Bingo 
I’ve said it before, needs to be said now.
The secret to using a bot is to know when to turn the bloody thing off.
@FXAlTareeg, maybe you can put more weight behind your agreement if you venture out into the forum a wee bit more. I know there’s a lot of work involved in maintaining a thread/s, but those worth listening to generally share their knowledge openly, not to the confines of tunnels.
Not that my opinion is worth listening to.
I dont think you can use bot only when you know when to turn it off… That would be pretty bad bot 
But with automated trading it is not that easy, markets are evolving every day, so must your bot. If you can find proper developer and market guru, then you can create perfect bot that will trade way better than you. Mostly problem is, ppl dont know how to trade profitable, so then how can they make profitable bots? Give me proven strategy, I will automate it and we will make fortune…
Well as long as we don’ t see the source code of those commercial bots his advice is right. Use a bot for the market it was made for and turn it off when it doesn’ t apply.
Building bots with strategies for each market isn’t an easy task, it takes a lot of lines to code and due consideration that signals are not conflicting.
They work until they don’t.
I think, that EA can make some profit… but just by following strict rules… I had EA, something like samurai or so, not sure… rare trades and small gain… but just always off while news time etc etc etc… nothing work full auto, I suppose, but with little help - much better
thanks for this thread, really useful… I don’t use any EA yet… and little bit confused about it…
Tradewizz, I think what bobbi means is that ea’s have a limited useful life, they can’t adapt like you or I can and you have to keep in top if it so you can drop it when it is no longer useful.
One of the problems with buying an ea from someone is that, although it may have had great past success it may be close to the end of its useful life when you buy it
Note: just read Bravehostamps post, he says this much more succinctly than I have
Hey Guys,
There appears to be an agreement among most or all forex traders that an EA has a limited life span mainly because of changes in market conditions, etc. Someone mentioned earlier in this thread about a trader who developed 6 EA’s running side by side. I’ll bet my 2 cents that each one of the 6 EA’s was developed for 6 different market conditions and I reckon this trader is on the right track to getting closer to the holy grail EA.
I’m a newbie and have no skills in writing an EA but my question is. Wouldn’t it be easier to develop EA’s for all possible market conditions (lets say 20), then string them all together in a “while-do” statement or “if-then-else” statement, etc. A small routine EA can then be written to hold the trigger for 20 sets of requirements and execute the appropriate EA according to the market condition. The job of the routine EA is simple, analyze the current market condition and if the result satisfies one of the 20 set of requirements, then execute the appropriate EA. The trigger EA meanwhile is analyzing the market every second and it’ll turn on and off different EA’s accordingly. As a safe guard, if a result fails to satisfy any one of the 20 requirements, then the trigger EA will stop all trading activity.
That’s my 2 cents worth.
Yes, you can build a script like that. Big companies spended 100 millions on such scripts. It is not a problem to write different EA’s for different conditions, but it is difficult to have them interact and to instruct them when which module needs to run or not.
The guy with the six EA’s was appaerently also not ably to integrate them and he needs to decide for himself when which script must run, as when they al run continuously each script is limiting the profitability of one of the other scripts as the profit scripts need to compensate the scripts that make A loss.
I run multiple scripts myself. The art is in when to know which one to run and when not.
…and the conversation comes back full circle to the need for accurately predicting the market condition
I’m guessing that your scripts were written for different conditions based on various indicators but not on market conditions. How do you manage your scripts? Do you sit infront of the computer screen and wait for the appearance of a trigger to execute a script? I’m no expert in forex nor am I in EA writing but from what I’ve found in some of the forums on this website, it would appear that there is a strong focus on the usage of various indicators and EA’s but nothing constructive on different market conditions. I’m sure if someone went into the forex archives and pull out all the the historical data on market conditions, list them in an EA as rules or arguments, then write EA’s to suit, automate the whole process, I reckon you’d have a near perfect EA. However this would be a HUGE job for anyone to take on but I’m positive that I’m on the right track to the holy grail. On that note I think I’m going to learn how to write an EA.
To the EA experts in this forum, is it not possible to write a small routine and program it to execute an EA or stop it when required? Does the MT4 platform allow it? That’s OK if no one answers as I’ll check it out myself.
What’s possible inside an EA is only limited to the skill of the programmer and the knowledge of the developer. What you’ll see as a common theme is that we don’t use commercial EA’s. We write our own. And then develop re-write and use, develop etc. Just as a trader must evolve and change to market conditions so to our EA’s. A skill definitely worth mastering.
Many thanks for your reasonable hints. I was doubting whether to buy advisor or not, and now I seem to have found the answer.
The secret is in the name, they are expert [B][U]advisors[/U][/B]. You’re the expert [B][U]trader[/U][/B].
Best of luck all.
Is it possible that someone in the commercial world may have developed an EA or a script that analyzes and interrogates historical data of various forex market conditions? I suppose if that was the case I’m pretty sure that no one else would know about it. I guess I’ve just answered my own question.
Personally, I have not yet seen an EA that works consistently except for one which ironically the programmer will not take in some of my suggestions to make improvements to what it can only do.
Commercial EAs, free EAs, complex or simple I have not seen but 1 or 2 that I would trade on a live account.
The one EA that has been the most successful for me is a NON-martingale Hedging Grid Trading EA. As opposed to the view of grid EAs should not be ran on trending markets, this handles both trend and range beautifully on the GBPJPY.
Pending trades open 30 pips apart 25 up and 25 down with a take profit of £5. From a demo perspective as I have not placed this live yet, I am soon to finish a backtest on tick mode for the year of 2015 that will show me I could have doubled a small £500 account trading only 0.01 lots. It has large DD but it is a non-losing EA. There are risks, but they are very low due to the high volatility of the GBPJPY pair. Will I trade it live on my account soon? I’m still not sure.
Over 10 years of trading on and off manually, I have looked at EAs and have not seen anything that would give me the confidence to trade on a live account. I am still of the opinion that there is something out there that works efficiently to the point that I am confident to use an EA live.
If someone who is trading with an EA on a live account that is profitable doing it and is generous enough to share their EA with me, please PM me. I don’t want to give you a sob story but you would be helping someone in a dire financial situation who is struggling to keep his house.
Many Thanks & Best Regards,
Daniel
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How has the testing been going?
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