I run quite a few EAs on one MT4 account as well as manual trading, and consequently it can get a bit tricky to read the statement on MT4 sometimes. Before you say anything, yes I know it's my fault for using EAs and yes I know I should be journalling each manual trade before I even take it. But still.

MT4 lets you share your account as 'read-only' with an investor password, but this requires the same broker's MT4 installation in order to view it on another PC which can be a hassle.

EAs almost always have a 'magic number' setting which is like a separate background comment inserted into their trades, so that they can recognise their own trades and modify/close them etc. It's often possible to set the text comment that is used on the trades also, but even then the EA will often append [sl] or even [tp] to the description, which can make it difficult to group them.

Several websites have cottoned onto this need for better reporting and sharing. I use 3 different ones but there might be more and better ones out there (which is why I'm starting this thread). All three are free.

MyFXBook
This one seems to be the grandaddy of them all. Whilst the site is very sober and busy looking, I find that it's one of the easiest to install and set up. You tell it which broker you are using, your account number and the investor password, no need to install special software. It does the rest and sucks your trades into the website, which you can set as private if you want.You can also use their EA to send your results. You can 'verify' your account to prove that it's a live account too. It allows you to export to Excel, filter by all manner of characteristics (date/instrument/comment/magic number) and make nice pie charts. You can write comments against each trade and even attachments per trade. If you make your results public in any way, people can comment on your trades. They also have some additional functionality such as widgets which you can post to a website or blog (or email/forum signature if you are that way inclined) and a very powerful API which allows you to read their data in your own programs if you know what you're doing. They host regular trading competitions and you can peruse other users systems. Many EA vendors publish their results here too. It has a mobile page at Myfxbook Mobile so you can view your results on the trot although it's a bit basic. My only gripes are that some accounts are clearly manipulated to show fantastic results, and also you can't group magic numbers together in a report so for example if you change the magic number on an EA the results will appear as 2 separate sets of results. You can however 'tag' trades and then report by tag.
(Changing the magic number on an EA from time to time is said to be worthwhile in case your broker is watching you and you are winning too often. I refrain from commenting.) You can 'follow' people and you can have it 'tweet' your trades if you must.

MT4Pips
Brought to you by the people behind Babypips, MT4Pips has a much cleaner look and a more blasé attitude with its cute rounded graphics. The setup procedure is very smooth, with an EA installer to make things easier, although you do have to use the EA. It has some pretty graphs on it, but it's a lot less configurable than MyFXBook and doesn't have any of the social network type stuff. Go for this one if you want pretty graphs.

MT4i
I discovered this site pretty late in the game but it seems to be very good for my needs. It has a good mobile site, a flexible reporting approach and a rather no-nonsense air to the whole affair. There are also some very good free indicators and addons available from the site (eg. the TradeTalk EA although you don't need to actively use MT4i to access this stuff). They also explain that their EA uses much less data than the standard MT4 ftp reporting which is nice.

Given that they are all free, you should try them all if you're at all interested. If you know of any others which I have missed (I know there's at least one more out there but I can't for the life of me remember its name) or you have any comments on any of these sites, fire away!

Z

Thinking about it, the Twitter functions of MyFXBook might actually be of use. It would be possible to set up a special Twitter account and 'follow' it with your personal account; then you could configure it to send you an SMS on your phone directly (or your 'twitter' 'app' could 'notify' you). The benefit of this is that you wouldn't need any EAs or anything extra, the effort is outsourced to myfxbook. More to follow!