Like i said before, I stopped all my EAs on eve of 18th December, and re-run them at January 11th… I wish I would listen to my own advice, and pause them earlier, as Megadroid suffered a stop-loss in my last active week of December, which lowered the overall great EA’s performance (July-) at doubling my account (with very non-agressive settings)…

But all is well in the EA land so far in January. MegaDroid EA is performing well, and I currently added some new EAs to my demo account. I thought about re-adding FAP Turbo to my active robots list, but decided against it, and rather took on some better performing (with hard evidence) trading signals from RAS. I wish this good performance from robots will continue in short term future, although there are strong oscillations in EURUSD… All in all i anticipate EUR will get weaker, which is something European exporters are pushing for, but which might be difficult to obtain as US exporters feel the same + they are willing to print as much money as necessary to keep the dollar cheap. We’ll see.

I must admit that in November/December time frame I was a bit distant from my Forex accounts, and I relied solely on my long manual positions (sell EURUSD) and my MegaDroid account – all on my VPS/virtualbox virtual machine running on my server invisibly to my day-to-day operations…

Because of the lower number of traders markets become more and more unpredictable. A strong trend/counter trend move might move the market much more than it had strength to move it months before. This is especially true on difficult markets (rare currency pairs) and outside of major trading hours (Asian session, scalping)…

Some forex trading robots are particularly sensitive to higher volatility (like FAPTurbo, Megadroid (read review here), IvyBot and any other scalping EAs). And running them during riskier time frame could mean that multiple stop losses could be hit – reducing your total account balance severely. But also manual trading behaves differently than before, and this includes automated forex trade signal trading – consider stopping them for this period. Therefore infrequent and newbie traders be advised, and consider taking your EA robots off the market for this period.

If you are very conservative, and want to be on the safe side, then you may want to stop trading at the end of first week of December (or earlier if there are major financial announcements scheduled for start of month). You can schedule your return to markets around 10th day of January and onwards.

I usually trade my manual trades and my robots until just before Christmas week – meaning Friday around 20th of December. I return to markets first Monday in new year, but not sooner than January 5th. Trading between these dates is something I seriously advise against. So, rather than drilling a hole in your balance sheet, take some time off, enjoy yourself, and use extra time for your friends and family. They are the most important part of your life! If you have extra time left, you can use it to analyze your trading in 2009, and maybe rethink and refine strategy for 2010; or just to optimize memory usage on your VPS…

There are plenty of forex trade signals services out there. This means that they provide “sell” or “buy” signals on various currency pairs, for some subscription fee. So instead of doing your own analytics, charting and brainstorming you rely on their knowledge, experience, technical analysis (and honesty) to do the work for you.

Some services provide plain signals (sent to subscribers either via email or short text messages– sms), upon which you have to act manually. Others provide integration directly to your trading platform, so signal automatically triggers a new order in your fx trading software.

These services are many, and while some of them target big forex managed accounts with account balances of $100.000+, and charge a fat monthly fee; some others are offered by brokers themselves -  for an extended pip spread cost. So you directly pay nothing for signal, but every time you enter/exit trade this costs you few pips more than usually if you trade on your own (case with Alpari’s  Systematic which I do not like – as signal providers get paid from that pip spread, so they are encouraged to make as many trades as possible. And this translates to conflict of interest in my book). If you are not into own trading, and your account is too small for managed forex trading, then signals might be the thing for you.

Lately I’ve seen several forex signals commercials even on CNN, so I guess topic is hot. But every forex signal software or service I checked in last few months has some disadvantage (like - it is either expensive, does not work with MT4, requires manual work). You see - as many other part time forex traders I use a discount broker with MetaTrader4 platform (the same platform that allows all the expert advisors – forex robots to work). And there are not many forex signal providers that offer integration with Metatrader platform (and I do not have time or nerves to open trades manually once I get email/sms). But then 4 months ago I read on forex trading forum about new service called Rent A Signal. This is open platform, where you can either buy or sell a signal. All you have to do is install their EA to metatrader, and link it to selected signal. And on their web page you can see live – forward testing of every signal that is on the market. Everything, with complete history, statistics, graphs, down drawn…

Signals are either FREE (yes, like completely free) or commercial. Commercial ones vary in price from $5 / month to several hundreds. While it is difficult to say which one is best forex signal, many of them qualify as daily forex signals. Providers offer many signals, some of them scalping other forex day trading signals. But the best thing is – with RAS EA you can tailor the signal to your account size and down drawn that is acceptable to your trading style.

I am now using Rent A Signal for few months both as a user/buyer and as a provider/seller. I starting providing my own forex signals (based on commercial forex robots that I bought in the past; which helps me shorten the ROI on them :)). I am proud to say that my signals trade frequently and are consistent in profit (ca 10% monthly), which was noted by other users as well, as now I have few paying subscribers!

Anyway, if you do not have a forex managed account and do not trade on your own (and if your expert advisor forex robot is not trading as much as you would like it to), or you just want to give it a try – do it. You can run it on demo account or in live account, and it works with any metatrader 4 broker. Best of all – it is completely free to start using (and to continue indefinitely), and you can just use free signals (there are several hundreds of them – many of very high quality, earning money from week to week). And best of all – signal providers are competing against each other on open platform – so they are competitive to offer you best profit, with lowest risk – and there is no other agenda behind them (

I invite you to try completely free Rent A Signal service (thru my affil link) – or directly, and especially if you have used any other signaling service/software, do post a feedback below, and let me know what you think of it.

So, as Alpari-UK is one of my two brokers where I have live account, I was interested on how this change effects EAs designed for scalp trading at night. Especially how this influences two most popular forex trading robots Mega Droid EA and FAPturbo available for metatrader trading platform.

With simple MT4 script I was logging spreads from august 21 to end of august, and here finally I had time to do all the calculations.

I was also interested whether now with dynamic spreads Alpari UK is better regarding price re-quotes which ware quite frequent before.

Although I did spread logging for several currency pairs (all that MegaDroid Pro is using: EURUSD, EURCHF, EURGBP,GBPUSD and USDCHF) I just finished analyzing the most frequent pair EURUSD.

When I opened account with Alpari-UK it had only one fixed rate for each currency pair, but later on it changed its spreads to daily and night regime. But I guess that did not benefit them, as they still needed good spread on EURUSD to be competitive, and most of scalping was done at night when their actual cost and risk was higher… Before the change to dynamic spread AlpariUK had the following fixed spreads:

EURUSD  1.8 pips    1.8 pips
USDCHF  4 pips    4 pips
USDJPY  2.8 pips    2.8 pips
GBPUSD 3 pips    3 pips
AUDUSD  3 pips    5 pips
USDCAD  4 pips    4 pips
EURGBP  3 pips    5 pips
EURCHF  3 pips    5 pips
EURJPY  3.8 pips    3.8 pips
GBPJPY  7 pips    10 pips
GBPCHF  7 pips    10 pips
EURCAD  8 pips    12 pips
EURAUD  10 pips    14 pips
USDSGD  10 pips    12 pips
NZDUSD  7 pips    10 pips
CHFJPY  7 pips    9 pips
EURNZD  20 pips    20 pips
AUDJPY 7 pips    9 pips
AUDNZD  20 pips    20 pips
AUDCAD 10 pips    10 pips
AUDCHF  8 pips    10 pips
CADCHF  8 pips    8 pips
CADJPY  6 pips    6 pips
NZDJPY  10 pips    10 pips
USDDKK  40 pips    40 pips
USDNOK  75 pips    75 pips
USDSEK  100 pips    100 pips
USDHKD  7 pips    7 pips
SGDJPY 6 pips    6 pips

With change to dynamic spreads Alpari UK was promising even faster execution and more competitive spreads, especially on most popular currency pairs. For USD they are promising 16-23 pip spread…

My analysis for spread on EURUSD since the change to dynamic spread are the following:

All the hours are CET (currently GMT+2).

You can see that for scalpers trading at asian session now pays less than with older fixed spread at 1,8 pips. At other times (with exception of 10-11pm with spread 1,97)spreads are better

I also noted that around USA market open (15.30-16h CET) Alpari often experiences even tighter spread, but which only lasts few ticks - starting as low as 1.0,1.1,1.2pips…)… The biggest spread is as expected at start of Asian session - around 23-23.45h CET (you can read about forex trading hours here), when we measured maximum spread of 11 pips (rarely) but more commonly we saw it around 4-9 pips… Surprisingly this peak in spread sometimes also shows around 14.30 or 16h - maybe pointing to a hiccup while Alpari UK changes its feeds.

All in all we also noted less re-quotes, especially during the day trading. All in all I would say that Alpari UK’s change to dynamic spreads did a lot of good to day traders, and it did not hurt scalp traders so much – in worst situation you lose half a pip more than before, but you might be lucky and catch even occasional 1,6 pip spread in this session… This indicates that best forex trading times are during the day, especially when markets overlap.

So, for me, i will continue using Alpari UK for scalp trading with Megadroid and other scalping EAs in future (or at least until i do the analysis for other currency pairs – if anyone wishes to help contact me, i have the data in excel files)…

cheers!

I hate doing just marketing and take profits from affiliate sales. I only recommend things that I personally use, and I am happy using, which means good results! And I stand behind my words.

To sum it up – mega droid is far from perfect – especially far from what authors would like you to believe regarding their sale’s page. But still – at the end of the day it is still the only forex EA robot I know of, that is consistently profitable.

I also mention my settings and some advance tricks to use on this EA (that authors are not disclosing), to make it even more profitable with even less risk to your account! And please, when you read my review, forget the “official” results, as back testing is known to produce wrong results which you can not put any fate on to! Only forward testing is good indicator whether something works or not, so here it is – after three months of forward testing and tweaking…

I am using it since may, and i’ve seen over 90% of profitable trades! So, go read my critical megadroid review.

To give you a fast recap - I run many copies of MT4 software from various brokers, each with many EAs active at same time. It you run expert advisors like MegaDroid, which can be configured to trade frequently, then you most likely do it and enjoy the extra profits. The holy grail of successful fx currency trading is low risk and preservation of capital. So many EAs, many times, each with small risk. Small gains are still summed to bigger amount at end of the month…. But more on my strategy some other time

Let me just say, that I managed to lower memory usage from around 350 megz to around 200 megz, while still running over 20 EAs at the same time! So can you! And this means paying less for VPS at the end of the month. Happy fx online trading!

Recently I came across Benjami R. Cook’s Advanced Droid Tactics e-book (ADT) on how to get more pips out of MegaDroid by driving MegaDroid to the next level.

ADT includes a lot of settings, two new strategies and A LOT of back/forward testing that confirms Benjamin’s findings and validity of two strategies he is proposing. He also has a member’s area for all customers of his e-book, where he shares some custom coded MetaTrader indicators, that he developed for MegaDroid users. I feel that wealth and value of this information is way higher than $40 he is charging for it, so I recommend it.

Why? If you have a $500 forex account with megadroid EA trading it, and you use only 10% risk, then in a good week MegaDroid can earn you ~$50 … But, in a low profile week you can only see $5 … But in my last week since I am testing ADT, number of trades was up from 4 to 12, and 11 of these were profitable. So i nearly doubled my MegaDroid’s average week income. That paid for ADT in first 4 days!

Since MegaDroid is simple, I will not lie to you – ADT is something you can do yourself with trying & tweaking MegaDroid EA settings and being creative… But that takes time… And a lot of testing. And results differ between forex brokers… Out of respect for author I will not go into details on how to do it, so please don’t even ask. As time is money, for me ADT brought a lot of value + Benjamin is keeping me as his customer updated with his latest findings and is improving his strategies… Since Benjamin is one man band, he also does customer support for his customers, and yet he is very responsive. But this is also the reason he is keeping number of customers limited so he can manage it… ADT was closed for last few days, but now it is open again, and Benjamin revisited his guide and settings in guide v4.1!

If you spent $100 on MegaDroid, then do yourself a favor and spend these $40 for ADT. I promise that you will be glad you did! And be sure to leave a comment below, what you thought of it. You can get ADT here (thru my affil link), or without it directly here.

If you do not have MegaDroid yet, you can check it out/buy it here (thru my affil link, with my thanks), or without it directly here.

Although I am using MegaDroid EA, which did very good for me in last 70 days since I bought it, I managed to resist (very good) marketing campaign and sales letter of IvyBot. And now I am happy I did so (as I am happy I stopped using FAP Turbo EA, which did good for me in first few weeks, but has lately been struggling to stay in black numbers).

I’ve been following IvyBot’s discussions on many forex related forums, and now, 2 weeks since IvyBot’s release, majority of users have negative balance as a result of using IvyBot. The other problem is that IvyBot is trading very very rarely, so there is already a joke spreading around forums that “IvyBot is protecting your account balance by not trading”. Of course normally I would agree, that 2 weeks are not even close enough to show EA’s performance, but for an EA that boasts with “best on market”, “the only that adopts to market”, “protecting your account’s balance”, “double money in 1 month” this is obviously a disappointment.

So where did all that nice equity growth graphs published on IvyBot’s web page came from? Answer is simulated history performance. As you know backward testing is not even a good way, nor proper way to evaluate EA, so the only  way to do it is by using EA on a demo account and forward test it. People who jumped right into live trading with real money are now bumping on their heads. You can see one of IvyBot’s real live account statistics here, and I will try to find few more (I invite you to submit them if you know of any).

So, is IvyBot just having a bad weeks, or is the problem deeper? Worse – is IvyBot a scam? Although I am not supporting illegal use of EAs, I am following few eastern forums, where users decompile EAs (and share them). I found IvyBot available there, but when reading user’s responses in same thread to my surprise most of them were negative. As a total shock, the forum administrators (the hackers) “officially” disapproved IvyBot by these words exactly:

This Ivy bot is MOD disapproved. Do not waste your time on it.
1) it has many variables with nice names, including variables that hint on various strategies, but the catch is that these variables are never used. It has bad code! It defines global variables, but they are only used locally…

2) The core strategy of this bot is to buy when MA3 starts to turn up, and ADX is between 35-55. It sells when MA3 turns down and ADX is between 35-55.

3) IvyBot runs without stop loss. And it exit signal is: Sell if the profit range is not reached within 16000 seconds. This is a very dangerous strategy (if you can call it a strategy).

4) It’s checking for authorization is pathetic. It searches for “CBCINTVALUE” in the whole string of clickbank-code (Click Bank Code Integer VALUE), which again hints at very unmature code.

Do not waste your time on it, this one goes to waste bin.

Interesting ah? If people who know MT4 coding inside-out tell people around them to not use this (and either way they don’t get anything off it), this raises a red flag in my book. But of course, I might be mistaken as well… If you want to check IvyBot out (there might be new version that fixes this behavior out since august 11th as i write this), you can follow this link (my affiliate code in it), or go there directly (either way they offer 60 days money back guarantee).

Choosing a forex broker where I opened a live account is a story on its own, so I will leave it for one of the next posts, but let’s just say that a bit over one month ago, I opened a live account. On purpose I only wired in $400, as this was my first live account with forex (i do have 7 years of experience trading stock and options). I chose 100:1 leverage, and I noticed that broker only lets me trade mini lot size (0,1 lot – meaning every pip move is $1). I wanted to trade micro lots (0,01 lots – pip move translates to $0,1) but somehow i didn’t change that…

And so it began. On the next day my total was $480. Over 20% in 24 hours! I was thrilled and so proud on myself. Maybe trading mini lots is just a right thing! Why should I bother with micro trading – it will take too much time to make me a rich man I thought somewhere back in my head… Third day was when disaster began!

I left two buy EURUSD positions open over night, setting nice trailing stop/loss.. But during the night positions went against me, and  my broker closed my positions as I reached my margin limit! In the morning i see EURUSD where i wanted it, but – what’s that? my account total is just $370! Aaargh!

After talking with my broker, which explained professionally and with examples what happened (and i am happy with their response and level of service) as it was my fault not to read and understand margin calculation (every broker might follow different rules and policy) I began chasing my lost money by force… And now I can tell you - this is the stupidest thing you can do!! Next night I left open another position, this time just one (not to reach margin call so quickly) again with trailing S/L… But in the morning – shock! My account total - $65! EURUSD went way down (although there were no news) and my position closed again when margin limit was reached! I was sad.

But this got me on the right track… I requested my broker to change my account to 200:1 leverage, and to allow me to trade micro lots (0,01 lot size – or to control 10.000 currency). After that I was following my forex trading system. Fear was gone as I had only $65 to lose. Greed was gone as I accepted the fate, that it is very likely that my first live forex account was gone…

So in next 10 days I managed to catch some nice scalp trades, reaching $100 soon with just safe trades. Of course I had some losers, but I used money management furiously and never risked more than 2% of remaining capital… And when you are operating with $100 that is not much…

Today, 14 days later, I topped $160, and I began trading with hedge trades in opposite direction. This is against the US rules now, but some brokers still allow it (i will write about this in later post).

So here you have it – first month live trading – from hero to (almost) zero, and slowly back again… Knock, knock, knock… I’ll keep you updated… But do tell me – what was your first live forex trading experience? How did you do in first month?

Overall I must say that I am impressed, and will keep using it, but since it is very volatile, I will limit potential damage in smaller account… Will keep you posted

START 5000 ACCT - default faptrader
————–
thurstday  -6,88 4993,12
friday   78,77 5071,89
—
monday   +106,05 –> 5177,94 
tuesday   +66,72 –> 5244,66
wednesday * not trading - (my wmvware crashed)
thurstday +270,56 –> 5515,22
friday  -39,61 –> 5472,61
—
monday   +140,87 –> 5613,48
tuesday   +147,36 –> 5760,84
wednesday +192,90 –> 5953,74
thurstday –568,34 –> 5385,40
friday   +309,53 –> 5694,93

Looks like EA robots are becoming better and better, and I recommend you take a look at http://www.forex-tsd.com since they have some nice EAs there free to download and try out! I will test drive several of them and report my findings. What about FAPturbo? Do you need to have it? If you think it will double your account fast, then it is probably better to stay away – read here why.

If you read all the facts and above article as well, and wish to give FAPturbo a try, you can buy it here (thru my affiliate link - as a thank you I will send you my settings to put you on fasttrack to profits), or directly here.