One question that comes up all the times is this: “How can I prevent myself from changing EmoGuardian risk parameters, if I get emotional?”
This is a legitimate question to which we will provide a detailed answer in this article. To really harness the power of EmoGuardian you need to set up a “comprehensive” risk management solution to avoid changing EmoGuardian’s parameters. The ultimate goal is to have “EmoGuardian run somewhere” and prevent yourself from changing the risk parameters. We will show you two different ways to do this.
THE VPS SOLUTION
Using a VPS (Virtual Private Server) is the safest and most powerful solution to use EmoGuardian. In this case you will need to have a EmoGuardian running on a VPS server and you will trade from your own local PC.
Then you should prevent the access to the VPS to make sure that, even in extreme situations in which emotions are governing your decisions, you will not change EmoGuardian parameters.
One easy way to block the access to the VPS server is by using a productivity tool.
My personal choice is FocusMe.
This productivity tool allows you to block some websites and apps in your PC based on a variety of parameters. If your VPS’s IP address is “123.456.789.123” , once you connect to you’re your VPS using the Remote Connection in window, the window title will contain the string “123.456.789.123”. You can use FocusMe to block a WindowTitle containing the string “123.456.789.123″ by blocking an application by “Window Title” and iserting as value “\b123.456.789.123\b”, check the image.
FocusMe also allows to set specific time ranges in which to block the access to apps and websited. Since VPS also require some basica maintenance, you might want to block access to the VPS server from Monday to Friday and allow the acess in the weekend to adjust EmoGuardian risk parameters and do some maintenance in the VPS server. See an example in the image below:
Using a VPS is the wisest solution for a variety of factors:
- It’s the safest solution to avoid yourself from shutting down the risk control imposed by EmoGuardian
- it allows you to protect your account in case of internet disruptions on your local area
- it grants 24/7 account monitoring which is normally not feasible on a local PC.
The only downside to using a VPS is the cost, a basic VPS server would normally cost between 10$ and 20$ per month. If you are taking trading seriously this is a tiny fraction of what you could actually lose by not having a risk management system in place.
For a quick explanation of how to set up the VPS solution, please refer to this YoutTube video.
To implement the VPS solution, in case you trade with prop firms, you should make sure that your prop firm does not impose any restrictions on IP addresses. Using a VPS and your local PC , you would be constantly connecting to your account by two different IP addresses. If your prop firm has some IP restrictions keep reading for an alternative solution.
USING EMOGUARDIAN WITHOUT A VPS
We know that many prop firms have some restriction on using multiple IP addresses. The reason is to avoid account management or pass services.
If this is your case, you can still use EmoGuardian locally. To do, you should simply use two different installation of MT5 on two different folders. To install MT5 on a different folder, select “Preferences” after clicking on the setup file.
On one instance of MT5 you will load EmoGuardian with the desired risk parameters, the second instance will be used to trade.
You can use FocusMe to block an application based on the process pathname. To do this:
You can use FocusMe to block an application based on the process pathname. To do this:
- open Mt5 installation that you want to block
- in FocuMe initial screen select “Helper” and click on the MT5 instance you want to block
- go to FocusMe tab to block applications and select Custom
- insert the pathname of the process you want to block, by copying it from the helper
Refer to the video for an easy example of how to do the whole process.
The local use of EmoGuardian in conjuction with FocusMe is probably not as effective as the VPS solution, but it’s still very powerfull to addresss the most common emotional issues of the traders.
