Hi,

I haven't backtested the EA myself to see if or where it fails. At this stage it's only in forward test and, provided it shows some potential after the first 30 days, I'll analyse it in greater detail at that point in time and review it on MellyForex.

You can read a little more about my Money Printer forward test on this link:

http://www.mellyforex.com/reviews/item/2011-10/forexbody-money-printer-ea---expert-advisor-in-forward-test

Otherwise, I'm afraid that I can't tell you any more about the EA. If you say it fails its backtests, then I've got no reason whatsoever to disbelieve you and I would say words to that effect within my article if I were to review it fully on MellyForex in the future. I'm quite happy to call a spade a spade.

For what it's worth, I personally wouldn't consider running any EA on a live account until after the 10 year backtests have been run through AND those backtests were profitable AND I'd carried out some risk simulations on the backtests including Monte Carlo AND it had been running in demo for at least 3 months AND it had shown profitability in that demo forward test.

No problem. I did notice in my version that users can set a limit to the number of open trades at any one time (default = 3 for each strategy in each direction) and I would guess that this plays an important part in limiting the amount of margin being used and helping to keep the EA out of trouble. Even with a full set of open trades, my demo account isn't under any margin pressure whatsoever.

I'm very reluctant to recommend one particular EA over another because I've no idea what sort of trading style you prefer. For instance, you get EAs which are scalpers which can either work 24/5 or they may only work for a couple of hours a day. Similarly, you get trend following EAs, swing traders, grid traders and other types too. Different EAs will offer varying win rates, varying risk/reward ratios, varying SL/TP levels. Some will only work on one or two symbols, others will work on many symbols. Some will only stay in trades for a short while, others will stay in their trades for days on end.

The one thing that I've learned is that if you have 20 different people in a room and you ask them what they want from an EA, you'll probably get 20 different answers. I don't know what you're looking for exactly, so I can't provide the answer.

For what it's worth, I believe the key to success in this business is to use a portfolio of several EAs. That way, you can spread the risk and, hopefully, the different systems will all under- and over-perform at different times resulting in a smoother overall balance curve.

If you check out my EA leaderboard:

http://www.mellyforex.com/live/

Nearly all of the top 8 or 9 EAs in the leaderboard are good (in my opinion), but they all do different things and will perform well at different times to each other. There are also some EAs which are good, but which are currently running at a loss on my leaderboard. I do expect some will recover and this highlights my point about using a portfolio of systems to spread/balance the risk. Most of those top EAs have been reviewed and you can use the site search to locate the relevant articles.

Sorry if that's not the answer you were looking for.

joegathu posted:
Hi Melly.

Which version of forex body are you currently testing on this demo account?


Hi Joe,

It's 4.11.0.

SeeMe123 posted:
Hi Melly,

Firstly I love the site, great work you are doing.

Secondly what are your initial impressions of this EA?

Thirdly are you using the default settings? If no what have you changed?

Thanks

Alex


Hi Alex,

Thanks for the kind words.

The problem with the EA is that it can carry a large open drawdown which can exceed the profit it's already banked. So far, the open drawdown has peaked at around 75%. When you look at an MT4 statement, all of the statistics only reflect the closed trades and look very, very impressive indeed. It's very easy to neglect the negative impact of the open drawdown. For instance, the closed trade relative drawdown has so far only been 1.28% which is a far cry from the 75% open drawdown that I mention.

That said, I may be compounding the open drawdown problem because the EA is trading on an FXCC account where the minimum lot size is 0.1 lots which is a bit too high for this EA on a $5k account. Microlots would certainly be better for this size account in terms of safety. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the EA survives its over-trading so that the equity can climb back up closer towards the balance.

Regarding settings, there are around 700 external parameters. The EA came with a preset file, so I used that. I'd never have sufficient time to go through all of the individual settings.

My only other observation is that I was under the impression that the EA limited the number of open trades at any one time, but it seems to have already exceeded the setting which has been a contributory factor in its over-trading. If I do decide to review the EA at a later date, that's something I would need to look at in closer detail.