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.

After the Sunday night clean-up, Forex Grid Bot did outstanding for the rest of the week. It won every trade on Monday through Thursday and really never got too close to having a drawdown large enough to risk hitting the SafetyNet stoploss. Thursday was the closest as it was almost 50% of the way there before heading back to take profit. The net gain for the week was $384.69, or +11.2%. Since the account was started on May 25, it has gained $810.96, or +27.0%. The account’s equity now stands at $3,810.96.

Forex Grid Bot is the current performance leader among the EAs that we have recommended. It has a very high winning percentage. And unless the bottom falls out this next week, I will open a real account with this EA beginning the week of June 29 (assuming I can get the account funded by that time). More details on the settings I will be using will be forthcoming in the next week or so.

The equity on the account now sits at $3,426.27, which is a gain of +14.2% since the demo began on May 25. You’ll notice the equity curve is pretty rough at the beginning of the chart below. This marks the period when I was still trading the USD/JPY pair and also when I was experimenting a little more with the SafetyNet setting. All in all, I am very pleased with the results of this robot. Of the four EAs that we are recommending, this one is probably the one I would feel most comfortable putting money onto at this point, and I may do that soon. It’s proven to be a solid performer.

As the name implies, Forex Grid Bot is a grid trading robot. However, unlike many such systems, it does not employ a stop-loss-free strategy and hope that a strong trend doesn’t develop that will wipe out the account. Instead, it allows you to enter a maximum risk amount (in dollars) in its SafetyNet setting. The EA will then shut down all trades if the total losses should meet this number. Fortunately this does not happen very often at all. It has happened to me only once, and then it was because I mistakenly set my SafetyNet number too low.

Forex Grid Bot trades only during a certain time each day, specifically 12PM to 7PM ET, or 16GMT to 23GMT. By this time, the markets have usually quieted down a good bit, making the trading a bit more stress free. Additionally, the EA features a parameter called “RestartProfit”. This is basically the opposite of the SafetyNet parameter. Once your profits for the day reach this number, the robot shuts down any trades and takes the rest of the day off. I really like this feature of the robot. It gets in, gets its daily profit, and gets out. In my short experience, it has been in the market only an average of 2-3 hours per day. That adds to the safety of this particular EA.

The authors of Forex Grid Bot indicate that GBP/JPY is “highly recommended” and USD/JPY is “recommended” for trading with this EA. They also say that the majors are fair game as well. In my short demo period, I tried GBP/JPY and USD/JPY and found that GBP/JPY did much, much better than USD/JPY (which won only 3 of 9 trades), so midway through the demo I decided to trade only the GBP/JPY pair. It has done very well since that point. Incidentally, this is the only pair that the authors use in their live demo on their website as well. Looking at the forum in the member’s area, some have experimented trading with any and all pairs, but mostly with mixed results. I figure if the GBP/JPY works so well, why not just stick with it?

The current version of the EA does not have automatic money management. However, you are able to set your own lot sizes, and you are able to specify the maximum number of trades that you want the EA to have open at any one time. There is also an option to only trade on certain days of the week. These things enable the user to be able to effectively manage risk. Because the EA wins so much (especially with the GBP/JPY pair), I am sure the temptation will be to ramp up the risk. But as always, slow and steady wins the race, so I would advise caution in this area.

I am told that the next version of Forex Grid Bot, due out very soon, will include some money management capability, as well as a hedging feature for those whose brokers still allow this. I have also been informed that the new version will allow for the customizing of the spacing on the “grid”, meaning that it can probably be better tuned for other currency pairs. Good stuff!

I am quite excited about the Forex Grid Bot. It methodically takes a reasonable profit out of the market each day. The drawdowns are very reasonable (max drawdown of around 8% to date), and if used responsibly, there is little chance to blow up your account. For this reason it now has a place on our “Recommended EAs” list.

One final note. The developers recommend a broker called BeamFX, out of Chicago, which is an introducing broker for CMS Forex, based in New York. The Forex Grid Spot people are probably getting a kickback for each person they refer (BeamFX offers $100 for referrals). That said, I noticed that BeamFX has a spread of only 5 pips on GBP/JPY, which is excellent (most brokers are between 7 and 10). I have not tried the EA on any other broker yet, but it appears that it does work well on BeamFX! You can open an account there with only $200, incidentally.