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PointBreak once again resolved the very serious situation, closing over 450 open positions on my live account with a small profit. At one point the account equity was 60% down and the margin went below 100%, a very dangerous situation.

Of course, my demo account also successfully closed all positions with a profit. The balance is now $37,523.

Although this is marvelous, the key contributing factor was the market movement. PointBreak is a trend follower. If the market ranges, it will accumulate losses. In the middle of the latest episode of the eurusd ranging, the author of the ea emailed users explaining how users might manually intervene to resolve the situation, but that would involve predicting market’s next thrust. Luckily I left PointBreak alone and the market move in my favor.

PointBreak is a great trading system but you have to be very conservative. I will try to apply some manual intervention technique next time around to prevent getting into another sharp drawdown.

I feel the need to write this update on PointBreak partly because there seems to be some readers anxiosly waiting for it and partly because there is a performance issue of the ea. The thing is my demo account continues to display steady performance with the balance now stands at $36,776 and a neglegible floating loss but my live account is in a big trouble. PointBreak accumulated longs when EURUSD made its last push upward during September 19 - 22, 2008 only to be caught in the strong trend reversal since September 22. My demo account somehow got off unharmed but my live account couldn’t. It squared off the positions with a huge floating loss of over 50% of the balance and then start accumulating net shorts. Altogether 375 trades have been entered into at 128:247 buy:sell ratio. There is a chance of recovery if the the downward push reaches the target around 1.31, about 400 pips away. On the other hand if the trend ends or if there is a correction, the trouble may be deepened.

I guess I need to monitor my live account closely and may have to manually intervene at a point. The ea’s author seems well aware of this problem and hints a manual maneuvering may be necessary from time to time. The later versions of the ea provide tools for such intervention but left it to the users on how it should be used.