Does anyone know of a profitable robot?

I trade manually and was wondering if anyone has used a robot that is profitable?

Thanks

There are some EA systems showing their performance on some websites (such as myfxbook.com), but even verified EA systems may not be reliably and consistently profitable.

In a polling on Forexfactory here, among 50 respondents, no one has claimed that they are consistently profitable using an EA. (EA users are asked to poll for "Signal Services" in this polling).

http://www.forexfactory.com/attachme...6&d=1265901728

Yeh, I have!

It doubled my account in about 4 months. It wasnt fully automated, as you also needed to use some common sense. It required some manual takes and frequent monitoring.

Im still evaluating it as I think the trading conditions aren't suiting it.

So yes. There is such a thing as a profitable ea.
(even if it is for only a limited amount of time)

Now theres a problem lol.

This is another problem. haha

Haha. Yeh your right. What I was trying to demonstrate, was that using ea's arent a complete waste of time. Even if they have their limitations.

Ronald Raygun claims to have do it. But he is using like 40 EAs that he made.

I wasted 12 months tooling around with EA's , indicators and a whole lot of other shite before i turned consistently profitable. But I have got it by the balls now.
Find a professional trader that shows you all his trading. Get to know his system. Watch the system in action. Ask question after question after question after question, until you can do it on your own successfully. You need to LEARN how to trade Forex. Despite what some say here, it is NOT a God-given gift.

All evidence to the contrary.

~200 pips for over a month of trading and holding on to unrealized losses of over 350 pips on one trade is hardly what anyone could call 'got it by the balls'.

Yes, you do.

I'm sure there are some but you're unlikely to find them on trading forums!

Check out the Automated Trading Championship, if I remember correctly it's run by Metaquotes (MT4), that's been going for a few years now with some amazing systems producing some staggering returns!

sorry, but no robot can be consistently profitable over time, that's because the markets are traded by people, with emotions, greed fear etc

I don't know, market dynamics and people don't really change that much, and computers are getting more sophisticated every day, I think it's reasonable to assume there are already bots running profitable trading programs.

I'm not a programmer but EA's seem fairly limited in their functionality though, there doesn't appear to be any way to make them adapt.

Some clever guys in those automated trading competitions though, most of them seem to live in Eastern Europe which I thought was interesting.

So how much of your strategy is discretionary then?

Can you tell me that what are the things that can be done by human but not by computer program?

R2D2 NOW THERES A PROFITABLE ROBOT I BET HE MADE MILLIONS

regards damien

This raises a very interesting point, IMO.

If profit can be attained through KISS entries, containing losses and letting profits run (or simply taking > X:1 RR trades), consistently applying an X% sizing rule, patience and discipline....... then writing a profitable EA should be child's play.

I disagree strongly with anybody who believes that EAs are at a disadvantage because emotions play a useful role in trading. Understanding market psychology may be important, but applying patience and discipline means keeping one's own emotions firmly under wraps.

So, given that most human traders outperform EAs, the question becomes: what can a discretionary trader bring into the equation that the vast majority of EAs lack? I believe that the answer is 'intelligent' analysis, both in terms of entry setup and trade management.

Everywhere I read about the importance of trading naked, and keeping it simple. But then when I discuss entry/exit specifics with proponents of these ideas, their methods contain many, many exceptions to their 'simple' rules. Some of these exceptions don't even appear on their charts: don't trade an hour either side of high impact news, don't trade certain pairs during certain sessions,...... there are two possible examples, just for starters.

In theory, any method, no matter how discretionary, can be programmed, or at least an increasingly accurate approximation can be programmed. It's a case of studying enough situations, and gradually covering every possible variation, or exception, to every rule, a slow incremental process. And it's NOT a trivial task, especially when one considers that many of the 'visual' concepts that are 'second nature' to an experienced discretionary trader are complex to define mathematically. Determining the 'quality' of a S/R level is a good example. Then we have things like pattern definition, multiple timeframe analysis, session or time-of-day considerations, specialist rules for price behavior before and after certain types of news announcements, technically based trade management, different trade management rules for different situations, special rules that apply specifically for for scaling in or out, defining confluences, assessing trend strength (or even merely whether prices are trending or ranging), pair selection, correlation, assessing risk vs reward of a candidate setup, deciding which points to draw a trendline through, weighting different technical factors against each other, perhaps some fundamental analysis, and no doubt a million other discretionary factors. None of these ideas are easily programmed.

Finally, EAs lack the intelligence to determine whether a certain type of setup is losing its effectiveness, and then adapt accordingly.

FWIW, that's my take on why very few EAs are long term profitable: discretionary trading involves many mathematically complex rules that traders take for granted.

Isn't that the answer right there? We know it's perfectly possible to write a profitable EA (for example the competition ones seem very profitable) but they don't appear to have longevity, each year new ones appear and the old ones disappear. Are they really that sensitive to small changes in the market?

How about an EA which could determine when a setup or strategy was losing its effectiveness and then perhaps reduce size/frequency, even just temporarily, until it's deterioration/failure could be confirmed by a human and the EA either adjusted or rewritten.

I don't think EA's have the flexibility though, I would think ideally an automated system needs some form of AI input. Not my area of expertise so I could very well be talking total garbage!

Pip, you've been trading a lot longer than me. How often do you find yourself adapting your basic method to fit changing market conditions?

I guess the answer is that if it's necessary for a human to adapt, then it's necessary for an EA to do likewise, and in much the same way.

About the competition EAs, they only have to remain profitable for the duration of the competition, which (if I understand correctly) is generally 2-3 months. We see some of these EAs making returns of the order of (say) 500% across that period. I doubt that such a return is sustainable, by any trader (robot or otherwise), in the long term. It's also possible that they are deliberately overleveraged, to maximize their chances of finishing in the prizemoney. Given that they have nothing to lose, risk management isn't that important.

I'm not saying that some of these EAs might not be long term profitable, just that a 2-3 month competition where they're not trading their developer's hard earned $$$ is a very superficial test.

I have a couple of EA's which I have tested and they are profitable. Trouble is you have to know when to switch them on and it helps if you tell them only long or only short. Additionally, to make them more consistent, it's useful to specify starting stop losses, trailing stop distance and take profit distance.

So all they do is mechanically carry out what I had in mind anyway. Handy, I suppose, if you like gardening or sailing.

That's what I love about forums, it all makes logical sense when someone else points it out, why didn't I think of those points!

My strategy doesn't actually change very much to be honest, but that's more out of laziness and familiarity than anything else, bit like an old pair of slippers, well-worn but comfortable. I doubt it could be automated though as there's an element of (sometimes incoherent) discretion involved.

What about all these algos than we're told run 24/5, not the high-frequency Goldman type, the 'other' ones, I'm guessing they must be profitable? Or maybe they exploit things not exploitable by us retail guys?

ps I might have been trading longer but that just makes me an old trader, not necessarily a wiser one