an EA that worked forever

i have heard many people say that EA's flat out dont work (which i beleive is bullpoop) or that if you have an EA that is profitable it will not produce $ for any meaninful amount of time because the market will change.

is there anyone here who has had a EA that was a consistent earner and was able to do so for a long time?

how long?

1 month, 3month, 1yr, more?

and how profitable was it?

i also heard abt EA....a lot people earning well on EA....but i don't have any...anyone from this group can share with us how to create an EA???

I have heard about EAs and those who have developed EAs and they probably wouldnot want to disclose about their EAs. Try to learn the programming aspect of MQL and EA and you can create your own EAs. Try in other forums similar to this.
Goodluck.

Safest way to make money with EAs is to sell them. Even if they don't work. Just give your costumers a backtest with 10% modeling quality. They'll buy it.

my opinion is that an EA cannot be a consistent earner.
it can earn one month, 1 year, even 2 years, but more than that i don't think so...
here's why
the market is made out of human beings, not out of emotionless robots or algorithms. that's why i believe a mechanical algorithm will never be successful, because the market changes constantly, and in order for the ea to be successful, it has to change, and do so by learning automatically, which it cannot do.

hope i made myself clear

Saw this thread that interested me.....

First off a bit of history - Have known about this site but haven't posted for many years, however have been actively trading forex since June 06 - live not demo. I too beleive in the potential of EA's, so much so that I designed my own that has been trading relentlessly - everyday all day for just under a year (Sep 10 09 will be its golden anniversary) with no user input whatsoever. It is 100% automated. My only commitment is to make sure my pc is left on constantly in order to keep the EA active. Reboots are done at select times during the day once no iminent trades are gonna open.

Yes my EA is in profit, infact it has done amazing but not in the way that many on here think it would. You see my expectations are different to most. Most here set themselves fantastic goals like trying to double their money in a month, every month. Welcome to the 95% club. My goal is far more modest - to design an EA that could trade all day every day and NOT lose money. I had no profit target but I figured that if I could trade consistently and not lose then the profits would come naturally. And they have.

Even though my EA is automated my analysis of the results has been a never ending story. I have a horrendeously large excel sheet that breaks down my results and seperates the information into manageable content that I can disect and manipulate until my hearts content. In my opinion that is where the real skill in trading is because its only in that disecting of real trading results can you emotionally prepare yourself for this rollercoaster ride.

I have enclosed 2 tabs of my excel sheet to mainly give proof of how a REAL EA performs including currency pairs, winners, losers, even an equity graph to see how the journey has been. The only information I have deleted is the Open Time coloumn for my own reasons.

A summary of my results are as follows:

10 Sep 08: Starting balance $3053.95
22 July 09: Balance $4606.95
Number of trades: 892
Increase in capital: 51%

Bear in mind that the big boys in these hedge funds aim for 30-40% a year.

An EA that trades automatically and makes you 51% in a year while doing nothing!!!! Sounds great eh? Check out the sheet and see for yourself what a real trader has to go through emotionally to achieve those kind of results - and as you can clearly see my journey to forex independance is far from guaranteed.

Without doubt my EA is profitable - for now - however this game is all about psychology. Especailly sticking to the system when the drawdown comes - AND IT WILL COME.

BBPI_fxtrader - I disagree, I beleive EA's are possible, but not in ways that many people think it is

Tjpld - No truer thing spoken. No one, and I mean NO ONE will ever sell an EA that can generate an infinite amount of profit over an indefinite period. That quite simply is PRICELESS.

nikolaou13 - Hope this helps you in making up your own mind about EA's. Just trying to give an honest answer to hard question.

I couldnt have wrote this post better. Anyone who has programmed their EA will spend the rest of their time perfecting and testing as they trade(my opinion). The "holy grail" is out of reach for ANY retail Forex trader(if it even exists at all). PID I feel exactly as you about EAs and I wish you all the best in your Forex quest-nice post.

Just thought i would add my 2 cents...

EA's dont have to be 100% automated. EA's can be useful for a number of reasons.

I like to use them specifically for the money management side of the house. Once i enter a trade.... that is it for me. It takes care of profits and losers. When to scale out of a position based on a number of different reasons. I enter positions based on my own analysis and rely on the EA to take care of the rest.

I find it so much better (and less stressful) to do it this way. It helps to follow a plan to the 'T' without the thought of... 'maybe i should just exit now and take what i have' or 'oh no, the trade has gone against me, maybe i should just take the loss on the chin' just to find it reverses and does what i expect it would.

To rely on a robot 100% of the time... well thats up to you.

Can EA's be useful. I (me, myself, this person typing this text) would say definately. Especially considering i have a full time job and can't monitor the trades that i enter all the time. I need help, EA's provide that help

Cheers

Brad

One thing that can be said on an EA is that while it works for a certain period of time, there is no guarantee that the following times will have a similar environment that lead to that EA being successful in the first place.

A good way to prolong the life of an EA is by optimizing it on different periods, and see which parameters work best, then, for the upcoming period, one can choose the numbers that worked well on a period similar to what the trader 'thinks' the next one will be. It involves a little bit of guessing, but what doesnt

An example would be by testing the same EA on low timeframes, with both trendy periods (london hours) and flat ones (asian hours), and see which param numbers worked best in each.

Hope that helped!

EAs do work especially for the trader who has other busy xchedules. The only advantage they hav over you is the ability to enter predefined ppositions like the snap of a finger, and the ability to trade for like for ever without resting. Apart from that, i think u can do better eith your own strategy and discipline.
I personlly hav been trying to work on EAs based on various kinds of indicators( MA crossings, parabollic sars and of recent, Ichimoku). My only problem is getting them to work on live chart. Backtesting work but i dont know if there is a parameter i am not adding to make them work on the liv chart.
I would appreciate if anyone has any ideas. Thanks.

Brad,
I agree, it is better to let the machine take your brain out of the process on the exit side of the trade. Many newbie traders have a tough time on knowing when to get out of a trade.

Joey

Hi.

From the Main Menu, go to: Tools>Options and click on Expert Advisors tab. Check every Main box but uncheck all the sub boxes.

Ex: Check ALLOW LIVE TRADING but uncheck ASK MANUAL CONFIRMATION.

Repeat the process for all the 4 Main boxes.

When done, click OK and run you EA again on live.

Happy trading.

For my opinion, EA can be very usefull for traders who are busy with their everyday life. It all depends on the trader himself.. with a system of his choice.

Depending on EA is like a pilot depending on gps, computers, autopilot, gadgets and meters around him.. it helps during stormy weather, or during night time, on how, when or where to land safely.. fully depending on "Robots" to make sure hundreds of life behind him reach their destination.

To me, running an EA can be very profitable, as long as the EA can help make ,,like 10%profit a mth. Consistence profit can make u a millionaire, if we realize it. Big boys make money by selling high and buying low.. consistently. You can too.. by programming a robot with that feature. I dont seem to be attracted by robots making 1000 from a 200 acc in a day.. but i am fascinated to see a robot doing 10 dollars a day from a 1000 dollar account. For $2400 a year of profit + $1000 margin, you will be making another $34 a day..the 2nd year. On the 3rd year, you can calculate how much you will get for the 3rd year and so on... all done by automated trading.

well.. just my opinion through my experience.. I might be wrong.

regards...

If you can come up with an equation that calculates human fear and greed maybe.

Good luck

6 out of the 7 EA's I am currently testing are in profit. Btw, all my testing is done on live, real money trading accounts, and I provide my Investor Password to each account as proof.

could you list the name of EAs?

Hey Pid, couldn't agree with you more.... so I thought I would share a pic of my trade explorer.

Currently I feel Forex Factory shows too much information in the explorer so this picture (below) has been edited.

It is a demo account but, the live results are very similar... but as you know live and demo is never the same thing. In the end you will either choose to believe it or not and that's fine by me. Many people at one time believed that the earth was flat too and if you venture too far you would fall off the edge... lol.

Believe me any fund manager anywhere would give up an arm and a leg for these kinds of results.

This is just merely to show it's possible. What you believe after the fact is your own doing. (These results are 100% EA, no user intervention except for turning the computer on.)

the guy has a site in his sig where he sells the EA's, so i would never ever trust in someone who says: "yeahhh my eas make monies" and has a sig where he sells eas..

its too obvious.. only TOO innocent people would buy that, honestly.

My friend, I have been using one EA already for eight months. Is it profitable - YES. Is it the same EA as 8 months ago - NO! The developer made seven updates so far.

Have a look: can you say where you will be in a week, in a month, in a year? Can you? To assume where you will be in a week is much easier than in a year.

The same with EAs - to predict market conditions for a month much easier than for a year.

HAve not been in forex factory in a long time I have been for years with two other programers building EAs
I can get fantastic back test with optimization and trade them forward and watch them fail. there is so much to learn about EAs and Optimization I could never explain it all in a life time .
MAny things can be learned from EAs but if you want to be a successful trader Forget EAS and consintrate on alerts .
Alerts keep you posted to teh best setups and then you still use Judgement based on many factors that are Impossiable to factor in in an EA.
Building EAs Tought me much and has made me a profitable trader
but I do not use them .
I can do much better using Alerts on high time frame charts 4 h and better.
That is teh biggest thing EA tought me consistent patterns happen in the higher time frames and consistent chaos happens in teh smaller.
The Big boys use TL and so should you .
the simple things like Fibs and TL really do work in high TF.
I do not care what you do small TF will be many times harder to be profitable in than larger.