I have been in trading for about 15 years off and on. Every time I hear about the next greatest trading system that is “totally automated” and “trades for you”, it seems to work for a while, then doesn’t. Do they all fail long term?
I am currently using an automated trading system that is working well, but I have only traded it for about 3 weeks. My account is up 9% and I have had to do almost nothing. The person who referred me to it has been trading it for 4 months and averaging 12-20% a month. HOWEVER, will it last?
Anyone trading an auto trading system that has lasted more than a few months?
Lol I know of a guy who was using an automated trading system through samuel and co who blew his account. 20k mate… gone. If the system was fully automatic and worked why would someone sell it to you. They would just keep it on and make money month in month out. Nope instead they’ll sell it to you so.you take all the risk and they get all the cash.
Ooooh. Automated forex trading is something that I haven’t really looked into. I just don’t understand how it works and all that. Could you tell us more about it? Hmmm.
BUT I feel like even if it’s working well for you right now, you have to stay alert and watch out for sudden price movements that your system might not notice. I mean, if these things always work, I think all traders would just be using these systems? Haha.
I have been trading since January 2013. I am still in the game, but I cannot do it for living. It is more for fun. After trying to keep me out of emotion it went pretty well.
As I am a programmer, of course I have tried to play with trading robots.
I have applied a “trend following” strategy and after more than a year of tries and adjustments I have managed to get a 40 percent profit for a 10(ten) - year period testing.
Maybe they will work but not in a spectacular way. You have to come up with something brilliant in order to worth it.
For a 4-percent per year you better go with bank interest on deposit…
I have used one for 11 months that has worked BUT it has got to 40% drawdown a couple of times which was scary stuff…even though it has worked I definitely see it going wrong at some point potentially(why I withdraw regularly).
They definitely have the best of both worlds though in that if it works you pay them if it doesn’t they lose nothing.
As for whether they will ever work. I’ve done a lot of research on EA’s and done a little use of them (not too much). My feeling is that most of them use very risky grid+martingale strategies some with hedging that apparently is vulnerable to big volatility and market swings. This can lead to big returns but huge drawdowns/blowouts. I’m ideally interested in EA’s/robots that don’t use these strategies and use money management techniques with stop loss that are not scalpers.
If I ever use a grid EA then I’ll probably run it on multiple accounts, each account having a small-ish amount of money (whatever seems small to me at the time maybe $1k-$10k). Then I’ll harvest profits regularly from each account so that if one account blows out it won’t hurt too much. This method of controlling the risk of ruin amount seems like it could lead to good returns. Putting EA’s on a big account and getting greedy by letting gains compound seems like a path to account blowout.
doesnt matter if its automated. it has to WORK. in other words: it has to be profitable. all boils down to intelligence and approach. no matter is the process of trading is auto.ated or not.
There is a book by Kevin Davey, “Building Winning Algorithmic Trading Systems” - it talks mostly about analyzing automated strategies.
The author states clearly that all automated strategies eventually stop working and need to be retired. Thus - a trader has to develop criteria on when to stop running a particular strategy.
Kevin Davey suggests using walkforward analysis, Monte Carlo analysis and monkey analysis.
According to him, walkforward analysis results can forecast the real trading results reasonably well.
Monte Carlo analysis can tell statistics about the expected behavior of the system (probabilities of various drawdowns, earnings, being profitable in a month, etc.)
Monte Carlo + monkey analyses are used to determine when a strategy does not work anymore (goes beyond its statistical boundaries) and needs to be retired.
Personally - I like how this testing process rips to shreds most (but not all) of my strategies. It’s better this way than the market does it. I have ‘retired’ one XAUUSD strategy last year but I am still hesitating if the boundaries I put were too restrictive.
Im using this penny robot EA for a month now. Some days it closes more profits, some days lesser, but overall, still a gain. I’ve blew up account doing copy trading from some masters. But since I’ve found this EA, I don’t think I’ll go back to manual trading, at least not so soon.
Yes, i am following a bot called LBF Platinum for 4,5 months and it made me 34% Gain.
The bot is managed by a team and charges only 20% performance fee.
I am very satisfied, and as the team is bringing out more bots in the future, i will be able to spread risks over several bots with different strategies.
I’ve been doing automated trading for some time, there are some good EAs out there, I’ve been using Penny Robot in the past few weeks and with decent performace. They are not only cheap but also offer a free trial if you care to try…
no matter how perfect your EA technique is, as long as your EA doesn’t provide anti news API, it won’t last. But I know an EA that uses that kind of thing.
I bet that no, I have had experience year ago not with forex but more like with some local coin on local market anyway and it shouldn’t really work there for such matter anyway. IT’s all failed projects from start to finish, nothing can beat manual trades.
That’s how the big banks and hedge funds do it so yes, it has to work somewhere! FX retail traders are fighting against institutional machines that have access to much deeper information and technology. The game is rigged here.
However, automated trading is not entirely inaccessible to us mere mortals. It’s just a little more complicated, as it’s not a matter of putting usual technical analysis approaches in a machine’s responsibility. The models are different and based on statistical techniques involving machine learning, in some cases.
A good place to start is quantstart.com. The proverbial rabbit hole goes deeper than you can ever imagine!
Automated forex trading is something that I haven’t really looked into. 
I just don’t understand how it works and all that. 