A trick with the dates is to be aware of the start time for that company's "Day".

With Gain Capital the start time is 10PM (GMT).

So what you might think of as the Daily bar for November 2nd, actually starts at 10PM on November 1st.

What it means is if anywhere in TS (backtesting, charts, view data, etc) you choose a "From" date of "01-Jan-06 00:00:00", the Daily bar starting at "31-Dec-2005 22:00:00" will not be included.

Similarly, choosing a "To" date of "31-Jan-2006 23:59:59" will include the Daily bar that starts at "31-Jan-2006 22:00:00".

Oanda's start of day is midnight GMT, so there is no such problem with their data.

An alarming number of people ask me how do they ensure that a new order will not be placed while a trade is open.

The "Different Stages of a Trade" section of the "Setting Up Trading Systems In Thinking Stuff" page has more information, but I thought I'd clear it up here as well.

A new Long order will be placed only if there is no existing Long order and no existing Long trade. It's the Long Entry Rules that determine if an order is placed or not.

If a Long order is in place, it will be modified if necessary. If the Long Entry Rules say that no order should be there, it will be cancelled.

If a Long trade is in place, the trade management rules and values take over. The Long Entry Rules are not needed anymore until it's closed. As I said, a new Long order will not be set while a Long trade is open.

But here's the thing - Long and Short are separate to each other. Just because a Long order or trade is open, it's not going to prevent a Short order being set. In fact quite often people want to have a Short order in place at the same spot as the Long stop loss. As the Long trade is exited, the Short trade is opened.

This creates the possibility that your Short trades will interfere with your Long, and vice-versa. Please read the "How to hedge?" section of the page mentioned above, even if you don't want to hedge.

The easiest way to get around this is to have one account for all Long trades, and a different, or sub-account, for all your Shorts.

When the Entry Rules allow an order to be placed, TS calculates the wanted entry price, the initial stop loss price, and the initial take profit price (if there is one).

At some stage you will probably use the "X Pips Above/Below the Calculated Entry" value for your stop loss or take profit. There are a couple of things I wanted to point out about these 2 values.

Firstly, as the name implies, it's above/below the *calculated* entry, which is not necessarily the *actual* entry. Most of the time the calculated and actual entry points will be the same. Gaps (unlikely but possible in currency trading) or a fast-moving price can mean you get some slippage, and the price you want to get in at is no longer available.

So you put you order in to go Long at 1.2000, with stop loss 1.1190, and take profit 1.2010. The broker accepts your order, but due to slippage your actual entry price turns out to be 1.2001. Well, the stop loss is still going to be at 1.1190 (entry price minus 11 pips), and the take profit is still going to be at 1.2010 (entry price plus 9 pips).

If you're using these values for trade management, they will use the *actual* entry price, because at that stage the actual entry price is known.

Secondly, the entry price for Long trades is the Ask price, and Long trades are exited at the Bid price. The entry price for Short trades is the Bid price, and Short trades are exited at the Ask price.

These values - "X Pips Above/Below the Calculated Entry" - will therefore be working off the Bid or Ask depending on the direction of the trade. The reason I point this out is because of the spread.

When you enter a trade, you are already a certain number of pips in negative territory. Let's say a spread of 5 pips. So if you want to set your take profit to the entry plus 10 pips, actually the price needs to move 15 pips before the take profit will be hit.

Similarly, if you put the stop loss 10 pips below the entry price, the price only has to move another 5 pips down for the stop loss to be taken out.

So 15 pips up and win 10 pips, 5 pips down and lose 10 pips. This is just how currency trading works (all trading actually, if you think of a commission in terms of pips), but I wanted to make it clear that these values do not take the spread into consideration.