FAPTS EA From Fapwinner.com

[rsmereka]

I would like to share my experiences with you in running the FAPTS EA which is provided when you subscribe to the Fapwinner.com site.

The FAPTS is a customized version of the Forex Autopilot (FAP) EA. It trades only the EURUSD pair on a 1 minute chart. FAPTS stands for Forex Autopilot Trading System. The Fapwinner.com site is headed by Charles A. Floyd, II who started FAPTS as a Yahoo group (I read that somewhere) and opened the Fapwinner.com site in 2008.

Subscription to the Fapwinner.com site is not cheap. The site used to have three levels of subscription but they have recently changed this and there is only one level with two payment methods. A onetime payment or payments for an entire year. Once the subscription is paid, there are no additional fees.

The EA is quite manual. There is no builtin money management . You have to plug in the lot size after each trade. Each weekend, new settings are posted on the Fapwinner.com forum and these need to also be pluged into the EA at the start of the trading week.

After I subscribed, I put the EA on a demo account as recommended. Fapwinner.com recommends demoing for one to two months and I was too anxious for that and I went live after two weeks. During the demo, the EA never had a losing trade. One trade was mysteriously closed well before reaching its take profit.

As of right now, FAPTS has not had one losing trade. That is not to say that it will never lose a trade. It is not a grid system and it is not one of those 'no-loss' systems.

The EA is very selective about entering a trade and, as a result, does not trade every trading day.

Current setup:
-Trading hours: 7am-12pm GMT
-Takes only one trade per day
-Take profit: 20 pips
-Stop Loss: 500

I know that the stop loss value is scary and there is a potential that if a trade moves against the EA, there can be a big loss. This has actually happened in the past but it does not happen very often. Take a look at the EA's performance at the Fapwinner.com site for more detail.

Here are the stats on the first week of live trading:
Jan 12-16 3% ROI

This was not a complete week as I set the EA up in my live account on Tuesday Jan 13.

I'll try and post my weekly/monthly ROI in this thread.

Rick

[Ken Long]

Rick,

Please keep this posted. I have heard nothing I would trust from this group. Most pro comments are like yours and sound more promotional than useful. The only thing missing is an affiliate link.

Recomendations: When you talk about the price, post the price.

If there are any optimizations that are not guarded proprietary secrets please post some when you are able. I would like to review these and form an opinion. When Charles posted the optimizations for FAPT on the FAPT members web site they were so overleveraged I had to laugh. Even the most conservative settings were destined to blow up accounts.

All other posting from Charles or his lackies have been so arrogant I could not imagine accually joining his service. He/they generally get on independant free forums and badmouth the work people are trying to do without his glorified support. They like to maintain that FAP Winner is the only one sanctioned to do optimizations on FAPS and FAPT, and present themselves as though they are somehow a mandatory service for anyone who wants to make money with these robots. As though the work others are doing is somehow inferior to his.

As you get on with this service, I would like to know if this is anything more than a glorified hand holding service? Does he offer you true knowledge, or is it a follow me service? Does he explain all the inner workings, adjustable parameters, and optimization techniques for the do it yourselfers?

I've gotten the impression that he doesnt like these kind of questions. He seems to prefer the newbies who need help setting up and want someone to follow.

And yes, that stop loss is scary. It shows a lack of accuracy, and a willingness to ride a trade into extreme drawdown in order to get a small profit. Even longer term trend traders looking for hundreds of pips rarely are willing to ride an initial stop that wide. Its a bit different once the stop is in the money and your not risking your initial capital.

Good luck, but I have to say, I have nothing but distain for this guy and his attitude.

Ken

[rsmereka]

Ken,

I am posting the information on this EA to share with the community. I have nothing to gain and have no relationship with Fapwinner.com other than being a member of their community.

Ok, lets talk about the price. The one-time payment is $599. The alternative is $99 up front and $49 a month for 12 months. Rather expensive if you ask me but RoboMiner is $497 and in my limited experience, FAPTS out-generates RoboMiner by about 2-6% ROI per month (based on FAPTS generating 14% monthly and RoboMiner generating 6-10% on a single pair and 10-12% on both recommended pairs).

The settings in the EA are quite simple and straightforward like:
-Whether or not to only open one trade per day
-Whether or not to use MA control (don't know what kind of MA: SMA , EMA etc)
-Lot size
-start and stop trading hour and minute

I agree that the FAP Turbo LRR values that Charles posted were way too high but then again, almost all the LRR values I saw contradicted the fundamental rule in trading which is not to risk more than 1-3% max per trade. Anyone that does is risking their entire account.

FAPTS is geared to 2.5% risk. Their member site will generate a trading plan for each member (that has incorrect calculations for EURUSD to boot). I calculated the risk factor from the trading plan generated for me.

Currently, I believe that the only way to make good money using Forex Autopilot is to use Fapwinner.com It's not that I think the service is that great but the FAP EA is not that great a performer alone (source: forex-robots.com). Fapwinner.com turns a lacklustre EA into something more than decent and given the fact that FAP Turbo is pretty much a dead issue, it's either this EA or RoboMiner and I have issues with RoboMiner (drawdown, breaking another cardinal rule: do not add to a losing position, going against the trend ).

I ignore all the Fapwinner pompous strutting. As I previously said. I care about the EA and its profit level and its continuing profit level. Nothing else matters and I ignore it.

No true knowledge there. Just hand holding and decent support if/when you need it. That is ok with me. I am an experienced trader. Just give me the meat.

I disagree with:

Even longer term trend traders looking for hundreds of pips rarely are willing to ride an initial stop that wide. Its a bit different once the stop is in the money and your not risking your initial capital.

I was a medium-long term trend forex trader trading EURUSD on a 4hr chart and I used to regularly blow 500 pips in the wrong direction to get a possible thousand or more in return (2:1 return). I traded using a custom trading system based on the Donchian channel (remember the Turtle traders?) first with CMS Forex and their VTTrader platform and after that with MT 4 and a custom EA.

Rick

[PipCop]

I would encourage you to post statements from any forward-trading account you have. While we can easily debate this and that, forward running statements and real account trades speak volumes.

[Ken Long]

Rick,

I'm interested in everything you have to say, and I agree with everything you've said so far. I really have very limited experience with these people. I was interested in joining this group at one time, but got very turned off by certain attitudes Charles and his freinds displayed, and the more I looked into it the more I thought he wasnt offering what I was looking for. I was interested in the development and inner workings of the program, how the indicators were used, and what caused the triggers and such, and he wasnt offering that. And he was fairly rude with his attitudes, to the sense that he was the only one who was authorized to do these optimizations, and if we wanted to make money with this robot we had to follow him. That was enough for me. I've seen this attitude before from countless numbers of people trying to sell expensive services and courses. I really dont wish to be beholden to anyone but myself. It may be a much longer road, but the end result is worth it.

I have tested a number of FAPS strategies and some backtest very well, but I dont think I would run any of them on a live account. At least not an account of any size. I just dont trust them well enough. Not that they arent capable of being profitable, some people claim great results. Have you seen Earl's settings from ForexAutoPilotForum.com? If not I can look them up and post them for anyone who asks. They test very well, but they dont use a stop. I could potentialy put a system like this on a very small account with micro lots, but I have trouble trading like this. I dont have the capacity to run many accounts this way, but more than that it goes against something. I like to understand how and why the EA trades, and I dont always agree with how this EA uses its indicators. Sometimes FAPS can run a string of great trades and make a killing, and sometimes its seems like it doesnt know what its doing. Its in the way it uses its indicators and averages.

Anyway, I'm very interested in your results, and I would be glad to have you prove me wrong about FAP Winner. After all, if you can make a good consistant profit that really trumps everything else. All the knowledge and understanding has to take a material back seat to making a profit. Theres always time to learn.

[rsmereka]

I would encourage you to post statements from any forward-trading account you have. While we can easily debate this and that, forward running statements and real account trades speak volumes.

I plan to upload my live account statement at the end of each week. Look for it this Fri-Sat.

Rick

[rsmereka]

Ken,

I agree with you. But unlike you, I have no desire beyond curiosity to know the inner workings of this or any other EA. I am interested in why/when the EA decides to trade and why/when the EA decides to exit but that is about it.

It is true that nobody at Fapwinner.com will discuss the inner workings of their EA but really, I don't know one commercial EA provider that will discuss their EA at this level. If you went to Forex-Goldmine and asked them about the inner workings of RoboMiner, do you think they would do this? I really doubt it.

I suggest that if you are interested in the mechanics of EA's, you should first learn everything there is to know about technical analysis including all the indicators and theory behind them. Second, learn MQL so that you can translate you superior technical trading knowledge into programming terms and create EA's. Also, take a close look at the MQL code base. I provided a link to this site when I was discussing the Donchian channel in post #3.

Rick

[Ken Long]

Rick,

I'm familiar with the MQ4 site. I have far to go learning the language, but this is a long term idea. I would love to learn this proccess, its something I think I would be good at. The moment I saw it, it sparked something, this is a next step beyond just simply trading. It adds a whole dimension to the job. Something that can be shared and used by others, as long as I can do it well. But this will take some time. I have no real experience with any of this. MQ4 and Forex and both relatively new to me. Forex I've known about for quite a while, but always avoided, I didnt know anyone else trading it at the time and my time was fully taken studying TA and options trading, and working, and raising kids, etc.

I'm fairly good with certain aspects of technical analysis , mostly the chart reading side. I've always been good with charts, and chart oriented analysis. Mostly trends and ranges, that seems to come naturaly to me, but I've read and studied a lot of different strategies. Simple trend and range , with some Fibonacci and Elliot, and a few indicators seem to fullfill the KISS rule for me.

Anyway, this will all take some time. I've almost completely turned over to Forex in just a few quick months, the short term profits are just incredible. Manual trading, these EA's are a whole nother story. I dont run any live yet, but I like to follow the FAPS and FAP Scalper, they're pretty easy to run and watch, and their positions usually give me ideas and motivate me to act. A slightly different style of trading than what I was previously used to. Option trading tends to take a little longer, both the analysis and the actual trades. I really need to start plugging some of my old time frames and trading styles into the Forex market, the swing to short term trend , and see how they convert. I probably would have started with this, but these EA robots got me entranced with the intraday potentials. There are possibilities in the Forex market that just arent as easily available in the stock or option markets.

I'm interested in your experience with Turtle trading. I've read some of Russell Sand's work, but never followed it strictly. I was always more of a swing into trend and cross range trader. Its really just relative to itself, all trends and ranges are fractal, microcosms of themselves. Anyway, time to do some work, I spend too much time writing and posting on boards such as this and never get all my work done.

Ken

[rsmereka]

Ken,

Your trading background and mine are very similar. I started with commodities in 2002. I traded all sorts of commodity contracts and options also. I switched to Forex in 2005 and assumed that the only way to trade it was long-term trend like in commodities. Boy was I wrong about that.

The profits in Forex are incredible as is the ability to blow an account. The leverage is just wild. The ability to control $100,000 in currency with just $200 margin (at the current maximum leverage of 500:1) is mind boggling, scary and outright dangerous. Now I understand why the margins on commodity contracts are so high.

Rick

[Ken Long]

One thing I've learned is NEVER look at the leverage or the amount of deposit it takes to hold a contract after the account is set up, other than to assure yourself that your margin is intact. Its just a deposit and has no reflection on the real risk.

All I ever look at is the number of contracts as position size and the stop as the risk setting, together they dictate the risk taken on.

The beauty of Forex for me is the lack of commision allows scaling in extremely small increments with no penalty, Turtle style. Scaling into a trend , moving the initial stop up and adding comtracts as the risk is covered. Closing the entire position at a preset stop or a partial position, and continueing the proccess.

The beauty is you dont have to buy the underlying, just a deposit to play. The misstake is looking at the deposit as an amount that matters, as though you were buying something.