Explaining Max Price Deviation Pips feature

Remote Trade Copier and Local Trade Copier both have a MaxPriceDeviationPips feature built-in. The Max Price Deviation parameter tells the Trade Copier EA the max price distance allowed between the initial trade entry price on the master MT4 account(s) and the current market price on the slave MT4 account(s).  It is an important safety feature that can keep you out of some unwanted trades.

As you may already know there are different spreads and price quotes among brokers so the entry price may be different sometimes when copying between two different accounts. Having this value set at 10 pips (usually it is default value) means that Client EA will not open a trade if the distance between the prices are higher than 10 pips.

In such cases where the price difference is so great the trade will be delayed. Delayed trades are always counted in the EA dashboard and you will be notified by a red icon on the screen.  This will help you keep track of why and when some of trades are missing and not copied successfully.

Max Price Deviation as a safety protocol

You can set this number to be negative, which will make the entry price be in clients’ favor by X pips. So if you set this value to -5 pips, the Client EA will enter the trade only if the entry price is 5 or more pips in the opposite direction of the original signal trade.  Only in this case will the order be executed on the slave account. Trades are delayed until the Max Price Deviation rules are disrupted and they will be opened as soon as the distance between the prices comes within range.

This is a security feature that will prevent opening the trades at a completely wrong entry price in case something goes wrong and the market price moves quickly. You can rest assured that you and your clients are protected against entry prices that are far away from the initial trade entry price.

If you set this value too low, you may end up with no trade copied at all. You should keep this in mind when you are adjusting the Max Price Deviation value. This is because the price on a slave MT4 account may never come into the range of the distance-away you set.

An important thing to mention is that this setting is applied only to market orders. It is not applied to pending orders (you can set those at any price). However you should note that there is a minimum price distance requirement by many Forex brokers. (You are not allowed to place pending or stop orders too near to the current market price). This limitation comes from the broker and the Forex trade copier or any other Forex Software can not adjust or change it.

Unfortunately there is no way to get around this. The broker will simply deny the entry order with a 130 error code which means “invalid stops”. In this case the MT4 Trade Copier software will wait until market price moves to an acceptable level and then will open the trade.

In the example above you can see the MaxPriceDeviationPips set at a default value of 10 pips (on a 5 digit broker it is 100 points like in our example). The BUY trade on a MT4 master account has an open price of 1.28982. It means that the Client EA will open this BUY trade only if the current market price (ASK) is between 1.28982 and 1.29082. If the price is 1.29083 or above then the trade will be delayed.

 

In the example above you can see the MaxPriceDeviationPips value set to 0.5 pips (on a 5 digit broker it is 5 points like in our example). The SELL trade on a MT4 master account has an open price of 1.28967. It means that Client EA will open this BUY trade only if the current market price (BID) is between 1.28967 and 1.28962. If the price is 1.28961 or below then the trade will be delayed.

You can see that the trade is delayed right now as indicated by the “red clock” icon. It is delayed because the current market price (BID) is 1.28956 and that is 1.1 pips (11 points) away from the original entry price.

In the above picture you can see that a SELL trade was opened at 1.28962 on the slave MT4 account. That is 0.5 pip (5 points) distance between the master and slave entry prices. Our MaxPriceDeviationPips is set at 0.5 pips, and this means the entry is valid.

In the example above you can see the MaxPriceDeviationPips value set to -1.0  pips (on a 5 digit broker it is -10 points like in our example). The SELL trade on a MT4 master account has an open price of 1.29022. It means that the Client EA will open this BUY trade only if the current market price (BID) goes in our favor by 1 pip (10 points) and is above 1.29032. If the price is 1.29031 or below then the trade will be delayed. You can see that the trade is delayed right now as indicated by the “red clock” icon. It is delayed because current market price (BID) is 1.29018 and that is 0.4 pip (4 points) against us.

In the above picture you can see that SELL trade was opened at 1.29040 on the slave MT4 account. That is 1.8 pips (18 points) in our favor. Our MaxPriceDeviationPips is set at -1.0 pip, this means the entry is valid and entry price on the slave account is better than on the master account.

Getting to know these features will help you program better settings into the trade copier which can make for great profits.  In trading, testing is king.  It is impossible to know the perfect settings according to your system without first testing and then testing again.