Quartz EA
Overview
| EA Name | Homepage | Pair | Timeframe | Takeprofit | Stoploss | ECN | 5-Digits | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quartz EA | Click Here! | USDJPY | M30 | 30 | 400 | yes | automatic |
Forward Test (Demo)
Status: running
Last update: 2010 March 12, 16:58 (GMT)
| EA Name | Statement | Weekly Net P/L [Pips] | Weekly Profit | Weekly Trades | Winning Trades | Max/Min [Pips] | Closed P/L [Pips] | Open P/L [Pips] | Total Profit | Max. DD [%] | Weeks in Test |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quartz EA | Statement | 18 | 1% | 9 | 74% | 78 / -282 | 238 | 0 | 9% | 4% | 13 |
Backtest
| EA Name | Statement | Period | Pair | Closed P/L [Pips] | Open P/L [Pips] | Trades | Winning Trades | Max/Min [Pips] | Max. DD [%] | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quartz EA | Statement | 2009 | USDJPY | 951 | 0 | 1763 | 73% | 100 / -290 | 10% | |
| Quartz EA | Statement | 2008 | USDJPY | 1522 | -2723 | 271 | 73% | 50 / -474 | 110% | stopped out |
| Quartz EA | Statement | 2007 | USDJPY | 1749 | 0 | 1249 | 74% | 100 / -290 | 8% | |
| Quartz EA | Statement | 2006 | USDJPY | 2165 | 0 | 1061 | 75% | 78 / -282 | 5% | |
Homepage / Vendor
The Hompepage of Quartz EA is simple and clean. It’s not the typical sales pitch which is a good sign. On the page there is mainly a brief description about how the EA works, the requirements to run it terms of account size and some account statements. There is not information available about the vendor itself. Here an excerpt from the page:
Quartz EA is based on pure mathematic algorithm. It does not need any indicators, or special settings. It opens positions and hedges them until they are closed in profit. During a trend you will get all profit from one position and during rollback you will close another hedged position with profit too.
Delivery
As owner of Quartz EA you get:
- the Quartz Expert Advisor (1 compile .ex4 file / 1 .dll library file)
- a 7 page PDF instruction manual
Installation / Licence
The installation is simple and well documented in the manual step by step. To run Quartz EA you need a license key. The license is restricted to 1 live account and unlimited demo accounts. This is stated as well on the homepage.
How does it work ?
Quartz EA uses a kind of hedged grid trading strategy combined with a martingale money management.
This means it adds additional sell limit orders above the actual price and buy limit orders below the actual price. Every additional order is of bigger lotsize. As an emergency exit a 400 pips stoploss is used while the first order has a take profit of 30 pips.
Settings / Money Management / Broker Requirements
The settings mainly affect the risk management. In terms of money management a fixed lotsize to start with has to be defined in the settings. There is then an option available to allow compounding at a defined intervall to increase the start lotsize automatically when the account get’s bigger.
Quartz EA automatically adapts to 2- / 3-digit price quotes and support ECN brokers which require market orders. Due to it’s martingale trading characteristics it’s strongly recommended to use a broker which allows microlots (0.01 lots). The recommended account size is 5-10k for trading 1 microlot. For smaller accounts a broker with nanolots (cent account) is required. Due to its trading system it works only on brokers which allows hedging.
Conclusion
An interesting combination of grid trading and martingale. The backtest and forward test results looks consistent and the high requirement in terms of account size which is needed to run such as strategy is clearly states which is fair. As we see out of the backtest starting with an account size of 5.4k$ created more than 100% return in 2006, 2007, 2009 but in beginning of 2008 the account would have been wipped out. An account size of 10k would have been sufficient which is the size which is strongly recommended ! As with all martingale strategies there remains the fact that in a certain moment the whole account may be at risk.