Tips and tricks for using MTI Live

There are two ways of publishing data from MT4 to MTI Live:

• Use MT4's built-in publisher settings (click on Tools/Options in MT4 and then go to the Publisher tab)
• Use our own Publisher EA

Our publisher EA uses much less bandwidth than MT4's built-in publisher, and is much more flexible. For example, you can hide pending or open orders, or put a delay on publication. For more information about the publisher EA, see the topic below.

You can use MT4's built-in publication settings to publish to MTI Live by doing the following:

• In MT4, click on Tools/Options and then go to the Publisher tab
• Tick the Enable box
• Fill in your broker account number in the Account field
• Choose the time period for publication - e.g. every 30 minutes.
• Enter www.mt4i.com as the FTP server
• Enter / as the FTP path
• Enter your MTI Live username as the FTP login
• Enter your MTI Live password as the FTP password
• Tick the Passive Mode box
• Click on the Test button

The Journal tab in the MT4 terminal should then show successful publication - a "Publisher: ok" message. If an error message is displayed, make sure that you have entered the correct username and password, and the correct details such as the FTP server and path. If no "Publisher:" messages are displayed, make sure that the account number you have entered for publication matches the account number you are logged into.

The MTI Live Publisher EA is an alternative to the publication settings which are built in to MT4. Our publisher uses much less bandwidth than MT4's own publisher, and is much more flexible. For example, it can hide open and pending orders, or put a delay on your statement. It also allows you to analyze your results by the magic-number of orders.

You can read full information about our publisher EA using the following link: MTI Live Publisher EA instructions

To download the publisher EA files, including the instructions, use the following link: http://www.mt4i.com/PublisherEA4.zip

You can display charts for a specific time period in two ways. Firstly, you can click on the Filter button in the top-right of the Stats page to choose the dates you are interested in (plus other filtering options such as symbol and lot size). This filtering affects all the tabs of the Stats page, including all charts.

You can also filter the results in an individual grid on the Stats page, and then display a chart of those results. For example:

• On the Day tab (or Week, or Month), right-click over the first day you want, and choose "Greater or equal"
• Right-click over the last day to include, and choose "Less or equal"
• Click on the Chart button at the top of the grid to choose which field(s) to chart - net profit, or net pips etc

After filtering a grid, you can also get information about a particular column by right-clicking over any of the cells in it, and choosing "Column stats". (You can also download the filtered data to Excel, and then graph it there, by using the Download button at the top of the grid.)

Each grid on the Stats page provides a powerful "Column stats" facility. For example, you can find out the average number of winning trades per week by doing the following:

• Go to the Stats page
• Go to the Week tab
• Right-click over any cell in the Winners column, and choose Column Stats
• MTI Live will display comprehensive stats on the column, including the average of the values in it - i.e. the average number of winning trades per week

For even more specific results, you can also filter the grids on the Stats page. For example, you can calculate the average number of lots traded only on days when you make a profit:

• Go to the Day tab
• Sort the grid by net profit
• Right-click over the first positive (i.e. profitable) value in the net profit column, and choose "Greater or equal". This removes all losing days from the grid.
• Right-click over any of the values in the Lots Traded column and choose Column Stats. The statistics will now only apply to profitable days.

The risk statistics are a broad indication of the risk and risk/reward profile of the trade results, rather than just their performance.

The risk/reward ratio is an expression of the system's performance in relation to its volatility (standard deviation). It prefers consistent results rather than wild swings. The figure is broadly analogous to an annualised Sharpe ratio, and figures in excess of +1 are notably good.

The risk of ruin is a Cox & Miller projection of the probability of a fall in the account balance based on the trading history, and particularly the standard deviation of results. The method estimates the likelihood of a fall in the balance at any time in the future. (N.B. Some investors question the applicability of Cox & Miller to trading, and prefer just to view the curve as an expression of volatility. It can yield very low estimates if volatility has historically been low.)

The spread of returns shows the number of daily/weekly % changes in the balance falling into each 1% band, e.g. the number of days on which the balance fell by 5%, or by more than 10%. Institutional investors will tend to prefer systems with a tightly clustered spread and few or no outliers. Systems with a wide spread will tend to have lower risk/reward ratios and a higher risk of ruin - because a small number of consecutive bad days/weeks would lead to major losses.

The deepest valley is the largest % fall in the balance from any peak to a subsequent trough. An investor who started trading at the top of the peak (rather than at the starting date of the results) would have seen this fall in their balance.

The loss from outset is the largest % fall which the system has seen relative to its initial deposit. It reflects the worst fall you would have seen relative to your original capital if you invested at the start of the system's results, but not necessarily if you started investing later (the "deepest valley").

You can set up a portfolio by registering for multiple accounts with MTI Live and then creating a portfolio to combine them. Please note that you can register with the site any number of times from the same email address.

Once you have created your accounts, choose one of them to use for creating portfolios. Log in to that account, and click on the Portfolio button at the top of the results. You give the portfolio an ID and a name, and you can then choose to add other MTI Live accounts which are registered to the same email address.

Once you have created a portfolio, you can also add another account to it by going to the URL for that account (e.g. http://www.mt4i.com/users/4051fx), and clicking on the Portfolio button.

The most common answer is that you need to restart MT4. If your internet connection drops, even briefly, then MT4 is not always good at resuming publication by itself. It often needs to be restarted before publication will continue.

You can check this by looking at the Journal tab in the MT4 terminal. If there are "Publisher:" error messages, then there is a problem such as an incorrect password or configuration for MTI Live. If there are no "Publisher:" messages at all, then publication has stalled, and MT4 needs to be restarted.

Alternatively, you can try using our publisher EA instead of MT4's own publication settings. Our publisher EA is better at recovering from network problems than MT4's own publication settings.

MTI Live receives whatever is shown in the Account History tab in the MT4 terminal. If your account history is incomplete in MT4, then your statement and results will be incomplete in MTI Live.

To publish your full history, right-click over the Account History list in MT4 and choose "All History". Please note that some brokers truncate (i.e. delete) the history on demo accounts. And, when MT4 is restarted, it may not default to showing the full history - you may need to tell it to display the full list each time that you restart it.

By far the most common reason is that you have not configured MT4's publication settings correctly. In particular, make sure that you have entered the correct username, password, FTP server, and FTP path.

If you have checked these details, and you think there is a problem with MTI Live itself, please contact us.

Alternatively, you can try using our publisher EA instead of MT4's own publication settings. Our publisher uses a different protocol to communicate with MTI Live (HTTP vs FTP), and is less likely to be affected by issues such as firewall configuration.

You can hide pending and/or open orders from your statement, but you have to upload your results using our publisher EA rather than MT4's built-in publication settings.

You can put a delay on your statement, but you have to upload your results using our publisher EA rather than MT4's built-in publication settings.