Using VPS to run 24/7 trading robot

I am myself is not a Forex trader, however I know that some traders are interested in running their trades using a robot. A robot is a customized script sitting on a PC and watch for opportunities to open or close a trade for profit. Why run it on VPS when I can run it on my own PC?

1. A PC is a PC, you will need it for other tasks, reading email, browsing, etc. Sometimes your wife might want to log in to her Facebook and unknowingly close your robot.. now what?

2. Remember at your home, there is a possibility for blackout. A robot won’t run without electric power.

3. Cost, electricity bill will raise up, your PC can get burnt for overheating (will it be?)

Okay so I have downloaded the Metatrader and use a demo account. The result is here:
http://basri.my/forex/fxopen/statement.htm

NOTICE: this is not a robot test, it’s a VPS functionality test, if the robot fail to get me profit I will still be happy as long as the VPS is running smoothly 😉

I will keep this post updated…

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Updates:

8/7/10 8:01pm – Metatrader client and my robot run smoothly for a day and made 5% profit. However due to some misunderstanding, the VPS connection has been disabled for few hours and the robot was not able to do what it is suppose to do during then. Luckily the last trades were quite successful. Scary right, what if it is the real 10K money that I put in? Luckily it is a demo account.

11/7/10 11:01pm – I just came back from my home town after taking leaves since last Friday. I can’t wait to check how my trading robot was doing since then, so I did take a peek at the statement here during my travel back to my home. Ah, I must mention that I can’t use my Blackberry internet during my break due to coverage issue, but that was another thing. My last check, the profit is about 8%. So as soon as i can get my hand on my PC, I started the Remote Desktop session and login to the VPS. Ouch, there was an unplanned shutdown notice right in front of me. I don’t know why, but the VPS just was restarted.

Just like what you and me are thinking, yes, the trading robot also stopped. I got about $1700 floating negative P&L.

Phewww… this sudden shutdown is not good. I should put Metatrader to auto start when Windows is loaded.

14/7/10 2.36am: Finally the curse on my demo account has over. The floating trades with losses at $1700 turns to $5xxx and luckily the trend just reversed today and my robot has fulfilled it’s function by making me profit about 11% as per today.

19/7/10 7.58pm: The demo on first server still accumulating profit at 30% after 2 weeks. I started another demo on second server to see how it will be doing on different MetaTrader server.

22/7/10 2.27am: Once again my VPS has restarted and leaving my open trades floating down to -$3k. I decided to end my experiment with MetaTraderon Exabytes VPS.

Based on my experience, this VPS perhaps does not meet the requirement of a mission critical application such as a robot trader.