Forex Expert Advisors : Sidewinder M8 Pro an Unbiased Review

I want to dedicate the first review of the year to an expert advisor that has been around my mind for a while. This expert advisor is called M8 Sidewinder Pro and is made by an EA programmer called Hal Chapman at halcyonfx.com. The reason why I believe it is important for me to write this review is because many people believe I recommend this expert advisor because of an interview I did with Hal last year. I never say on the interview that I recommend this EA but the fact that I never reviewed it may seem misleading to some people. Well, today I am going to write a review about the Sidewinder M8 Pro expert advisor, within this review I will evaluate the trading system and talk about the way in which it trades the forex market. In the end I'll give my opinion about this EA and its potential for long term profitability and whether or not it is worth buying or testing.

I have always thought that Hal Chapman is a good programmer and in my mind he always seems to have the traders in mind when developing his trading systems. At least this is the impression I had last year when I did the interview with him. I believe that Hal is selling what he believes is a good quality product that can bring profitability to the people in forex automated trading.

For me, his trading systems have always had mixed performance results. Trend tracer and doubleplay, systems developed in 2007 and 2008 respectively, delivered a terrible dosage of mixed results, with non of them fulfilling my requirements for long term profitability. I have traded both systems on live accounts and I was never profitable with both. As a matter of fact, trend tracer nearly wiped an account. After all my experience and research in automated trading I believe that non of his systems have any potential for long term profitability.

To me things started to go sour as Hal decided to implement a progressive, D'Alembert money management system, which increases lot sizes linearly instead of exponentially like a Martingale. The results are that you increase your market exposure terribly as trades start to go the wrong way. The use of progressive money management techniques is always the failure of sound trading. When programmers cannot find a reliable money management technique that works, they often go to this type of unsound money management techniques. Are they safe ? No. As I say, trend tracer nearly wiped a live account (on lowest risk) and doubleplay came close to risking 20% capital on one trade. This is crazy. I mean, who in their right mind would take such a huge risk in one single trade ?

Sidewinder M8 Pro is nothing more than a continuation of this trading mischief. The so called "second stage defense" is nothing but a more aggressive risk in equity. You can see on the expert's page that lot sizes go up to even 1.7 from the original 0.1. A more than 170% increase in risk. What happens if trades go wrong when you are on the second stage defense ? Your ruined, that is pretty much what happens. Is there any defense against this ? No. The possibilities are real and the numbers are real. If you reach those high lot size numbers and you lose, you'll lose big.

In my opinion Sidewinder M8 Pro is nothing more than an equity death trap. It is definitely an attempt to try to salvage a weak logic with the inclusion of an extremely unsound money management strategy. I would advice Hal to go away from this trading techniques and into sound money management techniques with money management that adapts to both risk, equity and market volatility, this is the only way towards reliable long term profitability without such unsound and large equity risks. As you have seen, in my opinion and due to the incredibly large risk in which this EA puts equity in risk I would say that it is NOT worth buying or testing.

If you would like to learn more about adaptive money management techniques and how to develop sound and 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 the article !

Doubleplay, Trend Tracer and Other Expert Advisors : An Interview With Hal Chapman from Halcyonfx.com

Fellow traders, today I have the pleasure to share with you an interview I did with Hal Chapman expert advisor creator and owner of halcyonfx.com . On his website, Hal sells several expert advisors which have been subject to much testing, critics and reviews. In my own website, you can find reviews on Doubleplay and you can certainly feel my doubts about the systems as well as some of their good points. However, having done business with Hal for a while and knowing how he genuinely cares for the retail trader, I decided to do an interview in which our doubts as retail traders would be cleared and we would have a more informed view about his experts. As always, I didn't get paid for the interview, neither did I get free expert advisors, commissions or the like. This interview is an unbiased as it can be. I hope it is as informative for you as it was for me ! Enjoy it.

My first question is relatively simple. I would like you to tell us what expert advisors you are offering and what are their general characteristics.

Sure, Halcyon Forex offers 2 main type of what I call “raw” Expert Advisors. Everyday trading EA's and News trading EAs.

In addition to that, we offer what I refer to as a “Complete Solution” which includes the EA of your choice, a VPS, complete setup and Premium technical support.

The difference is that “raw” EAs are just the EA itself with the user manual. Raw EAs are intended for people who are well versed in the use of MetaTrader 4, who know how to set up a VPS and so on. The Complete Solution is designed for folks who are new to this, they are not very familiar with MT4 and wish to participate and let someone else do all the setup and configuration.

Now, within the actual Expert Advisors that we offer there are the following:

Everyday 24x5 EAs:
Trend-Tracer 1.4 build 15
DoublePlay 4.5 build 203
PipCollector 2.0

News EAs:
Condor 2.0
SimpleNEWS 2.0

2. If you were a Forex retail trader looking for expert advisors, what solid reasons would you have to purchase each one of your expert advisors ?

I would be most inclined to purchase Trend-Tracer 1.4 because:

#1 It has a high winning percentage
#2 If it takes a loss or losses, it works to get that back and get back on track
#3 While the money management becomes aggressive to recuperate lost equity, it does not do so blindly. It has a safety system built in to reset the increments in the event the account is not back on track within the allowed runway. I do not like the idea of digging deeper and deeper into a rabbit’s hole. That is why this safety is built into both Trend-Tracer and DoublePlay.
#4 So in summary, it wins much more often than it losses, it fights to get back any loss and it does all this within the safety of a framework which puts the odds in my favor as the investor.

3. In the last versions of Doubleplay and your new expert advisor you implemented a new money management system that increments lot sizes after loses. Could you please explain the reasons why you decided to change your previous money management system ?

I would be happy to.

Initially I wrote DoublePlay (version one) back in November of 2006 and throughout all of 2007 I noticed it was a good system but not perfect because it would suffer draw downs. Even though it was winning a higher number of trades than it was losing; The amount when a loss happened was many times more than the amount resulting from the winners.

I realized that I needed some way to ensure that the amount produced by the winners end up larger than the amount resulting from lost trades.

Meanwhile, I was exchanging ideas with numerous other investors, customers, money managers and Forex traders. This is how I became familiar with the Essex Money Management principle as well as the Binary Math money management principle. These higher level money management disciplines, specially Essex money management, seemed to address the limitations of the current DoublePlay and merited a further look.

I researched these doctrines and once I understood the mechanics behind them I began to attempt to automate them. What I ended up with was neither Binary math nor pure Essex money management but inspired by both and quite effective. This work was completed last summer. However, I was even then extremely reluctant to introduce it into the production DoublePlay which my customers were using at the time. I am extremely conservative when it comes to changing production software as I realize this is what folks are using to make money. A change in that is something I have to sleep on quite a bit. Even if it looks like a good change because I have learned that in Forex, many things that SEEM to make all the sense in the world somehow just do not result in real life the way they should. Also, I realized that the aggressiveness of the money management would be disfavored by many investors. And so I held back at the time.....

After more successful testing and code adjustments as well as further conversation with one of my more trusted and experienced money manager colleagues, I was finally convinced that this was the right path and I released DoublePlay with the new money management.


Why did you choose this particular incremental type system ?

I chose this system for several reasons. Number one is because it works. But more importantly, I want to make sure that the account maintains a good equity curve. If you take a loss on a regular EA and then the next trade is smaller than the one you just lost, even if you win that trade, you will still be left behind. You would have to win a lot of trades to get back on track. With the Halcyon Forex Money Management when you increase the stake and win the account gets back on track or higher than it was before with just one or two trades. Then it becomes a matter of what are the chances of winning that next trade? With Trend-Tracer, you are looking at a 74% chance or better that the EA will in fact win.

Many people are afraid of this system as incremental lot sizes after loses are associated with Martingale systems which are considered to be proved losers, blanking people's accounts in the long run. What is the difference between your system and a Martingales system and why do you consider your system better ?

Great question!

The martingale doubles your stake endlessly. You can either win a few pips or tank the entire account.

The Halcyon Forex Money Management works with several parameters: Lots, step, top and bottom. The Lots represent the starting lot value. If a loss is encountered then the lots size is incremented by the value of the ‘step’ parameter until one of 2 things happens, the account is back on track or the value of the ‘top’ variable is reached. If the lot size reaches the value of the ‘top’ parameter, then the EA automatically reduces the lot value of the subsequent trade to the value of the ‘bottom’ value and if the account is still not on track the progression begins again. Once the account recuperates any losses, the EA automatically returns to the standard lot size. This creates a type of loop that gives the EA a great deal of ‘wiggle room’ to get back on track and not go too far into a draw down.

In the past 3 plus months, anytime there has been a lost trade, DoublePlay has not reached half of its allowed runway before the account was back on track.

I want to take the opportunity to mention that this type of money management would not work unless the underlying trading system has a high probability of winning. That is why this type of money management works well with both DoublePlay and Trend-Tracer.

If you had to give a rough estimate, what would you consider to be the probability (from 0 to 100) of wiping an account using your expert advisors ?

Assuming that 100 is certain to be wiped out then I would say that my EAs have a 5 or less rating on that scale as long as instructions are followed and with the recommended parameters. (lower chance with Trend-Tracer, I would say 3)

If your system wins consistently then the above money management strategy would prove successful, however,based on the logic of your expert advisor, do you consider them to be robust enough to withstand abrupt changes in market condition, if so, why ?

Yes I do and I would have to admit that applies more to Trend-Tracer than it does to DoublePlay but both quality for a yes. DoublePlay has a healthy track record that indicates its winning percentage rate throughout the entire year of 2007 and into 2008. which affords exposure to ample market fluctuations. As far as Trend-Tracer is concerned, the EA is not based on indicators and is much more accurate altogether.

Many people consider exponential growth an important characteristic of expert advisors. As your experts currently grow equity linearly, are there any plans to implement some sort of alternate money management to increase equity growth ?

Yes, absolutely. I am working on developing a more sophisticated algorithm to do this. Several prototypes are already testing in the lab.

Finally, if you were to buy your own expert advisors, which experts would your buy, what currencies would you trade, with how much equity would you start and how much money would you be expecting to make each month ?

I would buy Trend-Tracer, put it on a mini account with no more than 100:1 leverage and at least $1,500 starting balance. As far as returns per month, it is too early to tell. The back testing of course looked amazing but I do not believe in back testing to foretell the future. Save to say that it is right on track winning and as time passes the actual per-moth expectation will become more clear.

Thank you for your very good questions and please let me know if there is anything else that I could be of assistance with.

Best regards,

Hal Chapman
Halcyon Forex

Doubleplay v.4.5 Expert Advisor, A new Beginning...

A few weeks ago, the new version of Doubleplay, which is version 4.5, was made available for download to all Doubleplay customers. I received the new program with both excitement and a little bit of concern as Doubleplay's money managment system was changed for a supposedly better one.

Backtesting results of the new version, available at halcyonfx.com (which is the developer's website), show the expert advisor being tested on the GBP/JPY pair for a period of 2 years. This backtests somehow increased my concerns. Even though the equity curve does seem much cleaner than before, with I have to say, increased profitability, there is an obscure risk factor surrounding this new money management system.

The system basically builds up position size as losses are incremented, which clearly makes recovery from losses much faster. But I cannot help to ask myself, what if the expert suffers too many continuous losses ? Will the expert drive the account to a margin call ?

The tests did show this troublesome issue to some extent, on all of the test, Doubleplay did experience periods of sharp draw down, that, although not available in the presented data, amount to almost 50% of the account by visual inspection. The ea did recover all losses and drew a nice equity curve on all of the graphs but... What if the market conditions had been worse ? Is the expert going to cause a margin call ?

I have never considered an expert with such a high level of draw down acceptable, so I should not consider Doubleplay v 4.5 as one merely because of this fact. I must say, I have run Doubleplay v4.5 on a live account since March the 17th and it does show me a clean advance with a gain of almost 5% on my account until now.

But what about those dark market times ? The ea seems to kind of protect itself by limiting the scaling of positions sizes with a top, but this does not keep me from worrying about such a high draw down in bad market conditions. I would have to say, there are other options, better options, out there right now. As always, time will tell if the expert has a high enough win:loss ratio as to keep our accounts safe from a kill. Don't forget to check out my ebook that explains expert advisors and reviews several commercial experts !

Doubleplay v 4.0 Live Testing

As you may know, I stopped doubleplay's live trading as the expert advisor seemed to have a fundamental flawed related to the delay feature which prevents the opening of a position as soon as another one closes.

I was actually right. Hal, the creator of the expert, answered my email promptly telling me that other traders had also made the exact same complaint. As a result, Hal emailed me a fixed version of the expert advisor which is now in a live forward test using an interbankfx mini account I use for this purpose. The account has a hundred US dollars and will start trading tomorrow, Sunday, January the 20th as soon as the market opens.

First results and review will be published after two weeks of testing. Wish me luck !

Doubleplay Live Trading Stopped !

This week I traded Doubleplay v 4.0 live. The results were what I would have expected for doubleplay. Hitting one stoploss and managing to get 3 small wins which amount to a small loss for my mini account (about 4 dollars). This of course, due to the fact that EUR/USD was ranging the whole time which I have found out through experience, is not a suitable scenario for Doubleplay.

The reason I have stopped Doubleplay's live trading is not because of the expert's performance but because of a flaw (I think) I found . Doubleplay started to open trades as soon as it closed another one. This should not happen as the dl function should delay further order openings for at least an hour. This according to the value at which dl is set, 3600.

I have emailed Hal and I hope he can tell me if there is something wrong with the coding of my personal ea or if this is a change made between v 3.5 and v 4.0. I hope I can resume live trading next week !

Doubleplay v 4.0 expert advisor, Live Forward Testing

I have just started the forward testing of Doubleplay v 4.0 on one of my live accounts. I will rely solely on the trading made by Doubleplay to profit.

The account I am testing the expert on is a mini IBFX account so I have set the mini variable to true. I have kept all further settings at their default value with a 5% risk factor.

Since live testing results made by Hal himself and other traders (link at the bottom of the left column) have shown this expert to be profitable (and I have found Doubleplay v 3.5 to be profitable also) I find it reasonable to give this expert a chance in forward testing. As usual, statements and results will be commented weekly.

I hope this expert delivers as much as its predecessor !

The New Doubleplay v.4.0 Expert Advisor

I have just received my copy of the new version of the Doubleplay forex expert advisor.

The first thing I noticed when I got it was the inclusion of a new feature which allows to hide your stoploss and take profit levels from your broker. Your broker is fooled by the stoploss and take profit levels sent by the order but the real ones are executed by the expert advisor's logic (you set this levels to your taste as balance percentage!). This gives you the chance to eliminate the hunting opportunity for your broker !

The next thing I noticed was the wider stoploss. This, as weird as it may sound, comes without an increased risk as the ea adjusts lot sizes based on your balance to risk just the exact same amount of equity. The wider stoploss also allows you to get higher returns by allowing more movement in the market (the adjust in lot sizes means we do not increase drawdown!).

Another great new feature is the automatic managment of trades during Fridays and weekends. Previously, it required some intervention to close trades on Fridays and shutdown the ea (then turning it back on at the beginning of the next week). Now the ea controls this in an automatic fashion. A truly set and forget approach.

Although I have yet to confirm that this expert advisor is indeed profitable with the new settings, I am very exited with the added features and hope that it will be just as or even much more profitable than it's earlier version.

If you want, take a look at my review for the previous version of Doubleplay here.

The Doubleplay Forex Expert Advisor

When I began my quest to find an expert advisor that did well in a broad variety of market conditions I was very confused by the overwhelming amount of expert advisors available. After reading and searching for reviews all across the world wide web I found what appeared to be a good and well recommended expert advisor. Hence, I bought the Doubleplay expert advisor.

The Doubleplay expert advisor is what appears to be a very solid and conservative expert advisor. It fits my trading style, having a 50 pip adjustable stop loss and also a risk management module which makes sure that I never risk more than 5% of my account on each trade.

I have been very satisfied with this ea. It has traded as promised and has delivered some profit throughout the three months I have been using it for. I have obtained about 40% profit, which hits a quiet high profit/loss ratio. Support has also been absolutely wonderful, every doubt or support question I have had has been answered promptly by Hal, who is the ea's creator.

As much as I like this expert advisor, bear in mind it is NOT a way to get rich quickly. If you ask me I would say that this expert advisor is a PROFITABLE expert advisor, but I would never expect more than 10% a month in ANY case. This was proved by this ea having almost doubled my account along the beginning of October and giving more than half back just a few weeks later.

I have complete faith in Hal's commitment to the Doubleplay project, with no doubts in my mind that his main goal is to be successful as we are, not to deceive his customers in anyway. Doubleplay also has a money back guarantee if you have two consecutive months of losses using the ea.

This ea is one of the few I do personally RECOMMEND with no ties whatsoever, neither as an affiliate or as a personal friend of the ea's creator. This ea would fit great as a conservative addition to our ea trading package.

This expert advisor can be found here.