ARMFMyfxbook: forex account monitoring and drawdown by equity
Forex account monitoring answers questions the terminal report does not have: what the worst drawdown by equity was, how long it lasted, how much the average trade brings in units of risk and how the result is spread across the hours of the day. We take apart what exactly Myfxbook calculates, how an account is connected without the right to trade on it and where the capabilities of any external service end.
Myfxbook is an external service: it connects to a trading account, reads the trade history and builds statistics from it. It advises nothing and trades nothing unless you connect a separate copying service yourself.
What Myfxbook is and why a trader needs it
Myfxbook is a platform for publishing and reviewing the statistics of trading accounts. It is best known as a place where results are shown, but the second function is far more useful: the service calculates from your history the values the terminal does not display at all.
| Metric | In the terminal report | What the service adds |
|---|---|---|
| Profit for the period | yes | a breakdown by day, month and year |
| Maximum drawdown | by balance | by equity, with dates and duration |
| Profit factor | yes | the dynamics by period |
| Expectancy per trade | no | in pips and in the account currency |
| Average win and loss | yes | the ratio and its change over time |
| Distribution over time | no | by hour, day of the week and trade duration |
| Share of longs and shorts | no | with a separate win rate for each side |
| The equity and balance curves | no | two lines on one chart |
The last row is the main reason to connect monitoring. The balance curve is drawn from closed trades and looks smooth even when the account is sitting in a deep floating loss. The equity curve shows what actually happened.
Drawdown by equity against drawdown by balance
The divergence of the two curves is the most honest indicator of how the trading is done. The wider the lines diverge, the more time the account spends in unaccounted risk.
| Situation | Balance | Equity | What is visible on the chart |
|---|---|---|---|
| The position is open, plus $200 | $10,000 | $10,200 | the lines diverged upwards |
| The position is $800 in the red | $10,000 | $9,200 | a dip only in equity |
| The loss was sat out, exit at zero | $10,000 | $10,000 | the balance is smooth, equity has a hole |
| The stop triggered at $100 | $9,900 | $9,900 | both lines dipped equally |
The third row describes sitting out a loss: by balance the trader lost nothing, by equity they dropped eight percent. An external service records such episodes automatically, while the terminal report says nothing about them.
The Myfxbook calculator: position size, pip value and margin
A separate section of the service is a set of forms for quick calculations. Formally the myfxbook position size calculator solves the same task as any other size calculator, but it is convenient because it pulls current rates for the conversion.
Works out the size for a risk amount or percentage at a given stop distance. It requires the account currency and the pair — the conversion it takes on itself.
sizeShows the money value of a one-pip move for the chosen pair and size. Especially useful for cross pairs, where it floats with the rate.
pip valueThe collateral for a position at a given leverage. A check before a series of trades: the total margin limits the number of simultaneous positions.
collateralModels the growth of an account at a constant return per period. Useful as an illustration rather than as a plan: constant returns do not exist.
a modelOne rule applies to all the forms: the result depends on the specification you entered. If your broker has a different contract size or a different account type, the number will be arithmetically right and practically wrong.
How to connect an account without giving away too much
The connection is the only moment where monitoring touches the security of the account. The rule is simple: the service needs read access and never needs trading access.
MetaTrader accounts have a separate investor password: it shows the history and the positions but does not allow orders to be sent.
compulsoryThe name of the trading server is taken from the terminal. An error here is the most common reason an account fails to connect.
at connectionThe statistics can be kept private, opened by link or published in full. For personal review the private mode is enough.
at connectionCompare the profit and the number of trades with the terminal report for the same period. A discrepancy means not all the history was pulled in.
the first timeNot to a service, not to a manager, not to support. The trading password is needed only by your own terminal.
continuouslyWhat monitoring will not show
The service sees the trades but does not see the intent. Four limitations apply to any external monitoring, not only to this one.
Account monitoring: short answers
- Can several accounts be connected
- Yes, the service keeps them separate and allows comparison. That is convenient when strategies are spread across different accounts.
- Does the service see open positions
- Yes, when connected with a view-only password. That is exactly why the equity curve is built in real time rather than only from closed trades.
- Do the statistics have to be published
- No. Publicity is a separate setting, and for personal analysis it is not needed.
- What is expectancy in pips
- The average result of a trade expressed in pips instead of money. Convenient for comparing periods when the size changed.
- Does monitoring replace a trade journal
- No. It calculates the result but does not store the reason for the entry or your assessment of the execution — that stays with the journal.
- What to do if the account got disconnected
- Most often the investor password or the broker's server address changed. The connection is refreshed and the history is not lost.
Frequently asked questions
What Myfxbook is in simple words
It is a service that connects to a trading account, reads the trade history and turns it into statistics: return, drawdown by equity, expectancy per trade, the distribution of results over time. Plus a set of calculators and reference sections such as an economic calendar.
Is it safe to connect an account to monitoring
With an investor password the service gets read-only access: it sees the trades and the open positions but cannot trade and cannot withdraw funds. The trading password is never entered into such services.
How drawdown by equity differs from drawdown by balance
The balance changes only when trades are closed, equity on every tick. A loss that was sat out is visible in equity and invisible in the balance, so it is the first value that shows the real risk of the trading.
Can the statistics of someone else's account on the service be trusted
Only with caveats. A connected account confirms that the trades are real, but it does not show the size of the deposit relative to the person's life, does not distinguish demo psychology from live, and does not guarantee a repeat.
Does the service calculate the risk per trade
Not directly: it shows the result rather than the risk that was set. The share of risk can be estimated indirectly — from the average loss relative to equity at the time of the trade.
Is monitoring needed when there are few trades
Over the first dozens of trades the statistics are unstable, but it is worth connecting the service straight away: it accumulates history from the first day, and after a hundred trades the data will already be there.
Why do the numbers differ from the terminal report
Usually because of the period or an incomplete history load: on some accounts old trades are not transferred. Compare over the same date range and by the number of trades.
What does the distribution by hour show
At which time of day trades are profitable and at which they are consistently losing. This is one of the few slices that turns straight into a rule: do not trade in the bad interval.
Does the service help choose the risk percentage
Indirectly. It gives the win rate and the average ratio — the numbers needed to calculate the upper bound of the risk share, but the bound itself is calculated separately.
Is there any point in the service's sentiment and correlations
As reference data, yes, especially the correlation table: it shows that two open positions can be one bet. As an entry signal sentiment is not used.
Is the history kept if the account is disconnected
Usually yes: the collected data stays in the profile. But relying on someone else's service as the only storage is unwise — it is useful to keep an exported terminal report of your own.
Monitoring or a trade journal — which to choose
They cover different halves of the task. Monitoring calculates the result automatically, the journal stores the reason and the assessment of the execution. Over distance both are needed, but monitoring is the easier place to start: it requires no manual work.
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