Forex Expert Advisors : Forex Conqueror an Unbiased Review

Today's post will be focused on the review of yet another automated trading system which was pointed out to me by a fellow trader a few weeks ago. This system is called forex conqueror and is said by the creators that it is a Consistent, profitable forex automated trading system. In the following few paragraphs I will try to give you my opinion on this expert advisor based on the evidence and descriptions provided by the author.

First of all, let me say that this expert advisor's sale page suffers from some very serious problems. The website starts by giving out some very misleading information relating to profits. It says you can make certain quantities of money in several periods of time but no mention of account size requirements is given. That is, making 18K in a week with 10 million is a small win while with 1K is extremely unrealistic so talking about profit targets without mentioning account equity is just meaningless.

Then it has the boldness to say "Performance guarantee - Indisputable proof below". Well, it seems extremely unlikely that a PhD in computer science (as he says his business partner is) would agree to put such a bold statement in a front page when he should note that the evidence given is extremely subject to dispute. For example, backtesting statements are not given in a complete fashion (only shots of parts of the statements are shown) and absolutely no long term statements or statements that can be compared to backtesting are shown. Sure, anyone can make 5000 with two trades, how many can keep that after a year of trading ? The forex market is not about that at all, it is about keeping your profits, anyone can just make that much money in two or three trades out of luck.

The forex conqueror EA is just a dissappointment. There is no evidence at all to prove the authors claims since the extremely little evidence he gives a) cannot be confirmed b) is not complete and c) does not support all the claims. For example, he says his system can trade under any market condition (again, a very bold statement) but there is no live trading information that can confirm this. I have to say, this system is absolutely NOT worth buying. The evidence to support the author's claims simply does NOT exist. For all we know, the system could be curve fitted to give good results in backtests and it could be failing astronomically right now in live testing. Again, buying this system would be, in my opinion, a huge mistake with the current state of proof provided by the author. As always, I would be glad to change this if long term live testing (which he actually says he HAS on the webpage) is included on the sales page and access to the live account with an investor access password is given. Meanwhile, in my opinion, thi is just part of the ton of low tested, useless expert advisors out there.

If you would like to learn more about realistic profit and draw down targets in the forex market and how you too can use automated trading systems to achieve profitable real results please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed this article !

Forex Expert Advisors : Forex Revolver an unbiased review

Today I decided to talk about a trading system that I found a small while ago while I was searching for new expert advisors out there on the market. This expert advisor is called Forex revolver. This post will focus on the review of this trading system based on all the evidence provided by the authors. Again, this review is unbiased as it can be as I get nothing for giving either positive or negative comments about this expert advisor. Now let's get into the review of this forex automated trading system.

This website is very confusing for me since the expert advisor creator is always going into the effort of trying to convince people they can make massive amounts of money from the expert. In general I think that expert advisor creators should never use absolute money terms when talking about the profit of an expert advisor because this terms are all relative to account size and risk. For example, saying that an EA can make 50,000 in three trades means nothing since this would be small on a 10 million dollar account, yet extremely large in a 200,000 account. So expert advisor sellers should be careful about this because it can confuse the buyers (which I would like to think is not the objective).

Now, this is all the website gives us... There is absolutely no information that can back up any of the author's claims. Not even backtesting, live or forward testing. The author speaks about some graphs as "proof" but this in no way can show you that the expert can perform as the author advertises nor can they show you this behavior is sustainable in the long term. As far as I can tell, this system is absolutely not worth buying since the author offers absolutely no proof, not even the most basic back and live testing information needed to even assess if the expert has the necessary qualities for a system to be even considered for long term profitability.

If you would like to learn more about evaluating systems and how to finally start to profit with forex automated trading with realistic profit and draw down targets please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed this article !

Forex Expert Advisors : Forex Slasher an unbiased review

Today I will focus this review on the review of the forex slasher expert advisor which was suggested to me for review by a customer. I have to say again that I greatly appreciate people taking the effort to find systems and ask me to review them. Despite of the quality of a trading system for me it's important to review them all so that people will not potentially fall onto the traps usually setup by many commercial expert advisor sellers. On the other side, thanks to this suggestions I have been able to find some worthwhile trading systems. Now let's focus on the forex slasher review.

The first thing that greets you when you open the forex slasher's website is a huge banner that advertices the experts claim : "Discover the market slashing robot that has silently swiped $378,137.49 from the so called experts in the past year alone... completely on auto-pilot!"... Well, again, this people have many ethical problems. Whyi n the world would you tell people that an expert advisor did something it DID NOT do. The forex slasher trading system has a backtest that shows a $378,137.49 profit, that does not mean anything since we don't even have access to the experts statements to see if the expert is subject to backtesting interpolation errors or other problems so this testing is worthless for us.

Now what other evidence does the author offer to backup his claims ? Well, there are a lot of trading pictures that I could make using mt4 with absolutely no problem, so this are NOT evidence of profitability as we have NO IDEA if this are real trades, what the loses are, I mean, we have no idea about the way this expert advisor trades. For all we know, this could all be made up images and the expert could trade totally different.

Now there is something to get a good laugh from on the website. See the live testing ? What ? A live testing statement with only 4 trades which we don't have any more information about ? We don't even know if these trades were taken in an hour, in a year, in 10 minutes. Come on ! I could randomly make trades in forex demo account until I got a 199 profit in 5 minutes from 5 trades and then save a snapshot of this to place on a website. Please, dear expert advisor creator, again, your customers are NOT retarded and you should know better. Don't insult your customer's intelligence and don't be so unethical to exploit the naivity of those who cannot really figure out that your expert cannot live up to it's claims.

Again, another expert that is totally NOT worth buying since the creator fails to provide even the most basic evidence to evaluate how his expert trades. Why doesn't he provide 10 year long backtesting with at least a 6 month live test ? Well, because the system did not make $378,137.49 last year and it will not make that next year or the year after that one. If you achieve these results on a live account, just leave me a comment and I will rewrite this whole review... Meanwhile, this system is a total waste of time.

If you would like to learn more about how you evaluate trading systems and know the real usefulness of live, back and forward testing as well as a way to start trading profitably with a free long term profitable trading system please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed this article !

Forex Expert Advisors : Forex Lexus an unbiased review

Another system that was suggested for me to review a few days ago is the Forex Lexus expert advisor. Today's post will be dedicated to the review of this expert advisor based on the information given by the expert's creator. I have to say that this expert is totally strange as it deviates from what I am used to review.

When you arrive at the expert's website, the web page seems to be pretty badly rendered and structures. There is also absolutely no intent to hype the customer, to give him false claims or anything of this sort at all. I have to say that I appreciate the author's intent to make clean, clear cut website where you go straight to the evidence with no crap to read beforehand.

I have to say that despite the author's intent with the website and his seemingly good intentions, the expert advisor fails to deliver any significant evidence to prove it is profitable. First things first, the author provides live account statements which don't have any trades at all, so it is very hard to evaluate the expert in this way (well, I guess he just set it up so we should give the author some time to deliver the evidence). Now, the author shows some backtesting and then says that it is not suitable for year long backtests because it requires optimization every certain amount of days. Well, I have to say that in my experience I have never seen one single long term profitable trading system that requires optimization. The expert should be able to do this by himself so that the amount of lag due to the optimization to market conditions remains minimal. If the system cannot be backtested for the past ten years, analyzed and then confronted against live results, then there is not anything else to say about it's trading.

After looking at the website and going through the evidence provided by the author I would have to say that this system is NOT worth buying since there is no way in which we can confirm that the system can be long term profitable. The system also runs the risk of having periods of very high draw down if market conditions shift too quickly and repeatedly (while systems that have adjustable logic, by ATR values for example, will most likely endure the markets much better). Again, I have never ever seen a long term profitable system that ahs to be optimized every 30-45 days.

If you would like to learn more about automated trading and how there are actually free long term profitable systems you can profit from please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed this article !

Forex Expert Advisors : EAzeGor an unbiased review

After reviewing their winalot expert advisor a few days ago, I though it would be worthwhile to review the EAzeGor EA made by the Easy-EA company. I have to say that the fact that their winalot expert advisor is in good standing was with no doubt a very good reason to continue reviewing their expert advisors. Today's post will be dedicated to the unbiased review of their EAzeGor expert advisor system which is elegitely based on the results of an EA championship contestant.

On their web page, the authors talk a little bit about the EAzeGor expert advisor and the fact that it only wins 40% of it's trades. I have to say that I am pleasently surprised by both the way in which this expert is tested and the evidence that is given to support the experts trading. The EAzeGor expert advisor has backtesting results which match live testing statements to a good extent although I would still need backtesting from 1999 to confirm that the expert advisor is in fact long term profitable. Backtesting also exagerates profit potential, which seems to be a general problem with certain types of expert advisors (depends on how the choose to open and close positions) even if one minute interpolation errors are absent.

The live tests show us that the system delivers quiet as expected with the average loss being several times less than the average win. The system has therefore an excellent risk to reward ratio which is a characteristic of realiable trend following systems. I have to say, I rarely find trading systems that match what I would expect for a long term profitable trading system. Specially the fact that we have almost year long live testing and backtesting that is consistent (to some extent that is) proves that the expert, at least was profitable in 2008-2009. However, I have to stress that I would still need backtesting from 1999 to show that the expert was actually able to make money consistently under several market conditions because there is still the risk that the expert is only able to profit under 2007-2009 market conditions which are quiet specific. I have requested this backtesting from easy-EA and will update this review if they send it to me.

This EA has realistic yearly profit targets and draw downs (as the live testing indicates) and I would defintely consider it long term profitable if It shows profit it backtesting for the past 10 years. Well, I hope we can continue to look at the development of this expert's testing for the next few years. As far as my opinion about this EA goes I would consider it worth testing, if backtesting from 1999 would prove the system to be independent from changing market conditions. If they lack this, then the system could start to fail dramatically once market conditions start to change more (at least with the 10 year long backtesting we know it can at least endure a bigger set of conditions). This system will definitely be tested in my weekly newsletter if such conditions are fulfilled.

Again, I applaud this company's lack of hype and their commitment to providing long live testing and backtesting data. I would also ask the website creator's to add investor access passwords to the live account so that we can ensure the live testing results are in fact authentic.

If you would like to learn how you can evluate expert advisors, top wasting money and start actually making realistic profit targets in the forex market please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed this article !

Forex Expert Advisors : Forex Cyclone an unbiased review

As for the past two weeks, today I'll continue to focus on the review of another automated trading system. Today's post will be dedicated to the review of the forex cyclone expert advisor which was suggested to me by a customer who had previously purchased my automated trading ebook. As always, this review is written based on the evidence provided by the expert advisor creator and is no way biased as I get no reward of any kind for giving the EA either positive or negative feedback.

The website starts with a very bold claim from the authors saying he has "reeled in 986,928.17" USD from the forex market. Now, this guy seriously has to be jocking. I am pretty impressed as how naive and ignorant this expert advisor sellers think their customers really are to put such bold claims first thing in a webpage and thinking they'll just swallow the whole thing. The sellers makes this claims based in the fact that he has a year long backtesting results that shows these results. This is definitely not a valid proof on income ! This guy is actually lying to everybody's face as he did not "reel in" all those profits, he just happened to have a backtest with those numbers which is VERY DIFFERENT than an account with that money inside. These claims are just unproven and are in fact a very good example of how unethical expert advisor sellers can be in the forex automated trading market.

Now, as far as the backtesting statements go and their reliability I would have to say that from the TP and SL values I could say that the one minute interpolation errors should be small, however, the EA could still be trading with inside bar data which could make real live results differ from backtesting results considerably. But ok, the system seems to perform alright from 2007 to 2009 and I believe that backtesting could overestimate profits (a lot) and underestimate loses (a lot too) but the overall picture seems credible.

The real problem comes in when we consider the length of the backtest and the lack of live testing. First, we don't have any idea of why the creator did not backtest his system from 1999 if the system is so profitable and we also don't know why he does not have any live or forward testing statements if he really believes his or her system to be as profitable. I would have to say that these things are always what makes me extremely suspecious about a trading system. If the author fails to provide testing information which would be obviously provided for a profitable trading system, then it is obviously because said information does not help his outrageous claims.

This expert is considered of course, not worth buying and the author would have to provide us longer backtests and live testing information so that we can ensure that there is back live testing consistency and that the EA can actually be long term profitable. Also, a check of the word "proven" in the dictionary wouldn't hurt.

If you would like to learn more about my opinions about the reality of automated trading and how you can also me profitable with automated trading systems please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed this article !

Forex Expert Advisors : Forex Decimator an unbiased review

Today I'll continue my series of forex automated trading system reviews with a system that I as asked to review by two newsletter subscribers and a few people who have left messages on my website's chat. Again, I thank everyone who takes the time to look out for systems and give me hint. This makes it much easier for me to actually find new systems and review them according to the evidence shown by the authors. This review will focus on the evaluation of the forex decimator expert advisor, again, I will review this expert based on the evidence provided by the authors. This, as all my reviews, is as unbiased as it can get as I don't receive any profit from either positive or negative comments on any of the trading systems I review.

Lets start by reviewing the first claim the author makes we start to look at his or her website. The first thing we get is a big sign saying "29 Year Old Forex Geek Designs Ruthless Autopilot Forex Robot Proven To Turn $10,000 Into $100,000 With Less Than 10 Minutes Work Per Week"... Really ? I think that the creators of forex decimator need to take some classes in english as the meaning of the word "proven" seems to be a little bit blurry in their minds.

Proven, as far as I know, is when a fact does not come out to be false in the light of all possible testing that can be done against it. That is, if every possible test that could be done does not go against the claim, then, and only then, can the author say proven and even then, there is the possibility that a future test (for example future trading) will make the statement void.

Now, what in the world is this evidence for this "proven" system ? Well, nothing actually ! The author offers very little evidence of the expert's performance but yet, he or she does not go light when it's time to make claims. The author shows some backtesting which is totally useless because we don't have access to the backtesting statement something which does not let us evaluate the possibility of one minute interpolation errors or the extension of the tests. So all this evidence is rubbish.

Then, the "live trades" are just a simple table showing some values. This could have just been made in excel and placed on the website. How in the world are we supposed to know this is real ? There is not even a single live or demo account statement on the website really showing us how the expert trade, how it has performed in the past or if it's live and back testing performance do not match. This is, a total waste of anyone's time. I would have to say to this website's creator that his customers are not retarded and that saying that something is proven when it is NOT is unethical and maybe even bordering unlawful.

Of course, this system is NOT worth buying and the author would have to provide much more evidence like a backtest from 1999 with statements and at least a year long live testing to even consider this worth buying. If you would like to learn more about how you can profit in the world of automated trading please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed this article !

Forex Expert Advisors : The Winalot expert advisor an unbiased review

For the last few days I have been aggressively looking at, analyzing and reviewing trading systems I have come up with. The most recent system I found is called Winalot which is sold by the easy-ea.com company. This post will therefore be dedicated at the exhaustive review of this expert advisor through the evidence offered by the creators on their website.

Well, I can say that they easy-ea website is pretty much one of the simplest websites I have ever seen regarding commercial expert advisors, not a lot of hype and cutting straight to the evidence. They offer back testing and presumably live testing information. Their back testing is done year by year and goes back up until 2007 which I find pretty odd given the fact that his system could have been easily backtested from 1999. Since the market changed completely between 2006 and 2009 it is not surprise that they may have omitted previously unprofitable trading periods.

The expert advisor also offers a forward testing statement from December 2008 to date which is something you could say impressive for a commercial expert advisor. After nearly a year of trading they achieve a profit near 50% which I consider reasonable for a forex automated trading system. Now, the backtesting should be at least an indicative of performance since position sizes are higher than 20 pips which should make interpolation errors small. When comparing live and forward testing you do see discrepancies which could be because both the feed and the EA opening trades within bars rather than based on bar closing values. The system underestimates draw down a lot when you compare statements. For example, backtesting says only 3 losing trades happened in March 2009 while you see 5 on live testing. Of course, the profit targets in backtesting are too unrealistic because of some artifact of the expert's logic (such as the opening of positions I just mentioned) but the live testing statements seem to achieve reasonable profit targets with reasonable draw downs. Given the fact that the risk to reward ratio is 2:1, which is borderline acceptable for me, I would say that this system could be worth testing if we had a way to confirm long term profitability since 2000.

However, since they fail to provide us with this data for some reason and we can only know the EA is profitable under 2009 conditions I am inclined to say that there is not sufficient data for this EA to be tested and used by us. The creators should modify the EA to make backtesting reliable so that we could have a measure of adaptability and consistency. While this happens I will have to say that this EA is not worth trading because there is not enough evidence of it's longer term profitability. However I certainly applaud the author's drive to provide long term live testing and backtesting information.

If you would like to learn about free long term stable profitable trading systems and how you can too start earning money in the forex market using trading systems please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed this article !

Forex Expert Advisors : Forex Humanoid an unbiased review

In an effort to continue my reviews of expert advisor systems today's post will focus on the review of the Forex Humanoid expert advisor. Of course, I write all this reviews with the hope that traders new to automated forex trading will not get ripped off by unethical sellers that offer systems that just do not work and put the hard earned cash of those out there at significant risk. Remember that all my reviews are as unbiased as they possibly can with no cash (or services, or doughnuts, or anything else) given to me for neither good or bad opinions about any particular system.

Now let's start reviewing the forex humanoid expert advisor. I have to say that the forex humanoid expert advisor looks like the regular trading expert advisor out there, with little evidence to prove their claims and really outrageous results.

First of all, let's look at what they are saying on their webpage. They are saying that their system gets no loses, yes, no loses. And not even only that but they are saying that they have managed to turn 10K into 100K during the last year. Now, they also claim that their expert uses a better than 1:1 risk to reward ratio. I mean, if there is a system out there that can make a 1000% profit return with no loses and a 1:1 or better risk to reward ratio then it IS the holy grail by all standards.

But wait... What is wrong then about this expert ? Well, that they are pretty much not proving any of the claims they make. For example, if their expert is so profitable why isn't there any live testing information but just pictures (which I mean, can be perfectly easy made up) which cannot prove the profitability of this expert. If it is so good, why isn't there a live testing statement of at least a year showing us what it can do ? Why does he say that the expert has made all that money when it certainly has NOT ! If it has, then where is the proof ? I mean, I just hate when EA creators just say things for the sake of saying them.

If you are going to say something, prove it, or shut up. Backtesting results do not mean that the EA actually did that, maybe in some imaginary world where streets are made of gold and most EA sellers are honest but definitely not on this one. This system could have of course, been designed with the benefit of hindsight, hey, if you know the past you can make a system that makes 2 million from 10 dollars in one year and I mean, it is just outrageous to claim such profit and draw down targets with no live testing to prove that backtesting and live testing correlate. I mean, this system is a total waste of time and a total death trap for people out there. If the EA creator givves us a year long live or forward test proving that it trades exactly as in backtesting I'll be glad to change my review. Up unitl now, I consider this EA absolutely NOT worth buying or testing, totally worthless.

If you would like to learn more about how you evaluate and trade free experst and actually be profitable in forex automated trading please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed this article !

Forex Expert Advisors : Forex Shocker an unbiased review

Today I will continue on my latest series of expert advisor reviews which as you know are all experts I have found either through the suggestions of my readers and subscribers or through searching the internet for expert advisors. This post will focus on the review of the Forex Shock expert advisor which I actually found through google (as we do most things).

At first glance, the forex shocker website seems like the way in which an expert advisor website should be structured, almost no marketing gibberish and just the testing evidence we need to evaluate if the system is profitable or not. Then, when I started looking with a little bit more depth at the actual trading statements of the forex shocker I was (not surprisingly) not shocked.

It would appear when you first look at all the trading evidence that the forex shocker is actually a very well documented and tested expert advisor but the next thing you have to look at is the validity of the tests and the actual trading scheme the expert advisor uses. For example, when you look at the trading statements you realize that the EA uses a very large risk to reward ratio of 10:1, which is appaling and already a signal of this system not being long term profitable, trading only on the random movements of the market which adapt to it's logic on the current market conditions (I go to depth about this on my ebook).

Then you look at the backtests which are straight equity curves with almost no draw down extremely characteristic of systems with large risk to reward ratios that exploit the one minute interpolation errors of the metatrader backtester. So, you have an EA that has backtesting that is worthless, with a 10:1 risk to reward ratio and very limited live testing information. My judgement is then sound and clear, this expert advisor is, in my opinion, not long term profitable and therefore absolutely not worth buying or testing.

If you would like to learn more about automated trading systems and how you too can profit from the world of fx automated trading with realistic profit and draw down levels please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed this article !

Forex Expert Advisors : Adelpha by FedoraFX an Unbiased Review

It is amazing how I just cannot end up reviewing commercial experts. Everytime I surf the web in search for new automated trading systems I find a couple or more new, sometimes even more expert advisors. I usually try to review all expert advisors I encounter each time I search for them as well as each time people ask me to review some system I have not come across. Today, it's the turn of the Adelpha trading system by FedoraFX. I have to say that the website, from my linux desktop, looks quiet unpolished and badly done. Of course, I recon this could be due to the nature of my operating system but an EA seller should have his website ready for any customer, regardless of what operating system they are using.

But well, let's go directly into what concerns us, the evaluation of the trading strategy and evidence provided by FedoraFX, the creators of the Adelpha expert advisor. I mean, when you first enter their website and start to see their backtesting graph the hair on the back of your neck must start to stand up. I mean, absolutely linear equity graph when backtesting for the past 10 years ? After looking a little bit more deeply at the trading system you find out that (not surprisingly) the system closes trades with very small profits. Now, this means that there is very significant backtesting interpolation error, so yes, backtesting of this EA is meaningless.

Besides that, the EA has no stoploss, and this is the reason why it doesn't have any loses for the past 10 years. It just does not close any trades with open draw down, that is, the stoploss is your account balance ! Couple that with the interpolation errors in backtesting and that means that on a live account you would have had a few wipeout during the past 10 years. In my opinion, this expert advisor is just completely worthless, not even the time it took me to enter the website, calculate the values and write all this on a review. Of course, I do this in order to prevent any of the inexperienced retail traders out there from gettings such a sure loss expert advisor.

Again, if you would like to learn more about long term stable profitable expert advisors you can trade for free and how you can also evaluate experts and stop this EA sellers from getting your money for systems that don't work please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed this article !

Forex Expert Advisors : PrecisionTypeA an Unbiased Review

Today we have a very special review I have also been putting to the side for a while. This review is about the PrecisionTypeA by the RapidForex management group. I was quiet surprised at their website and the way this expert advisor is portrayed by them. I also surprised me in a good way that they are actually money managers who actually use their expert advisor to trade people's money (I suppose, I guess they can also be trading their managed accounts manually). Now of course, all this things don't mean anything until we get to the real evidence of profitability.

The PrecisionTypeA expert advisor has (again to my surprise !) a one year long live testing coupled with a few months of demo testing and backtesting of the expert from 2000 to 2009. Of course, when we analyze the trading system we realize a few things about the way in which it trades the forex market. First, we can see that the EA has a 5:1 risk to reward ratio, which of course, is not my cup of tea for long term profitable systems. The nature of the small take profit can also significantly affect the reliability of the backtesting results. Of course, if you compare backtesting and live results you notice that there is a substantial difference which is probably attributable to backtesting interpolation errors. Therefore, draw downs suffered by the system are terribly underestimated and are most likely 10 times the draw downs shown, as the number of losing trades in backtesting against live testing follows such a relationship.

Then, the live testing and the demo testing do not have investor access passwords we can use to check the expert has actually done all the trades but I mean, this is understandable as most EA sellers who use a service for giving results trust these to prove their authenticity (although you only need a bit of imagination to post fake statements on one of those reporting services). The live testing results have however achieved what I would consider agressive but yet achievable trading results with profits a little bit above 100% with a maximum draw down that I estimated to be near 40% (approx). Of course, this is a rational profit target with an understandable draw down due to the market exposure.

I am worried about the expert not having consistency between back and live testing results something which could mean the expert could wipe accounts on some years in which it looked less profitable in backtesting. For example, 2007 shows a substantially lower profit achievement, which could turn into large loses if you take into account the underestimation of draw down. If the year of 2008 gave profits near 860% according to backtesting and the draw down is so underestimated, then a profit of only near 200% in 2007 could have meant an account wipeout on a live accounts.

Overall, the people that make this EA have made an outstading effort to prove their claims and provide evidence of their profitability, it seems only logical that they are thinking about earning most of their capital through trading their system rather than selling it. However, I think that it is worth noting that the EA should be traded with far less risk than the one suggested on the backtests to correctly preserve equity. Also, I consider that the lack of consistency between back and live testing does not let us appreciate the long term profitability of this expert advisor so we only know it's profitable under 2008 and 2009 market conditions, for this reason I don't consider there is enough evidence of long term profitability to actually buy and trade this EA and be sure it will be stable and profitable in the future (we would also not know this if there was consistency but at least a consistent backtest between 2000 and 2009 and live tests would give us a much higher probability).

Nonetheless, I have to say that it is actually refreshing to see an EA seller who at least does the effort to test his system without trying to deceit people (as far as I can tell). Lets hope all live testing does not mysteriously "vanish" if the system enters large draw downs.

If you would like to learn more about how to stop being ripped off by expert advisor sellers and how to start trading profitably with realistic profit and draw down levels please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed this article !

Forex Expert Advisors : Euro Blaster an unbiased review

Since people seem to be enjoying my reviews about expert advisors I have decided I will review as much expert advisors as I possibly can so that people can greatly benefit from my experience in forex automated trading. It is of the utmost importance for me to keep people away from losing their money to most of the forex automated trading schemes out there showing them profits they will not get. So, getting on with the contents of this post, today I am going to review the Euro-Blaster expert advisor which I found recently when looking for new expert advisors to review. I am always amazed of how many expert advisors are actually being sold out there !

This expert advisor's website is pretty simple, with just the trading evidence they have to offer and a small attempt at the regular marketing stuff in the middle and at the end of the website. However, as always, we are not interested in how the EA is actually presented but in how the EA actually performs. Of course, the first thing that makes my skin start to crawl is the straight up line of the equity curve with no loses. When you see a forex system with no loses, it just means one thing. Either it has not traded for enough time, or it's actual risk is the whole account size so it does not lose until it loses everything.

Of course. looking at the backtests, the demo and live accounts, we also see this, the EA opens trades in some cases with no stop loss (see some backtesting statements and you'll see this) or it opens trades with extremely high risk to reward ratios. Now, this is just a run away signal, the EA is trading huge risk, small profits risking a lot of capital, which ironically goes against their claims given on the sales page. This expert is just a total death trap.

Something which also talks about this expert's credibility is the fact that live tests where just run for a week or to, in April 2009. The EA could have by now a very large profit and the author could have a lot of evidence about it's profitability. Why isn't there any evidence of this on the website ? Well, it didn't happen because this EA is obviously NOT long term profitable and therefore my opinion is that is is absolutely NOT worth buying or testing, just by the merits of it's logic as 99.999% of the experts out there, it can be discarded.

If you would like to learn more about really trading profitably with automated trading systems and how you can avoid being fooled by expert advisors sellers into buying systems that don't work please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed this article !

Forex Expert Advisors : Lerosa pro FX an unbiased review

Today I embark myself in another review journey to look at the Lerosa Pro Fx expert advisor. I must confess that this EA has been suggested a few times for me to review but I have left it aside because I wanted a little bit more development on the EA before I made any comments about it. Within this post I intend to write my actual opinion about the Lerosa Pro Fx system based on the actual trading evidence given by the authors.

Well, at first glance I though that the Lerosa FX Pro website was very good, aimed at people who knew the risk levels they were looking for and who are not looking to get rich overnight using automated trading systems. Definitely, the people at Lerosa have given this some thought. There is a big Risk Warning item on the menu, one of the first I might add, which is quiet odd for an expert advisor selling website.

But well, what I can I tell you about their trading system ? I have to confess that this is one of the first experts I have reviewed in a long while which I have not discared in the first 5 minutes of analysis, it actually took sometime to really get my opinions constructed about this trading system. The website owners provide one year backtesting of the expert with three different risk levels which is something I consider appropiate given the fact that people should consider how much draw down they would be able to sustain and balance it with how much profit they can get. Stoploss and take profit values are adequately separated from the entry price so one can consider backtesting of this ea as guidance for risk levels, as they probably represent the system's trading accurately.

Another thing I liked about the Lerosa FX Pro trading system is it's risk to reward ratio which, in an absolutely surprising turn of events for me, turns to be actually very small, of about 1:3, That is, the system risks 1 dollar for every 3 it makes, something which is always a positive characteristic of an expert. It's equity curve is what I would consider ideal but it's draw down levels are below it's predicted market exposure by my standards.

One thing that gets me thinking is why no backtesting from 1999 is provided by the authors. This of course means that the system must have underperformed on earlier years since the authors so conviniently miss to show this testing although it would certainly not hurt to do so if it showed a similar equity curve as the backtests they show.

The live testing up until now, from June 2009, matches what I would expect from a trend following systems with several important loses during the past month which has been quiet rangy. I would have to say that as much as I like the way the logic of this expert advisor looks, the fact that backtesting is missing could mean that the system is too well adapted to a certain fit set of market conditions, which could be the case due to it's rigid take profit and trailing stop parameters. I have emailed the authors of the Lerosa FX Pro trading system requesting they post backtesting results from 2000 to 2009 to really show their system's long term profitability. If they fail to do so, then we will know the system is just adapted to current market conditions and will start to wipe equity as the market changes a little. However, I do concede that the Lerosa FX trading system is in much better standing than 99% of the experts out there and will obviously be tested on my weekly newsletter if they agree to show extended backtesting results which we can confirm to be consistent with live testing reports.

If you would like to learn more about how to evaluate expert advisors profitability and how to trade profitably with a free long term stable trading system please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed this article !

Forex Trading Signals : Forex AutoMoney an Unbiased Review

Today I am going to diverge a little bit from my usual reviewing material and go a little bit towards forex signaling services. A website visitor asked me to review the forex automoney trading signal website so that he or she could make a decision about purchasing the subscription and using their software. I have never liked forex signaling software since I think they are an uneccessary intermediate between manual fully automated software. I think that of course, they can be profitable if the signal service is directed by dedicated proffesional trading proffesionals and the person is able to execute all the instructions as indicated. So ok, let's take a look at the forex automoney website.

My first impression about this is that it follows the same trend as most of the forex software, services and systems offered out there, it has a lot of hype and a lot of ways and calculators you can use to see how much you could "make everyday" and little evidence to support any of the claims on the website.

I also hate websites that show you testimonials with no evidence. I mean, what in the world are they thinking ? Are we supposed to believe that the testimonial belongs to a real person even if there are no trading statements from the person or no hard evidence whatsoever that the system and service are profitable. Sure, I am certain they made 400K last year, but from their subscribers, not from the forex market ! At least, there is no evidence on their website that can prove either them, or their customers have been able to achieve the profit targets they give on their main page.

By the way, a harder look at the testimonials reveal that most of them really like forex services. For example, Margaret Blake, from Ontario Canada, has testiomanils over at least (that I could find quickly) 5 different forex websites. What a coincidence right ? This person has absolutely no other place to be found online rather than in forex system and signalling service websites ? I highly doubt she or all other testimonials given are real. They are, as they always are, actors who are made to resemble most social groups the marketers are targetting (aren't they clever !) you can see a lot of stereotypes (young couple, business woman, young adult, etc).

Well, I have to say that I would never buy their services because they do not have enough evidence to support their claims (I'll be glad to write a second review if they do), as far as I know, you could just wipe your account by using their service. Anyway, it is always a better strategy to really treat forex trading like a job and rely on yourself, rather than third parties, to actually do the job.

If you would like to learn about automated trading systems and how they can be used to profit from the forex market with realistic profit expectations please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed this article !

Forex Trading Systems : The ultimate forex edge an Unbiased Review

As you know, I regularly review automated trading systems for the forex market but I have recently been asked by a website reader to review the ultimate forex edge trading system. Of course, as my website is called "reviewing everything forex" I am also interested in the review of regular trading systems and signal services so I decided to give this a go and review the ultimate forex edge trading system.

The forex ultimate edge website seemed to be just another cheesy marketing website that attempts to bond with the website's visitor by appealing to his likely current situation. The author first describes how he was broke and desperate (as many are likely to be when entering the website) and then he says that he saw the light and started to profit from forex trading. The story of course, has just no back to it, the trader does not mention the actual name of the company that allegedly gave him the chance to trade a 10 million dollar account or any information on any managed account or account he traded before or after this.

As a matter of fact, this is the most important thing. We have this guy telling us he can walk the walk and trade the forex market profitably but where is the proof ? Where are his account statements with all the profits he has been able to make with his trading system ? If anyone was going to learn a trading system from someone they would want him to show his trading statements right away. Why should you be different ? If he is claiming he can do something then he shouldn't have any hard time proving it if it is actually true. Now if it is, I'll be glad to take a look at the new evidence and redo this review to reflect that, but up until now, it's just bunch of made up graphs and blablabla anyone can talk.

Being an account manager or selling a trading system is not supposed to be about being able to talk BS but it is supposed to be about being able to convince people through evidence and logic that your system is able to do something good with their money. Of course, up until now, this website is just a bunch of non sense which I would never consider worth buying.

If you would like to learn about automated trading systems and how there is the possibility to trade profitably with automated trading with real profit and draw down expectations please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed this article !

Forex Expert Advisors : Forex Cash Detective an unbiased Review

I often read and go through a lot of expert advisor's websites with all their absurd claims, marketing techniques and poorly made points and I have to say that I am no longer surprised by the large amount of systems out there that follow this scheme. This makes me worry everyday a little more about all those out there who are looking for truly honest opinions about these systems and this is the main reason why I try to review most systems that you guys tell me about. Today I am going to focus on the Forex Cash Detective expert advisor.

The website is pretty the usual stuff, which I have said many times, does NOT make me judge an expert before looking at it's actual trading evidence. I never judge an expert based on the website or what the website says, I judge them by the evidence they portray and how what the trading statements actually say about the system's logic and the amount of market exposure and risk it will put on your trading accounts.

Now, this system is one of the most bald faced I have ever seen and for this reason I decided to take this guys claims (at the end of the webpage) one by one and tear them apart. According to the creator this are the characteristics of his system :

Hand you the keys to the kingdom - my personal proven, time-tested, and cash-generating trading systems, strategies, tactics. -> This is a total lie since there is no proof about this in the whole website. There are no live testing statements that backup such a claim. I mean, we are not stupid and we can know that if there are no accounts showing profits and draw downs there is no way in which you may have made it "proven and time-tested". If it is really that profitable, the creator would be glad to show us the statements. Guess why he is not ?

Show you exactly how to potentially earn hundreds, even thousands of dollars per trade...-> Probably more tell you how to lose thousands of dollars per trade. The word "potentially" says it all, I also can tell you how you can potentially make a million dollars in a casino. This statement is just misleading.

Practically force you to earn an easy, consistent income from forex trading - even if you've never traded before...-> This is total non sense. If you have never traded before and start using an automated trading system you don't understand, you will probably wipe out your account. Even if you use a long term profitable automated trading system, it is bound to happen. I clearly outline all the reason for it on my ebook.

Obliterate all emotions and eliminate all the guesswork from your trading...-> This is a good one ! Automated trading has AS MUCH or much more emotions to it than regular manual trading. People seem to forget this since many EA sellers mislead them this way. I also explain on my ebook all the psychological aspects of automated trading and the toll they will take on you as a trader !

This hands-off, consistently profitable system will puts cash in your pockets, every single day...-> This is a terribly BOLD, UNPROVEN statement. How can he say this if there isn't a single trading statement that can show profits everyday showing that these claims are true. He is just saying it for the sake of it, something which is obviously not true. It is not proven and there is NOTHING on the website that backs this up.

As you can see, the forex cash detective system is just a bunch of hype with absolutely no proof, just a bunch of graphs which as far as we know can be simply made up using the trading platform. Again, I know and I understand that it is very easy to be misled in the world of fx automated trading with all the sweet words they put on your ears, but again, you have to be very careful about the systems you intend to buy and how you evaluate them.

If you would like to learn more about how to evaluate expert advisors and what characteristics you should look for in a long term profitable trading system please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed this article !

Forex Expert Advisors : Forex Monster an unbiased Review

I have to say that it is very hard to keep up with everything that comes out everyday on the forex expert advisor market and I would really like to thank you guys for telling me about new experts that come out so that I may check them out and review them. Of course, I always hope that one of these systems will be able to go through my criteria for long term profitable profitability but I am still waiting for that to happen ! Now, I am going to review an expert advisor called forex monster, suggested to me by a person who left a message on the chat (it is on the bottom left of the webpage if you would liket o leave a message).

Well, forex monster's webpage greets us to what seems to be a part of a backtesting summary with a huge sign on top saying it can make you 500% profit, not mentioned the time it requires to do so. You should also look at how conviniently the part of the backtesting summary that shows the modeling quality is ommited, very convinient ! Also, why is there no access to the actual backtesting detailed statement ? Things are starting to look a little bit suspicious already.

Now this guy shows us 20 days of trading and calls it "proof" that the system can make a certain amount of profit, which is of course, completely absurd since first, we don't know if that is a backtesting statement, a forwards testing or a live testing statement. We don't know the rest and we certainly do not why the testing stopped there if that testing was done 8 months ago. I mean, if I was an EA seller and I wanted to sell my product, assuming I'm telling the truth, I would want to have as much evidence as I can to support my claims. So why doesn't he show any more backtesting or live testing since at least January 2009 ? When this testing statement was issued ?

Looking at the statement there is nothing notoriously obvious about the trading logic that could make this system wipe your account. I could say that it would eventually fail when the market changes as position sizing and stop loss and take profit are rigid. However, this system is most probably geared to take profit of breakouts in high volatility environments, which is why I guess it worked at the beginning of the year when the market was terribly volatile because of all the market crisis. As you see, the system is obviously not a long term profitable system but saying how risky it is something I cannot do without more testing information.

This system is NOT worth buying clearly because the author does NOT show any information to backup his claims. He could get this information pretty easily if he really traded this expert advisor on his live accounts. Why not show us his account statements ? Well, the thing is that this person probably makes his money from selling that system to innocent victims and has never traded it live. If he has, he can show us all his statements with investor access so that we can confirm them and I'll be glad to say he is an honest seller who just happened to "miss" placing the proof on his website. Needless to say, why am I feeling this won't happen ?

If you would like to learn more about how you can evaluate expert advisors and how you too can profit with automated trading with realistic profit expectations and draw downs please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed this article !

Forex Expert Advisors : Forex Supremacy an unbiased review

I have to say that I definitely enjoy the fact that several people have taken the time to email me or leave messages on the chat about new commercial systems they have come across which they want me to review. I am absolutely flattered about my opinion being so valued and taken into account. Now, of course, in order to satisfy the demands of my readers I have decided to write a review about a system somebody asked me to review recently called Forex Supremacy.

Of course, I always start every review with a clean slate and no preconceptions about a system so that I can evaluate them as unbiased and independently as possible. The Forex Supremacy Automated trading system is no different than most other experts out there website wise with the same marketing scheme we have become so accostumed to. The website uses the "personal story approach" which sets the creator of the system at a bad time, in a situation similar to many potential buyers, time in which he "sees the light" and decides to create his automated trading system. Now, of course, he wants to share this system from us to "help us" in the world of forex automated trading.

I mean, I have nothing against websites doing marketing and telling stories, for me this is perfectly fine. What I simply cannot stand is the absence of evidence to support wild claims. For example, the forex supremacy website claims " My Automatic System WILL Grow Your Trading Account By 23.70% EVERY Single Week". There is abslutely no proof on the website that leads one to believe that the system has such a capability, there are no forward or live testing statements of a significant period of time (one or two years) which can effectively show how the expert trades, the risk level taken, etc.

I have to say that this people are very bold to throw all these figures at us without any proof. I mean, what are all those charts about ? Sure, I know that showing sample trades is a way to show the way a system works and how it can or cannot be profitable but without trading statements that go with them they just don't mean a thing. What can you possibly infere from a few charts ? Absolutely nothing significative, evenmore, the charts could just be made up placing a few arrows and lines. Where are the real trades ? Where are the statements ? If your system can produce 23% or so every week, why don't you show us 5 months of this happening ?

Well my friends, the truth is pretty obvious here. There is no evidence because this system is probably just a trading system with an exceedingly high market exposure that risks a lot of money, that is unable to profit consistently and that is just being sold to you at the expense of your lack of education on the matter. If I am wrong (which I wish I was) the creator would be glad to provide us with live trading statements with investor access that we can use to check his performance and see that his system does perform the way he says.

Until then, this system is of course NOT worth buying and again, this people are really bold faced to try to sell things which they probably know can have serious consequences on people's finances. I mean, I guess they only sleep at night because they sleep on a pile of money.

If you would like to learn more about how to truly trade long term profitable trading systems and how to evaluate systems so that you don't fall into any experst which are NOT going to work please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed this article !

Forex Expert Advisors : Forex Poison an unbiased review

After yesterday's review I believe today will be forex poison's turn. As I said yesterday, a website visitor pointed me in the direction of this expert advisor and asked my opinion about it. In order to help that person and all my other website visitors to better know this trading system I decided to write a review about it after a very careful study of all the evidence shown on their website.

First of all, I would have to say that the forex poison case is rather peculiar because there is in fact a lot of information about the system on the selling webpage so there is a lot of information we can use to evaluate the actual trading of the expert advisor. The first thing we are shown is actually a collection of two "live statements" which apparently show the expert trading since May, 2009. I have to say that sadly we have no way of proving that these statements are real and not made up because we have no investor access to the accounts, therefore lets pretend the seller is honest and analyze the expert's trading.

The expert's trading is quiet strange, although I could still notice several interesting aspects of it. To start, the expert has an unfavorable risk to reward ratio of about 5:1 in most cases although it can be worse depending on the trade since apparently the TP value is not assigned at the beginning of the trade but is generated as the trade progresses in some way. I say this because there are some trades that go to the SL and close without ever reaching the TP. There is also a considerable change in lot sizes during the past month which is something very curious because there is an almost 10 fold increase in risk. I mean, if one of the last trades would have ended up in a loss it would have wiped out a very good chunk of the profits. My best guess is that traded lot sizes were increased to try to make the system look more profitable if it has a winning streak, which is something I have seen done in the past to have better results to show.

However the most interesting part comes when we look at the rest of the information on the website. We see backtesting results at 90% modeling quality with NO loses. Hey, this just SCREAMS one minute interpolation errors or in another way, it could mean that there was a total absence of a stoploss in the tests. Also, why is the backtesting so reduces ? Why isn't the backtest the same as the live testing period to show consistency ? Why isn't the backtest from 1999 if the expert can adapt to any market condition ?

Obviously, if the expert has huge one minute interpolation errors because of it's logic there is no point in showing backtests from 1999 because they would just be meaningless. This of course, leaves us with almost no tools to evaluate the EA since forward and backtesting cannot be related. However, I could say that the actual risk to reward strategy and the large lot sizes traded do put the trader in a place where is market exposure is likely very large. That said, this means that, in my opinion, I think the expert is prone to wipe your account because of it's market exposure, and I have no convincing evidence to think otherwise.

Also, making the claim that an expert can trade profitably under any market condition is just outrageous. There is no way they could prove this since they don't know how the market has evolved and they cannot even rely in consistent backtest to prove that at least the expert would have performed well in the market conditions spanning from 1999. That said, I think this EA is not worth buying or testing because the EA has a significant market exposure which puts very significant amounts of equity at risk. Even if the increase in lot sizes is not artificial but due to the expert's logic I would never trade an expert that made such a jump in risk. The creators should also consider posting investor access passwords to verify the live accounts are real. I really want to see if those live accounts will stay there or if they'll remove them if the EA crashes (which in my opinion is obvious due to the market exposure of the system).

If you would like to learn more about evaluating systems and trading long term profitable trading systems please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed this article !

Forex Expert Advisors : The Forex Accumulator an unbiased review

A few days ago I met a website visitor on the site's chat who asked me about the forex accumulator and forex poison expert advisors. Given the fact that I had never heard of any of the two, I decided to take a look at them and write my honest opinion about their trading techniques and their potential for long term profitability. On this post I am going to concentrate on reviewing the forex accumulator expert advisor.

A first glance at the expert's website shows, yet again, another automated trading system aimed at luring new traders into buying it with the regular marketing techniques which by now have become an everyday thing for expert advisor sellers. This however, as I always say, is no reason to judge or look away from the expert. I never judge any expert advisors by their marketing techniques, I always look at the trading statements and the evidence they provide and then I judge if they would merit testing or not through my experience with automated trading systems.

This EA is an outrage. It had been a while since I last saw an expert that had such little evidence to prove it's claims. First of all, the backtesting statements shown by the expert's creator shows only a 25% quality. For god's sake, a 5 year old can program a system that makes profit under a 25% modeling quality. If even at 90% modeling quality there are many many things that can go wrong I have no words for everything that can happen at a 25% modeling quality. Trying to lure people into buying an expert or trying to prove that what they are saying is true by showing this is just being naive.

After that we only see a few part statements with outrageous claims which, if actually happen, only mean that this expert has a bestial market exposure which from the equity curves would suggest an expert that either does not close it's trades with draw down at all or has a very large stop loss with a huge risk to reward ratio. I would have to say that they must think people are really stupid if they pretend to sell this system with such a low level of proof of anything at all. Of course in my opinion this system is totally NOT worth buying and I would even say that it is not worth even looking at the website.

If you would like to learn more about how you can evaluate expert advisors and trade with long term profitable automated trading systems please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed this article !

The Indicator Series... The Moving Averages

When I thought about writing a series of posts about forex trading indicators the first one to come to my mind was of course the moving averages. These type of indicators are quiet simple and almost anyone who has ever traded the forex market is familiar with them. For most people, the moving average is just a line that price should be under or above in order for them to exit or enter a trade. I now intend to analyze the moving average indicators with a little bit more depth so that my readers can have a better idea on how these indicators can be used and improved in order to trade market instruments efficiently.

So what exactly is a moving average ? Well, the moving average can be several things. A simple moving average is the average of some value of the last X candles, this last value can be the opening price, closing price, high, low or any other operation of price during that candle, like the median price. For example, an 8 period close simple moving average is simply the sum of the closing price of the last eight periods divided by eight. Now, this value is calculated for each candle and ploted on the screen giving us a moving average line on top of the instrument's chart.

What does the moving average mean ? It is really just the average of price movement over the past X candles. Why is the strategy to go long when price goes above the moving average and to go short when prices go below the moving average ? This is because when price goes over the average of the past X periods it means that price is doing a "breakout" over it's previous average price, it certainly means that price is moving away from it's previous average values. This of course as you know, is a strategy that would wipe your account since moving average strategies would suffer from what most people would call whipsaws. That is, price tend to move above or below a certain average of previous prices only to return to the average because the average price after all, is the price the instrument has been traded for in the past.

Another important matter is the moving average period. How many periods back in time should we average ? 10,20, 4, 100 ? Well, the more periods you average the harder it will be for price to break over or under the moving average as you are taking into account a longer period of time. So for example, a 200 period moving average on the daily chart catches 2 to 3 year long trends and is therefore a powerful strategy by itself since prices tend to whipsaw little on such large timescales and periods.

The moving average, as you may know or have infered by now, is a trending indicator, that is, it works very well when the market behaves in a directional manner because prices tend to stay above or below their averages during a trend. However, prices tend to cross their averages constantly during consolidation and ranging periods so you will lose money overall. How can you improve the moving average ? Is there a way to make it a better indicator ? With what other indicator can we pair the moving average to make a strategy ?

The first questions is probably answered with a little instinct. If we are guiding ourselves by the crossing of a moving average, it is an awfully lagging strategy since sometimes prices move away from their averages and when they cross back you are already a million years behind price action. What if we traded the derivative of the indicator ? That is, what if we traded the slope of the moving average instead of the actual crosses of the moving average ? For example, when prices are moving down, the average tends to decrease as each periods brings in a lower price, if we calculated the change of the moving average in time we could then plot an indicator that showed us if the change was positive or negative and we could enter a trade using this which would of course lag much less than the moving average. I am, of course, not the first person to come up with this idea and this is why the Trend Analysis Index Indicator was created a while ago. It plots the derivative of a moving average and gives you a much better sense to trading than the regular moving average indicators.

Systems with moving averages then have very strong limitations, by themselves, moving averages provide little potential for long term profitable systems unless long periods on large timescales are used, such as the 200 daily moving average system. If you trade any smaller scale, or try to scalp using a moving average (or several moving averages, being them weighted EMAs or whatever), you are absolutely doomed because the profitability of your signals will definitely change with time as the random events that generate price on the small time scales changes (and so will the crosses of your moving averages and therefore signals). This is why many people find that a great scalping system that uses a 5 min SMA is unprofitable but very profitable with it's signals reversed and then when they trade it with the reversed signals it kills their account because the market has changed again.

Moving averages however can be paired with certain indicators to enhance their performance. If you give it a little bit of thought several different pairing options apper. Moving averages only work on trending markets so you would need to find a way to filter markets where they will whipsaw, of course, there is no way to do this 100% but there are some indicators we can use to do this. For example, oscillators (next indicators on the indicator series of posts !) can be used for this purpose (again, more on this on the oscillators post). Also volatility indicators and volume indicators can also be used for this purpose. Trading moving average crosses on high volume is certainly a way to improve their accuracy since profitable trades with moving averages usually only occure when there is a large amount of volume in the market.

I hope this post has taught you a little bit about moving averages and how they can be used to effectively trade the market. Maybe this will give you a few ideas to further develop or enhance your current trading systems. Of course, if you would like to know what types of strategies are long term profitable, how to evaluate strategies and how to trade with a profitable trading system please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed this article !

The indicator series... Going back to the basics !

It has caught my attention that many of the traders that are involved with forex trading and particularly those involved with automated trading systems often have no idea of how an indicator works or what it is telling them but most of them rely on visually correlating some number being reached on the indicator when price reverses or some color changing on their screens to develop a trading system. I cannot stress how wrong I think this approach is to trading as it can lead to pretty disastrous merging of different indicators onto an unsound and unreliable trading system.

For this reason, I have decided to start what I would like to call my "indicator series" posts which will focus on explaining the mathematical background and initial intent of the most common types of indicators as well as some particular examples of individual indicators. What I want to achieve with this is to give people a better knowledge of what indicators really mean and what useful information can be obtained with them.

Antoher interesting thing is that when you look at indicators in a mathematical way, it becomes more logical to mix certain indicators with others and to generate trading systems that are reliable, sound and very likely to work. I will try to go into the roots of the origin of the individual indicators and tell you what they were initially developed for, what combinations of indicators actually make sense and what information we can get and how we can use this information to develop good trading systems.

I will try to write as many as 20 posts on this matter, although this number is bound to change depending on the interest you guys (my readers) may have on this matter. I think that in order to use indicators you must first understand them. Something which is vital for trading system creation. Even more, after understanding these indicators we may come up with some new ideas based on the mathematics I will explain :).

If you would like to learn more about automated trading systems and how you can evaluate experts and trade long term profitable trading systems please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed this article !

Forex Expert Advisors : Ivybot an unbiased review

Isn't there always something cooking in the forex automated trading kitchen ? Yesterday I received yet another spam email from the ivybot expert advisor website so I decided to check what all the hype was about and take a deep long look at their website and trading system. Well, I have to say this is, with no surprise, another extremely hyped website of a new forex automated trading expert advisor. This website is obviously targeted at new traders, showing profit targets which are absolutely unreal and which would require absurd market exposure to be realized in the real market.

First of all, let's take a long hard look at what they are telling us and lets make a decision of whether it is or it is not worth buying and putting to the test. The first think I noticed on their website were these absurd profit targets which aim for 500% or even higher profit targets in under a month Are you crazy ? Who would, in their right mind, use a trading system that would put their capital at the risk necessary to realize such an absurd profit targe ? This profit targets are WAY too far from being realistic.

Second, lets take a look at the evidence they show us. No investor access to trading accounts, no record of the time it took to generate each one of the live results, no statements, I mean, come on, they could have simply created all the stuff and you would have no idea they did. In order for testing to be believable and to give us an idea about how a system works and trades we need to have at least trading statements of some sort. The results they showed could have been achieved in a single month ! Many MANY trading systems show short term results but then burst your account in the long run due to their unsound trading techniques.

From the backtesting and the equity curves I can say this looks like yet another expert advisor with extremely high risk to reward ratios that is geared to take small profits from the market with a huge risk to your capital. I mean, this seems to be the case from the straight equity lines but since I have no statements to see if it is really the case, I cannot say very much about it.

I really have to say that I would NEVER get this trading system for the reasons outlined above. The creator would have to give us WAY better testing information with live account statements with investor access that have a direct comparison to 10 year long backtseting results. It would be unwise to get this trading system as evidence that backs up their claims is pretty much non existant plus the actual veracity of the information shown cannot be confirmed.

If you would like to learn more about the characteristics of long term profitable trading systems and why most of these commercial expert advisors fail (and why many people are inclined to buy them besides this !) please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed this article !

Backtesting and getting it right ! How to correctly backtest an MT4 expert advisor.

During the past few years I have been asked several times to write a tutorial about how to correctly and accurately perform backtesting on metatrader expert advisors. I have to say that I had not done so because there are myriad of other places online in which you can find information on how to backtest expert advisors but then I realized that many of these places are outdated and some others fail to give accurate information about how to really perform the process. So here it is, my very own tutorial on how to accurately backtest expert advisors.

First of all, you need to get some data in order to backtest an EA. Earlier version of metatrader 4 did not have a way to download data directly and this is the reason why many tutorials use the Alpari one minute data to perform the tests. This process is unnecessary and long, other people say that metaquotes data is crap. That is completely wrong as I have several examples of comparison between live and backtesting data with metaquotes data that show that the data received from the metaquotes server is just as good as Alpari's. However, if you don't do the process correctly you WILL corrupt your data and render it useless for backtesting. Here are the steps you need to follow in order to perform accurate backtesting :

• Install a metatrader instance solely for the purpose of backtesting and do NOT open any demo accounts on it (broker DOES matter since some brokers use some non standard nomenclature for the currencies the backtester cannot associate, I recommend you use IBFX's platform as I know their currency names work ok). The reason not do open any demo accounts is because the updating of data from the brokers server can mismatch with metaquotes data and corrupt it (very important !).
• Now that you have the new instances of mt4 installed with NO demo or live accounts go to the tools menu, then open up the history center. Now you will see a menu you can open (click on the + sign) on your left with all the currencies which can have data downloaded. Go to whichever currency you want and open it, then double click on the one minute data icon and click the download button on the bottom left side. Say "yes" if it pops up a warning about using metaquotes data (this is normal, it is warning you about there being possible differences between your broker data and metaquotes).
• Exit the history center by closing it.
  
• Restart your metatrader platform.
• You should now me able to perform 90% quality backtesting from 1999. It is however very important that you do all the above process on a FRESHLY INSTALLED instance of MT4 with NO demo or live accounts added.
  

After following the above process you will have access to 90% backtesting on several currency pairs which may greatly aid you in the evaluation of newly programmed as well as the optimization of already programmed trading strategies. However, you should be ware that not all backtesting is meaningful and it is only useful up to a point. If you would like to learn what backtesting can be used for, when it says something and when it doesn't say anything as well as how to know if your strategy can be accurately evaluated with backtesting please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed this article !

The changing of a vision... How my understanding of FX automated trading has evolved

When I wrote my last blogpost about the simple daily system earlier this week, I suddenly realized that my vision about automated trading has changed a great deal during the past two years. It is only vaguely that I remember now how I thought about automated trading at the beginning. I decided to write this post in order to tell my readers a little bit how my vision has changed during the past few years and how I have come to see the world of automated trading under a different light.

I think you could say that my journey in automated forex trading has had three major phases in which I have come to realize certain important truths about the way the market works and about how I can actually profit from trading the foreign exchange market. My first phase, which is the phase most people are in when they begin to trade automatically after trading manually for a while is what I would call, my dumb phase. At this stage I had no idea what testing could be done, what it meant, it's faults, I knew nothing about automating strategies about what could be profitable and what could not. I mean, I believed almost everything that was thrown at me with some marketing and I was caught in several non profitable systems which people often refer to as scams (although a scam implies that the author is willingly ripping people off and in some cases the author may be as ignorant of the system's profitability as the users).

This is when I decided to start this website, two years ago, after trading automated systems for a while. Then my discovery phase started. On this period of time I knew many things about automated trading. For one, I certainly knew that most of the systems out there did not work but I certainly though some could so I came out with what many people before and after me did, to evaluate every expert I came across which had some evidence of profitability. Of course, this approach is evidenced in my first ebook which took a hard look at particular trading systems and gave some criteria about how to evaluate if a system was profitable or not. Then, after many systems being tested and lot of time digging into the experts being produces, manual trading, trading logic and a lot of interesting and long conversations with experienced (and unexperienced) fx traders led me to what I believe is my current level of knowledge.

Now I am in what I would like to all, my development period. Right now I believe I have been able to really condense the things that make traditional evaluation wrong and I have come up with a way that certainly allows you to really evaluate a trading system's potential for long term stable profitability. Now I believe I have the ability to develop some real profitable trading systems and of course, I have included all this knowledge on my latest ebook. This is the main reason why I decided to make a full ebook remake, my vision has changed through time and it was time for my ebook to show this much more polished refined version of what automated trading actually is. Of course, my interest in this field is almost never ending so I can assure you, there will be more developments, more periods of my life in automated fx trading and we will hopefully come to unveil more secrets the world of expert advisor trading has to offer us.

If you would like to learn more about EA evaluation and how you also can start trading with a free long term profitable trading system please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed this article !

The Simple Daily System : Profitable or Deadly Trap ?

Recently several people have asked me about the simple daily system and the testing that has been going on with this expert advisor. As you may know, the simple daily system has been tested for almost 10 months now and has, up until now, made a profit of more than 100% on the EUR/USD on a demo account. Now, most people believe this amount of information would be enough to call the simple daily system profitable and start testing it on live accounts but I have a different opinion.

During the past two years of testing, evaluating, reviewing and programming expert advisors, I have developed a whole new evaluation and testing concept which really puts back and forward testing into perspective and shows you what a profitable trading system really performs like. Most people intuitively overestimate the potential of back, forward and live testing to evaluate a trading strategy and in doing so most of them end up wiping their accounts with strategies like the simple daily system.

While I was writing the latest version of my automated trading ebook, I decided that I needed to come up with a criteria to evaluate which strategy was profitable and which one was not, a criteria that would easily discard unprofitable strategies and leave only the long term, reliable trading strategies. In doing so, I totally reevaluated the simple daily system trading strategy. I finally was able to condense all the requirements a profitable trading system should fulfill into a checklist and I saw if the simple daily system could fit into it. The fact is that the system failed some key points on the list.

Why is the simple daily system NOT long term profitable even if there is almost a year long forward test that is in fact very profitable ? Well, the thing is that the simple daily system is the kind of system that can perform extremely well for even a year or two, then wipe your account. you can see this when you take a look at the logic and backtest the system from 1999 (bear in mind that forward testing has shown us that this expert trades almost the same in forward and backtesting). When you backtest the system you get about 7 account wipeouts using the same risk parameters as those used on the forward testing trading account. That said, if you started to test the expert at the right time, you could get even a 200% profit.

This type of systems are deadly traps ! There are many EA sellers out there who will take the system, live test it for a few months, even a year, and get incredible results. Then they get an account wipeout so they just restart the process. Interesting ! This means that you can get systems that perform very good in live testing that will wipe your account ? Yes ! This is all a consequence of market exposure and the experts logic which is inherentely flawd. So yes, the simple daily system is a deadly trap, not a profitable system and should not be traded on any live accounts unless you realize that you are taking an astronomical risk with it.

If you would like to learn more how I evaluate expert advisors and how you can design and trade with long term profitable trading systems please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed this article !