So you’ve decided to take the path of agotrading now, huh? I remember you’ve said earlier that the future of trading lies in HFTs field or something like that. Have to disappoint you, AAFX does not allow high frequency trading, but they do let EA executions in general.
Ahahah, my programming skills are far below the level needed to develop a successful HFT algorithm. Actually, I think that if those skills were that good, I would have become a quant or a senior developer at Morgan And Stanley. Or would join some other financial institute out there on the Wall Street. Those guys are making at least half a million yearly without risking any personal capital and working 8 to 5 in a cozy office.
No, I’m just a manual-style trader, working on my MQL skills and trying to extract this complex system of market decision making process out of my head and turn it into EA strategy. In this light the fact that EA is not forbidden at AAFX is a piece of good news. My current dealer does not like robots for some reason.
Good luck, man. Manual trading is exhausting, especially if you daytrade. So you are on the right path. Your million-worth annual profits are yet to come. IMHO none of the coziest offices is worth the freedom you get once you start making money using your own brains and financial instruments. Moreover, these profits are quite easy to scale.
Back to the point. AAFX really allows to run Expert Advisor strategies. The only exceptions are HFTs and arbitrage strategies. This has to do with the rule of exits. You can’t close your trade in less than 1 minute since you’ve opened it.
Hmm, not that I need these exits in less than 1 minute, but for the sake of curiosity I wonder what happens if I do that? Or the platform won’t allow me to exit?
I haven’t tried that myself, but I think it will allow the exit. I can’t see how they can prohibit that technically. But the trade profits will get nulled most likely, so better don’t even try.
I wish I was any good in programming myself. Eventually EA can save a lot of time and energy. Actually, we always have the option of hiring some experts to do the code. So this is nice that my broker and MT4 allow algotrading. You never know, maybe sometime in the future I’ll need this option too.
I guess algorithmic trading really can yield some profits. But for now I think that human eye is capable to distinguish much more complex information than a programmed pattern can. Sure enough this comes with experience, but still, I perceive sticking to some algo to be a limitation.
Sticking to any pattern is a limitation. You can hand trade and learn 1-2 patterns that work. But this will never make you a successful trader for long enough. Markets change and you have to change develop your skills to recognize these changes fast enough.
I’ve recently watched a webinar of Tim Morge, who used to work for Federal Reserve as a trader. His experience in trading is 40+ years. He was talking about some pattern called corner trade. And then in the end he said that even though he loves the pattern and uses it very often to trade bonds and indices, this is still a very small part of the instruments he uses to analyse markets. Too much depends on the market context and a specific instrument that you trade.
So if you plan to be patient enough and spend 10+ years to become a good manual-style trader - there you go. Algos can make this path shorter, I think. Anyway, it’s nice to have a choice and this is actually why I plan to transfer my account to AAFX. They give this choice whether you wanna use EA or hand-trade.
I personally prefer manual trading too. It doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in algorithms. In fact, I’m very fond of numbers, spreadsheets and formulas. But a good algo requires a skilled effort of a real team. I know personally a guy who is a quant developer at a trading startup, they trade SnP index. From what I’ve learned, they’ve started working on a trading system in January 19. It’s almost 2020 and the’ve just started testing it on a real market using very small risk capital. Considering that they’ve spent a year, have at least 5 full-time team members with above-average salaries and spend much $$ on development environment, market data and those kinds of things - this is a very expensive business, when you have to invest too much and can’t really rely on the outcomes. Huge business risks. Outstanding potential profit on the other hand 
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Good to know. The most important thing that we can learn from this discussion is that we all more or less agree with the fact you need to plan your trading. Both as a business venture and a system that allows you to enter the market when its statistically advantageous. I think this is pretty much why I like AAFX too. I hand trade, but when I notice some interesting pattern, I can quickly test the idea with the help of EA. Having these results I learn whether it’s worth paying attention to this observation further or not. If it’s worth, I add this idea to my daily market analysis. I don’t do programming myself though and go to upwork to find someone who can do that for me. Don’t do this very often though.
Awesome approach! I really like it. And you are absolutely correct, trading manually or with EA, you have to trade systematically. This autumn when I was trying to fulfill the bonus requirements I decided to enter some trades that didn’t match my system 100%. 60 day were coming to an end and I thought that I can push it a bit and get more flexible on my entries. As a result I did get a bonus by fulfilling the requirement to trade the necessary volume. But I lost some money with unsystematic trades. So basically the bonus simply covered these unsystematic losses.
So you think this is a bad idea to go for this bonus?
Not at all. I’ve performed some calculations and found out that I can easily reach the necessary volume if I trade as I usually do. But I missed 2 weeks due to health issues, so was trying to catch up. That was a bad idea. Simply when you plan to get the bonus, I’d advice not only to plan the volume for each trade accordingly to your average number of trades, bus slightly increase this volume just in case you will miss some trading days like I did. Having 2-4 trades a day with very moderate leverage is enough to get the bonus.
Glad to hear that. It’s not that easy to get withdrawable +30% to your account, so it’s definitely worth trying. BTW AAFX offers +40% to account as a holiday offer till the end of January, so its definitely a good time to think about topping up the account.
I don’t think the offer is still available. They still have a withdrawable welcome bonus of 35%, but its only available for $500+ deposits.
Correct, the offer is gone already. I didn’t realize the min amount is $500 to get +35%. Was planning to invest around $250. Damn, I was nearly there and once again I’m in doubts.
Funding a trading account and starting to trade live is a big step. In my experience, when you hesitate funding the account, it most likely means that you are not so sure about what you gonna be doing when you go live. Excuse me if I’m wrong. On the other hand, I also think that sometimes this is necessary to start trading live at least with some small amount in order to boost the progress on this path. Even if you are no so sure about what exactly your system is, these small losses and wins will definitely become a highly motivational factor to speed up the process.
New user here, but just stumbled upon this thread. I have been using AAFX for about 9 months now, and I haven’t had any issues at all. I have read the scam warnings, but they seem great to me. I have even held some positions for months and there hasn’t been any issue whatsoever.
I totally agree! You can spend ages on demo account. If you will be losing, you’ll keep thinking oh well, at least I’m just losing the fake demo money. If you will be gaining profits, you will get satisfied with an idea how smart you are and fear of having a different result on a live account will keep you from transferring from demo to live trading. Our mind is a bi$ch and it is endorphine and dopamine addict. Demo can give you a lot of these hormones and this will sooth your common sense. But the truth is that the only reason to start trading is to start earning real money.
Correct! Money is the only true motivator to get more professional in trading. I am not pushing anyone to invest all they have into trading account. But as I’ve already said, risking small amounts is necessary to make a leap of progress. Unless u are ok with keeping it all at the gaming level.
I hear you guys. My first reaction on your words was anger. Then protest. Then I thought you just know nothing about me and my situation. However, after thinking about it all for little longer, I realized your words really make sense. My demo account is very profitable. But I know I won’t be able to trade like that on a live account. I know my trades turn out successful most of the cases simply because I forget about my opened positions and just let take profit or stop loss happen. I definitely am afraid to get disappointed in my trading skills if I go live. Thank you, I’ve made up my mind. I’ll fund aafx account with just $100 - the smallest they allow and I won’t care about any bonuses. We will see how it goes.