VPS?

S

sqa

Village Scribe
I'm in the slow process of laying out my full technical setup for real trading, and I notice a lot of brokers offer "free" or discounted VPS services (on contract with a company).

Now, I do not and will not be running an EA, so most of the utility I perceive from a VPS goes away. However, I was thinking about the subject, and here's the Pros & Cons I could come up.


Pros:
- "Faster" execution
- Personal Setup Failure Protection
- Simplification of Technical Setup
- Off-sight Backup

Cons:
- Extra Point of Failure
- Off-site Security Exposure
- Cost


I have no experience with VPS directly (plenty with handling remote servers, though), but I can't see much utility, as I don't run EAs. Am I missing anything in the calculation?
 
Didn't see this earlier..

I use a VPS. Specifically, this one.

If you're not using it for EAs or tick collection, there isn't a lot of advantage to paying for one.

The one key factor though is the reliability of the internet connection at your VPS provider can be much better than the connection you have at home. Especially if you're in an area of the world that isn't known for rock solid stable internet. For running EAs where the terminal has to be connected to manage your positions (and thus, risk,) this is rather important.

Cost can be a non-issue.. often they are cheap to begin with, and most brokers will sponsor you these days if you do enough trading volume or meet minimum deposit requirements.

For manual traders though, I can't see much use in one.
 
Thanks for the response Jack.

And if I grabbed the correct forum, I probably would have seen the post.

Still, you answered my question. Thanks.
 
I use vps for my trading. here's why. When I first started trading I spent years trading with ea's. Than I started focusing on my manual trading. The problem for me was I also run an electrical contracting business and because of that I cannot sit in front of the charts.

My option was to have a stripped down mobile version of mt4 or to set up a vps + remote desktop protocol

The vps + rdp was a perfect setup for me. It is kind of like cloud computing. I am able to set my charts up on my vps and than view them across any devices including my laptop, tablet or phones.

It is a perfect solution for me.

I use W2 Cloud for my vps (no affiliation at all) and there are numerous free or small fee rdp apps. W2 cost about $15 a month.
 
I started in Forex trying to use EA's (some I bought and some I wrote) because I was driving a truck and did not have time to live trade. I found that the broker provided VPS's (two different brokers) had very poor response times. It was almost impossible to change parameters or manage the EAs. I found private VPS's provide much better response.
I may start to use a VPS for trade opening EAs- there are some that "buy or sell the bounce" that will act like a pending limit order but only open a trade when price bounces back above/below a certain level. I may try using them with ICT Trade setups.
There are also trade copying EAs that allow you to copy trades from one account to others others. That may come in handy for me.
 
There's actually room for a EA/VPS-style setup with ICT analysis concepts. Especially for some pairs, where they'll wait to hit an expected level for 48 hours, then hit it for 5 minutes and run away. Without a pending limit, you're not going to get it.

That, taken together with some automated entry technique for a much smaller necessary stop, and it could be very useful.
 
Unless you are scalping and require very low latency or have internet reliability issue (ie maybe live in a remote area) I believe that setting up your own 24/5 server (with UPS etc) is a better option than a VPS.
 
If not running an EA then I agree with Rod. The issue is reliability, not speed. Speed and closeness to execution centres are great selling points but they are mostly moot. If you're seriously into HFT then you don't need this thread. Otherwise, speed is not likely to be an issue as you still need to send orders from your computer to a VPS anyway, so there is no effective speed benefit if you have a decent broker and reasonable connection to the net.

Of course, one possible situation which could override the above is need for mobile access. This too can be solved by linking back to your own setup or just hooking into whatever your broker provides but if these present problems there might be a role for accessing a VPS.

Mind you, a really good setup that provides reliability from home is a bit of work to set up and maintain and involves some expense so many people will still find they need to make a choice between a VPS and winging it with nothing special.

I have used VPSs but now prefer not to use them. Interestingly, I didn't find them fast at all and still experienced issues with accessing them when let down by my telco on two occasions and by a bigger net issue a couple of times. Fortunately the access reliability has improved, but it left uncomfortable memories.

Of course there are different types of EA and while you may not be interested in a 'robot that trades for you' it may be that a trade manager that takes care of positions you open could be of enough benefit to make a VPS worth considering. It's all horses for courses.
 
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