Why do we need Equity Logging?

[badmin]

For ''normal'' Forex trading where trades are either short-term scalps or long-term, carefully-tracked trades, the account balance gives a good measure of the state of an account. With Grid-Trading however, when many open trades can accumulate over a long period, it is not always easy to determine how the equity flows in relation to the price movements.

During early exposure to grid-trading, it became obvious we needed to follow closely the changes in equity. We traded on the MetaTrader platform, and designed a macro-heavy spreadsheet that digested detailed reports and produced some nice graphs. Although it worked well, it was cumbersome and could run for a half-hour or more as the reports became large.

Out of that exercise was born our Forex Equity Logger. It provides a real-time view of the equity flow in a registered account and charts this against the center-line and price for each currency pair. While it is especially suited to Robot trading, it can also play a role where traders have established their own unique styles of manual trading.

At this point in time, no decision has been made about a business model for this system. The options are to fund it with advertising revenue, or to charge a monthly subscription. Currently we are allowing a small number of beta-testers to participate at no cost. As the volume grows, we will need to move to a dedicated server and fund the overheads [ somehow ].