Forex Set and Forget

It appears that the GoMarkets demo accounts are only good for 30 days at a time. I found this out the hard way, as my Forex Set and Forget robot stopped working a few days ago. That said, it did very well in the first month, grabbing a profit of 27.61%. This was version 1.09 of the robot. It is my understanding that version 2.0 will be released very shortly with several improvements. Tony Manso (the developer) has kindly agreed to forward us a demo copy to test and review once it is available. We will then put that version to the test and see if it can do as well or even better over the course of a month’s trading. If you are wishing to purchase this robot, you will need to wait, as Tony has temporarily made it unavailable until version 2 is released. We will let you know as soon as it is available once again.

EuroBlaster

The EuroBlaster demo has gotten off to a shaky start. It has won 73% of its trades, but as mentioned previously, because of the still less than ideal risk-reward ratio (6:1 in my demo), it must have a greater winning percentage than that (over 85%) to be profitable long-term. In several instances, the robot has entered its trades at the worst possible times (very top of an uptrend or very bottom of a downtrend). The account is currently down about 15%. I will just let it continue to run and see if it can trade its way out of the hole it has created. This demo is on IBFX, so I will have more than 30 days to see what it can do.

Forex Overdrive

Forex Overdrive has done very well thus far, winning all 28 of the trades it has taken. It is up 28.9% in just about two weeks of trading. The thing to keep in mind with this EA is that when it does finally get a loss (and it will), it will be a large one and will knock the equity level down a ways. I am currently running it at the 5% risk level, which I consider a prudent level. The key will be avoiding too many losses in row or getting into a trade that won’t hit TP or SL but just languishes for days or a week or more with no end in sight.

Forex Revolution

I was approached by the Forex Revolution team about testing their robot, which I agreed to do. But I have had the robot set up properly for two weeks and have not seen it take one trade. The manual says to be patient, but I have no interest in an EA that trades that infrequently. You do have to be in the market some to make money, after all.

New Grid-Based Bot

I am in the process of testing a new version of an existing grid-based robot that may very well be the most powerful and capable EA I have ever worked with. I have been very impressed with it so far and have gotten excellent results. I will be introducing this EA to you probably by this weekend sometime, so keep your eyes open.

The first thing I noticed is that from a settings perspective, it reminded me a lot of the early Euro-Blaster versions. I asked the author about this, and he said it is indeed similar. Specifically, it has a default take profit level of 25 pips and a stop loss level of 328 pips. These can be modified, of course, but that would likely take a bite out of the robot’s winning percentage. With such a poor risk-reward ratio, the robot has to win around 93% of the time just to break even! That’s awfully high, and I have my doubts as to whether that could be sustained for any substantial length of time.

Just like the early Euro-Blaster versions, my guess is that this robot can occasionally churn out some very impressive results, maybe winning 20, 30, or even 40 or more trades in a row. That makes for a nice looking chart. But then comes the dreaded loss. In an early test, my demo account made a 15% gain in about 15 days before it hit a stop loss sending it back to about a 1.5% gain. Unfortunately that is just the nature of the robot. There is a chance that you could run off an impressive streak of wins and build up your account quickly, but there is equally a chance that you could hit two or three (gasp) stop losses in a row and really do some damage to your account.

The risk can be lowered via the settings so that it trades smaller lot sizes, but of course that limits the amount you will make during the stretch of wins. Like all robots, you would need to find a risk level you are comfortable with.

I’ve begun another demo account on GoMarkets. I am trading on the EUR/USD and GBP/USD pairs, which is what the creator recommends. I have set the risk level to 5% (the default is 15%). Let’s see how it does…

For further information: Forex Overdrive Website

My biggest knock against Euro-Blaster when it first came out was that the risk-reward ratio was so extreme. I believe the recommended stoploss with the initial version was between 300 and 500 pips while the take profit was still only 10-20 pips or so. The robot would sail along great for a month or two, but then it would hit one of those monstrous stoplosses and knock your account way down.

This newest iteration, version 7.11, contains better entry logic, allowing for a more reasonable risk-reward ratio. While the R:R is still not perfect (now somewhere between 5:1 to 10:1 depending on your settings), it’s vastly improved. Patrick’s back and forward tests look good, so I thought it merited more testing here at EA-Reviews.com.

I have set up two demos (same settings) with different brokers, as Patrick says you can get different results with various brokers. Below are the results from the accounts so far. I will post the settings for the accounts in a later message.

For more information: Euro-Blaster Website

Forex Derivative
It was a mixed bag this week for our two Forex Derivative demo accounts. The FxPro account did well and was up $284.36, or 8.6%, bringing its account equity to 3,579.30, or a 19.3% gain since the account began one month ago. The Alpari-US account didn’t have such a nice week and continues to disappoint. For the week it lost $316.71, or 11.0%. This account now sits at $2,554.63 in equity, or a 14.8% loss since the account was opened on June 4.

EuroBlaster
It was a great week for our EuroBlaster demo account. First and foremost, it was able to get itself out of the rather large drawdown that it had been fighting since a June 12 trade that went against it. Then it also made a positive trade or two. The account now stands at $6,092.40 in equity, which represents a 21.8% gain since it began on June 8. There is one position open, currently with a drawdown of $154.00. I have now lowered the risk that the EA is using. I am risking just 2% with a lot size of 0.1 and maxtrades of 1 as well.

The Robominer
The Robominer had a great week. As I have stated before, I *really* like this robot, and this week showed why. This week the EA added another $67.37 in equity after it was able to close out a whole host of open trades. The equity balance is now $3,180.35, representing a 6% increase since the account began on May 21. This thing just chugs along making a steady stream of small wins. It’s conservative — but effective!

Forex Grid Bot
I blew it with Forex Grid Bot this week. I took down the demo account and began a live account on Tuesday with $1,000. It was able to close out its first trade on Tuesday with a profit, but then the trouble began. The GBY/JPY pair decided to make a steady play to the north and never retraced enough for either of my two open positions to close out a profit. Ås the price continued up, I foolishly went against my plan and removed my stoploss at $150. My thought was that the immediate 1-hour trend would bring the price back down to a point where I could get out of the trades without an issue. Well, the price has ranged since Tuesday and has not allowed me to exit those trades yet. I am presently down about $275 between the two positions and have turned off the EA to manage them on my own. In retrospect, I should have been firm with the stoploss I set ($150) and just taken my lumps. So depending on what happens with these trades, I will be back soon with trading results on either the demo account or the live account.

I should note that Patrick sometimes does not let his EuroBlaster trade on Fridays. Obviously if I had restricted mine from doing the same on June 12, I wouldn’t be facing this current drawdown. It sounds like that may be the safer way to trade this EA, and thus I have set the “Trade_On_Friday’ parameter to “false” going forward.

Also, I have changed the “RiskPercent” setting from 5.0 to 2.0 going forward. Using 5% still leaves you open to too much drawdown when a trade doesn’t go the way you intended (and believe me, it will happen eventually). So, to review, for my demo I am using the conservative preset with MM turned on, the risk percent set to 2.0, and no trades on Friday.

I am very pleased to report that except in a few cases, the backtests for the new version are MUCH more profitable than they were for Euro-Blaster V1! The developers have clearly made some remarkable improvements in this new release. Suffice it to say I am very encouraged by what I see.

I am now less inclined to use the monthly method that I previously proposed. Euro-Blaster seems capable of being quite a bit more consistent now (assuming the live accounts mimic the backtests). I am going to begin a demo immediately using the “conservative +MM” preset and just leave it running. This is the conservative preset that ships with V2 but it also has money management turned ON. This allows for compounding of profits.

To see all the latest test numbers, please visit the Results page.

• Improved StopTime function, more sensitive to time between orders.
• Improved MM function. Auto lot size is linked to riskpercentage, maxorder and stoploss setting…. so 10% is equal to 10% risk at mini lot (1 lotsize = $10k, 1 pip = $1)
• BreakEvenPips function added. If BreakEven is set to True, Euro-Blaster will close the trade once it reaches the specified number of pips rather then descend into a drawdown. For example in a normal trade with a TP of 25; the trade may go into profit by 9 pips, then drop to a negative 15 pips before reversing and going on to reach the TP target. With BreakEven enabled, when the trade reaches a specific number of pips profit; it will set a StopLoass at the entry point (break-even) rather then descend into drawdown. This is for the conservative trader that would rather close an order than wait for a reversal.
• MinAutoTP function added, user can set minimum profit expected from auto TP logic filter. This is the target Euro-Blaster may switch to depending on internal logic triggers. If you do not want Euro-Blaster to change the TP level, use this feature. For example, if you want your TP target to be 25 pips and only 25 pips, set the Min_Auto_TP to 25.
• Performance enhancement. Yields superlative backtest results to 2007 using 350 pip SL.
• Time Management function expanded to include two possible trading sessions per day.
• Improved ProfitProtection function sensitivity.
• Embedded fix for “trade context busy” error.
• Embedded Anti-Piracy feature added.

This is quite an impressive list of additions for version 2. It’s great to see the developers are not resting on their laurels but are actively trying to improve the robot. I will be setting up a new demo for this version tomorrow and will also run some new backtests. I am hoping to see some nice improvements.

If you are still on the fence about buying Euro-Blaster, this is a good time to get it. As of June 15, the price will go up a bit — to $96 (currently $89). CLICK HERE to get your copy.

FXDD Backtest Monthly Results

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Here is the comparison on a yearly basis (using the monthly method):

2004: Alpari-UK (+99.8%); FXDD (+34.6%)
2005: Alpari-UK (+88.7%); FXDD (-56.1%)
2006: Alpari-UK (-36.2%); FXDD (-12.7%)
2007: Alpari-UK (-8.6%); FXDD (-37.7%)
2008: Alpari-UK (+31,903%); FXDD (+4,997%)
2009: Alpari-UK (+114.6%); FXDD (+88.5%)

I think there are a couple of conclusions we can make here:

1) As was suggested early on in this experiment, backtesting is never the best way to test a method, and these results prove it. Using the same pricing data, we got strikingly different results with the two brokers. How do you explain that? I’m not sure we can. I am guessing that we could test this with 10 different brokers, and the results would be all over the board.

2) Looking at either of the backtest sets, I think it is safe to say that Euro-Blaster has done unbelievably better in recent months than in the past. It has been hugely profitable over the past 1.5 years. Is this because the EUR/USD pair has become more volatile? Is it a permanent change and can we expect this type of performance to continue? Of course no one knows for sure. One thing is certain, forward testing is your best bet, and especially so with this particular EA.

As you can see, there were two occasions where there were as many as three or more losing months in a row. By using only 25% of our available capital to trade each month, we are able to weather such bad streaks and still end up ahead in the end.

It has been brought to my attention that results from some other brokers are wildly different. While I would expect them to definitely be some different, I would be surprised if the difference was meaningful. I will be looking into this over the next few days.

Without further adieu, here is the table. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Alpari-UK Backtest Monthly Results

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