Signal provider

I started following FXcomment on May 1 and the results have been very good. I heard about them on this thread that was started by mr0an.

http://forums.babypips.com/expert-advisors-and-automated-trading/80112-fxcomment-signal-service-discussion.html

I am also subscribed to DD Markets. They have also been profitable for me since they started back in business in March.

Ashraf Laidi results have been very disappointing this year. I’m going to drop that service when my current subscription expires at the end of the month.

FXcomment seems interesting…i might give them a try…how many pips have you gained since May 1

I have made 660 pips profit since May 1. I am very happy with them so far.

that’s awesome…it’s hard to find a review on these guys…i think they operate out of Egypt…their monthly fees are so reasonable…I think I’ll give them a try. Thanks for the reco yohec.

hi Yohec…have some questions…when are the signals sent and by what means…email, text etc.
and how often are they sent are they pending orders with TP and SL settings?
thanks again.

Signals are sent by e-mail and are posted on his website. About half of the signals have come in early morning between 03:00 and 06:00 hrs (I live in USA) but he has also sent signals throughout the day and night. All signals have been to enter at market price. He will provide SL. Most of the time TP is open.

Most trades are closed manually when he sends a signal to exit the trade. Of the 27 trades I’ve taken, 24 were closed manually.

Is Garik still around and providing signals? I am looking to get in touch with him but haven’t seen anything form him in the last 6 months. Has he given up the game??

It doesn’t matter: there are thousands of signal services “out there” (and unfortunately quite a few of them “in here” as well!), and at any one time, out of those thousands, it follows that there will be a small number who happen, simply by the laws of chance, to have had a run of a few good months.

There’s also a process at work which statisticians call “selection bias”, which predicates that [I][U]those few are usually the ones you see advertising and promoting and being recommended most prominently[/U][/I].

Unfortunately, the fact that they happen just to have a few good months has very little (or “no”) bearing at all on their chances of having a good few months [B][U]again[/U][/B] when you subscribe, because they had it by luck and “because someone has to”, not by skill. They’re successful marketers, not successful traders.

That’s the “hidden reason” why it’s so common to join a successful service and for it all to turn sour as soon as you start paying for it. :frowning:

Don’t listen to the know it all naysayers purveying their highly biased and subjective advice to straight jacket other traders into their very narrow minded field of view. I understand your time constrains and the thing to do would be to be very meticulous with your research and select something that is suitable for you.

Be careful to take the limitations of any such system into account and factor that into your overall trading plan.

Work hard and work smart.

Are we saying that the forex business is indeed no skill and just pure luck and that there are not really any successful traders out there ?

One argument seems to be that if anyone was really profitable that they would not share their profitability through a signal service but keep it to themselves. I have an argument against this idea now. There seems to be a gap in the market for genuinely good trading organisations to share their knowledge very profitably. several thousand subscribers at $50 a month would indeed be a worthwhile business by most calculations. Judging by the amount of lurkers here and on other forums such numbers would appear to be achievable.

I will also say though, that the vast majority of signal providers out there are scammers. Most scams are carried out in the performance reporting area. As we all know all trades open at a roughly 50% chance of success, so it doesn’t take much manipulation to appear ‘profitable’. Other simply and unbelievably don’t even report performance ! However I have kept an open mind on whether it is possible to run a real signal service due to this gap in the market.

As a disclaimer, I am not working in any signal service providing organisation or indeed in any forex company. I think people who have seen my posts here will believe that. I don’t often post on these signal threads though as it is clear that there are scammers here selling these products and I don’t want to be considered part of that. On the other hand most of us are here to share our experiences and help other with opportunities to be profitable in forex.

I am a subscriber to one of the providers here (fx comment). As far as I can see at the moment they are THE ONLY REAL PLAYER IN THE GAME. Apologies for the caps but that is the result of my research and I feel an important part of the post. One other mentioned here falls into the poor performance reporting category. (That doesn’t mean that they have no chance of providing a profitable service, however I would not use them). If anyone can add to my list (of 1) I would love to have a look at the provider suggested. fx comment appear to be an organisation that employ people full-time to do research. They have a track record of profitability and they report fairly. FX comment are also using methods of technical research that are widely accepted in the forex community and by experienced traders. For anyone reading this, bare in mind that past performance does not guarantee future profitability as lexys mentioned. However in my opinion jumping on a currently successful bandwagon for a while at least does seem to be better than a lot of ideas.

Look forward to some further discussion and suggestions.

Cheers

Michael

I would also like to mention that like the forex business in general the provider mentioned above will not suit everyone.
They do often go against some very common trading ‘rules’. They may open a few positions that are highly correlated (They may be long/short the same currency in more than one trade). Sometimes they can seem very contrarian, leading some to say things like ‘Why would you sell x at the moment’ etc. When these trades don’t come off it can feel bad as traders know . They have also been known to ask subscribers to move stops, this is something that goes against most principles. This has occasionally been done before news , where they feel trades may be taken out due to widened spreads. Following their system exactly can mean risking up to 2% per trade. However pips does equal dollars with their suggestion. I think a lot of subscribers will place the trades using their own risk management rather than the suggested one which is a little aggressive.

There are over 100 posts in the thread, and I can’t remember every word of every one, but I don’t recall anyone saying or even implying that? I would think that in a forex-trading forum, even if someone really were naive/ill-informed enough to imagine that that’s so, they might be quite reluctant to suggest it?

Yes, I’ve seen that argument, too, though it wasn’t one I offered, here.

Indeed. There’s always huge market demand for these “services”, which is, of course, [I]why[/I] such a huge, scammy, dishonest industry has grown up in order to make money by satisfying it. Like all these things, it’s demand-led.

There are [B][U]huge[/U][/B] numbers of people who genuinely don’t understand selection-bias, don’t quite appreciate that out of the thousands of services available there will [I]always[/I] be some with a good recent record, and many of them imagine that that’s somehow linked to those services’ chances of being profitable in future, too, rather than being random! :15:

[U]I think it’s a point which can’t be made too often or too clearly[/U].

I agree.

And I think even the vast majority of the ones who aren’t outright scammers are about as naive and ill-informed as their customer-pool.

It [U]is[/U] clear - I agree.

Very regrettable, but perfectly clear.

I strongly encourage all members of the forum to click the “report” button, whenever they see such services being promoted, here.

If enough people do it, the moderators [I][U]will[/U][/I] remove those threads. Sometimes slowly, sometimes after long discussions, but it [B][U]is[/U][/B] possible to get them removed. We recently achieved the removal of one big, long promotional thread about a signal service, which pretended to be “discussing its results” objectively while actually promoting it, and the thread’s initiator and main contributor was also removed from the forum (as he had been from other forums, in the past).

It [B][U]can[/U][/B] be done, but it needs the members to work together, to some extent, and to [I][U]be persistent in reporting anything promotional to the moderation-team[/U][/I]. All you need to do is click the “report button” and write something like “promotional posting” in the report-box.

Hi Lex,

There is a contradiction that I would like to clear up. If is is true as stated in the first part above that profitable traders exist then it must also be true that the future performance of a genuinely good signal provider will not be random but can indeed be considered to be highly likely to be profitable, as such a service can be run by profitable traders whom we agree do exist :). I am hopeful that in a market full of scammers that a viable business is possible and if we uncover a good one we should share the information among the forums members, but let’s also be prepared to knock them down if we can see that they are not worthy.

Michael

I’d say “theoretically possible” (which is part of what drives the market, of course) rather than “highly likely”. What the (undoubted) logic of your assertion above really demonstrates is that it’s “not impossible, in theory”, but there’s a huge gap between showing that and showing that it “actually exists”! :slight_smile:

Very sensible approach. Nice comment.

yohec seen your posts and as u i been looking for a good signal provider any ideas ? stil with ddmarkets?

I am currently using Trends2Trade. Their recommendations are medium to long term swing trades, so be prepared to hold positions for weeks and even months. This works for me as I prefer longer term trades based on daily, weekly, and monthly charts.

Their monthly fee is $119 so you need to have a good size account to make enough profit to justify the expense.

I am never trade using signal provider, still not sure how good they are, if reading some signal provider need cost to subscribe, might not suitable for me, which still like to learn manually, with using own analysis, but maybe using signal provider or pamm trader, or copy trading or robot trading is one option for busy trader

I think Ultimately you have to learn to trade yourself, and not depend on a signal provider. I’ve learned through out my trading career that the simplest methods work the best. I’m currently trading off the 4HR TF with 3 EMA…nothing new or Earth shattering, but it seems to yield decent result and percentage of success.

I agree. I trade my own system but I also use my signal provider. As long as the signal service make enough profit to pay for itself, I will continue to use it. It takes very little of my time and gives me some extra profit.