Hi, I posted a trade and it did not appear. Is it possible to have a short position in a given pair, while a long position is open?
This is the posting URL I sent :-
2011.12.08 12:00:05 http://www.collective2.com/cgi-perl/signal.mpl?cmd=signal&systemid=68311507&pw=cross11&instrument=forex&action=STO&quant=16&symbol=USDCHF&signalid=14913577&stoploss=0.9292&profittarget=0.9259
Guy -
I removed one of your posts because it included your password. (I have emailed you to change it.)
To answer the question there:
No, you cannot be long and short the same currency pair at the same time. That is called hedging and isn’t allowed in the U.S.
The mathematical equivalent is to offset your long position by closing it (or a portion of it). This is the same as being “simultaneously” short.
MK
OK I understand. Perfectly legal here in the UK… I’ll do the math…
I did not get a warning message back from the system though
You know I am not sure your system is acting as it should really, I’m not breaking the law by posting on your site, it should be the responsibility of the actual trader as to whether he can place the trade or not… Not everyone lives in the US…
Guy -
I understand your point.
But one of the primary purposes of Collective2 is that you can post your system here and allow many people to automate the trading of it.
Because we are a U.S. company, registered with, regulated by, and audited by U.S. regulatory authorities, and because many of our broker partners are similarly U.S. registered, and because most of our customers automate their trading at U.S. brokers, we work within U.S. regulatory guidelines.
We therefore do not allow hedging at this time. Fortunately, you can achieve the exact mathematically equivalent position without hedging. Just offset your position by reducing or closing it.
MK
Hmmmm. It’s not really as simply as that the start contains two essentially independent methods, one for trending market and one for ranging. The targets for range entries are typically much shorter.
So to make this work as it should.
Assuming a long already open, I would need to :-
1. Reduce or even close the existing long.
2. when the short hits target or stop I would then need to increase the long position again.
A lot of faffing around 
Maybe I could use OCO orders to do it?
Also why no warning message emailed back?
Guy -
In cases where you submit a signal by API, if it is NOT accepted and is rejected immediately by the pre-processor (as in this case) you will receive an error message via the API. Check the returned XML and you’ll see the error returned to you within the error node.
We email the human only in cases where the error happens AFTER the signal has already been accepted and the software client is long gone.
Matthew
OK understand that, no big deal on the error message. Still think the principal of policing hedging is flawed. For example I trade via FXCM, clearly a US broker and they allow me to hedge because I am not affected by the law. Can I do this with OCO do you think? Really it is just a little crazy to make me jump through coding hoops to achieve something so simple as this…
