I am not sure if it is just me, but I have noticed an increase in people trying to sell new traders forex robots or EA’s. I could be mistaken here as I admittedly do not follow this garbage that closely, but forex robots were all the rage for new traders to lose their money after which is decreased in activity. Now I think we are seeing a new spike in cheap sales pitches to inexperienced forex traders in order to give them a different way to blow their money.
I do not wish to drag this out, but my advice to all new traders: Stay away from this garbage and learn how to trade. There is no replacement for that!
+1.
I’ve never understood the allure of automated trading either. Professionals spend millions of dollars in R&D to try and come up with algo’s to trade the markets. What can a system for $299.95 really do in the long term? Market conditions can change and completely nullify any relevant edge of a back-tested EA, over night.
Millions? Heck, if I had several million dollars I would be trading rather than designing a script just to earn $300 per sale. I really question the so called backtesting and forward testing that they do. To me, it looks nothing more than faked results.
Well I use an EA but its not like other EA’s. It uses signals and consensus ratings to help identify the best trades. It seems to be working but its early days yet.
The EA’s retail traders have access to did not cost millions to create and therefore make the seller a ton of money as uneducated newbies are tricked into buying them. The truly professional algos out there are off the market and kept within the firms using it for their trades. Why give up an edge? That is what retail does not understand. In addition a pro using an algo does not turn it on and thinks trading is done. It can be a tool to help trade, but the trader is there. Newbies buy an EA, turn it on and think they are earning money while they are out there doing other things. It does not work like that.
Why doesn’t it work like that ? Isn’t that the whole point of an EA. To trade when I am out, sleeping, eating, working, etc. That is exactly what I want my EA to do and that is exactly what it is doing.
Trading does not work like that and it appears you have either been fooled by it or fooled yourself. Sure, your EA can take positions but you could also train your dog to press a button for a treat and execute trades that way.
People want to not work and have their account magically make money as they sleep. If they would only think about how insane that statement sounds maybe they would wake up to reality. But then again people buy lottery tickets hoping they will be the next billionaire.
If it fails so be it. If it works then great. I did not buy an EA. I wrote the EA myself.
I do the exact same thing in sports and horse racing and I make money every day while I do other things. It places bets on teams and horses and makes a nice profit every year. I have now turned my attention to forex where it is not quite such a negative sum game (although it is still a negative sum game). My demo testing made a very large profit with the EA. The real test is so far doing ok.
[B]Just because you can’t code an EA to make a profit does not mean other people can not do it.[/B] But saying that I would never buy an EA as I like to know whats going on behind the scenes and how everything is handled. Saying the EA means I do not have to work for it is wrong too. I spent several months coding and testing and understanding the flaws of the EA so that I could perfect it. I probably spent more quality focused time looking at the markets and understanding them then most people do in a year.
It has nothing to do with the ability or lack thereof of coding an EA, but go ahead with you approach. I don’t think anyone is trying to convince you otherwise.
Its not the ability to code an EA that I was talking about. Its the ability to code an EA that is profitable which is the hard thing to do. Coding an EA that loses money is very easy to do. I would think almost everyone who has coded an EA that works will not share it with the general public even for a fee.
Actually there are reasons to automate your trading. Several trendfollowing rule based systems exist that do in fact make continious profits over time. These are not the EAs that are sold though, since people want 100% return or more per year that’s what EA sellers home in on and try to trick people in to buying.
All automated strategies do not suck however, just because most MT4 EAs do…
most reason is to save time :). while there’s many EA seller, which actually only works on BT result. there’s a few traders who willing to automate his trading plan, an EA from real trading strategies, not just from logic sketch. now we have several platform which able to reform a programing code just like mql code, for example ctrader, is anyone here having experience with ctrader code ?
Actually the main benefit is to gain consistency in execution and rule following, but of course it saves screen time as well. That saved time however goes into studying and evaluating…
Math solving market? Seems impossible for me. Trading is not trading if I don’t take part in it, I would be always on alert of some script disposes my real money without any restrictions (not taking into account SL and TP). My hotforex platform free of technical lines, templates, EA’s, etc, because I believe only in news trading…
seems imposible for you but a challenge for others. why people do math then ? because for each trading aspect there’s a number! even your indicator are build by math.
I have seen many traders despise automatic trading one, but the fact fx market been breached by many order comes from algorithmic trader than the manual one.
problem with traders given up with ea develop is, not enough knowledge sometimes they didnt have a proven trading system at all just an idea to turn into EA. while with expert manual traders, they expect too much from the automatic version based on their manual trade, said when their manual trading monthly result are 10-20%, they expect up to 20-50% when their current trading system turn in to EA. while actually it should do the opposite, a 5-10% monthly with ea are already damn good one.