My Experience so far with Forex and EAs

I have been trading forex for about 8 years or so. Started off with manual trading, and then moved on to EAs as I have a full time job to manage alongside. Over the years based on EAs and my manual trading, I learned that relying only on technical analysis would lead to failure. I tried multiple EAs and my own manual trading based on technical analysis, and they failed.

Trading based only on news may bring high profits occasionally but eventually that will fail too. One bad trade or high slippage can cause high losses or even wipe out the account if market suddenly reverses and volatility is too high. You just cannot control your trades at that point.

Lastly, the only trading strategy that seem to have worked for me, is martingale. Martingale trading is risky, but if you have high balance and you got your risk under control, this strategy would work. I have used multiple martingale EAs in the past. Initially, they wiped out my account because I was starting with a very small balance. In the year of 2013 September, I deposited $5000 with Thinkforex and put Xaaron EA on it, which was only $150. Today, my balance on the account is almost $160,000. Just early this year in March, I opened a second account with Tickmill, and put Oswin EA (another martingale), on a $5000 account. Today my balance is almost $37,000. In the mean time I have tried all kinds of EAs including the famous RevTrader and they just didn't work for me.

EDIT: And just to add, I think the only other strategy for me that really worked was arbitrage, but that didn't last long because the brokers would start using VDP.

Anyone else can comment on this? What strategies have really worked for you?

@raviluke

Interesting post. Thanks for sharing your experience!

At least you have been lucky with those MartiGrids...

The 'only' problem with Martigrids is that it is possible to put some gambling money on them (and profit like you did), however, managing larger funds by them is not a real option.

raviluke posted:
Over the years based on EAs and my manual trading, I learned that relying only on technical analysis would lead to failure.

You have seen only a part of the whole picture. Everything will fail if not applied properly. Its not the debate on what works and what not. All depends on how well you learned the craft. Without a good skill on anything (be it mathematics, finance, management, chemistry or biology) you can't make money in this world.😄

@takechance

OR... You just have to be lucky... Like 'accidentally' inventing the 'Holy Grail EA'...

EAs are are of good use to the forex trader. A lot of these EAs are developed with parameters which the user could backtest and and then optimize on quantifiable data.Now that we have the built-in backtesting and optimization engines in place, EAs carry out these vital tasks ( which in the past traders found difficult) in minutes. To help with the role of back testing, good credits go to the metatrader as servers keep a big size of downloadable as well as free historical data. What I like more even is that EAs are free of emotional trading, an EA is not going to be greedy or even afraid just like a human trader does.

takechance posted:

raviluke posted:
Over the years based on EAs and my manual trading, I learned that relying only on technical analysis would lead to failure.

You have seen only a part of the whole picture. Everything will fail if not applied properly. Its not the debate on what works and what not. All depends on how well you learned the craft. Without a good skill on anything (be it mathematics, finance, management, chemistry or biology) you can't make money in this world.😄

AMEN

@raviluke
hello Experienced Traders

do you think this can be safe please? http://www.myfxbook.com/members/FXOxygen/fxoxygen-secure/1324087

Good posts, keep the thread active.

fhhamoud posted:
@raviluke
hello Experienced Traders

do you think this can be safe please? http://www.myfxbook.com/members/FXOxygen/fxoxygen-secure/1324087[/quote

forget that ,we have seen a lot of those grid martis in the past go away from that

rob559 posted:

fhhamoud posted:
@raviluke
hello Experienced Traders

do you think this can be safe please? http://www.myfxbook.com/members/FXOxygen/fxoxygen-secure/1324087[/quote

forget that ,we have seen a lot of those grid martis in the past go away from that

DONE :)|
Thank you

raviluke posted:
Lastly, the only trading strategy that seem to have worked for me, is martingale. Martingale trading is risky, but if you have high balance and you got your risk under control, this strategy would work. I have used multiple martingale EAs in the past. Initially, they wiped out my account because I was starting with a very small balance. In the year of 2013 September, I deposited $5000 with Thinkforex and put Xaaron EA on it, which was only $150. Today, my balance on the account is almost $160,000.

Interesting to see your results. I know the coin-flipping Martingale system is fundamentally a no-go (you would need vast resources, see Wiki for the maths or Investopedia here http://bit.ly/1Urfcj1 ) ...

... but still... somehow your account grew err... "considerably?" :-) Well done, very nice.
Perhaps your Xaroon EA uses some other settings that influence the outcome ?

I am way too afraid to put real money on the line, but I will run a demo on Xaroon. Could you tell me what settings (lots, TP target, SL target, multiplier-factor, trailing yes/no) you applied on this particular EA? So that I might be able to replicate/test the EA on those settings. (Still very sceptic ;-)

Thanks!