Frequently asked questions

You can upload your trading history from MT4, MT5, cTrader, Oanda fxTrade, XOpenHub, Vertex FX, or FXCM TS2.

You need to register with FX Blue Live. You then either download and install a publisher app for your trading platform, or - for MT4 or cTrader - you can set up account sync where we collect your trading results from the broker.

You can look at orders and statistics starting from a particular date by using the filtering on the website. You can set start and end dates (and many other options, including symbols and lot sizes).

Separately, all our publisher apps have an option for setting a start date. All trading activity before this date is then ignored, and is not published to the website at all. For example, there is a IncludeIfOpenedSince parameter in the Publisher EA for MetaTrader 4.

You cannot set a start date if you are using account sync (but you can still use the filtering).

Many brokers truncate trading histories, particularly on demo accounts. Older trades may be replaced by an opening balance which reflects the total P/L before the truncation, or the orders may simply be removed from the history leaving a statement where the closed trades no longer reconcile with the balance.

There is a special consideration with MT4: the full history may be available, but it may not be downloaded by default in the MT4 platform, and therefore may not be published to the website. If you are using our publisher EA for MT4, and the website is not showing your full account history, try the following: go to the the "Account History" tab in MT4, right-click over the list, and choose "All history".

If you are using one of our publisher apps, please make sure that the app is running, and says that it is connecting successfully both to your broker and to FX Blue. For example, if you are using the Publisher EA for MetaTrader 4, please make sure that the EA is running on a chart and that Expert Advisors are enabled in MT4.

If you are using account sync, then please check your settings on the account sync page. Brokers do occasionally change their server settings, and you may find (in MT4 particularly) that the details of your account have changed - e.g. your account is now on a different server, as reported by the Tools/Options in MT4.

We are constantly looking to add other trading platforms to the list which can publish to FX Blue Live. If you have a request, please ask.

To be included, a trading platform needs to have an API which provides access not only to the trading history of the account, including the profit on each trade, but also to all cashflow events as well - deposits, withdrawals, adjustments. There are further requirements in order for us to be able to provide account sync for a trading platform.

We can give trusted partners the ability to upload data in any format of their choice, but we do not make this facility publicly available. We are not prepared to publish results on the site which might be entirely fictitious.

Registered users can do two things:

• Add extra usernames on the settings page, and then view any combination of those usernames
• Or, create a separate new registration with FX Blue. You can register any number of times from the same email address.

You can add extra usernames on the settings page, and then view any combination of those usernames.

You can also set up a portfolio, which has a permanent ID and its own URL. To create a new portfolio, go to the Portfolio tab of the first set of trading results which you want to include in the portfolio.

The portfolio system on FX Blue Live can be used by trading groups where each account in the portfolio is controlled by a different person. As a result, there is one account which "owns" a portfolio. If you are logged in as account A when you create a portfolio, then you need to be logged in to account A in future to make any changes to the portfolio.

To set up a portfolio, log in to the FX Blue account which you want to "own" the portfolio. You then go to the Portfolio tab of the first account which you want to add, e.g. https://www.fxblue.com/users/example/portfolio. You choose a name and title for the portfolio, and you can also click on the "Other accounts" link to specify other accounts registered to the same email address which you want to include.

However, you can also combine multiple accounts on an ad-hoc basis using a URL such as the following:

https://www.fxblue.com/users/example8,example9

You simply combine the usernames in the URL, separated by commas. For many purposes, this can be simpler than setting up a fixed portfolio.

The portfolio system on FX Blue Live can be used by trading groups where each account in the portfolio is controlled by a different person. As a result, there is one account which "owns" a portfolio. If you are logged in as account A when you create a portfolio, then you need to be logged in to account A in future to make any changes to the portfolio.

To add a new account to an existing portfolio, follow these steps:

• Log in to the account which owns the portfolio (not the account which you want to add)
• Go to the Portfolio tab of the account which you want to add, e.g. https://www.fxblue.com/users/newaccount/portfolio
• Click on the "Add to" button next to the name of the portfolio which you want to add the new account to.

If you want to replace your current results with a new broker account, you simply start publishing from the new account (either by changing the settings in the publisher app, or by changing your account sync settings). The data from the new broker account will overwrite the existing data shown on FX Blue Live.

We do not want to have trading access to users' accounts. Therefore, we only provide account sync for platforms which have a read-only password (e.g. MT4) or which have some similar way for users to give us read-only access to their account.

We add new brokers to the MT4/5 account sync list when users ask us to. To add a new server, please send the following information by email to support@fxblue.com

In order for us to add a new broker (or a new server for an existing broker) you will need to send us two things:

1. An example account number and read-only investor password on the new server
2. Server details

In relation to the server details, we need one of the following (in order of preference):

• The internet hostname of the server (e.g. mt4live.mybroker.com, not the MT4/5 Server ID such as MyBroker-Live)
• The IP address of the server
• A copy of the servers.ini file (for MT4) or the servers.dat file (for MT5). You can find this by using File / Open Data Folder in MT4/5, and then going to the config subdirectory

You can check which server you are connected to in MT4/5 by using Tools / Options, and then the Server tab of those settings.

(We cannot create the new record if you only give us the server ID such as MyBroker-Live. We need the corresponding servers.ini or servers.dat file as well - or, preferably, the internet hostname or IP address.)

We add new brokers to the MT5 account sync list when users ask us to. To add a new server, please send the following information by email to support@fxblue.com

In order for us to add a new broker (or a new server for an existing broker) you will need to send us two things:

1. An example account number and read-only investor password on the new server
2. Server details - preferably, the IP address or internet hostname of the broker's server

The frequency of updates varies both by trading platform and by broker. The only general rule is that we collect live accounts more frequently than demo accounts.

Our publisher apps update more frequently than account sync. (You get faster updates at the cost of having to run an app on your own computer.) You can configure all the apps to publish as often as every 60 seconds, and some of them can be configured to re-publish immediately whenever orders are opened or closed.

Trading results which are published to FX Blue are public by default. If someone knows (or can guess) your username, then they can view your results.

You can protect your results by setting a PIN on your account. You do this from the profile page which is displayed immediately after logging in.

Alternatively, you can use the profile page to set up a "white list" of accounts which are allowed access to yours. People can only view your results if they are logged in to FX Blue using one of the accounts on the white-list.

You can do this in two ways. On the profile page immediately after logging in, you can set the option "Make your order list private". The site will then only show your open and closed trades while you are logged in to the site. If you are not logged in (or someone else is visiting your results) then the site will show statistics, but not individual trades.

Alternatively, you can turn off publication of open trades and/or pending orders. If you are publishing your results using one of our publisher apps, then you set this option in the app (e.g. you turn off the IncludeOpenOrders parameter in the MT4 publisher EA). If you are publishing your results using account sync, then you turn off the equivalent setting on the account sync page.

If you turn off publication of these trades then they are not visible at all on the website at any time. The website simply does not receive this data. The information is not displayed - because it is not available - even when you are logged in to your account on the website.

A further option is that you can set a delay on publication: orders are only included N minutes after they are opened. This option is available in all our publisher apps (e.g. the DelayTradeListByMinutes parameter in the MT4 publisher EA), and on the account sync page.

You cannot hide both your balance and your equity. If you are publishing your results for other people to look at then it makes a material difference whether a return of e.g. 50% has been achieved on a deposit of $100 or $100,000.

MT4 users can hide their equity but not their balance by using the publisher EA (not account sync) and turning off the IncludeOpenProfit parameter in the EA. This option is not currently available on any other platforms.

Visitors to the website cannot see your email address under any circumstances.

Yes, you can embed a fully functional version of FX Blue's analysis on your own site, including charts, order lists, filtering etc. For a demonstration of this, see the Widgets tab of your own results, or the example results at https://www.fxblue.com/users/example/publication

The Widgets tab also lets you generate individual charts and banners for inclusion on your own site. You can also collect your trading history from FX Blue using our Javascript and RSS feeds.

No trading platform is capable of providing your actual historic account equity at a particular date in the past. On any site such as ours, calculations of historic floating P/L (and therefore equity) are done by calculating the open positions at that time and then using a historic price feed to work out the gain/loss on the open position. This is generally a very good approximation, but the figure will nevertheless not be 100% accurate.

We do not display figures for historic margin usage. There are three main reasons for this:

• Historic floating P/L (and equity) is an approximation, and a calculation of margin usage is then a further approximation based on that.
• An increasing number of brokers have floating/variable margin usage, and the headline leverage reported for an account such as 400:1 is not necessarily correct.
• An increasing number of people are using MT4 to trade CFDs as well as forex. On these instruments, the headline leverage figure for the account is generally just plain wrong/meaningless.

In other words: any calculation of historic margin usage is capable of being substantially wrong, and will generally be an under-estimate which could provide false reassurance.

We do not calculate anything which we label as a Sharpe ratio, though our risk/reward ratio is very similar to a Sharpe ratio.

There are a number of issues with Sharpe ratios, and at the moment we prefer not to use the term on the website. The reality is that Sharpe ratios are calculated in a number of different ways, and a figure on website A is probably calculated in a different way to the figure on website B:

• A proper Sharpe ratio should be calculated using historic equity, not balance. However, any calculation of historic equity from trading platforms has to be an approximation based on a feed of historic prices. We think that publishing a "Sharpe ratio" would imply more confidence in the figures than it is possible for anyone to have.
• Variability #1: everyone agrees that a proper Sharpe ratio should include a measure of a risk-free rate of return. However, no-one agrees on how this rate should be calculated (and whether it should be a fixed figure or should vary over time - though this has been a slightly hypothetical consideration since 2008).
• Variability #2: (almost) all published Sharpe ratios are annual figures, but some people annualise them from daily returns and some people annualise them from monthly returns. Sharpe ratios based on monthly returns will tend to be higher.
• Variability #3: we have seen many Sharpe ratios which are based on an arithmetic mean of returns, not a geometric mean. This is hard to justify, but many people - including registered fund managers - use it. Oddly enough, a Sharpe ratio based on arithmetic means will be higher than one based on geometric means.

If you have multiple deposits, or deposits and withdrawals, then your percentage returns (total, per month etc) are not simply your trading profit divided by the total of deposits.

For example: you deposit $5000 and make a loss of $1000 (20%). You then deposit another $6000 (giving a balance of $10,000) and make a profit of $1500, i.e. 15%. You have made a cash profit of $500 overall, but your percentage return is negative: you lost 20% in the first period and only gained 15% in the second. The site will calculate this as a net loss of 8% (0.80 x 1.15 = 0.92).

(You should also bear in mind that profit and loss percentages are not symmetric. For example, if you lose 20% - e.g. $200 of $1000 - then you need a profit of 25% to return to break-even - a profit of $200 on the remaining $800.)

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").

In forex trading, a "pip" is a convention which provides an approximate way of comparing profits from different trades while ignoring the trade volume (and thus ignoring the actual cash profit). It is defined as a price movement of 0.0001, except for JPY pairs (and HUF) where it is defined as 0.01.

The notion of a pip works in fx because (a) the most heavily traded pairs are all xxx/USD, xxx/JPY, or xxx/CHF, and (b) the USD/JPY rate is close to 100 and the USD/CHF rate is close to 1. If AUD/USD or GBP/USD rises by 100 pips, then it has changed in price by 1 US cent. If GBP/JPY rises by 100 pips, then it has moved by 1 yen, and that is close to 1 US cent. Similarly, if EUR/CHF rises in price by 100 pips then it has moved by 1 Swiss franc cent, which is again close to 1 US cent.

But the notion of a "pip" works less well on a symbol such as EUR/GBP. A change of 100 pips on EUR/GBP is a change of 1 British penny, which is - currently - worth about 30% more than 1 US cent. Therefore, a trader who makes 100 pips profit on EUR/GBP has made a substantially larger cash profit than someone who has traded the same volume (of euros) on e.g. EUR/USD.

In other words, in fx the notion of a pip is a broad and approximate way of comparing trades. It would become a lot less useful if, for example, the USD/JPY rate went up to 200, or down to 50.

Outside of fx, there is no consensus on what the "pip" sizes should be for instruments (and the term "pip" is relatively rarely used by traders). For example, different people will define a pip on spot gold variously as 1.00, 0.10, 0.01, or even occasionally 0.05. There is no consensus in the same way as for forex pairs (and there is certainly no "correct" or "official" definition).

Our systems currently define the pip size on gold as 0.10 and on silver as 0.01. This means that the cash profit when trading 1 lot of gold or silver (using most brokers' contract sizes) is relatively close to the cash value when trading 1 lot (i.e. 100K) of a forex pair. Other non-forex instruments are defined as having a pip size of 1.00, except for a few oil and index contracts.

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
• FX Blue 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 Strategy tab of the Stats page can analyse your trading results based on the "magic number" of orders (MT4/MT5 only), or based on tags which you define to match against each order's comment.

For example, let's say that you follow two trading strategies, and you enter "strategy1" or "strategy2" as the comment when placing an order. Sometimes you are particularly sure or unsure about the prospects for a trade, and you add either "safe" or "risky" to the order comment, e.g. "strategy2 risky".

You can then define strategy tags which automatically update on the Strategy tab based on the orders you publish. For example, you can create a tag which looks for all orders whose comment contains "strategy1", or a tag which looks for all orders containing "risky", or a tag which matches orders containing both "strategy1" and "risky". You simply define as many tags as you like using the Strategy Tags button.

You can draw a quick chart of the results for a single tag by selecting it in the grid and clicking on the Filtered Chart button, or you can use the strategy tag options in the main list of charts on the Charts tab to compare different tags. Please note that a single order can match more than one tag, and the total profitability of each tag on the Strategy tab can therefore be different to the total profitability of the account as a whole.

It is important that strategy tags are based on the order comment which you define when placing a trade. All you have to do is define your strategy tags once; you do not have to manually assign tags to each order after publishing your results. The system also helps you stay disciplined about your trading and results: if you thought a trade was safe when you placed it, you cannot then remove the "safe" tag later if it goes badly, because the order comment is read-only.

You need to be logged in to your FX Blue account in order to set up strategy tags, and you need to be publishing your order comments. For example, if you are using our Publisher EA, make sure to turn on the PublishOrderComments parameter.

For an example of strategy tags, see https://www.fxblue.com/users/strategytagexample/stats#strategy

No, your don't have to use a VPS in order to run tools such as our Publisher EA or our Personal Trade Copier. But if you don't want to leave your home PC running all the time, to upload your trading results or to copy signals, then you need a VPS instead.

For information about different types of VPS, please see our article.

Our partner ForexVPS.net offers special discounts to FX Blue users.

No. Your choice of broker will be determined by your own personal weighting of a number of factors: service, execution, spreads, liquidity, availability of tools, education, training etc. There is no such thing as "the best broker".

No, we do not recommend any money managers or automated trading systems.

You can register without publishing your trading history, and download our tools, but some tools and services are only available to people who are using the site to publish their trading history.

Some of the services on FX Blue are only available to people who have verified a phone number. We send you SMS or a voice vall, and you confirm that you have received it by typing in a code.

You can verify your phone number by going to https://www.fxblue.com/live/register?phoneVerify=yes