Known scam EA blacklist

Trading Systems Expert Advisors and Automated Trading
1

I am posting this list here (compiled and borrowed from another forum) to help the robot trading newbies out. From what I can see so far, there is very little information about rip-off EAs on this forum… and many of you are showing up here, possibly after having being “introduced” to this hobby by means of a trading bot that’s losing your money hand-over-fist… and you’re possibly starting to think you were scammed.

Well, I’m going to be kicking butt and taking names in this post.

You will note that some of the commercial EAs on this list are actually rehashes of freely available EAs that you can find and use on the internet if you look for them. So how about that? I even point you in the direction of some free EAs that were tested and considered good enough for a freeloader to try and sell for profit!

Here’s the list of definitely dodgy commerical EAs. If you bought them, you were ripped off.
This list does not even include the multitude of original, but outright bad, overhyped EAs that don’t really work or hold up over time.

EA BLACKLIST

Category 1: yet to be classified as Cat2 or Cat3
Category 2: Exact copy
Category 3: Largely copy but with customization/enhancement
Category 4: Pure scam such as backtest curve fitting

Symbols:
Cat1 =
Cat2 ==
Cat3 =~
Cat 4 !!!

Category 1:

Ea Mechine = one logic of rdb_THUNDER4WD
Quantum Trader = Your lucky
EA-Boss = FAP Turbo
Electron EURUSD = StarFX Trader
Forex Maestro = Free Firebird EA
PipZu = Free Otkat EA
Saturn GBPUSD = Free RSI Power Maximum
Socrates GBPUSD = Free Hammer EA
The Forex Magic Machine = Free vForce like EA
The Forex Wonder = Free Pseudocarcharias_v102

Category 2:

Pipsleader == free Divergence Trader EA
Artemis EURUSD from fxgtc.com == Free DemarkLinesEA

Category 3:

Europe Wave =~ rdb_Thunder_4WD
Dragonpips =~ rdb_THUNDER4WD
NightCash =~ MegaDroid Multipairs with customized settings
Euroblaster =~ reoptimized fahrad crab
Forex Espionage =~ Free Parabolic EA with customized setting file **
Forex Conqueror =~ Free Parabolic EA with customized setting file **
Forex Transformer =~ Free Parabolic EA with customized setting file **
Forex NewVampire =~ Free Parabolic EA with customized setting file **
Forex Slasher =~ Free Parabolic EA with added MM and customized setting file **

Category 4:

Forex Derivative !!! Backtesting curve fitting

2

Hi

Thanks for the list.

Would you consider updating the below list given the amount of new EA released since this post?

3

Tell them not to buy any ea. If the ea is profitable now the in few days it will be a looser for ever guarantee.

They should not forget mt4 or any forex flatform is also a robot to eat up cash

4

Well i disagree with you.

You can lose money (and a lot of it) in any forex trading platform.

However MT4 (and other platforms) are also profitable if and only if you have a proper trading plan and a system.

Ever heard of this “a bad workman blames his tools” ?

It means you can have the best tools in the world to do the job, but if you (the trader) is bad at forex trading (the tools and platform) then you will never be successful at trading forex. You cannot claim forex or EA’s eat up cash because you have’nt a clue how to trade manually (or you dont have your own working profitable system).

So…dont blame the tools, blame yourself or learn how to do something correctly, and then you wont have cash eaten up if you use proper money management :slight_smile:

5

does anyone have a better trading plan? all i know off is scammer giving good advices on how to not loose to much.

some one actualy giving forex book for free just to hook somebody

6

It seems like you have been burnt quite badly. I’m sorry. Maybe Used Auto Sales is where your calling lies. :smiley:

7

win little loose more. scam advisor. I think some brokers give this for free no need to buy

8

i think the list will be literally dozens of pages long.

9

yeah but it doesn’t mean mt4 is crap.

10

Variables TP = Take Profit, SL = Stop Loss, TS = Trailing Stop

Entry NO specific rule,

Strategy EA to Open both long and short position in the same pair with only TP and SL set

As one side closes at the SL the EA must put a TS on the remaining open position Same as “Simple”

When second open position is closed either at TP or TS The EA then reopen 2 positions

Money Management Lot size = % of balance, EA to stop when certain threshold is reached of remaining balance

11

Naynay,

My deepest appreciation for your efforts here…from a newbie!

Question about “backtesting curve fitting”…

I’m trying to develop a simple EA, but heck, I’m just tweaking it to make a profit using historical data. This is backtesting curve fitting, is it not? I figure if it makes a profit for the last 6 months of this year, it could very well be profitable for the next 6 months.

Is this bad??

Regards,
Robert

12

Hello,

I didnt saw a Forex Legend in the list. I heard bad information about it, but I still trading with it for two month and have a profit. Have anybody been trading with this robot more then two month? Is it ok?

13

when people curve fit their EA, know one thing - they’re scammers.

14

But don’t you want to tailor your EA to maximize profits from historical data? Let’s say you don’t tailor to the historical data…would that mean that future performance will be better? It seems like you do want to curve fit to historical data that’s not too old…to represent the way things are now. Right? Otherwise, you just write an EA, test it with historical data, but don’t make changes to make it perform better? I can’t imagine not doing some curve-fitting! -Robert

15

Definately NOT its the very last thing you should do. Some people employ an element of walk forward optimisation, but personally, I wouldnt even reccommend that approach.

You need to test it yourself, and then you’ll understand why its not a great idea.

16

forward testing is the only way to know if an ea is performing.

I understand the whole backtest thing and I think it is useful to decide if the ea is even worth pursueing but it is no reason to buy an ea and definatly only the very first step.

17

another one to be careful of is 4XHOTBOT. I received multiple emails promoting this EA and the first thing I noticed was the deposit date on their “live account” was showing as 2010.06.01 yet the EA started trading on 2009.06.02. I took a screenshot a few days ago and to my surprise the deposit date now says 2009.06.01. See the attached screenshot and compair it to the current site

4xhotbot scam.jpg700×579 71.8 KB

18

I got forex legend scalper but no key
I also got forexlegendtrendfollower I wonder if the key works for two ea I will
share you just send me key

19

Walk-forward optimization? Do you mean tweaking your code as time goes on?

You need to test it yourself, and then you’ll understand why its not a great idea.

OK. Yes, I plan on doing that…I’m still changing things everyday…but yes, that’s the next step. How long would you test an EA on a demo account, a month or two? Six months? I have no idea!

20

There’s a few ways of doing walk forward optimisation, typically developers will re optimise system parameters on historical data once a month, or alternatively using a rolling 12 month window. You can use the same approach with backtests, or forward tests, or even in live trading. Usually your’d be optiising system parameters, but I suppose you could tweak the strategy

There’s quite a good video made by the guy who developed the Wave 59 charting application where he discusses the design of a system based on walk forward optimisation. He concluded that just at the point in time where he’s able to establish that a particular set of parameters for a system results in optimum returns, those parameters then cease to work. He has a system based on fading those signals. If you think about this probably has some merit, every mug punter with a copy of trade station is going to be running the very same optimisation routines over the same data, and reaching exactly the same conclusions. As these are the people who inevitably lose, fading them seams reasonable. Lets face it, at the point that an edge gets so obvious that practically everyone can see it, then there’s a very good chance it’ll stop working.

How long would you forward test an EA ?, its a difficult question, you need a reasonable number of trades (I’d argue a minimum of 400 long and 400 short), and over a reasonable sample of market conditions, even for relatively high frequency systems I’d probably suggest 6 months to a year.

In my experience, mechanical systems only have a small edge over random chance (and thats all they need). The varience in returns is a function of the square root of the number of trades, therefore if your trying to identify what might be a small edge, unless you have a large sample size, that edge will almost certainly be masked inside the random distribution of returns.