Noob Question

[hotsawce]

Hey everyone-

Been doing my homework on the EAs and I'm kind of torn between a few. The "set it and forget it" favorite here seems to be Robominer over Megadroid, though I've heard good things about both. This forum's live review doesn't show great profits with megadroid, but other blogs and sites have shown some much larger gains, some holding and some losing over the long run, and robominer seems to be conservatively consistent (almost too conservative) wherever I look. But, unfortunately, Robominer is quite a bit of money. I've been looking at GT Shadow and Euroblaster, and GT Shadow seems iffy at this point (and fore more experienced EA users) and I can't find any experiences with Euroblaster here.

So I guess I want to know what the popular consensus is on a good, not-so-confusing, EA, and what broker would you guys recommend with it? Does anyone have experience with an EA around the $100 level? Any help or discussion is welcome.

[rsmereka]

Originally Posted by hotsawce

Hey everyone-

Been doing my homework on the EAs and I'm kind of torn between a few. The "set it and forget it" favorite here seems to be Robominer over Megadroid, though I've heard good things about both. This forum's live review doesn't show great profits with megadroid, but other blogs and sites have shown some much larger gains, some holding and some losing over the long run, and robominer seems to be conservatively consistent (almost too conservative) wherever I look. But, unfortunately, Robominer is quite a bit of money. I've been looking at GT Shadow and Euroblaster, and GT Shadow seems iffy at this point (and fore more experienced EA users) and I can't find any experiences with Euroblaster here.

So I guess I want to know what the popular consensus is on a good, not-so-confusing, EA, and what broker would you guys recommend with it? Does anyone have experience with an EA around the $100 level? Any help or discussion is welcome.

Hi And Welcome,

It depends on what you expect from an EA. What do you expect? Are you ok with 4-10% per month return or are you after bigger profits?

MegaDroid can be a very good profit producer but to get that, you have to increase the risk factor a lot. I believe that Pipcop is running MegaDroid at 5% risk (the default out-of-the-box). As a comparison, the MegaDroid site runs at 38% to get the profit that they advertise. However, MegaDroid's risk/reward is 115 pips risk for 15 pip reward so if you run the EA hot, you will get burned sooner or later.

The same EA performs very differently with different brokers. We have learned that here. The best broker for all EA's does not exist. Different brokers do well with different EA's. I think you should decide which EA you would like to run based on your trading objectives and then decide on the broker .

Right now, Alpari is doing well (arguably the best) with the EURUSD pair. Any EA that is based on this pair seems to do well with Alpari (my preference is Alpari UK but if you are a US citizen, you will have to go with Alpari US). Look at the results on your left. The best broker for FAP Turbo and Megadroid seems to be Alpari.

Rick

[PipCop]

I will echo the same sentiments Rick makes. It depends on your risk aversion level, the amount of money you have to invest, and your goals.

I am the kind of guy who is looking at this long term. I personally doubt any robot will make me rich in a year, or even in a few years. To that end, I want something that makes safe, consistent profits, even if it takes longer. From my testing I have seen lots of robots shoot to the top of the chart in terms of profits, only to wipe out the entire account a few hours or days later. There is no point to that, in my opinion.

I am running MegaDroid with the default settings. However, it's so slow it doesn't make any money at all - at least not enough that I would consider the 5% setting useful. I may change it up higher now that it's been mentioned.

All in all, it's hard to really recommend anything. I would like to see all the robots perform on live accounts for a year before I went live with them - but I am HIGHLY risk averse!

[hotsawce]

Originally Posted by rsmereka

Hi And Welcome,

It depends on what you expect from an EA. What do you expect? Are you ok with 4-10% per month return or are you after bigger profits?

MegaDroid can be a very good profit producer but to get that, you have to increase the risk factor a lot. I believe that Pipcop is running MegaDroid at 5% risk (the default out-of-the-box). As a comparison, the MegaDroid site runs at 38% to get the profit that they advertise. However, MegaDroid's risk/reward is 115 pips risk for 15 pip reward so if you run the EA hot, you will get burned sooner or later.

The same EA performs very differently with different brokers. We have learned that here. The best broker for all EA's does not exist. Different brokers do well with different EA's. I think you should decide which EA you would like to run based on your trading objectives and then decide on the broker .

Right now, Alpari is doing well (arguably the best) with the EURUSD pair. Any EA that is based on this pair seems to do well with Alpari (my preference is Alpari UK but if you are a US citizen, you will have to go with Alpari US). Look at the results on your left. The best broker for FAP Turbo and Megadroid seems to be Alpari.

Rick

Yes, I've noticed a lot of what you're saying; the performance difference among EAs and the manner by which they perform with different brokers. I'm just a bit confused because all of the research I've done seems to have brought me full circle....just a wealth of different reviews and sentiments for the various EAs.

And PipCop, that's what I've come to issue with, too. The Megadroid sounded great and I've seen some great live accounts where it was pumping out some great profits, others where the opposite was occurring, and a few where a run was great and it backed off a little bit. Megadroid doesn't seem to work for conservative, consistent gains at the default level and the higher risk factor seems to be a bit of an unknown and more of a gamble than anyone has really researched so far.

As for my objectives, I have to say I'm not at all experienced with EAs and would likely be considered a Forex newbie among the experienced here, though I have traded a little bit. I'm fairly positive I don't want to deal with an EA that requires constant monitoring and fiddling, like Euroblaster. I just don't have the time for it and I'm afraid my unfamiliarity with EAs would do me more harm than good in that regard.

I was teetering between robominer and megadroid, but as I've stated robominer is a bit expensive for the profit it seems to be returning. Plus, megadroid seems a little more customizable in a newbie friendly manner.

I'm thinking I could do megadroid, but I'm not sure how the risk factors with the EA tie into the recommended account value and I'm not sure how it has held up at higher risk levels. Unfortunately, I haven't found much information about this on the web....mostly individuals "setting and forgetting" it on the default settings. I'm not comfortable with sinking $5,000 into the bot like some of the tests here have done, but I could treat $1,000 to $1,500 like a manageable shot. But this leads me to the question, "Do larger deposits fair better with higher risk factors and should the leverage be changed for the smaller accounts?" Does anyone here have any experience with risk factors between the 5 and 38 percent...say 15-20? Could this yield more consistent profits without being to risky? I don't need profits like on the megadroid site, but something safer with a slightly higher return than the 1 dollar a day returns on the 5% risk level would be nice. Basically, I'm willing to take a shot with my money but I don't just want to foolishly put it in play at absurd risk levels.

For example, one fellow backtested megadroid at 5% risk level and managed a 30% return with 6% drawdown and the live accounts tested here haven't produced anything close to that....so it's a bit of an unknown.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to discussing this and learning more. Hopefully, this topic will yield some interesting and useful ideas and conclusions that could be made into a FAQ or something, and if I take the plunge I'm all for making my live account public.

Anything that could be related to my response in any shape or form would be greatly appreciated and I hope I can contribute something useful to the forum.

[rsmereka]

Originally Posted by hotsawce

Yes, I've noticed a lot of what you're saying; the performance difference among EAs and the manner by which they perform with different brokers. I'm just a bit confused because all of the research I've done seems to have brought me full circle....just a wealth of different reviews and sentiments for the various EAs.

And PipCop, that's what I've come to issue with, too. The Megadroid sounded great and I've seen some great live accounts where it was pumping out some great profits, others where the opposite was occurring, and a few where a run was great and it backed off a little bit. Megadroid doesn't seem to work for conservative, consistent gains at the default level and the higher risk factor seems to be a bit of an unknown and more of a gamble than anyone has really researched so far.

As for my objectives, I have to say I'm not at all experienced with EAs and would likely be considered a Forex newbie among the experienced here, though I have traded a little bit. I'm fairly positive I don't want to deal with an EA that requires constant monitoring and fiddling, like Euroblaster. I just don't have the time for it and I'm afraid my unfamiliarity with EAs would do me more harm than good in that regard.

I was teetering between robominer and megadroid, but as I've stated robominer is a bit expensive for the profit it seems to be returning. Plus, megadroid seems a little more customizable in a newbie friendly manner.

I'm thinking I could do megadroid, but I'm not sure how the risk factors with the EA tie into the recommended account value and I'm not sure how it has held up at higher risk levels. Unfortunately, I haven't found much information about this on the web....mostly individuals "setting and forgetting" it on the default settings. I'm not comfortable with sinking $5,000 into the bot like some of the tests here have done, but I could treat $1,000 to $1,500 like a manageable shot. But this leads me to the question, "Do larger deposits fair better with higher risk factors and should the leverage be changed for the smaller accounts?" Does anyone here have any experience with risk factors between the 5 and 38 percent...say 15-20? Could this yield more consistent profits without being to risky? I don't need profits like on the megadroid site, but something safer with a slightly higher return than the 1 dollar a day returns on the 5% risk level would be nice. Basically, I'm willing to take a shot with my money but I don't just want to foolishly put it in play at absurd risk levels.

For example, one fellow backtested megadroid at 5% risk level and managed a 30% return with 6% drawdown and the live accounts tested here haven't produced anything close to that....so it's a bit of an unknown.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to discussing this and learning more. Hopefully, this topic will yield some interesting and useful ideas and conclusions that could be made into a FAQ or something, and if I take the plunge I'm all for making my live account public.

Anything that could be related to my response in any shape or form would be greatly appreciated and I hope I can contribute something useful to the forum.

As you may have noticed, I trade MegaDroid on a live account. I started at 5% and up'ed that to my current 20% which I have been running for a couple of months. The consensus here seems to be (and correct me if I'm wrong) that 20% is a good, high risk, setting. A full-stop loss will loose big but it won't wipe out the account. The risk here is several losses in a row or close together. At 20%...five losses and I'm done...baked...toasted.

There are also free EA's that perform well. Pipcop has been running Prototype IX since November 2008 (but I have noticed that it has not traded in months) and I am live trading another free EA called vForce Like EA V1.1 which has done very well (better than most commerical EA's) so far.

MegaDroid is a fine EA (much better than most). However, in order to get serious returns out of it, you have to push it and then you run an increasing risk of losing big.

Larger deposits do fair better sometimes with some EA's but not MegaDroid. It will not perform any better given the same risk factor. Remember, with more money in your trading account, you are risking more.

Rick

[hotsawce]

Originally Posted by rsmereka

As you may have noticed, I trade MegaDroid on a live account. I started at 5% and up'ed that to my current 20% which I have been running for a couple of months. The consensus here seems to be (and correct me if I'm wrong) that 20% is a good, high risk, setting. A full-stop loss will loose big but it won't wipe out the account. The risk here is several losses in a row or close together. At 20%...five losses and I'm done...baked...toasted.

There are also free EA's that perform well. Pipcop has been running Prototype IX since November 2008 (but I have noticed that it has not traded in months) and I am live trading another free EA called vForce Like EA V1.1 which has done very well (better than most commerical EA's) so far.

MegaDroid is a fine EA (much better than most). However, in order to get serious returns out of it, you have to push it and then you run an increasing risk of losing big.

Larger deposits do fair better sometimes with some EA's but not MegaDroid. It will not perform any better given the same risk factor. Remember, with more money in your trading account, you are risking more.

Rick

Okay, I'm starting to get it. Also, I'll start reading up on those free ones (haven't heard of them prior to this.)

Also, I must have missed the thread about your live megadroid account. Sorry about that (I do run searches before I post!)

As for that account, did you change other parameters aside from the risk level? If it's in the thread just tell me the name of it and I'll search it and look I don't want you to dig for me.

And, unfortunately, I'm in the US where the rules were changed so it doesn't look like I can use Alpari UK (and from what I've read, it looks like most that use EAs are using the foreign accounts.)

Thanks for the info and I'll keep doing the research!

[rsmereka]

Originally Posted by hotsawce

Okay, I'm starting to get it. Also, I'll start reading up on those free ones (haven't heard of them prior to this.)

Also, I must have missed the thread about your live megadroid account. Sorry about that (I do run searches before I post!)

As for that account, did you change other parameters aside from the risk level? If it's in the thread just tell me the name of it and I'll search it and look I don't want you to dig for me.

And, unfortunately, I'm in the US where the rules were changed so it doesn't look like I can use Alpari UK (and from what I've read, it looks like most that use EAs are using the foreign accounts.)

Thanks for the info and I'll keep doing the research!

You are very welcome,

I only things I changed in the Megadroid EA was the risk (it's expressed as a fraction percent, not a whole percent so 5% is expressed as 0.05) and the magic (which I customized so that I can load trades from multiple EA's in a database and run performance analysis on them).

You can get a non-NFA broker if you live in the US. Just ask here and our members will be more than happy to recommend a non-NFA broker . With MegaDroid is does not matter as I don't think that there is any conflict with the NFA rules at all. I think, however, that a non-NFA broker is a good idea just in case you want to use some EA's that will not run properly with an NFA broker .

The biggest complaint that we have (if I can speak based on the consensus) with MegaDroid is that is does not trade that often. MegaDroid on my live account last traded on the evening of Jul 16th (12 days ago). That combined with the low pip win rate means that you have to really push the risk to make it produce on a monthly basis.

Rick

[hotsawce]

Originally Posted by rsmereka

You are very welcome,

I only things I changed in the Megadroid EA was the risk (it's expressed as a fraction percent, not a whole percent so 5% is expressed as 0.05) and the magic (which I customized so that I can load trades from multiple EA's in a database and run performance analysis on them).

You can get a non-NFA broker if you live in the US. Just ask here and our members will be more than happy to recommend a non-NFA broker . With MegaDroid is does not matter as I don't think that there is any conflict with the NFA rules at all. I think, however, that a non-NFA broker is a good idea just in case you want to use some EA's that will not run properly with an NFA broker .

The biggest complaint that we have (if I can speak based on the consensus) with MegaDroid is that is does not trade that often. MegaDroid on my live account last traded on the evening of Jul 16th (12 days ago). That combined with the low pip win rate means that you have to really push the risk to make it produce on a monthly basis.

Rick

Got it. What leverage are you trading with, by the way? Sorry if I'm bombarding with questions, but I've never used an EA so I'm not familiar with what all of the parameters are and how they are used in correlation with different leverage .

So anyone that may be looking on...recommendations for a good non-NFA broker that might work alright with Megadroid?

[rsmereka]

Originally Posted by hotsawce

Got it. What leverage are you trading with, by the way? Sorry if I'm bombarding with questions, but I've never used an EA so I'm not familiar with what all of the parameters are and how they are used in correlation with different leverage .

So anyone that may be looking on...recommendations for a good non-NFA broker that might work alright with Megadroid?

By default, all Alpari UK accounts are floating leverage and unless I have a position of more than 3 million (30 full lots), my leverage is 500:1. To me, leverage is not that important. It just dictates how much margin the broker will set aside from my account to maintain the position.

I also think you should ask your broker question in the MegaDroid thread as people may not be monitoring this thread.

Rick