PIP ANDROID

Pip Android is not a very active robot, but it has at least been profitable overall. It only had seven trades this week, six of which had closed by the end of trading on Friday. Of those six trades, five were closed in profit, and the one loser only lost $2.08. The one trade left open is currently down $22.00. Hopefully it will be able to clean that one up Sunday or Monday.

One thing I like about this robot is that it has a definite stoploss — it’s around 40 pips. Plus it only opens one position at a time. So you never have to worry about opening up your trading platform and seeing this robot with a drawdown of 30-40% at any one time. In this way it is conservative and safe.

So far, in closed trades, the robot is up 2.53% after two a half weeks. So you’re looking at about 1% per week. No, it’s not going to make you rich overnight, but as I said, at least it is positive and seems fairly low risk. I am running it using the “medium risk” settings recommended by the developer.

FUSION V

The Fusion demo had a bit of a scare this week. It opened ten positions using the HiRider algorithms, and the currency went severely against those positions for a good part of the week. At one point the equity on the account got down to around $700. Fortunately, though, EUR/USD finally turned and headed back up and allowed it to close out the positions in profit. The account now sits at $1,070.14 for a total account gain of 7% after a week and a half. That’s a pretty impressive gain any way you look at it.

Note that this demo is using a fixed lot size of 0.02 lots for all trades. This is exactly what the FRWC’s current live test is using. I wanted to run an identical test to make sure that I am able to get the same results that they are. So far the trades and results seem to be the same. Even at 0.02 lots, though, it’s important to remember that if all ten HiRider trade positions go against you all the way to stoploss, you will take a pretty heavy hit to the account. This is one reason I use 0.01 lot sizes for my actual HiRider demo account (see below).

HIRIDER

My HiRider demo continues to move right along with success. So far only one loss since we began running it a couple weeks ago. To date, the account is up to $1,067.81 for a total gain of 6.8% so far. As mentioned elsewhere, I have changed the settings so that it is now trading a fixed lot size of 0.01 lots per trade. This is the most conservative setting for the robot, and I think it is the only realistic way to trade real money on it. The FRWC recommends 0.01 lot size per $1,000 in the account, so that is what we will follow. So far, so good!

LMD-MULTICURRENCY

This demo was restarted at the beginning of this past week to again use more conservative settings that are recommended by the FRWC. I have turned money management off and am trading a fixed lot size of 0.05 lots per trade. So far it has fared pretty well. The first week saw a 3.5% gain on the account after managing six wins and seven losses. Stay tuned!

SUPER VOLCANO

Well, this robot seems to be the dud of the group. It has taken a grand total of ONE trade over the first two and a half weeks of the demo. That one trade was a loss, and the account is presently down a little over 4%.  I have reviewed the settings to see if there was something I needed to adjust to get it to trade more often, but I did not notice any problems there. If anyone is getting more trades with this robot, please send me your settings as well as who you are using for a broker.

PIP ANDROID

Pip Android took only four trades this week – two wins and two losses for a very small gain on the week. Our demo has been running since February 11, and the EA has lost $2.03 or 0.1% since that time. There are no positions open currently. So we’re basically at breakeven so far. I’ll give it a few more weeks at least before drawing any hard and fast conclusions.

FUSION V

As mentioned in my previous update, the account statement that the FRWC showed for their live test of Fusion V clearly shows a lot size of 0.1 lots. Thus, in an effort to test the robot on identical settings, I advocated making the change to a 0.1 lot size. Well, I immediately saw that this wasn’t going to work. Fusion proceeded to open up ten HiRIDER trades, and suddenly my available margin was in jeopardy. It got down to around 105% before the EUR/USD turned the opposite way and allowed me to close out of the trades with small gains before it damaged the account. Note that I am using an identical FXCM account as the FRWC folks ($1,000 balance, 1:200 leverage). Here’s the thing. If you get several wins in a row right out of the gate, you might be able to keep trading at such a high lot size, but you are risking a margin call, especially if the first few trades go against you at all. Therefore, I do not think it is even remotely reasonable to expect the kind of gains that FRWC showed on their 19-day Fusion V demo (345%). It is entirely too risky to trade such high lot sizes on such little starting capital, and frankly I think it’s misleading that they would advertise results that used such a risky setup but then in their manual say this: “Our opinion is that a lot size equal to 0.01 for each $1,000 of available equity is reasonable.” If that is their opinion and what they think their clients should use, then that is what they should have used in their testing. That effectively means the expected results should be about a tenth of what they showed, or about 34.5% over 19 days — still very respectable and worth using but a far cry from over 345%. These guys talk a lot about transparency. Where is the transparency in that?

Interestingly, in the manual they state (and it is highlighted): “In our opinion, it is far safer to turn off the automatic Money Management feature and set a fixed lot size of 0.01. This is because certain strategies, i.e. Straasha, involve a modified Martingale system while other strategies (like HiRIDER) can open up to 10 trades at a time! You must therefore set a “safe” lot size to avoid unnecessary risks.” This is a warning that shouldn’t go unheeded, in my opinion. Thus going forward, I have changed my lot size back to 0.01 lots with money management turned off. I will follow the guide of 0.01 lots per $1,000 of equity, as recommended. If you do likewise, just be aware of the fact that you will nowhere approach the ridiculous return that they reported during their 19-day test, but you should be able to rest a bit easier knowing your money is safer.

The good news is the robot did make it into positive territory by the end of the week. The account balance after closed trades is $1,016.84. One trade remains open and is currently profitable, so the account equity currently stands at $1,025.05, or a gain of about 2.5% over the first three days of the test. That’s a pretty good start.

LMD-MULTICURRENCY

Well, unfortunately the LMD-Multicurrency EA continued to dig itself a deeper and deeper hole and at one point was in drawdown over 50% – a complete train wreck, frankly. I’m not sure about you, but I’m not willing to even consider putting real money in a robot that has drawdowns of that magnitude. Therefore I am going to be starting a new demo with this EA with the following changes to the settings to see if we can get much smaller drawdowns with the expectation that the possible account increases will also be tempered:

Lots: 0.05
Microlots: true
Money Management: false

I will use the user guide’s recommendation of 0.05 lots per $1,000 of equity.

The current demo will be stopped and its results will be available on the Results page on Monday.

HI-RIDER

Thus far, this robot has been the most consistent performer of the bunch.  It has registered only one loss in the first three days of testing. Closed trades have resulted in an account gain of $62.77, or 6.3%. However, on Friday, two trades came just short of hitting their take profit level before completely reversing and going the opposite direction. These two trades together are down $40.10, so the account equity is at $1,022.67 at the close of the week, for a 2.3% gain for the first three days of trading. Again, this is a pretty impressive start. Let’s see if it can recover from the two stranded trades early next week.

In rereading the manual and after looking carefully at the backtests, I think I probably have the risk settings too high on this robot as well. There were at least three occasions in 2008 when all ten positions hit a full stoploss at the same time. That could potentially be account debilitating if your risk levels are too high and if it happens several times in a short period of time. Thus, going forward, I will be changing the LotRiskReductor setting from 5 to 1 with money management turned ON. Admittedly, this will result in slower growth than what was achieved during the two month competition, but it will be a lot safer. Account protection is the name of the game, folks.

SUPER VOLCANO

Not much going on with this robot. It took one trade, which it lost. Account equity is at $958.80, so the total loss for the first three days in the market was 4.1%. All we can do is keep the demo running and see what happens going forward.

Closing note

I’m going to be honest here. I still love the idea behind the FRWC competition, and I think there are some good robots here, but I feel they did everyone a disservice by allowing the robots to operate with risk levels that simply won’t be sustainable over the long term. Yes, you might get an occasional two-month period where some of these robots do really well, but that does not mean they are viable for a year or even six months at those settings. And the problem is that no one ever knows when a bad period is coming. Thus it’s not realistic to think you can just go forward with those settings. My guess is that you could run the competition again with the same robots and same settings, and you would probably get vastly different results, both in terms of percentage gains/losses as well as the finishing order.

As I said, I think some of these robots may indeed be winners, but I think we need to rein in our expectations a bit with them. I think the risk settings need to be lowered to what the FRWC suggests in its manuals so as to make the robots’ performance sustainable for the long-term. It does no good to have great gains for several months only to lose all of it along with a portion of your principal in one or two bad trades.

You can always find up-to-date results on our Results page. Once there, clicking on the performance box will take you to the Myfxbook system page where you can see a detailed view of the robot’s performance, including each trade it has taken.

The robot’s developer, Sean McDaniels, has kindly agreed to give us a copy for testing purposes so that we can write up a review of it. So, probably beginning next week, we will put Pip Android on a forward test account on a VPS and see how it does. Stay tuned for more.

One thing about Pip Android that is very encouraging (if it is indeed legitimate) is the live trading results they have posted on their front page. They’ve set up two live accounts (with starting balances of $1,000 and $5,000), and the results are updated every 15 minutes. The $1,000 account has increased its equity to $1,719.78 after one month of trading. That’s an incredible 72% account increase in one month. The $5,000 account is sitting at $6,233.06 for a 24.6% increase after trading for about a month and a half. It appears the $5,000 account has not taken a trade for about a week, so I am not certain if they are still actively trading that account. I am not sure why there is such a discrepancy in results between the accounts. That’s something that will have to be determined after purchasing and getting more details. I did notice that the $5,000 account only took trades on one pair (AUD/NZD) and always used the same lot size whereas the smaller account traded on five pairs and varied its lot sizes. So clearly there appears to be some settings differences in play.

If you are interested in learning more and possibly getting a copy for yourself, click here:

www.pipandroid.com

Once you begin to get some results, please let us know how you fare, and we’ll share with our members.

• Live trading results on vendor website updated every 10-15 minutes
• Works in any kind of market (ranging, sideways, choppy, trending)
• Profit and drawdown protection system
• Compatible with all brokers
• Fully automated and manual trading options
• Easy 5-minute installation program

Looking at the Pip Android website, if it can be trusted, they have a live test running that shows about a 65% profit in one month. Another live test shows a 25% increase over about a month and a half. Presumably they are using different settings as the trades taken are not the same.

This robot launches officially on February 9 at 9 AM EST. I may not jump to buy this one right away but may wait and see what the early birds think about it and how their testing goes. If we do buy a copy, we’ll issue a report on it here on the blog.

In the meantime, you can sign up on their website for a chance to win a free copy. Go here:

www.pipandroid.com