains. I think I could assign it to capital gains also. Probably on the limit of the allowance but should be ok.
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Look here's the thing, as a part time trader in your first year chances are you aint gonna make ten grand. So ditch this outfit and go with an FX broker, try Oanda for very small stakes. 51% of their customers make money, according to what they had to file with the SEC.
 
To be honest i think you may as well give up trading EAs with SLM. I will still use them for the small minimum bet size but to be fair the data feeds are really crap. Same Robots, same settings demo took 0 trades last week - live took 5 (4 loosers 1 BE). This week demo scratched one, live not done anything.
The template on the chart suggests both (obviously) should have taken a lot more trades (including a very nice winner on Brent today).

Its NOT my EAs. I coded them both and they have been trading. Last week and this week though its just stupid.
 
Anyone using SML on a VPS?
Any advice on advantages or otherwise would be appreciated as I've been looking at adverts for various hosting companies and am more confused by the minute!
 
Smart Live Markets said:
Hello
Yes we had a problem with our multi-contirbuter FX data feed this morning for which I apologise. This was from 0639 - 0706.

This was corrected as soon as was possible and all charts corrected.

All orders in the system that should have been filled during this time have been honoured.

During this time, as always, we had full phone back up service where anyone could have called in to deal.

For the avoidance of doubt, if you are running an EA, it is your responsibility to ensure it is running correctly and if something is not right with an order or position to either manually adjust it or call in to have something changed.

Once again I am sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused.

Regards
SLM
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For the avoidance of doubt SLM, does it matter when you call in? If you notice later in the day that something was not correct can you then call in?

I know there can be a lot of problems with EAs not working as expected, but if your EA is running perfectly correctly but your platform is not then I assume you (SLM) would take the responsibility. In this instance it was also not possible to manually adjust it.

There doesn't seem much point running an EA if you have to sit and watch it all the time because you can't trust the platform!

I think this is an important distinction if you want to retain the trust of your customers.
 
jimmc said:
For the avoidance of doubt SLM, does it matter when you call in? If you notice later in the day that something was not correct can you then call in?

I know there can be a lot of problems with EAs not working as expected, but if your EA is running perfectly correctly but your platform is not then I assume you (SLM) would take the responsibility. In this instance it was also not possible to manually adjust it.

There doesn't seem much point running an EA if you have to sit and watch it all the time because you can't trust the platform!

I think this is an important distinction if you want to retain the trust of your customers.
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You put it much better than my earlier ramblings.

Obviously they honored the open trades with hard SL and TP, but I would have expected them to at least take the view that if the client can show the EA behaving regularly in a specific way, then it would probably be behaving in the same way today (e.i. setting a break even at 20 pips profit).

If that behavior could not be executed because of the price feed then for goodness sake compensate to keep your customers - at least to the break even point that happened to the great majority of other people with the same settings - you could even argue that an additional amount would show good will.

Perhaps there is an argument that a broker can not be expected to go searching around in peoples accounts looking at trades to see if the client set BE after 20 pips profit from past 6:30AM trades - but I ONLY trade this specific EA on this specific account - they are all there in black and white with no ambiguity - every day - opening trades only at 6:30am UK time!

Its 100% obvious I am not "some Tom, Dick or Harry" trying my luck by saying "my EA would have done X or Y". You can tell me what it does because its all over the history - nothing but this EA - constantly moving SL to BE at 20 pips!

Its just purely and simply a complete joke.

Use SLM at your own risk. If you run an EA - make sure it does not have any dynamic SL or TP - otherwise they will take full advantage of it.

They dont seem to want a long term relationship with the clients - they seem to want to just be arrogant and unhelpful - especially when they are convinced that they are right. They need to learn when to apply a little common sense and humility IMO.
 
Macd41 said:
Anyone using SML on a VPS?
Any advice on advantages or otherwise would be appreciated as I've been looking at adverts for various hosting companies and am more confused by the minute!
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I run (ran) a number of SLM accounts on a VPS (tagadab). Not sure why I would bother through because your PC at home is probably more reliable that their feed - so no real advantage on a VPS.

I think you can get cheaper VPS's that tagadab. Very good idea if you are using EA's 24/5
 
peterwood said:
Hi,
I was just about to open a live account with SML but as has been said i have had no data on the demo account since friday.This is unacceptable for a live account,does it happen often?.I have been very impressed by the charting capabilities but if it breaks down on a regular basis i can't use it.Is the problem only with the demo version or does it happen to the live version as well?,
Peter
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Its never happened to my live account.
 
I must be getting old, because in this case I think SLM's viewpoint seems reasonable. Even if their data feed fails, how can they really be responsible for what EAs do, or don't do, as a consequence? Aggrieving and annoying though it is, I can't see the FOS being impressed if you went that route.
 
dmt257 said:
Its never happened to my live account.
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Hi dmt257,
Thanks for the reply.I think i will open a live account.The two big advantages to me are the charting capabilities and the facility to trade both long and short on the same market at the same time.I do use EA's but only so i can then manually trade,and i see i can enable an alert on the system to warn of data failure so i will do that.As to the debate over data loss,to me it hinges on what SLM initially say about using EA'S to trade automatically.If they say they support them for that purpose then they should compensate if the data crashes.If they don't say that then they need not.
 
Imo you cannot go wrong with SLM. I searched everywhere and couldn't find a bad review. I just don't trust the vast majority of the competition and their questionable practices. And of course, they offer MT4 SB which is win win win.
 
as above--had no problems at all on live account in approx 5 months.(apart from some bad decisions on my part)
-I don`t understand how some of you guys get in such a mess with your trading .
 
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