Explaining max price deviation pips feature

To make sure no unwanted trades will be done; there is a built in feature on the LTC called ‘MaxPriceDeviationPips’, this feature tells the Trade copier the maximum price distance between the initial entry price for the trade on the master MT4 account and the current market price on the slave account. Of course it is done in multiple master accounts and slave accounts if needed.

Different brokers have different price quotes and spreads, meaning if you are using the trade copier on different account types or between different brokers and you do not meet the price quotes or the entry prices the trades will be delayed. The default value for the entry price is usually 10 Pips, delayed trades will appear in the EA dashboard and you are notified by a red icon appearing on the screen, it will help you keep track on missing trade that were not copied.

Max Price Deviation as a safety protocol

The ‘MaxPriceDeviation’ can be set with a negative value; it will make the entry price in the favor of the client by the number of pips you set. For example of you put -5 it means that the entry price will be 5 pips or more in the opposite direction of the signal. In that case only will the trade be executed in the slave account, all delayed trades will stay delayed until ‘MaxPriceDeviation’ will be disrupted and the trade will open as soon as the price will be within value range.

This feature allows you to be sure no trades are made with an entry price that is far away from the initial entry price, even if the market prices moves quickly, it is one of the advantages of the ‘MaxPriceDeviation’ used as a security feature, and will help you avoid making trades in a completely wrong entry price.

It is important to remember few things, if you set the value on the Max Price deviation too low, you will end up with no trades at all it will happen because the slave account might not get into the range you chose, The MaxPriceDeviation feature applies only for market order and not for pending orders, remember that on pending orders there is a minimum distance value that should be met, meaning you will not be able to put a price that is too close to the current market price, this is a limitation made by many brokers and you cannot adjust or play with it, only work accordingly.

If you don’t act accordingly the broker will deny your order and show you a 130 Invalid stop error, The trade copier in that case will wait until the market price moves into the correct range and only then 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.