Randy pointed out in some other thread that it can be frustrating that FXCM accounts for gen 2 autotrading cannot be traded manually once you have decided to shut down autotrading. I thought about this solution to work around it: Create a C2 system, with $0 fee, subscribe yourself to it, and set it on autotrade. Enter the trades via this system. It is not perfect, because there will be some delay, but at least you will have immediate access to your money.
You can also use it to manually override while you are autotrading: If you don’t like a position of another autotraded system, just make the opposite trade in your own system. After this you have to monitor the account, because if the other system closes the unwanted position then you must close the opposite position as well. It is not convenient, but it is possible.
Jules,
Yes that would work very well, interesting idea!
Another solution is to open a second account and trade it manually.
Francis
The “subaccount” approach offered by Open E Cry is also one way to handle this particular problem, and if FXCM also allowed this it would be a good second-best solution.
The best solution would be to establish a link between C2 and the broker so that if autotrading is turned off at C2, the brokerage account immediately reverts to manual trading. When autotrading is turned back on at C2 the brokerage account becomes read-only again. This would be independent of any “subaccount”, and in the ideal world could only involve a software flag that C2 controls and the broker reads.
I don’t know the logistics of implementing something like this, but the value it provides for dealing with software bugs, consequences of bad ticks, simply deciding to take a break from a system during a bad time, etc. would sure be worth the effort IMO.
Jules:
A couple of comments: 1) You don’t have to specify $0 subscription fee. As owner of the system you can trade it for free! Do a good job trading your own account and somebody just might want to join you. Of course, if you did not want anybody to see, you can specify it to be a “test” account when you set it up. 2) C2 charges a semi-annual listing fee. You do get 5 (I think…) free trades before having to pay however.
Hans.
Very clever! So this means you can add your own stops to a system you subscribe to, i.e. for each trade initiated by the system you subscribed to, you’d enter a trade in opposite direction that triggers at your preferred stop level. You just need to monitor things carefully once the stop is hit and close your position once the vendor close his. Uhm, it sounds like something could be automated there…
If such a switch is implemented, I suggest it being located at the broker. One of the situations where you might want to interfere manually is the (admittedly rare) case when C2 is down, and in that case you won’t have access to a C2-located switch. BTW, my suggestion won’t work either in that case, but in other cases I hope that it can help some people as a temporary solution.
I asked both OEC and FXCM if it was possible for me to toggle the account between manual trading and read only from their side (ie. after I had logged into my borker account), and in both cases the answer was no. They couldn’t seem to understand at all why this would be useful.
To actually get this functionality will probably require a concerted effort by autotrade users to convince C2 and the brokers that we need this to be able to counter problems and generally control the account, without long delays (days) for requests to the broker to be processed.
I didn’t realize the possibility of adding stops, but that would be possible too. Hmm, I think I would only do this incidentally. Otherwise I have to monitor the account continuously.
Automation will be difficult because the signals are sent to only one broker. I gave it some thoughts, but I have the feeling that this is the wrong way because then we will be designing autotrade software with the sole purpose of supressing other autotrade software. A kind of de-synchronization program 
I doubt if this will make our life easier. If you systematically want to alter the trades of a system then actually you don’t want to trade that system. For gen 1 autotrading it is maybe be a different matter.
Randy,
That won’t work. Brokers are not setup to process LPOAs electronically.
Francis
I’m not talking about processing a POA, but the ability to toggle the account between read only and manual trading after the POA has been processed and the account set up for autotrading. The brokers can process such a request via telephone, email, or online chat methods, so why not via an electronic signal from C2, or a direct request through their own trading platform? It’s purely a software issue.
It’s not how it works. For manual trading the LPOA must be revoked and this has to go through the legal department.
Francis
But this does not necessarily mean that an AutoTrade customer couldn’t adjust or alter signals, assuming the software were in place to do it, and the proper upfront legal issues were taken care of.
Yes but my point is this will not be done broker-side or through their software, it has to be C2 side.
The reason is we cannot know which system an external order belongs to.
Francis
I see some systems have paid manual and autotrading for free. Is there a way to do this with bulldog/fxcm and get paid for trades as a system vendor, or do I need to offer a managed account?
This was my first suggestion way up in the thread … that C2 provide a flag to the broker which controls whether the account is read only or allowed to manually trade. This flag is toggled when an autotrader enables or disables Gen 2 autotrading from within C2. Seems straightforward, but if you are saying a process must take place at the broker side to revoke the POA through their legal department, then reactivate it, there must be some way around this.
The reason I say that is because I tried to convert my account at OEC back to read only for autotrading (which was previously set up and active) from manual trading via repeated email and web site “contact” forms over several days. I started this process on a Monday, and by Friday nothing had happened (no replies from OEC at all, and no change to the account). Finally, on Friday, I threatened to close the account and within 2-3 minutes it was converted back to autotrading. So they do have the ability to do this essentially instantly, and I can’t see why a flag controlled by C2 couldn’t be used to accomplish the same thing much quicker.
>Seems straightforward, but if you are saying a process must take place at the broker side to revoke the POA through their legal department, then reactivate it, there must be some way around this.
There is no way around this. The best C2/system vendor can do is to issue an alert for the trade in question. Then the autotrader can implement any changes to the trades (reduce position size or exit completely or hedge by buying a put/call, trading opposite forex pairs etc.,) he wants using his own system (either public or test system) which is also autotrading enabled for the same real-money account with the same real broker.
