I don’t know that to be a fact for Forex. It could be true. But if it is then I’m sure there is an explanation that makes sense. Perhaps (assuming for the sake of argument that what you’re asserting is true, and I don’t know that to be the case) those trades are somehow calculated to be inherently less risky than typical single trader, single account trading. The latter, which I can speak from experience in saying, is not what I consider practical at all to attempt to do in any monetarily significant way by relying on a “robot”. So I think it remains to be investigated whether or not your implied argument is sound.
I know a handful of people who trade exclusively with robots, so if you want to define what you mean by “good money”, I can tell you if I, or indeed anyone that I know qualifies.
I too know a handful of people that trade exclusively with “robots” and I and all the other full time professional traders I know beat them in profitability every month, without exception. That’s why we joke about it being a waste of time to fiddle with “robot” gimmicks.
Mind you I’m not saying that one shouldn’t do what they feel like doing. This is all just my singular opinion expressed here. If you like “robots” and they work for you, do it. If you have doubts, my advice is to trade on your own. It makes no difference to me one way or the other so long as you find what you’re looking for.
MoneyChick, your statement that programming is not comprehensive enough to deal with a myriad of possibilities is just nonsense. I have seen some pretty complex programs and they can deal with the market far better than you could ever hope to.
Also, last time I looked, none of the manual systems here on BabyPips relied on gut instinct as an input to the system. They all seem pretty rule bound to me.
You can make a joke of robot trading…but its headed your way, that is a fact. You can fight it as much as you like, but as a trader, you will be superfluous before you know it.
That sounds like the kind of arguments that the makers of Deep Blue initially made against Garry Kasparov. Deep Blue lost their initial match. In fact no computer has ever been able to achieve such decisive victory over a chess Grandmaster so as to find it a reasonable conclusion to label human chess players inferior. I say that to argue that just because a computer is more time efficient in measuring and counting and in some cases executing actions as a tool in certain circumstances doesn’t mean that it’s superior to the depth of human insight and understanding. To place computer programs on such a pedestal I find off-putting. Besides that, chess is relatively simple compared to evaluating the buying and selling decisions and market moving factors in the entire Forex.
Also, last time I looked, none of the manual systems here on BabyPips relied on gut instinct as an input to the system. They all seem pretty rule bound to me.
The best traders are wise enough to know the limitations of a rule in a trading system. That’s what intuition or the “gut” is all about. If you haven’t cultivated this skill you’ll run into problems with trading eventually. Rules and programming are a fixed point in experience. Real life is constantly changing and so you must remain flexible and know how and when to apply rules and when to modify or discard them.
You can make a joke of robot trading…but its headed your way, that is a fact. You can fight it as much as you like, but as a trader, you will be superfluous before you know it.
I’m not the least bit worried about that. I’m far more intelligent than any computer program. I don’t care how many calculations it can make per second and how many variables it’s claimed to be able to process. It has no authentic understanding of anything but what it’s been told to analyze. A computer program, while useful in a great many circumstances, is ultimately limited by it’s nature of being rule bound.
So why is the majority of volume is traded by robots ? and why do financial institutions spend money developing the technology when they can hire someone at a fraction of the cost to do it ?
Are you seriously implying a human, or team of humans attempting to trade a risk free arbitrage strategy could process 120,000 ticks a second coming in form almost 10,000 markets worldwide, and trade on that information in real time ?
Whether Deep Blue won or not against the grand champion is irrelevant. The question should be, would you be willing to take Deep Blue on? I am willing to bet that computer will kick the backside of 99.99% of chessplayers out there. The fact that there may well be 1 in 10 000 people that can beat it does not invalidate its ability to play chess. There will no doubt be your manual traders who can beat a computer…that is not the challenge. The challenge is whether it can trade successfully and I would debate that point that trading is more complex than chess. Maybe the Pro’s need it to be, I don’t know.
I won’t debate the intuition issue since I know nothing about it. I have only ever used robots and I have never needed intuition. If it serves you, that is fine, but to argue that a computer cannot trade successfully because it lacks intuition is ignorant.
I see the rule-bound nature of a robot as a strength, not a limitation. I certainly don’t want my robots to develop intuition and start operating outside of their mandate.
You can poo pah the robot trading but I know that it works.
I suppose you are right. We all have beliefs, you can see this by reading this thread. I guess i dont like robots because a freind of mine got nailed by one.
I believe trading is a craft and a mind thing. i guess thats my opinion and everybody is just as entitled to theirs.
I personally would find it important to develop the manual trading skills simply to understand the logic behind a trading robot.
Kenny, are you talking about programmers who have created their own forex robots, or commercially available robots out there? Did you program a robot you use for your own trading, and what are your returns like? I’d just like to put it into perspective.
I’m really not trying to argue that “robot” trading can’t be successful on some level. But I am arguing that it’s not consistently successful for raking in significant profits over the long haul for individual traders due to the inability of a “robot” to consistently adapt to the dynamic, complicated and sometimes illogical nature of the Forex.
I’m not against others using “robots” either. If it works for you then so be it. But I’ve never seen it to be the case that a “robot” can out-trade me or any of my professional acquaintances. I’ve also never known a full-time, professional trader to rely exclusively on “robots”. As I mentioned before: They might actually exist. But I’ve never known one.
As far as “calculations per second in real time” and all of that is concerned I’m not impressed. I don’t think all of that is necessary when you have human understanding and insight as well as intuition working with a foundation of solid trading skills. Computer programs need to do all of those outrageous calculations per second because they can’t access any authentic understanding to weigh in on any matter. That’s why they lack. The calculations and such are an attempt at compensating for their obvious weakness. You mentioned the question “Would you take on Deep Blue?” I would, as I happen to fancy chess and am quite good. But even if I might lose I don’t think that it’s an inevitability. I think it’s simply that I’m not a dedicated student of chess, who puts their soul into the game. But with trading, I have no fear of challenging any “robot”. I believe without doubt that I’d win as I am a dedicated student of trading, and I do put my soul into it. A computer just can’t do that.
But as with many things: To each their own. Do what you feel like. It only matters if it matters to you.
The forex market may be dynamic, complicated and illogical, but are your trading methods also as dynamic complicated and illogical, or are they as every system described on this forum is, mechanical in nature and based on a set of rules?
I must say some of your arguments surely are illogical, you talked about using intuition in your trading, how can you say that intuition is a skill to be apllied to forex trading? Are you saying you believe you have some kind of psychic ability to “know” what is going to happen to the price without any physical rhyme, reason or indication ? Surely that is what intuition is ?
Or is it another word for “a good guess” when the “intuitive” trade went in your favor?
Anyways, I think the main argument here is partly due to a lack of understanding of the almost unlimited potential of computer programs to replicate the human decision making process, and also it is partly egotistical in nature, traders hate to think their special talents, learned and perfected over many years of experience, could be replicated by a computer program.
The fact is, a well designed algorithm can replicate almost anything a human can do.
FBI computers can recognise your fingerprints from millions of others, they can also distinguish a photo of you from milllions of others.
Even cheap digital cameras have the capability to distinguish the human face from all the other clutter in the scene.
If you really believe there are trading decisions you make, that could not be replicated by a computer, how about you describe some and let us try to describe an algorithm that could deal with the same scenario programaticaly ?
I took long time for me to read all the messages here, and I have got some good advices. And in my opinion,just have a look in the trading robots and If there are a issue of trade you can change or fix all the error when robots created
I use both. I mix and match. I will sometimes use parts of a commercial robot that I like and integrate it with parts of another robot. I will sometimes use robots to simply to study the market (or a broker for that matter) in order to validate or disprove a theory.
MoneyChick is right to a certain extent. There is no blackbox out there that works by itself forever…to believe this is naive. As an automated trader, I work twice as hard as a manual trader. I have had to learn about trading, as well as about automation(specifically MQL4). This is often (ignorantly) mistaken for laziness and that I want to go to the beach while my robots trade. My robots are tools. The manual trader will call up MACD and I will call up a robot.
Unfortunately the robots lend themselves to abuse and people will get stung by their own naievity. I got stung many times the first year but looking back, I didn’t know what I was doing. This brings me to my next point…“I tried a couple of robots once” is often the extent of many traders’ experience and yet they will pronounce judgement like their opinion is now gospel.
Bama, performance is ok. Probably not earth shattering but suffice to say that I use 5% pm as a benchmark. Sometimes I do better sometimes not.
I suppose you are right. We all have beliefs, you can see this by reading this thread. I guess i dont like robots because a freind of mine got nailed by one.
I believe trading is a craft and a mind thing. i guess thats my opinion and everybody is just as entitled to theirs.
I agree everyone is intitled to their opinion and there really is no right or wrong. Only profitable or unprofitable.
As for money chick her problem is she can only see one way to trade. Actually I’m not picking on her its just what I observe in a lot of people who claim robots cannot be profitable.
[B]The fact is robots trade differently than humans do[/B]
Humans make discretionary decisions in there trading all the time. In the majority of traders this is their downfall! Fear and greed cause us all to make poor choices and once you ad ego forget about it.
EA’s trade differently. The ones that fail imho are the ones that get programmed to try and trade like a human. The better ones use there own style which relies heavily on math and numbers and complex alogorithms that take advantage of mathematical probablities. For example I am running an ea that is a “grid type system” It places buys and sells at different levels and uses a “maritingale” style money management. It would be impossible for me to try and trade like that.
Before I get flamed to death I would like to add that I do not recommend my ea to anyone especially if you are new. I am comfortable with it and its money management but if I were to get even a little greedy it could blow my account right up. I am aware that most people frown on martingales however I feel the risk is acceptable as long as you have a small enough starting point and you are willing to cut all your losses at a certain point if necessary. I have yet to earn less than 10% a month and sometimes earn 10% a week.
Finally I would like to say look at professional money managers. How many of them are using algorithmic trading? All of them? most for sure.
The other side of it is that most manualy traded methods only have real time experience, it is close to an impossible task to accurately test a trading strategy manually over historical chart data for any length of time, this leads many to believe their strategy works profitably when over the long term it will fail due to changing market conditions.
As any EA programmer already knows, many of the trading strategies based on indicators commonly in use, fail miserably during testing when written into an EA for the simple reason, the programmer can test that strategy over years of historical chart data in just a few minutes, and by doing so will discover it is very difficult to find a strategy that trades profitably over an extended time period this is one of the reasons why many believe EA’s do not work.
It is not because EA’s cannot be made to replicate human decision making it is because so many of the prescribed trading methods that programmers try to run in an EA are inherently flawed in the first place.
What is behind market?
People.
In big financial institution in banks -no matter.
People.
Can computer write music, books?
No.
You can use your EA’s as a part of analysis. But trust them?
If some Ea really gonna work then market disappear.
No more financialproblems for governments-just put good ea to work?
I’m yet to see a robot clocking 100% or even consistent 50% trading precisions (winrate) whereas traders hit that all the time. However, traders cant handle the number of trades boxes make unemotionally & not counting effort involved, and most traders make negative anyway. Really robots work, but for true traders who can weave mt4code too. Bottom line a profitable trader can beat any EA quite easily.
The site there shows what I think is realistic return on cap for robots though it would be more authentic if there was a public forum like where peeps come with their toys to race, or something like the past Automated Trading Championship hosted by mt4commune.
That said I think the Lewinsky thingie should be forgotten and forgiven by now, dont hate the player, & its really a great game! Hate the painting not the artist - he jus provided something for you to google in your continuous quest for the truth, and if hes scamming hes quite moderate about it, lol (<-insert wooaaah! & keep tha course).
