Interesting thread…
I am currently running an EA on my LIVE account, so far for over 2 weeks. It only lost once, and the largest winner was bigger than the loss. Before I ran it live, I put it on a dummy account of course, and the return was unbelievable. I am not going to tell you the percentage, because it is “unbelievable”.
That being said, I still only allow it to trade a very small portion of my account. Prior to purchase this EA, I had done a lot of research of course. I am not going to risk my money. First of all, be aware of those EA’s that do not employ an initial stoploss orders. It is obvious. While they look GREAT from the back test result, in reality unless you are really loaded and your risk tolerance is high, it can easily wipe you out with one trade. Secondly, don’t play with an EA that average up or down. Meaning when it loses, it opens more positions with more lots “hoping” the price will come back and you can get out with profit. We all know once the markets begin to trend, it could go on for a while. ALL positions might end up losers altogether. I bought this EA because 1. It is commercially released and the programmer promises life-time upgrades. This means you can always find the source and ask questions. 2. It uses a stoploss. 3. It uses a trailing stop. In short, if the EA doesn’t trade the way YOU trade, don’t even try it. You always use a stoploss, don’t you?
Also be aware of those EA’s that make gazillion of trades and almost never lose. There is a reason why they never lose. The most obvious reason is that they will NOT close a position until they win.
Still, I do believe that EA can do a good job. An EA can analyze more data in a second than any human being can handle. It works 24 hours a day as long as you keep your computer on, it never gets tired, it never needs to sleep. It doesn’t have the human emotions and it never breaks the “rules”. Now, you all trade with a set of rules, or a “system”, right? If you have a mechanical system that you trade with and you follow the rules to the tee and you have been profitable, what make you think the EA will do a worse job than you do if you know how to program it properly? Certainly I don’t know any one who can feed the fundamental data to an EA for it to consider, but the last time I checked, not many people using fundamental analysis anyway.
In the past week, I have read so many posts on various forums that people were shorting EUR because of all the technical divergences. Yet my EA opened long trades one after another. Every time it did that, I got worried. But I have determined that I will not interfere with its “job”. So I left it alone. Boy! Did that pay off! I really could care less because like I said, I only allow it to trade a very small portion of my account, for now. And the stoploss is user adjustable (I set it at 50 pips) so my risk is pre-defined, that’s how much I am going to lose if a trade is not going to work out. That was my only loss so far (50 pips), and my largest win so far was 76 pips. (Target at 100, price shot up to 96 pips and retraced, trailing stop 20 pips, so 96-20=76).
THAT being said, I really have no clue what my EA bases on to open a trade. From the chart, it always looks like it opens a trade “in the middle of nowhere”.
Two week might not be a long time to really see what it can do! But I am happy with my result so far.
And oh, yes, I bought one off eBay as well. AFTER I purchased it, I read the trade list more carefully, even compared the time/price with my chart. And guess what, those 40-pip drops in 5 minutes indicated in their statement never happened on my chart. I know every broker has slightly different prices, and the time zone may be confusing. But some of the trades were not even in the direction of the market as they claimed. Of course when I back tested that EA, it wiped out my account in less than 4 months, on different time frames and pairs. So be aware!!
Good trading!