My thoughts about EAs

Beginner Questions
1

Hi, I have been trading Forex for 8 years, and 5 years professionally. I have seen a lot of posts lately, here and at other forums about people asking for an EA that “works”. I am going to give some thoughts about EA.

The main question is: can an EA make money? [B]Then answer is Yes and No. [/B]

Yes you can make money with an EA. And NO, you won´t make money with an EA that you buy in a website (a commercial EA). So here are my main thoughts about them, from my 8 years of experience:

  1. First of all, [B]commercial EAs DON´T WORK[/B]. Stop wasting your money. No one with a profitable EA that is making him tons of money is going to sell it on a website. If you had a chicken that put golden eggs everyday, why would you post in the newspaper and risk your own profitability? All the charts and profits u see are optimized results and curvefitted, that on live trading will bust your account. Sorry to disappoint all the newbies, but there is no easy road to succeed in forex. You won´t be make money by buying and EA and let it run all day, and cash at the end of the month. It just won´t happen. Maybe you can make money 1 month, but eventually it will crash. [B]I started making money with EA the minute I forgot about commercial ones, and created my own personalized EA. [/B]

  2. [B]Behind and EA there is a system.[/B] If there is a system that has a positive expectancy and the EA is well coded to the point that can replicate that system, then the EA will make money. But is not the EA the most important aspect, is the system behind it. That is why you need to understand your own system, in order to adjust all the parameters. When the market conditions changes, what are u going to do if you do if you don´t even know what is it about?

  3. If you have a system that has a positive expectancy, look for a professional that can put this system into an EA, with your own parameters. That is what I did some year ago. Here is a page where you can find very good coders:
    [B] https://www.mql5.com/en/job[/B]
    Just look the reviews and look for a someone who has a lot of jobs finished and positive reviews. The work is very professional accurate and fast.

4)If you really want to be profitable with an EA, then start spending hours developing your own system, reading, watching videos, and put together what works for you. I have my own EA, that I developed based on my system, and I make money with it. I use it to trade during London session (because is 2am here in my country), and at New york session I trade by myself. Sometimes I just monitor it the whole day, without even touching it. It sounds easy but it took me hundreds of hours (years) to get to this point. This is another reason why commercial EAs don’t work. It takes a lot of time and effort to find a profitable system that suits your trading style and personality, and I will have to be crazy to sell it. Maybe in some years, after I have made enough money to retire, I can give it to the public for free. So trust more a free EA than a commercial one.

5)If you have constant problems with your internet connection crashes, or your pc restarts, or electricity problem, [B]you can pay for a VPS server.[/B] Here is a list that u can choose: Forex VPS Reviews, Comparison table, Rating - ProfitF - Info for Forex, Binary Options traders

Finally to summary mi ideas:

1)Stop wasting your time with commercial EAs
2)Spend hours reading, asking on the forum, watching videos and learning, and develop your system. You can also use another system that is already profitable and make some personal adjustements. This is the most time consuming part, but the benefits are incredible. There is no easy road, you can´t jump this step. It may take a couple of years, but is worthy.
3)If that system can be translated into an EA, go pay a professional to do it.
4)Demo test your EA for 3-6 months, or with a live account with little money.
5)Keep making adjustements periodically in order to adjust to the market conditions.
6)Pay for a VPS server if you have internet connection problems.

[B]The best advices and education on trading I learned so far, where free. I never had to pay a single cent to become a profitable trader. The only price I paid was the hundreds of hours in front of my pc, studying the market.[/B]

Hope that helps,

Cheers

2

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I personally agree with those points you mentioned, especially the ones emphasizing the importance of doing your own research and developing your own system.

3

+1. I think an EA which was developed based on your own strategy can make your trading life a lot easier and more profitable, the ones you can buy are just worthless. You need to do the hard work to get to an easier trading day with the help of an EA.

4

Unless we are able to know about the system that we use in our trades our profits will be limited. This is because many times we have to make some or the other changes in them :slight_smile:

5

EA’s are not very predictable, they work on a fixed program and its hard to predict them in a volatile market situation.

6

Spending any money on someones EA is the worst idea ever. Before you spend your money buying some EA ask your self, why will someone sell a working trading system?

7

I second this…Took me 3 years plus to figure out that it is actually just a huge money-making opportunity. The idea behind EA’s surely was that a trader could code his trading method to make it easier for him. Then it exploded into a massive scam/money making drive.