How to choose a forex robot (Expert Advisor)

Forex robots (EA) have become very popular ever since the MetaTrader 4 trading platform was released. The many commercial EA offers and frequent scams do not make it any easier to find a robot that genuinely works well.

To find an EA that fits your trading style and risk tolerance, you need to analyse various statistics such as maximium loss (drawdown), profit ratios and the risk-to-reward ratio.

Forex trading is very risky, you can lose all of your money even with a robot that displays good statistics. Before using an expert advisor with a real trading account, you need to know in advance the financial risk that you can afford to take. The most profitable robots are usually also the most risky ones. So you also should choose a robot based on your appetite for risk.

Before you invest your money, it is essential that you test the robot with a demo account and do backtests on historical market data. Choose an STP forex broker that allows you to trade micro lots in order to start real trading with minimum risk and also to see if the EA works well with that broker.

Analysing an Expert Advisor's stats

1) The Profit Factor

The profit factor is one of the most important statistics. It allows you to answer an important question: will the robot make money?

The profit factor is important because it shows the relationship between profit and risk. A robot that is profitable - but nevertheless risks all of the money in your account - is not an ideal robot.

To calculate the profit factor:

Profit Factor = gross profit (sum of all winning trades) / gross loss (sum of all losing trades)

If the profit factor is less than 1, you must eliminate it immediately, choose EAs with a big profit factor.

2) Expected profit per transaction (Expectancy)

The expected profit (Expectancy) is a statistic that tells you how much you could earn on each trade on average.

Obviously, these statistics are based on trading history, so it doesn't guarantee future results, but it is a useful indicator when choosing an EA.

The expected profit is calculated as follows:

Expected profit = [% of winning trades (average profit per trade)] - [% of losing trades (average loss per trade)]


3) The drawdown (max drawdown, average drawdown, drawdown recovery)

A robot that makes money is no good if it takes too much risk on each trade. Drawdown is a very important indicator of risk. It shows the percentage of maximum loss recorded since the last high point. This can give you an idea of the potential drop in your account when the robot is in trouble.

The first step to analyse drawdown is to look at an equity curve chart. A rising curve indicates that the robot is profitable, but if the curve is rather agitated with frequent and large peaks and troughs, the robot is very volatile. A volatile robot will most likely have a high drawdown and pose a greater risk. You can therefore quickly filter the robots by selecting charts that display a smooth equity curve.

Maximum drawdown simply shows the maximum loss since the last high point. For example, a 50% drawdown means that at some point the robot lost 50% of the account value from its highest point. For example, if you opened a trading account with £10,000 and started to use this EA at the wrong time (just before the drawdown), you would have been subjected to a 50% loss of your capital from the start!

The average drawdown compares the EA's various drawdown amounts. For example, let's say that the expert advisor had 3 drawdowns, the first 10%, the second 4% and the third 12%. To calculate the average drawdown, you just need to add the three drawdowns and divide by three (10% + 4% + 12%) / 3 = 8.7%. The average drawdown is interesting to look at because it gives you an idea of what you can expect to lose during a drawdown period, while the maximum drawdown showed you the worst case.

Drawdown recovery is an indicator that measures the speed with which a trading system emerges from a period of drawdown (in time or in number of trades). As you can imagine, it is best to choose an EA that is able to quickly return to positive territory after a loss. However, a less volatile (and less risky) robot will recover from a drawdown in a slow and steady manner, unlike a riskier robot.

4) The risk-reward ratio

The risk-reward ratio indicates an Expert Advisor appetite for risk. An Expert Advisor that uses a 5-pip take profit and a 40-pip stop loss has a risk-reward ratio of 8:1. It therefore needs a success rate of at least 89% to be profitable.

Some EAs on the market - especially the ones that scalp - have a risk-reward ratio of 15:1 and higher, which indicates that it uses a very risky strategy. A high risk-reward ratio does not necessarily mean that the EA does not make money. An Expert Advisor with a 95% success rate will still be profitable with a 15:1 risk-reward ratio, but if that rate drops to 93%, the EA will lose.

Most EAs feature options that allow you to manage risk by adjusting the maximum SL and TP, which allows you to improve the risk-reward ratio. However, you need to make backtests before changing the settings to see if the changes do not affect the strategy.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST

MT5 FX ROBOT give you the best experience in using Forex Robot. MT5 FX ROBOT has a lot of uniqueness that you can not find it in others Forex Robot. 

MT5 FX ROBOT has numerous advantages as :

• You can verify the results by login into the trading terminal used for MT5 FX ROBOT with the investor password feature
• Programmed by experienced and well known forex robot coders.
• All the trading algorithms are following how an actual trader trades. His daily profits have been ranging from $10K to $100K every single day.
• Provides quality and different customer support options like e-mail, live chat support and skype. 
• You do not need any trading experience. However it is advisable that you must have basic trading knowledge on money/risk management if you wish to change those settings.

Forex Automatic Trading Robots - Things You Must Know Before Using Them

The popularity of forex automatic trading robots keeps increasing, in spite of the dubious returns generated by using them. If you’re interested in trading currencies, there’s more than a slight chance that at some point in your trading career you’ve considered buying one of the software advertised online as the greatest revolution in trading, the best robot that awes the pros and experts with its successes. There’s little merit to these ostentatious claims, but if you are intrigued by them, here are some things you must know before using or buying any of the forex automatic trading robots.

Forex robots are automated systems that enter trade orders in the place of a human trader. They are programmed to generate returns by the application of mathematical rules which are decided by their creators. In other words, the intelligence and skill of a forex robot is entirely dependant on its creator. The forex robots run the pre-programmed routine under all circumstances; they don’t change, revise, or adapt it to changing conditions in the market, but will attempt to cut losses based on the instructions provided to by the programmer.

The commands executed by the robot are based on the tools of technical analysis, but sophisticated programmers will also use back testing to optimize the results of their robots. This process can be automated itself, and involves tweaking of the program to ameliorate its performance with respect to maximum drawdown, the placing of stop-loss orders, and other aspects of money management.

What the programmers of these robots won’t tell you.

There are important problems with the logic behind the creation of the forex automatic trading robots, and the actual results generated by them. The first and obvious issue is the fact that the robots have never been tested in actual market conditions. In almost all cases, they are tested on historic data, and non-trade related problems, such as connectivity issues, or problems that originate from the broker which would not be reflected on market data, are ignored. For example, even the best robot will be useless if during some inevitable technical problem originating at your local ISP a brief blackout wipes out your account. Similarly, if, for whatever reason, spreads of your own broker widen to levels much greater than that prevailing in the vast majority of the market, even the best automated system will be useless. Only good money management methods, through the use of proper stop-loss orders, and preparation and willingness to admit and recognize losses can ensure survival against such periods.

The second issue is born of the fact that by using a forex automatic trading robot, you’re basically handing over the control of your finances to a machine that has no brain. It is programmed to run according to a set of rules at all times, and has no ability to adapt itself to changing circumstances, regardless of the severity and importance of the changes in question. This is perhaps the most important disadvantage of using a robot in the forex market where change is the only constant.

Finally, and in relation to the above, we should remember that the robots are only as smart as their creators. Do you really believe that the peddler selling you the robot is a market-busting genius at the level of a Warren Buffet, or George Soros, who, after all, have had their own fair share of disastrous trades over the years? If you don’t think that the peddler is that smart, then why do you expect rules written by him to beat the markets in a way that even the best traders with proven records have never been able to do?

Conclusion: What to seek in a forex robot?

We do not advise that you purchase any forex robot, since trading by using them, without understanding and knowing what you’re doing goes against all the basic principles of a successful trading career. The only kind of forex robot useful for you would be one which you could use to automate your own trading strategy, or one that you understand and are confident about, having examined the inner mechanism, and design of it. When you buy a forex automatic trading robot, you know close to nothing about why and how it performs, since even their creators don’t know why the particular combination on the basis of which the robot is operating is supposed to be creating good returns in the markets.

On the other hand, if you create your technical scheme and want to automate it, there’s nothing wrong with purchasing a forex API pack from a forex broker or API developer and using it for that purpose. But many of us lack the confidence and the experience necessary for creating and customizing these tools ourselves, which is why the robots are so popular on the market these days, advertised by extravagant claims, and hyperbole.

In short, the forex automatic trading robot is an alluring, great idea that promises a lot, but delivers little due to the random nature of price action in the financial markets. If in spite of all the information in this article you still have confidence that some of the robots out there deliver the incredible returns promised by their creators, consider the obvious. If the owners of these systems have achieved the Holy Grail of trading, why would they peddle it to you online for meager sums? They would not even need to advertise them, as financial institutions all over the world would compete with each other to acquire these products from them. Instead, large firms and broker ignore the robots and creators. Why won’t you do the same?

LAST BUT NOT LEAST

MT5 FX ROBOT give you the best experience in using Forex Robot. MT5 FX ROBOT has a lot of uniqueness that you can not find it in others Forex Robot. 

MT5 FX ROBOT has numerous advantages as :

• You can verify the results by login into the trading terminal used for MT5 FX ROBOT with the investor password feature
• Programmed by experienced and well known forex robot coders.
• All the trading algorithms are following how an actual trader trades. His daily profits have been ranging from $10K to $100K every single day.
• Provides quality and different customer support options like e-mail, live chat support and skype. 
• You do not need any trading experience. However it is advisable that you must have basic trading knowledge on money/risk management if you wish to change those settings.

5 Forex Beginner Tips That Will Save Your Money

                                                                                  

Forex Beginner Tip 1. Money Management

The 5 forex trading tips listed below are mentioned throughout this book. That's because even though they can't guarantee success ― nothing ever can, otherwise everybody would be successful ― they can save you a lot of money. Experience shows that many beginning forex traders bleed money mainly because they fail to follow the next five principles:

Rule number 1 for every forex trader is to survive. Every trader has losing trades, but when you go broke you can put yourself in a position where you can no longer have winning trades. Therefore, before everytying else you have to make sure you stay in the game.

Many beginning and/or consistently losing traders focus exclusively on having a profitable trading strategy. But even though a good trading strategy is definitely important, using solid money management and having a rational, disciplined trading attitude will get you further at the end of the day.

Two rules of thumb for good money management are not to risk more than 3% of your trading capital per trade and making sure you have enough trading capital for at least 40 trades when you are a beginner.

Forex Beginner Tip 2. Always use a stop loss

The stop loss is perhaps the most powerful weapon in your arsenal as a forex trader, just as the most powerful weapon of the professional poker player is the fold (if that means anything to you). The stop loss allows you to predetermine your risk down to the pip, therefore ALWAYS use it!

There are really only advantages to putting in a stop loss. It forces you to think about when the trade you're about to put on would be considered a failure. After you've opened the position you might talk yourself into staying in a trade going bad, using all kinds of irrational excuses. But if you've set a stop loss before opening the trade (when you were still thinking rationally) you'll always have that shining beacon, reminding you that you'd be a weak, emotional idiot if you stayed in the trade after the stop loss is triggered.

Setting a stop loss also forces you to think about your profitable trades/losing trades ratio. Suppose you want to risk 50 pips to win 100 pips, that would mean you'd need a winning trade at least 33% of the time to break even. Does your trading strategy get you a profitable trade 33% of the time?

Another advantage of the stop loss is that you don't have to be afraid that one badly chosen trade will kill your whole account in case the trade goes bad and for some reason you're not in a position to close it manually. So remember to always put in a stop loss and never move it further away after opening the trade.

Forex Beginner Tip 3. Be realistic

Unless you are amazingly lucky you can't expect to close 80% of your trades profitably or turn a $500 trading capital into a $10,000 trading capital in six months. With those kind of expectations you're simply setting yourself up for disappointment, frustration and failure. (unless you're very, very lucky).

Try to look at things realistically right from the start. Determine an attainable percentage of winning trades considering your strategy and experience. Ask yourself how much time you can spend on trading and learning. When you have a clear view of your trading tools and conditions, you will find it much easier to work towards a profitable trading strategy.

For example, suppose you're a day trader with a trading strategy where you risk, on average, 15 pips to win 30. After doing about 200 trades, it turns out that 50% of your trades reached their profit target of 30 pips; the other 50% of the trades went sour and triggered your stop loss. So you've won 100 x 30 pips = 3,000 pips and lost 100 x 15 pips = 1,500 pips, for a gross revenue of 1.500 pips total. Gross revenue, because you still have to deduct the spread, i.e. the transaction cost you pay your broker, remember? Let's say the spread is 2 pips per position, meaning your 200 trades costed you 400 pips. Your net revenue then, was 1.100 pips over 200 trades, or 5.5 pips per trade.

Of course data on 200 trades isn't enough yet to be of statistical significance, but at least it would give you something to work with: on average, each trade nets you 5,5 pips.

Forex Beginner Tip 4. Interact with other traders

For beginning traders an often overlooked source of information is other traders. Of course, reading books about forex is important. Books can provide you with a solid basis in a short time, providing a foundation to build on.

Practicing is another important factor to get the hang of things quickly, but you'd be surprised to find out how often fellow traders can give you valuable feedback about your trading strategy, or about alternative ways for putting on a particular trade. You should therefore become part of an online forex community and consider starting a trading blog, so people can comment on your strategy.

Don't be embarrassed because you're a beginner; remember that we all started out as beginners at some point, and many of the traders you'll meet on online trading forums are also just starting out.

Forex Beginner Tip 5.Keep your emotions under control

This last trading tip is perhaps the most important one. As previously said, trading on the forex is exciting, fun and dynamic, but it's crucial not to get carried away because of this. Successful traders approach trading like a business, not a hobby.

You use your trading capital to make business decisions; some will make you money, others will cost money, it's that simple. But as soon as you lose sight of your rationality I promise you that the losses will stack up pretty quickly.

I'm talking about those moments that you do move your stop loss, because you just can't get yourself to take the hit. Or those moments that you decide to get in right now, even though your trading plan tells you to wait, because you're so scared to miss the trade, or perhaps you're just bored. Those moments that you're so mad that you lost 10 trades in a row that you start trading with triple your normal risk, taking positions in currency pairs you normally never trade in.

Those are the moments you lose in 30 minutes what it took you three weeks to build up.

Times to Trade

Trading the OTC (over the counter) currency markets offers an opportunity to hedge stock and bond investing, but really is more of a traded market following the ebbs and flows of global commerce than it is an investment arena to plan retirement from. Getting to know six major currency pairs would seem an easy task when compared to the tens of thousands of stock and bond options available for analysis.

Forex trade is not all about how each currency will move against the Usd, just as important is knowing when the market will have momentum, because that is key to not getting caught in reversals and snap-backs whilst leveraged at 100:1.

Setting times to trade really does make a lot of sense with the near-term view that forex valuations carry, and the fact that each 24 hour period has to absorb three regional commercial market's trade, in Asian, Europe and the U.S.

There are three main forex moving times that regularly garner attention, and therefore offer an ability to move prices with momentum. They are the 2am EDT German Dax futures market getting underway, the 6-7am EDT London gold/oil fixings and LIBOR rates being set, and the 11am EDT European market close.

Outside of that, the return from lunch in Japan between 11pm EDT and midnight, and the closing of the NYMEX markets at 2.30 pm EDT really are the only other times that prices move substantially and then hold.

At the end of the U.S. session the pattern is for Asian markets to try and initially reverse U.S. trade direction, although the lack of volume tends to soon allow pairs to find and hold support areas. The European markets tend to move in the same direction as Asian trade, and then Chicago based futures movement will try to reverse things back in the direction of where the U.S. previously closed, and re-set their books as the London fixings are placed between 5-6am EDT.

At 10:30am GMT in London, telephone bids for the gold and oil fixings take place, something that sets the morning clearing prices for bullion and crude dealers that (are then adjust once again at 3.30pm GMT). At 11am GMT each day in London the British Bankers Association set the inter-bank LIBOR rates, something that sets the tone for lending rates between financial market participants.

The London fixings tend to force Chicago based futures markets into a re-alignment program at 06:00 EDT that replicates the newly set fair values on oil, gold, and lending rates, and by default tends to then impact Usd based currency values. It is rare for the U.S. not to push back each morning and reverse the pattern of forex trade that came before, especially if a sizeable move has happened in overnight forex trade.

Forex traders really need to know what is going to trigger the technical set-ups, and therefore be prepared to ride momentum while it lasts, and to cap expectancy and exposure in things are moving against the near-term trend. In the trading forex arena there are different things to look for than in the equity and bond investment world; a week in forex absorb fifteen regional equity market moves, and all of which are movinmg for varying commercial regions, and using foreign exchange to hedge commitments, repatriate overseas profits, align reserve values, and garner swap interest.

The European and NYMEX close (11am EDT and 2.30 pm EDT are the U.S. based things to get out of the way, because then, maybe, the equity markets can reveal where they really want to go, and by default send the Usd in the opposite direction. Traders looking for moves outside of 2am, 6am, 11am, and maybe 2:30 EDT, may just find themselves sitting and waiting, wondering why they just bought the high of the day that then reversed.

Try it out, take a look at a volume study in forex futures, or look at the longest daily 30 minute candles, and see on average what time they hit. Then look at the times that nothing happens. That is not luck, it is the forex market tagging along, following the ebbs and flows of global commercial trade.

As the global economy travels trades its way out of the business cycle trough phase, the leaning is towards looking at S&P futures trade to confirm near-term sentiment, and risk tolerance. The speculators are never too far away from the S&P in times of fear; either selling into the fear of loss, or buying into the fear of missing profits. That is the reason for so much near-term volatility, and that is how things will stay until signs of GDP expansion are seen globally.

Until then it seems that the 24 hour a day S&P futures trade will set up the eight hour S&P cash market for currency traders to monitor, that will be followed by the S&P futures market tracking the 16 hours of Asian and European activity. Forex will follow that equity trend, at least until interest rates start to rise globally, and economic expansion takes place. At that time interest rate differentials will take over the valuation of forex pairs, to the greater degree.

5 Advantages of Using a Forex Expert Advisor

If one of your forex goals for the year is to work with an expert advisor or a trading robot (Hey, that’s me!), then let me help you out by outlining the main advantages in doing so. Let me remind you though that this trading strategy requires a bit more knowledge, experience, and research so make sure you do your homework before running an EA.

1. It can trade while you sleep!

Even though the forex market is open 24 hours a day, humans like you can’t possibly stay up all day and night throughout the trading week just to keep track of price action the entire time. Well, that could be doable with copious amounts of coffee and energy drinks, but that ain’t healthy at all!
A forex robot, on the other hand, can be programmed to watch market movements without the need to rest or even take pee breaks. It simply follows a set of rules based on technical indicators or price action and can execute trades automatically. For a lot of forex traders who’d like to profit from market movements during a particular trading session but are stuck in a different time zone, using an expert advisor means that they don’t need to worry about trading sleep for pips.

2. It is not vulnerable to emotions.

Every forex trader out there has probably grappled with either greed or the fear of losing at some point. Human emotions can cloud decision-making sometimes and can lead a trader to deviate from a tried-and-tested strategy.
What sets trading robots apart from human forex traders is that we don’t have any emotional components at all. Expert advisors are wired to stick to system commands and take valid trade signals, without feeling pain from losses or joy from wins.

3. You can run backtests quickly.

Another advantage of having an expert advisor is the ease of conducting backtests, particularly on an MT4 platform. In fact, I’ve written a short tutorial on how to backtest and EA on MT4 and you’d be surprised to know that it just takes a few clicks to see how a system fared over several years!

4. It reacts to quick market movements instantly.

While humans take a few seconds or longer to digest market information and figure out how to react to price movements, a forex robot can react instantly and execute a trade faster than a blink of an eye. This can be beneficial for day traders who are looking to profit from quick price moves based on 1-minute or 5-minute charts.
Expert advisors can also book profits or cut losses without second-guessing. As Dr. Pipslow often discusses in his Pipsychology articles, the decision to exit early can sometimes be difficult to make, as it can involve either leaving profits on the table or realizing small losses.

5. It isn’t prone to human error.

Aside from having emotions interfere with making trading decisions, being human also entails making mistakes. This can be in the form of making wrong calculations in position-sizing (gasp) or entering an extra zero in the trade lot size (double gasp) – errors that can be avoided when using a forex robot.
Of course this isn’t to say that humans are inferior to robots… not at all! You guys created us! I’m just suggesting that, with a bit of programming knowledge and hard work, human forex traders can be able to automate their trading strategies and possibly ramp up their profit potential.