FOREX NEWBIE

Intro #5 - Improving Your Success

noreply@blogger.com (PieterSA) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 22:13:00 +0000

Lastly, in this Introductory Guide, I’m going to discuss some of the tools, services & resources that are available to you and will help you take your trading to the next level. Knowledge is power these resources help to ensure that you are geared-up to improve your success with Forex trading. I strongly suggest that you take full advantage of every possible resource to get you ahead of the crowd and help you take full control of your trading. Making careful, conscious & informed decisions are what turns your Forex trading from risky gambling into a safe, profitable investment. These resources are some of the things that will assist you in achieving that!

So let’s have a look at some of the things that I consider to be essential parts of my trading strategy:

1. Virtual Private Server

To ensure that your Expert Advisor (EA) is active and online, you need a dedicated computer with a live internet connection. If you don’t have a dedicated trading desk at home or work I would strongly suggest that you look into subscribing to a Forex VPS service.

What is a VPS?

A Virtual Private Server is a dedicated server that runs in a virtual environment on a powerful machine that can host hundreds of these “Virtual Servers”. Each person that uses the service get’s their own personal “server” that is permanently connected to the internet and “always on”. Remember that your EAs need constant access to the internet when they trade and I would highly recommend you subscribe to such a service or alternatively choose a Broker that gives you VPS access for free, as discussed in my previous article in this Introductory Guide (Step #4: Brokers Reviewed).

Some of the benefits of a VPS:

Live 24/7, 365 days a year so you don’t need to worry about having a computer with a live internet connection. Your EA is live all the time to allow it to monitor the markets and trade when the time is right.
Have a fast internet connection, so if you run multiple MT4 platforms, all your EAs can trade and they won’t clog up your internet connection and “block” each other from trading because of a slow connection. Also you don’t need to worry about it using up all your bandwidth if you have a monthly limit (Cap) on the amount of traffic transferred on your internet connection.
You can easily access your VPS from anywhere in the world using Windows (Remote Desktop), Apple Mac or Linux. When you login, you see a desktop, not unlike your own computer’s desktop.
You can transfer files to and from your VPS, usually using a web service like Parallels Power Panel.
You have full control over what you install on your VPS. I would recommend though to keep your VPS clean and only install Forex software. Also don't do Windows Updates and don't install virus software. The service provider will do updates for you and do a virus scan on a regular basis.
You can run multiple MT4 platforms and multiple EAs
When the VPS gets re-booted your MT4 platforms will automatically start up and continue trading! Although the service providers only do maintenance over week-ends when the Forex is down, you might need to restart your server for whatever reason.
The service provider will do regular security updates, virus scans and also back-up your VPS so that you don’t loose any files/settings in case something goes wrong. If you mistakenly delete files you can ask them to restore the previous days’ backup and you’re good to go!
Everything is included in an affordable monthly fee and there’s no start-up fee. Installation assistance and free support is also included in the monthly fee.
*** Make sure that when you subscribe to a VPS Service you get all these benefits!

Each MetaTrader 4 instance you run uses a certain amount of memory. If you get a VPS that gives you, say, 512MB (MegaBytes) memory you can run as many as 15 MT4 platforms! A warning though: Some EAs require more memory and you should check your memory usage by opening Windows Task Manager and monitor how much memory you have available when they are all running. If there’s less than 100MB available, you should be careful because you might run out of memory and your MT4 might crash! Also it’s very important that you don’t do back-tests on your VPS. Do that on your own computer at home as the back-testing uses huge amounts of memory. If you only have 1 (maybe 2) MT4 platforms running on your VPS, then you could do back-tests. Always close & re-open MT4 after doing back-testing. That will free up all the memory used for back-testing. I would also recommend that you restart your VPS (or all your MT4 platforms) once a week to free up some memory. If you don’t have a computer at home and need to do back-testing while running several MT4 platforms, you might want to choose a bigger VPS package that gives you more memory. This could become expensive though…

There are various services on the internet that offers you a wide range of options for having your own server. Options include various sizes of storage space, monthly bandwidth (amount of traffic that can transfer to and from your server), Memory (RAM) etc.

Let’s look at two of them that I personally would recommend (Remember you don’t need these if you choose a Broker that offer free VPS services)

ForexVPS

At ForexVPS all packages are ready for Forex Trading right out of the box.
They pre-install MetaTrader 4 but you can install as many additions as you like.
Each VPS includes full Administrator access via RDP (Remote Desktop) giving you complete control over installation of Forex trading and/or any other programs, configuring websites, etc.
Their goal is to provide each customer with the most stable platform available allowing you to focus on making trades, and never having to worry about your network, operating system or connectivity.
All VPS packages come with a control panel (Parallels Power Panel).
24/7/365 Support.
Windows® Server 2003 Edition.
Packages starting from $35/month.
*** I use ForexVPS and I currently have 8 MT4 platforms running on their starter package. You can easily run double that amount though because they give you 768MB RAM.
*** I recently had an incident where I ran a Windows Update on my VPS (At the time I didn't know that I shouldn't do that because the service provider do this for you on a file-system level.) Anyway I screwed-up my whole VPS while there were trades open! Also I had 12 MT4 platforms installed & configured, 8 of them were running at the time and my VPS had to be re-installed! It would have taken me a week to re-install, setup and configure everything again. The friendly folks at ForexVPS worked over-time though and re-installed my VPS and restored my installations and settings in a few hours. I lost some money on the open trades, on demo accounts though (luckily...) The support team at ForexVPS gave me great service! I learned a big lesson though and when I go live with real money I will never screw around with my VPS again, lemme tell you!

SWVPS

The most cost effective Virtual Private Server solutions available on the internet.
All Virtuozzo VPS packages come with a control panel option such as Plesk or Parallels Power Panel.
24/7 customer service.
For UK VPS, please visit their UK website or choose UK location during checkout when ordering.
Orders are setup within 1 - 24 hours depending on configuration and current work-load.
Superior performance.
Windows® Server 2003 Edition.
Packages starting from as low as $7.95/month! (You can only run 1 MT4 platform so I would suggest taking their WVPS-1 package, it gives you 512MB RAM and is only $18/month)

2. MT4Stats

MT4Stats.com is a great free service that allows you to publish your live trading stats from your MT4 platform and show it on a website. After registering at MT4Stats.com, set-up you MetaTrader platform to publish the stats to your MT4Stats service and you can immediately access your stats using an address like: fapturbodemo.mt4stats.com. MT4Stats.com provides you with a full guide on how to do this.

The service also gives you a breakdown of what currency pairs performed the best and what your win/loss ratio is as well as avg. per win / avg. per loss, total wins / total losses, etc. This is great for analysing your EAs’ performance.

3. Advanced Performance Analysis

To be a successful auto-trader you need to constantly monitor your EA performance, especially while still testing it on a demo account. To take your systems analysis to the next level you can use an Excel spreadsheet to calculate the different stats for you automatically. You can then copy & paste your trades from, let’s say, your MT4Stats page to the spreadsheet every day or week and everything gets calculated for you. I have created a spreadsheet that does this for you. You can modify it as you like and add other calculations, etc. This spreadsheet is still very basic and there are lots of things you can add to it. MT4Stats.com gives you a lot more stats tha this spreadsheet, but it might be a good idea to have something like this where you keep a record of your trades & stats offline on your computer. I'll be improving on this basic one and post any additions/changes here for you to download.

After filling in a few fields (Initial account deposit, start date and amount of days traded) you can copy & past your trades into the spreadsheet, and it will calculate the following:

Non-trading days (To get an idea of how many overall days the system has traded so far compared to non-trading days).
Total wins in $
Total losses in $
Total profit in $
Total transactions.
Total number of winning trades.
Total number of losing trades.
Avg. amount per winning trade.
Avg. amount per losing trade.
Percentage Winning Trades.
Average % Return-on-investment (ROI) Per Month.
All-Time % ROI.
System Performance Expectation.
Projected income/returns for the next 3 years (broken down per month) according to current performance.

On the bottom tabs (or worksheets), you’ll see 3 worksheets that are named: Trades, Performance Analysis and Projected Income. You paste your trades into the “Trades “ worksheet and the stats get calculated on the other worksheets.

Like my EA settings, this spreadsheet is provided to you free of charge, all I ask is for you to register on my Blog for free at the top of the blog sidebar. Once registered, I will give you access to my new "members-only" blog where you can get the password for the spreadsheet as well as see my strategies & settings for my EAs. Please allow me a few hours to enable access, as I currently have to do this manually. You will receive an email where you have to click on the activation link, which will then take you to the new members' blog. I ask this small favour because I want to get an idea of how many people are actually downloading my resources and requesting my EA settings.

Get Trades Analyser Now

Unfortunately it turns out that my "members-only" blog only allows access to people with Google accounts. If you don't have a Google account, you can still register and then post a request comment at the bottom of the article and I will email you your requested password/strategies/settings/etc. In the next month-or-so I will have a new members website, that will ensure a much better experience for you.

System Expectation is very valuable to know. It tells you that for each dollar you invest, you will get x amount of dollars back in a few months. Let’s look at an example: If, after 50 trades, your systems’ Expectation is 0 it means that your EA did not make any money, and also not lose any money, your win/loss ratio is the same… Your account balance will still be the deposit amount. If it’s 0.1 it means you made a slight profit. A good Expectation is around 1.5 to 2, meaning that for every $1 you invest you’ll get an additional $1.5 to $2 back over a few months. An expectation of 1 means 100% profit. If your system’s Expectation is less than 1 after 50 trades, change your strategy, broker or consider getting a refund and go for another EA. If it’s more than that, great stuff, keep your EA! My current Expectation on my FapTurbo account (after 84 trades) is 1.82

Expectation can be calculated by using the following formula:

Expectation = (% Win X AvgWin) - (% Loss X AvgLoss)

Where:

% Win = percentage of trades that are winning trades
% Loss = percentage of trades that are losing trades
AvgWin = average amount per win
AvgLoss = average amount per loss

4. Forex Calendar

For some EAs, especially FapTurbo, it might be a good idea to disable your EA over public holidays. You only need to switch it off on the currency pairs that might be affected by the holiday. For example, if there is a holiday on a certain day in the USA, switch your EA off on the specific chart(s) where one of the currencies in the pair is USD.

To switch off your EA for a specific chart only: Right click on the chart, point to “Expert Advisors” and click on “Properties”. On the pop-up window that opens, click on the “Common” tab at the top and un-check “Allow Live Trading”. The next day you can enable it again by checking the “Allow Live Trading” setting.

By doing this you might miss potential wins but also avoid potential big losses. The benefit of avoiding these losses far outweighs the possibility of getting a winning trade.

A good source for getting International holiday dates is: FXStreet Economic Calendar. * Please note that when you open this page, you might see an ad that completely hides the pages you're trying to see, just close the ad by clicking on the "X" at the top-right hand side of the ad frame. You should then see the Bank Holidays page.

* The same strategy can be applied to large news events, especially at the end of each month. When you become more of an advanced trader and have enough time, you can regularly check the Forex Calendar to see when there will be large news announcements and also switch your EA off on these days. Forex MegaDroid, for example, is configured to automatically not place any trades at the end of the month for this specific reason.

5. Trading Psychology

This is one of the most important parts to becoming a successful auto-trader. The right mindset will help you achieve anything!

I had a couple of big losing trades recently and I thought it would be fitting to write a short piece about it... Some losers were caused by me fiddling around and some by my EA & market conditions. Given that I'm only on Demo accounts you can say that I should ignore the losing trades where I fiddled because I won't do that on a live account, but if you are realistic about it, it could happen in a live (real money) scenario. We are human beings and will always make mistakes here and there.

Having said that, there will always be large losing trades from time to time. If it happens to you early-on it when you’re just getting started, it might scare you, where if it happens after you have built up your portfolio for several months, it might just be a little blip on the screen. Either way you need to accept the fact that there will be the occasional "big losers". Fortunately with systems like FapTurbo, Forex MegaDroid & IvyBot (and many others), your account balance will be restored in no time and you're on your way to generate more profit. The winning trades will, over time, always come up top and ensure that you have constant growth on your account.

If we take a scenario where we estimate that there will be 1 big loser every month and a certain amount of winning trades every month, we come up with an average amount of profit per month. If we are very conservative we could say that our EA will make an average profit of about 10% per month. Less conservative trading strategies could give us up to 100% profit on average a month (you need a large account balance for this though...). But in the end even if you get an average of 5% profit a month it is still a much better investment than about any other investment I can think of!

I think the key point here is not to get greedy and to build up your portfolio slowly, starting with very conservative risk (maybe 0.1 - 0.5% of your account size per transaction) and working your way up over several months as you become more comfortable with your EA and your account size grows to larger sizes. I would recommend that you never risk more than 5% of your account balance per trade though. Going higher than this is playing with fire and could cause you to become more and more greedy. Obviously if your EA has proven itself over - let’s say - a year, you can go higher if you are sure of what you’re doing.

I have learned that even the best auto-traders get big losses on their accounts but they understand that it's all part of the game and if you're patient enough you'll be amazed at your profits in a few years (or even several months).

I want to mention here that there are ways to minimise the large losing trades on your live, real money, account by studying the news and announcement dates and holidays. When you get accustomed to this you will know when to switch your EA off on the days that the markets will be influenced in ways that will affect your EAs' performance negatively. I have not yet acquired this research skill but when I go live with real cash I will surely do this because it will be my money and I'll be much more careful with it.

Because it's almost impossible to stop large losses from happening at all, it's important to make peace with the fact that it will happen. Don't get frustrated or angry and lose confidence, you need to keep going. As long as, over time, your overall EA performance is good, make peace with the losing trades and don't have sleepless nights over them :))

Conclusion

I hope this guide provided you with a good, solid base-level to start from. Nothing will be more satisfying than hearing that this guide provided enough information to eventually turn you into a successful auto-trader!

To all your Forex trading success!

Pieter Smit,
Forex Newbie

I encourage you to post comments, with your help we can find the best systems out there. If you liked this article, Digg, Buzz or Tweet it!

Forex Megadroid

noreply@blogger.com (PieterSA) — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 21:17:00 +0000

>> Updated: 15 Sept 2009

Today we’re going to take a look at Forex MegaDroid, a very popular Expert Advisor (EA) that is a fully automated trading bot.

The MegaDroid developers claim that this EA was developed as an Artificial Intelligence (AI) EA and although I’m not a big fan of fancy footwork and the hyped terms that these guys use I do think that it’s a somewhat relevant term used to explain the EA because of the highly accurate “prediction” of the short-term future movements of the market. They claim that MegaDroid has a success rate of more than 95%, come on, there’s no way! Or is there? So I decided to try it out after a lot of research and talking to some well respected traders.

MegaDroid, in its’ default setup and configuration, is a very slow trader and only makes a couple of trades a week, sometimes even skipping a week or two. It will not trade if market conditions are not matching what seems to be a very extensive and strict set of pre-defined rules, but because it’s so extremely accurate, you can set your risk settings and lot sizes quite a bit higher than most other EAs. There are also strategies that you can use to get it to make many more trades a week, and I will tell you how I did this in a short while.

MegaDroid really impressed me and I’m convinced that the developers really knew what they were doing when designing this system. What I especially like about this EA is that it trades in the similar timeframe as FapTurbo (the Asian session), it stays accurate and you don’t have to change your strategy/settings when market conditions change (which you need to do with most other EAs). It will simply not trade when these conditions are not right. MegaDroid is also configured to, by default, not trade on Fridays, Sundays, public holidays or at the end of each month, because those days are associated with higher risk. To me that's fine tough because the elimination of potential losses on htese days far outweighs the potential for getting a few winning trades and in the long run you'll see a huge positive difference in your account because of this safety feature.

Get MegaDroid Now

I have a $500 demo account with Alpari (UK) and I’m applying the same idea as with FapTurbo: Expert Advice. This time it’s in the form of a guide from Benjamin R. Cook called Advanced Droid Tactics (ADT). Applying his strategies (I use 4 x EURUSD 1HR (GMT +0, +2, +6, +8 on Alpari) I was so far able to get an incredible amount of trades compared to the standard 1-chart set-up, while at the same time reducing risk. My standard MegaDroid setup (1 chart, aggressive=true) that went live 18 Aug 2009 has only made 3 trades so far (I don't know if this is normal though...). MegaDroid with ADT has made 26 trades since 24 Aug, only 2 losses so far(which, by the way, was my fault as I'll explain below)!

You can see my live stats on my Blog sidebar. Just to explain my 2 losses: The -25.28 trade on 11 Sept: What happened here was that I crashed my VPS while a trade was open. I did some windows updates, which the support team clearly says you shouldn't do on their support page, but I was stupid enough to go do it and it took them some hours to restore my VPS to the state it was in before. When I logged back in, the trade had hit the Stop Loss and I felt like a real idiot because that trade now stands out like a sore eye on my stats! You can also discard the first transaction because I opened that one manually to initialise the ADT Profile Reset Tool to see if it works.

The ADT reset tool is an extra indicator you get, when joining the ADT website, that will reset your charts to make sure all trades are managed correctly across the 4 charts that you trade on (all being EUR/USD). You will definitely need this if you trade using the ADT system. I don't actually know what exactly the reset tool resets, but I know it works. I tried exactly the same set-up on another MT4 installation, without the reset tool and there were very few trades... I'll try to find out what it does and update this article.

Coming back to ADT though, I've had a 100% winning rate with the Hybrid strategy so far! Amazing...

While MegaDroid itself comes highly recommended, I think ADT is a must have add-on if you’re serious about increasing your trading frequency, while decreasing overall risk. The ADT strategies will turn MegaDroid into a trading monster and it will more than pay for itself as well as MegaDroid in less than two months even if you start with an initial deposit of $500 on your broker account, so just go for it! I think they'll only sell a limited amount of copies of the ADT strategy, so make sure you get in while there’s room for new customers. The price is $39.95, which for me is a huge bargain considering the incredible benefits that come with this system. You will also have unlimited support and receive free updates when they are released. Once I’ve come-up with my own version of this system, I’ll be sharing my strategies & settings with you for free. But for now I recommend just buying it. It really is worth it!

Get Advanced Droid Tactics Now

As I said before I strongly believe that MegaDroid was developed by real Forex gurus just because of the extremely high accuracy rate. It takes a lot of skill to develop an EA of this calibre and it trades as if it's making informed decisions and predicts the immediate future of the market with uncanny accuracy. It’s a very strong contender to FapTurbo and these two EAs are my top recommendations so far.

MegaDroid is a patient trader and grows your account steadily over time. I'm using very conservative settings but this EA is so good you can really bump-up your risk settings higher than what I'm using. Remember though that the best EAs are systems that make smaller, less-frequent trades that grow your account consistently over time. It makes them predictable and manageable and you can anticipate what your account size will be a year or two from now. That makes it a long term investment rather than a get rich quick gamble (the house always wins!).

Now I'll be honest with you: I didn’t even consider purchasing MegaDroid when it was released. I saw many ads and thought it was just another phony EA with a fancy name, but after seeing for myself how this system performs there’s no going back for me. I've now decided to go live with MegaDroid and will keep you posted once my two live accounts are running (The first one with FapTurbo and the second one with MegaDroid)

Get MegaDroid Now

I encourage you to post comments, with your help we can find the best systems out there. If you liked this article, Digg, Buzz or Tweet it!

Intro #1 - Quick Start Guide

noreply@blogger.com (PieterSA) — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 18:12:00 +0000

>> Updated: 16 Sept 2009

Welcome to my Blog, FOREX NEWBIE! If you are a beginning Forex trader and need a jump-start to get you going and be successful, this Blog is aimed at providing you with enough information to do so. I will be sharing my experiences with you and hopefully help you make the right decisions in your quest for success with Forex trading!

This introductory page will enable you to easily find your way around my Blog and get you going in no time! So let's take a quick look at the structure of my Blog:

Title Bar

"FOREX NEWBIE: The Quest For The Best Auto Trading Systems". My mission statement. You can click on the title bar to go to the latest article posted on this blog.

Menu Bar

Located under the Title Bar, the drop-down menus enable you to jump to any article, resource or related websites with one click.

You can also subscribe to my article feeds or comment feeds by clicking on the links to the right-hand side of the Menu Bar.

“Introduction”

This section is aimed at beginning Forex traders and, starting with the first article, I will introduce you to the incredible world of automated Forex trading. You can work you way down through the articles to more in-depth information. Basically this is a step-by-step guide aimed at getting you ready to start trading a.s.a.p!

“My Articles”

This is where all my blog posts (articles) will be listed. Each new article will appear here. Updates to existing articles will be posted in red to make it easy for you to see if and where it was updated. I will also indicate the date when it was updated at the top of the article under the title.

“Auto Trading”

Here are links to the websites of a few of the literally hundreds of automated trading systems out there. The primary goal here is to list the best performing systems that are perfect for beginners. More about these later on…

“Brokers”

This section lists the top recommended brokers. Again, the same rule applies. Only the very best Brokers will be listed here, and they are Brokers that are “newbie” friendly and allow you to start trading with a very small investment. They also welcome Expert Advisors (EA)/ Auto Trading Systems. I will review these Brokers later on in this guide.

“Members”

My new members blog that contains free resources and my strategies and settings I use on my Expert Advisors. To access the members blog, please register at the top of this blogs' sidebar. Registration is currently free. Please allow a few hours to gain access, as this is currently a manual process on my side. You will receive an email where you have to click on the activation link, which will take you to the members blog. If you do not receive this email, please check your spam folder on your email client. Subscription happens via Feedburner. It’s secure and you don’t EVER have to worry that I’ll send spam or share your email address with anyone. Unfortunately, for now, you'll need a Google/Gmail account to be able to register. Opening a google account is free, quick and easy though! In the next few months I'll be creating a proper members' site where anyone can register and there will be loads of new content, so please bear with me for a little while longer!

Side Bar

Located on the right-hand side of my blog. This bar serves as a container for various blog add-ons/widgets.

The most relevant parts are probably the links for viewing my live trading stats on MT4Stats.com as well as the Subscribe via email form at the top of the side-bar. When subscribing to my blog, I will give you access to my new "members-only" blog where you can get all the free resources as well as see my strategies & settings for my EAs. Please allow me a few hours to enable access, as I currently have to do this manually. You will receive an email where you have to click on the activation link, which will then take you to the new members' blog. I ask this small favour because I want to get an idea of how many people are actually downloading my resources and requesting my EA settings. Subscription happens via Feedburner. It’s secure and you don’t EVER have to worry that I’ll send spam or share your email address with anyone. I absolutely hate spam! When you subscribe, only I can see your email address. Don’t post your email address in the comments below the articles (on ANY blog), spammers or spider-bots can detect your address there and you’ll start getting spam emails that might contain gross content or viruses.

Buzz, Tweet & Digg

You will see these links on the left-hand side of each article, just under the article title. If you like my articles, you can help me generate more traffic to my blog by Buzzing, Tweeting or Digging it! You can click on one (or all!! :)) of the links to add to the vote counter and that will help me get an idea of how many people that visited my Blog actually liked my articles and will help me improve my content.

Tags

These are links that you can use to locate articles that are related to the keyword you clicked on. It’s an easy way to find keyword related articles.

Comments

For me this is the most important part of my blog. Your feedback! I encourage you to post your comments (positive or negative) to help me improve my Blog. If you find that some of the information provided anywhere on this Blog is incorrect or offensive, please let me know and I’ll address it immediately. Any commends are highly appreciated. This section can also serve as a forum for people to chat and share info.

If you would like to receive an email every time someone posts a comment on a particular article, click on the Subscribe by email link at the bottom of the comment area. You can also unsubscribe by clicking on the Unsubscribe link. Please note that you need to be logged into your Google/Gmail account to be able to do this.

Continue To Step 2: My Road To Discovery ->

Fap Turbo

noreply@blogger.com (PieterSA) — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 13:46:00 +0000

Today I'm going to discuss FAP Turbo. I will take you through and my initial, somewhat disappointing, experience with it and the steps I took to turn that around!

FT started out a little slow for me... I had it running on 3 Demo accounts with different Brokers on a VPS (Virtual Private Server) to get a good idea of it's performance. I considered my choice of Brokers to be excellent as I followed the advice from the FT Team and also added in 1 more that I personally liked and knew they offered good spread sizes, micro lots and welcomed bots, especially FT. I soon discovered though that through all the hype going on around me, my setup just wasn't performing anywhere close to the results that other people were achieving. Trades often closed in a loss and my account balances were slowly being depleted.

While spending countless hours researching and back-testing I always came to the same conclusions: That FT was definitely one of the top (if not the top...) bots out there. Live account results and independent research sites were all showing just that. FT even won the 4x Robot Factory competition where it was running live side-by-side with some of the other top-rated bots (like Forex MegaDroid, Boomerang and others) over a period of time. So what was I doing wrong?

Firstly I realised that FTs' performance should be analysed over time, not over weeks or a few months, but rather over many months, or even years. You possibly remember in one of my earlier articles where I discussed how Forex success is best achieved over long periods of time. Long-term investment guys! A few years of patience will not kill you, especially if you see results that beat almost any other form of investment anywhere on the planet! At least any investments for newbies like me with only a small initial investment. I noticed that there were periods where the markets were performing badly and if you bought FT in this period you will probably be very disappointed with it's results and rush back to get your refund. But with a little patience you will find that there are periods where FT goes nuts with profits and more than make up for the bad times...

Secondly I knew that my particular set-ups on those 3 Demo accounts were less than optimal, because in the same time-frame other people were getting very good results. So what did they know that I didn't? I knew that my combination of settings and Brokers were not favourable, but this is what the developers of FT recommended!

Remember: FapTurbos' default brokers and settings are recommended for the masses and the developers have to assume that the masses were going to invest an average amount of money, with and average amount of risk. If you stick to those default settings and brokers, you will definately see good returns over time, if you are patient enough! I just wasn't too patient when I started and I only had 5 weeks left to test before I have to make a decision and keep it or ask for a refund. So I knew that to get the most out of FT, I needed to go beyond the defaults.

I set out to find a guide that will provide me with the best holistic formula that I can apply to FT and get the most out of it, the "secret" settings that people guard closely and won't just share it with everybody for free.

Well, I found just that: Expert advice!

Get FapTurbo Now

There are plenty of networks / websites that you can join, and get advice from some of the most successful auto-traders in the business. Yea, I know, it is more money spent and the hyped sales page of FT (or ANY bot for that matter) makes you think that all you need is the bot, some investment cash & your good to go! In some way they are right if you're patient enough, but if you want to accelerate your FT performance and pull in loads of cash, these expert guides will give you a huge boost and you'll get advice that you will find no where else (for free that is) and it will save you months of research, testing and frustration, as I discovered.

Now, I will be sharing my settings for free with anybody that's interested. These are the settings I use, derived from these expert guides and are the settings that have been running on my FT demo account since I opened it. You can see the results on the blog sidebar (FT on MT4Stats.com), but more about that later on in this article.

So you don't HAVE to join these paid services, but let me tell you, if you have the cash just go for it! The benefits are great if you're part of a trusted community/website where only the best information is shared. Plus you'll be making so much cash that it will way-more than pay for the service as well as your initial investment in FT & your account deposit!

So starting off I didn't know which of these expert guides could be trusted and after some researching and reviewing I ended up with a few that seemed worth it and I tried some of them out. I tested a combination of some of their strategies and it worked like a charm! So here are my top 2 recommendations:

1. FAP Turbo Expert Guide
This guide was created by Rob Casey, a Forex Industry Veteran. Rob has a degree in applied physics and has been developing automated trading systems for both personal use and commercial use for over 8 years. He has made tons of money trading for other people (obviously for himself too LOL!). In the past Rob worked on the particle accelerator project at CERN in Europe. This guy knows what he's talking about and his website has a relatively inexpensive once-off fee, for lifetime membership. He comes highly recommended, even by competition websites and just recently he was endorsed by the FT Development team as well as the Forex Guru Club. I highly recommend his guide if you want to get the most out of your FT. His website is my number 1 recommendation.

2. FAP Winner
This website was developed by Forex Industry Expert Charles A. Floyd II and contains a wealth of information about Forex trading in general as well as FapTurbo. If this is your choice you will join a large community of traders and find everything you need to know about FT settings and performance and the Forex game. The site is quite large and it takes some time to sift through all the information in the Forums and can be a bit overwhelming at times, but it is pretty extensive. It can also be a bit on the expensive side and unfortunately you have to pay a monthly subscription fee. I still recommend this site just because of the vast amount and quality of information you'll receive. If you don't want information overload and prefer to get straight-forward, to the point information, settings and reviews, then rather go for FapTurbo Expert Guide.

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My experience with FapTurbo.

Next I want to discuss my experience with FT so far. As previously mentioned I got off to a slow and somewhat disappointing start, but after applying the strategies that I learned in my Quest For The Best, FT really surprised me!

I want to get one thing straight. FapTurbo is compared to a lot of other bots but remember that you have to be patient with it. There are times that it performs slowly but more than makes up for it over time. See it as a long term investment that will grow your account consistently over time and in a year or two you’ll be amazed when you look at your account size! I need to stress the fact that the Forex game is not a get rich quick thing, except off course if you are a professional trader with 15 years experience under the belt!

FT settings / strategies.

I scrapped all my previous accounts with the different Brokers and decided to made a fresh start. So I opened a $500 (which is what I’ll do when I go live with real money) Demo account with GallantFX. These guys are professional, have a good long track record and provide excellent customer service. On top of that FT works like a charm with them! You can see my review in my post about Recommended Brokers.

The best strategy for most beginner FT traders with small account sizes is the Scalper strategy. It makes small but consistent trades almost on a daily basis and when it loses trades, you only lose a very small amount compared to the winning trades. My results so far (as you can see on my Blog side-bar on MT4Stats.com) has been very encouraging and so far it’s made 20 trades in a week and a half (at the time of writing this), with only 3 losing trades and 1 trade ending in $0. That’s more than 11% profit and a very good success rate, more than any bot I've encountered so far. Remember I only watch live performance stats on MT4Stats.com and other sites and don't believe claims on sales pages of 95% - 98% accuracy until I see it performing like that on live or demo accounts! With time this success rate might go down slightly but from all my investigations it still looks like I can expect a profit of around 30% or more per month on my current settings. When I'm more confident and have a larger account size I'll try more risky settings and can probably expect profits of up to 50% or even 60%. Remember that with account sizes of $500 or so ALWAYS start with conservative settings, you don’t want 2 or 3 losing trades in a row to wipe out your account! If I currently get 3 or even 5 losing trades in a row I will maybe lose around only 5% of my account balance of $555, that’s only around $30.

If you are discouraged by small consistent profits or maybe a little impatient, you can always set it to more aggressive settings, but with a small account size I do not recommend it. Just bear with it and see where your account balance sits after a month or two. I'm sure you'll be happy with it's results and if you compare your returns to the host of other investment options we have in the financial world, these high returns makes FapTurbo a winner for me!

I distil info from a few professional guides to end up with the FT settings I currently use and also change my settings every now and then to reflect the current market conditions. You have to be hands-on with this baby! It's automatic but you have to take care of it and review it on a regular basis. If you are interested in my FT settings, please subscribe using the “Subscribe: Enter Your Email Here” form on my blog sidebar and post a comment here requesting me to send you the details. I will then email them to you and when the settings change I will notify you. I won’t charge anything for this, maybe one day when I become a pro! :)) Don’t post your email address on ANY Blog comments, because spammers will wreak havoc on your mailbox! I absolutely hate spam and will never send you anything that you don’t request and also will never share your email address with anyone so don’t worry about that at all. This is simply a way for me to monitor how many people are interested in my settings, given the performance of my FT strategy. Also I want you to do at least a little work by subscribing and commenting here. Then you get rewarded ;)

Update: I have decided to go live with FT in the next 3 weeks or so, and I’ll keep you posted on how that goes.

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Don’t have all your eggs in one basket.

It’s always best to have a few, maybe around 3-4 (or even more depending on your wallet size), accounts & strategies going at the same time. That way if one system is performing slowly or losing with the market conditions at the time, the other could buffer that out and you end up with the same consistent profits over time. Maybe have two bots on different accounts and even try a separate manual account where you do the trades yourself, using some indicators that you can add to your chart in Meta Trader 4. Once I have researched and are comfortable with some indicators, I will write an article about a few good & free ones that could assist you.

A few reminders.

Always start with Demo accounts. When you feel comfortable and the settings are performing well for a period of 1-2 months, go live!
Once you go live, always have a Demo and Live account running side by side on two installations of Meta Trader. Try new or more aggressive settings on the Demo while the live account is running on proven settings. When you’re comfortable with the Demo account after 1-2 months, apply these new settings to your live account and repeat the process. Although most of these bots are fully automated, you do need to review / change your settings from time to time to stay up to date with the market conditions at the time.
Don’t be scared to change brokers if you find that your bot is not performing well with that particular broker, but do give it some time first. It’s a pain in the backside to change Brokers once your account is live, so do the Demo thing before taking the plunge!
Look out for public holidays in the US and Europe and switch off your bot over those days. You might miss out of a few good trades, but hey, you'll be avoiding possible large losses because the markets go bonkers over those times!
Also note that no matter who tells you different, there are differences in performance between Demo and Live accounts! I have discovered though that with the most reputable Broker firms that difference is minimal and I know GallantFX is one of them. If you decide to join the FapTurbo Expert Guide, you will get a link in the members section that gives you access to create and account with GallantFX that will provide you with the most accurate live currency feeds that are the same feeds for Demo & Live accounts. I think this special live feed is only available to FT Expert Guide Members, I'll see if I can find another way of getting this special feed.
Some Brokers tamper a little with the feed of Demo accounts to give you good performance and when you go live you discover that performance all of a sudden drops and there are delays in transaction execution times, re-qoutes and all sorts of funny things. Reputable Brokers will not do this though! I’m currently investigating those differences and will write an article once I’ve completed my research.
Back-tests are also not a very reliable indication of a systems' performance due to several reasons I'll discuss in another article.

I encourage you to post comments, with your help we can find the best systems out there. If you liked this article, Digg, Buzz or Tweet it!

Intro #4 - Brokers Reviewed

noreply@blogger.com (PieterSA) — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 17:10:00 +0000

>> Updated: 9 Sept 2009. I have revised my list of brokers to only list my top 3 recommended brokers. These are the only Brokers I use and after testing several brokers over a period of two months, these ones were by far the best. I'm getting great results with all three of them and you can be comfortable opening an account with any of them. Please first make sure that you can eventually open a live account with them from the Country you live in, before opening a Demo account!

There are many Brokers out there and I could not possibly review even a fraction of them, but there are a hand-full of Brokers that come highly recommended by many professional traders. We will be looking at some of the best ones that meet the following criteria. They should:

Be newbie-friendly
Offer great support and good training material to guide you, the beginning Forex trader, in the right direction to become successful.
Welcome automated EA (Expert Advisor) trading and don’t cheat you on their side when it comes to live trading.
Have low spreads to decrease your risk and broker fee per transaction, as well as improve your EA trading frequency.
Allow you to start with small start-up capital ($100 to $500). Some brokers require you to start with a minimum of $2,000 or even $10,000!
Allow mini lots (and ideally micro-lots) for starting with small trades and working your way up as you become more comfortable with the trading ability of your EA.
Be reputable broker firms with a good track record and you can be rest assured that your investment is safe.
Offer accurate and fast execution, with the added bonus of lower costs. Ideally you want to go with a Broker that offers Straight-Through-Processing (STP) for fast and accurate trading as well as low spreads. This is also important so that there are very little differences between trading on Demo or Live accounts. (You’ll need to go live at some stage and if the differences are minimal, great stuff!)
Ideally not charge you a fee for opening a live account or any monthly fees for having a live account and also not charge you any commission on trades.

How do these Brokers make their money?

Let’s look at an example: If you buy one US Dollar from a Foreign Exchange Bank using Euros you will, let’s say, pay 0.70 Euros for that dollar. If you immediately (without the currency values changing), sell the Dollar back, you only get 0.69 Euros back. This difference between the “bid” and “ask” price is called the spread and that’s also how Brokers make their money. When you make a trade, the Broker will charge you the difference between the bid/ask price. It's a very small chunk of every transaction you (or your EA) make and it's almost always a much smaller amount than taking a % commission. We're talking a few cents or less here per transaction... I will go as far as to say that it’s negligible and you don’t even need to worry about this when trading.

So let's continue with the review:

1. Gallant FX

Gallant FX is a Foreign Exchange liquidity provider that offers a wide range of trading technologies and services. Their position as a liquidity provider allows you to take full advantage of transparent real-time pricing. This has enabled Gallant FX to create a unique Forex Trading environment that offers individual traders the same STP (Straight Through Processing) liquidity, execution and trading functionality demanded by interbank traders. There is a strong recommendation from many professional auto-traders that this is the preferred Broker for FapTurbo as well as other EAs. GallantFX is my first recommendation and I'm currently using them with FapTurbo. You can see my live stats (on a Demo account off course) at the top of my Blog sidebar. Funny enough when you activate your FapTurbo on a demo account in the member's section, you'll notice that in the example they use an account number that starts with 208813x. That is the account number created when opening a Demo account with GallantFX...
Benefits:

Spreads from as low as 0.3 pips.
Micro lots (starting from 0.01), mini and standard lots sizes.
Hedging capability.
Scalping capability.
Minimum opening deposit on a live account: $500.
FREE VPS hosting on live accounts. (Run your MetaTrader platform live on a Virtual Private Server 24/7)
Straight Through Processing.

2. Alpari (UK)

Alpari (UK) provides institutional-level online FOREX trading services and technologies. They offer comprehensive market analysis and educational tools, as well as delivering world-class customer service. Alpari(UK) should not be confused with Alpari(USA). I personally would not recommend Alpari(USA) for several reasons. Alpari(UK) is quite popular amongst professional auto-traders.
Benefits:

Spreads from as low as 1.8 pips.
Micro lots (starting from 0.01), mini and standard lots sizes.
Hedging capability.
Scalping capability.
Regulated by the FSA.
Micro Account: Allow users to trade via MetaTrader4, with a minimum opening deposit of $200 on live accounts.
Classic Account: Allow users to trade via MetaTrader 4 and/or Systematic (Alparis' automated trading solution), with a minimum opening deposit of $500 on live accounts
10% credit bonus on all new live accounts. (Between now and 30th October, the net deposits in your live account could get you up to 20% extra funds to trade with.)
An automated risk management system that is designed to reduce the risk of your trading account being depleted to zero or turning negative.

3. FastBrokersFX

FastBrokersFXs' trading platforms are built on a solid, fast and efficient back-office infrastructure designed for one specific purpose – to let you trade. The pool of liquidity available gives you the freedom you need. While market conditions allow it, scalping, news or swing traders are welcome at FastBrokersFX. Their policy is simple: Trade the way you want! They come highly recommended by many well respected professional traders.

Benefits:

Spreads from as low as 2 pips.
Micro lots (starting from 0.01), mini and standard lots sizes.
Hedging capability.
They welcome scalping traders.
Minimum opening deposit on a live account: $500.
FREE VPS hosting on live accounts. (Run your MetaTrader platform live on a Virtual Private Server 24/7)
ECN Broker
Regulated by the NFA (National Futures Association) & CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission).
24/5 Customer support

How Electronic Communication Networks or ECNs Work

ECNs pass on prices from multiple market participants, such as banks and market makers, as well as other traders connected to the ECN, and display the best bid/ask quotes on their trading platforms based on these prices. Unlike fixed spreads, which are offered by some market makers, spreads of currency pairs vary on ECNs depending on the pair's trading activities. During very active trading periods, you can sometimes get no ECN spread at all, particularly in very liquid currency pairs such as the majors (EUR/USD, USD/JPY, GBP/USD and USD/CHF) and some currency crosses. Brokers that use Straight Through Processing (STP) offer somewhat similar benefits.

About The Financial Services Authority (FSA):

The FSA is an independent body that regulates the financial services industry in the United Kingdom. The FSA has been the single regulator for financial services in the UK since December 2001, when it was given statutory powers by the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (FSMA 2000).

All companies regulated by the FSA are obliged to meet strict financial standards including capital adequacy requirements. Companies are required to submit financial reports to the regulator on a regular basis. The FSA has the right to fine companies and/or terminate a company's regulatory status for violations.

The regulations require that the Broker:

Maintains sufficient liquid capital in excess of the amount required to cover all client deposits, potential fluctuations in the company's currency positions and outstanding expenses.
Undergoes a detailed annual audit performed by an independent financial auditor.
Are under constant Supervision by the Regulator
Segregation of funds protection: All capital not being used for margin purposes (doing trades) should be fully segregated into a special client account kept separate from the Broker company funds. In the unlikely event of the Broker's default or insolvency you still have your funds available to you in your non-broker account.

Brokers in different Countries are regulated by different financial authorities (some are un-regulated - stay away from these!) When choosing a Broker it is best to choose one that is regulated by a financial services authority. Although these brokers often operate under more limited conditions, you can at least know that they are properly audited and regulated. This will give you peace of mind that your funds are safe and that the Broker does not "cheat" you.

Risk Warning:

Before deciding to participate in Forex trading, you should carefully consider your investment objectives, level of experience and risk appetite. Most importantly, do not invest money you cannot afford to lose. Please be aware of the FOREX risk. Only invest money that you can spare and that will not change your lifestyle if you lose all your money. There are no guarantees in this industry, but with lots of research and help from you we can find trustworthy systems that will give us peace of mind and a steady stream of income!

Always start with Demo Accounts. You can open as many as you like for free and test them for as long as you like until you feel comfortable going live with real cash. To manage exposure, employ risk-reducing strategies such as 'stop-loss' and 'take-profit'. These strategies are built into most EAs, especially the ones I will be reviewing on this Blog. You can manually set these variables to lower amounts until you are comfortable with the performance of your EA. A good EA should earn high profits (more than 70% profitable trades).

If you are a beginning trader, I recommend not changing the default values that are already set when you install your EA, unless the developers notify you of new settings, or if you are getting advice from a trusted source.

There is Forex risk associated with utilizing an Internet-based trading system, including the failure of hardware, software, and Internet connection. If you're using MetaTrader, I suggest you have a dedicated trading desk at home or work and that you PC is running 24/7 with a live internet connection. Remember your EA has to constantly analyse market movements to make successful trades. If you don't have this sort of set-up available I suggest you look into having a Forex enabled Virtual Private Server (VPS) service that will run MetaTrader on their server 24/7 so you don't need to worry about down-time. We will have a look at this in the next article.

Conclusion:

At some stage, after having tested your system and being happy with it's performance, you may want to go live. Be sure you do this with the same Broker that you tested on. Results can vary significantly between Brokers! Before opening a demo account with your Broker of choice, please make sure that you can eventually open a live account with them from the Country you live in. Do this before you start, you don’t need the disappointment of finding out you can’t, after two months of successful trades on your demo account!

Some brokers require a very high minimum deposit for you to be able to open a live account. Although I rather stay away from these, you might have your own reasons for choosing such a Broker. If this is the case and you are getting the best results with your EA using one of these Brokers, you can sometimes get around this by depositing the minimum amount and then withdrawing some of it afterwards. I'm not sure if all Brokers allow this but I know some do. Do some research to find out if you can get away with it, although I would still recommend using one of the Brokers listed above. Start small and work you way up, baby steps!

I have posted the links to these Brokers' Websites on my menu-bar at the top of the Blog.

I encourage you to post comments, with your help we can find the best systems out there. If you liked this article, Digg, Buzz or Tweet it!

Continue To Step 5: Improving Your Success ->

Intro #3 - Auto Trading Systems

noreply@blogger.com (PieterSA) — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 21:33:00 +0000

In Step #2 of this Introductory Guide I introduced you to Expert Advisors (EAs, Robots). This automated form of Forex trading is my primary focus on this Blog.

Of all the systems listed under the "Auto Trading Systems" section of the blog menu bar, I have only had the opportunity to test FapTurbo, Forex MegaDroid, IvyBot & Alpari Systematic so far. Please help me by giving your feedback (and ideally links to your live trading results) of systems that you have had good experience with.

The most important thing I have learned so far is that you need to be very patient with your EA. Make it your quest to discover the best settings and set them early-on while testing it in your 60-day trial-period. Patience is truly required with this game. Consider this a long-term investment; there is no quick (and legal) trustworthy money-making scheme! If your EA has not performed well in 3 weeks, check your settings or change your broker. Again: Only open demo accounts while testing!

Please don't be discouraged if you need to change Brokers! Changing brokers sounded like such a mission for me when I started, but it's as easy as 123 (while trading demo accounts off course)... Choose a broker and download and install Metatrader, open a new demo account & set-up your EA. It will take at most 20 mins of your time. Changing brokers after you went live is a whole different story, so do it while you're demoing! Once you have found the right combination of EA, Settings & Broker, leave it running until you have at least 50 trades to get a good indication of your profit/loss factor. When you're comfortable with it, take the plunge and go live! If your EA has performed badly no matter what you've tried and you have spent the 60 days testing it, consider getting a refund. You can always re-purchase it later if the system has been improved, or you can purchase another one, there are a few good ones so don't be too scared to ask for a refund if you're convinced your system does not perform well.

A good idea might be to run your EA on different Broker accounts at the same time. This way you can see how your EA performs differently on each account (and believe me they do!). Once you go live with real money have your EA run on a live & demo account with the same broker & settings side-by-side on two MetaTrader platforms. This way you can see the difference between performance on live & demo accounts. You can also test new settings on the demo account while the live account is running the "safe & proven" settings. Once, after some time, you achieve better results with your "experimental" demo setup, move your settings over to the live account, and repeat the process.

Another piece of good advice is to join as many communities/forums as you can. Do your research and find the best communities that will give you all the information you need to become a successful auto-trader. There are plenty of free forums & newsletters you can join for good advice.

If all this information is a little overwhelming, don't worry too much! Read this guide a few times until you are comfortable with the various aspects of auto-trading. You have all the time in the world, Forex isn't going anywhere so be patient and take it one step at a time... When you purchase an EA, you also receive very informative set-up guides in the form of PDF documents and training videos that will take you through the process step-by-step, from downloading & installing MetaTrader to opening a demo account and setting up and configuring your EA.

Note #1: Currently the top two systems I would recommend is FapTurbo & Forex MegaDroid as I'm experiencing very good results with them. If you find that these systems just don't perform well for you, consider getting expert advice in the form of membership websites that you can join to get tips from some of the top auto-traders. You can find more info on this under the "Articles" section on the blog menu bar where I write about specific services available for each EA.

Note #2: Don't confuse the term Expert Advisor, with "expert advice". Expert Advisor (EA, Forex Robot) is the name given to systems/add-ons to the MetaTrader platform that help you trade or trade automatically for you. You can access your EA under the "Expert Advisors" section on the "Navigator" pane in MetaTrader. When I refer to EA in my articles, I refer to your EA system. Expert advice, on the other hand, is basically joining a trusted website/community/guide that gives you good trustworthy advice on how to set-up your Expert Advisor for best performance ;)

I encourage you to post comments, with your help we can find the best systems out there. If you liked this article, Digg, Buzz or Tweet it!

Continue To Step 4: Brokers Reviewed ->

Alpari Systematic

noreply@blogger.com (PieterSA) — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:05:00 +0000

I opened a new Demo Systematic Account with Alpari (UK). This system runs online on Alparis' Servers and you can access it through a web interface in your browser. No need to purchase a bot or install software on your PC, and no need to have a VPS (Virtual Private Server).

Once you have logged into your account you can add some automated strategies to your portfolio. You can choose from 20 predefined systems and combining each system with all the available currency pairs you have 1015 strategies to choose from. Pretty extensive... All of these strategies come free with your account. While reviewing the strategies (before adding them to your account), you can sort the systems according to profits, success rate, etc. so they make it really easy for you to find the best performing strategies. It is a hands-on exercise though and I would recommend that after you add one or more strategies to your account, check it daily, even if it is an automated solution. You can never be too careful and in doing so you can maximise profits over the long run (which is the most important factor in Forex trading)!

After initially testing this system on two strategies, and getting amazing results, my account totally got wiped out! Guess I was a little greedy... I was, very abruptly brought back to the harsh reality of forex trading. There is still a huge potential with this system and I will figure it out! I'm opening a new account and will start afresh, this time frequently changing my strategies while keeping a watchful eye on my account. I'm sure I can crack this code. Alpari (being a very popular and reputable broker with many successful auto-traders) will not offer these strategies if they didn't work and I'll persist until I am successful. I consider this as one of the strong contenders for the top 5 of the strategies I'll eventually use when trading live, real money, accounts.

Unfortunately I haven't figured out how to link to the live account for you to look at, but I will post screenshots that I will grab every time it closes trades. As stated before I will not tamper with ANY results posted on my Blog so you can be assured that this is truly accurate results. Since the Demo account is free to open, try it for yourself and give feedback so that we can compare!

I have removed my previous screenshot as there's not much to see after it being wiped out :)) I will however soon post a new screenshot once I'm getting better results... The idea behind this Blog is after all to provide you with the best performing systems/strategies/settings, so watch the space!

I encourage you to post comments, with your help we can find the best systems out there. If you liked this article, Digg, Buzz or Tweet it!

IvyBot

noreply@blogger.com (PieterSA) — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 16:35:00 +0000

>> Updated: 5 Sept 2009

I purchased IvyBot just after it was released (29 July 2009) and after some disappointment with a few Brokers, I now have it up on a $500 Alpari Demo account, running on a VPS (Virtual Private Server) so that it is live 24/5.

Initially I was somewhat convinced that this truly is a revolutionary EA (Expert Advisor), maybe slightly influenced by their sales page, and with a 60 day money back guarantee, I decided to go for it! IvyBot was very easy to setup and it looks like it's a very extensive trading system.

Get IvyBot Now

The system was developed by a group of Ivy League graduates (very clever people :)) You get four seperate bots that trade on four different currency pairs. Each reacting in it's own way to the differences in behaviour between these currency pairs. Makes sense if you ask me...

IvyBot can be traded on small account sizes but I'll advise you to start with very low risk settings just to become comfortable with it's trading style. I initially set mine on higher risk and aggressive settings and had a bit of a scary experience with some large drawdowns. After restarting it on my new Alpari account we'll see how it performs. This system looks to have large potential and the developers are actively releasing new versions as they improve the system.

They are only selling a limited amount of copies, so get in while you can! Remember that you have 60 days to test it out...

Get IvyBot Now

I encourage you to post comments, with your help we can find the best systems out there. If you liked this article, Digg, Buzz or Tweet it!

Intro #2 - My Road To Discovery

noreply@blogger.com (PieterSA) — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:46:00 +0000

>> Updated: 30 Aug 2009

I'm pretty new at the Forex game... I read an article a while back about the Foreign Exchange (FX or Forex) and what an incredibly huge market it is. In fact, it's one of the largest and most liquid financial markets in the world. According to the Bank for International Settlements, the average DAILY turnover in global foreign exchange markets is estimated at $3.98 trillion!

In the past, Forex trading was only available to large corporations and financial institutions. Since it became available to the public, the market has grown exponentially every year and with new tools, like the free MetaTrader platform, people like you and I can easily trade from the comfort of home. Forex trading is fast becoming a very popular way of generating income!

I saw a huge potential in the Forex market. It looked to be a much safer (and easier, as I will show you a little later on!) playground than stocks, futures, commodities, etc. It will never run out of money even if every single person in the world is trading. In fact the more people trade the larger the market becomes. I knew that with the right knowledge and tools, I had the potential to make huge profits off this largely untapped resource. So I started researching but was soon overwhelmed by all the terminology and vast amount of information out there. I read about all the different strategies people employed and promises of great success, especially if you "invested" large amounts of money in advertised products & guides.

I didn't know where to start, however I believed that most advertisers will just try to scare you with all the terminology and complexity, so you end up buying their “insider’s secrets” into the wide world of Forex. Not a lot of people will just give away their trade secrets for free. They won’t give easy to use guides that explain EXACTLY how this game works, how and when to trade in layman's terms, for free. But being the positive and tenacious person that I am, I decided to give it a shot anyway without buying guides or systems that Forex gurus “guarantee” will make you punt loads of cash…

So I went to a broker's website (I chose Alpari (UK), but you can use any Broker of your choice to start with). I downloaded their MetaTrader 4 (MT) platform. MetaTrader is free software you can use to trade live on Forex. Almost all Brokers offer it as a free download. It's very easy to use and comes with a bunch of free indicators and chart templates, etc. that can make trading easier for you. I installed it, opened a demo account (when you open it for the first time it automatically opens a pop-up window where you can instantly open a demo account) and a moment later I was staring at live currency feed graphs, ready to start trading... Phew, I was nervous!

I tried to read some market news to see what the markets were doing, but I didn’t really understand how the news affected the markets. I discovered however that the market somewhat consistently moved between these high & low peaks. It's a game of patience and if you wait it out, you eventually get the right peaks where you can open a trade and end up with a good profit. Just monitor the graph and you'll see what I mean.

I waited for the peaks and when it was very high (at the top) I opened a trade order to "sell" or "go short(in traders' lingo)", hoping that it will go down so that I can make a decent profit. When it peaked very low (bottom), I closed my sell position and at the same time opened a "buy" or "go long" position, then closed the buy when it reached a high peak and repeated the process.

Off course it’s not always that simple and it didn’t always go so well when the markets moved the opposite way of what you anticipated, but I just played around and started getting better... Manual trading is unfortunately something I cannot teach you within the confines of this blog and nothing beats some "screen" time where you stare at the graph for lengthy periods to learn the "rhythm of the graph" and do trade after trade manually. Remember you're playing with false cash so go crazy with it. The more mistakes you make the more you'll learn and when you wipe out your account, just open a new one and you're good to go at it again! You can open an unlimited amount of free demo accounts. If you struggle to get started, use the MetaTraders' help system. It's very easy to follow and will get you going in no time. You can access it by clicking on "Help" on the top menu bar and then click on "Help Topics".. So after a week of trading, to my pleasant surprise, I had averaged a daily profit of $600! I was very excited. After a few weeks I looked at my stats and calculated that 90% of my trades ended in profit, but it took a lot of time to constantly monitor the movements...

With my day job and working long hours as well as having other responsibilities, I just didn't have the time to constantly monitor the markets. I also found that it became a little bit addictive, especially when you’re making good profits and I got more and more emotionally involved which caused me to make mistakes by opening trades at the wrong time. You can get greedy when you see so much money rolling in, even if it's fake money!

I needed an automated solution that removes the "human" element and that takes the guess work out of Forex trading, so I started searching for brokers that offer automated trading solutions.

But then I stumbled upon something that I've never heard about before: Expert Advisors (EAs)! You get these Forex Robots (Bots) that monitor the market for you 24/5 (Brokers are closed over weekends) and once it's set-up and configured on your MetaTrader platform, all you need to do is have MT open with a live internet connection and the EA will open an close trades automatically following a pre-programmed set of rules. It will wait until the market is in a favourable position that matches these pre-defined rules, then open and close trades automatically for you. You don't have to do a thing! Except for initial setup off course. Most of the good EAs are also configured to close a trade when it reaches a certain (configurable) amount of profit OR loss, called “take profit” & “stop loss” so that you can make a safe profit, but also not loose too much money in one trade when the market moves the wrong way.

So here I was at a crossroad: Do I continue trading manually or do I actually invest in one or more of these EAs? Or do both? I knew I had to "go live" with my trading at some point. I also realized that I won't be getting into this game without an initial investment. I thought a little reality check would be a good idea at this stage...

So I asked myself:

What if these EAs really worked? What if they really made good, solid returns? -> Wouldn't that be nice... :)
How much money did I have available to invest in one or more EAs? -> I had $100 for one system to start off with!
How much money did I have available to invest in memberships to website that give me expert advice for my EA, so that I can configure it correctly without going through months of painstaking testing, monitoring, etc.? -> I had $100 extra for joining a member's site
How much money did I have available to eventually invest in a live Broker account? -> $500!, you can start lower if you want, but I won't advise going lower than $100
How much time did I have available to trade manually and/or set-up & monitor the EAs? -> Tough question...
Will it be a good idea to have one, or more than one, systems/strategies going at the same time? The term "Don't have all your eggs in one basket" comes to mind...

The EAs were a little expensive (some, totally un-affordable!) and I needed to be careful here without leaving my wallet empty! I didn't know if I could trust what the EA developers were promising on their sales pages. So I set off to make it my mission to find a few affordable automated systems that will generate decent, profitable income consistently. Systems that could be trusted and didn't bite large chunks out of your account balance.

My initial goal (and you can easily use this as a possible solution if you don't have a lot of money to start off with, maybe $300 to $800) was to find a system that will make enough money to pay for itself($100) & the expert advice membership sites($100), then pay for the ($100-$500) money invested into the live Broker account. Then I could take that profit and purchase a second EA, join a good, trusted community for expert advice and open another live Broker account. Repeat this process and in a year or two I could have around three systems running, generating solid income while I go on with my life (or get more systems!). This is a game of patience (as any good investment), but you'll see, it will pay off in the end and will be much more than worth the wait!

Update: Off course if you have loads of cash available you can save a lot of time here and get a few EA's, join the respective member's sites and open a few live accounts ranging from $100 to $500 (always start with demo accounts first, then when you decide to go live, start small and when a system has proved itself over time, invest more or leave it running and look at other systems!)... So I veered a little off my initial decision to start with one system. I decided to squeeze a little more money out of my salary and invest in a few systems. I'd use the 60-day money-back guarantee and go from system to system. If one didn't perform I just get my money back and use it to check the next one out. So I decided to start with three. I will introduce them a little later on in this guide...

I have to mention that at first I tried some of the best free EAs out there on demo accounts but that didn't go down too well...

So I went and purchased my first EA, FapTurbo! I will go into more details in a later article...

Conclusion

So, who can we trust? Which products are the most successful? With your help we can find systems that really do the job as promised by the developers.

The purpose of this Blog is to review the best EAs that are perfect for Forex Newbies, beginners like me. I'll review systems that are easy to implement and need no (or very little) manual intervention once they are installed & configured. I will provide accurate and honest feedback about their performance. I will post links to my actual live trading stats so you can see for yourself how they perform (no back-test mumbo jumbo, only live stats from real demo or live accounts). Remember that NO EA is perfect and from time to time you will need to change the EAs' settings and install released updates for it to perform optimally with the market conditions at the time. But hey, who cares for a few minutes of work a week when they do all the rest of it for you!

I want to ask you to please provide your (honest) feedback of systems that you are/were using, good or bad. I would like to distil down a list of systems that people can feel comfortable purchasing and be confident that it will make a good, steady profit for them (without hurting their budget too much!). I want this Blog to be successful and not a hyped sales pitch site that fools people into buying systems that don’t perform well.

Please Note.

I need to make it clear that I'm currently not endorsing any Products, Websites, Services or Brokers. I will however "recommend" the systems, services and brokers that I use because I've had some experience with them and had very good results, but in the end it's all up to you to decide what systems/services you go for! Once I have months of live trading results on real live trading accounts that have proven itself, I will definitely endorse the best ones. But for now this Blog is just a true and honest platform for me to express my feelings, ideas and experiences I’ve had so far. I do not write about bad performing systems and if some of the systems that I've been "hyping" about ends up been crappy, I will surely remove it from my Blog, that's a guarantee. I will be very satisfied if this guide becomes a trusted source of rock-solid accurate information that could help people without them having to sift through the stupendous amount of cluttered miss-information and in-accurate "advise" that exists out there.

I want to be honest with you about the fact that I do earn commission if you purchase a system from a link on my blog. I also earn a small fee for every time that visitors click on the Google Ads links. So feel free to click away and help me earn cash! Nah just kidding!! But like every blogger it does encourage you when your Blog earns you a little cash on the side because it does take a lot of time and research to create a good Blog. So I believe there's nothing wrong with refferals or ads on a Blog, I just don't want my readers to think that my articles are biased towards systems that are "advertised" on my Blog.

I will stick to my code of The Quest For The Best! I really need to find systems that will bring in the cash, and when they do, I'll share them with you. I would like to help all new traders who get scared when trying out Forex trading for the first time and run for the hills when things go bad. It will be a great achievement for me to have one of the top free Blogs where people can get good advice and make a success without having to go through months of late nights and week-ends researching and ending up just cutting their losses and giving up.

There are lots of successful people trading Forex and I intend becoming one of them. Then, help you to become one of them! I love sharing my success stories and that's the 1st intention behind this Blog, the 2nd one being that this is a reference guide for myself as well.

Note #1: Please be careful when purchasing an EA. Make sure that they offer you a full, no questions asked, 60 day money-back guarantee. That will give you enough time to evaluate them and see if they work for you. Continue reading to see my top EA recommendations...

Note #2: When choosing a Broker first start with a Demo account. Choose a broker that offers demo accounts for free (most reputable ones do), with no time limit on the account. Open as many Demo accounts as you need to. Test, test, test!! Be patient until you're comfortable with your combination of EA & Broker, then go live! Continue reading to see my top Broker recommendations...

I encourage you to post comments, with your help we can find the best systems out there. If you liked this article, Digg, Buzz or Tweet it!

Continue To Step 3: Auto Trading Systems ->