Do YOU think EA's work (POLL) | Forex Factory

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Do YOU think EA's work (POLL)

  • Poll

  • Do EA's work?
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  • #1
  • First Post: Mar 7, 2007 2:39am Mar 7, 2007 2:39am
This has probably been brought up before, but I was just curious and wanted to get an idea for where people's heads are at with this topic.

QUESTION:

Do EA's (or automated systems in general) have the ability to be turned on, forgotten about, and make you a fortune in the process.

A show of hands please, and the reasoning behind it. I'll start it off -

NO, because when markets deviate from their mathematical nature, they do so in such a way that EA's (strictly mathematical in nature) get squashed. I'm specifically talking about EA's that put on single trades with a sizable lot load. I'm not talking about using a Grid, or Martingale type of EA where you have $100K account... and you're buying Micro's. I'm talking about the guy who puts in $500 into a live mini account, wants to leave his computer on all day while he's at his 9 to 5, and come home to a 3% equity increase on his account balance.... you know the typical FF newbiehttp://www.forexfactory.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Ok... now lets get some numbers on the board.

MM
  • #2
  • Mar 7, 2007 2:45am Mar 7, 2007 2:45am
I have testet at least 100 EA's but never found one that works for the long run.. So, out of experience I would say they help taking desicions but they can never substitute discretionary trading.
  • #3
  • Mar 7, 2007 2:49am Mar 7, 2007 2:49am
Quoting watzdorf
I have testet at least 100 EA's but never found one that works for the long run.. So, out of experience I would say they help taking desicions but they can never substitute discretionary trading.
Watzdorf,

I think that's the whole point. It's not that you haven't found a good one, they just can't do what most users would like them to do... and that would be to build their retirement fund for them.
  • #4
  • Mar 7, 2007 2:54am Mar 7, 2007 2:54am
Market conditions will change sooner or later, but there is no program nor software that is able to pick that up and make self-adjustment. Human brain works are needed to come out with a new EA version. And the cycle continues...............
To me, to call something works, it should not fail. If it fails, it is not working.
my 2 cts.
Forex is my business
  • #5
  • Mar 7, 2007 3:07am Mar 7, 2007 3:07am
I would love to get some feedback from the few that voted YES.
  • #6
  • Mar 7, 2007 3:36am Mar 7, 2007 3:36am
Quoting mr.marketz
I would love to get some feedback from the few that voted YES.
I voted yes because I think it works. Of course not in the way that you let it run for years and just let money coming because of course the market conditions are changing and then you need to adapt your strategy. Automatisation is just a way to be sure that you follow the strategy and that your emotions don't let you deviate from it.

I voted yes for several reasons:
- my personal experience tells me that it works if we use a reasonable strategy and don't want to do 50% per month
- all the big actors uses automatic software for trading. If it wouldn't work they will just have a plain platforms and guys clicking but that's far from what they have
- in most cases the manual trading techniques could be automatised, so if there would be no hope in automatic trading ther will be not much hope in manual trading as well. Could it be possible that only the strategies that are impossible or too complicated to automatise are profitable? I don't think so.
  • #7
  • Mar 7, 2007 4:04am Mar 7, 2007 4:04am
Point taken... so a long term EA possibly on 4H or 1D time frame. More like an investing machine... I guess we could call it. Fair enough.
  • #8
  • Mar 7, 2007 4:29am Mar 7, 2007 4:29am
Quoting mr.marketz
Point taken... so a long term EA possibly on 4H or 1D time frame. More like an investing machine... I guess we could call it. Fair enough.
Yes exactly, personaly the EAs that work for me are on H1.
  • #9
  • Mar 7, 2007 4:36am Mar 7, 2007 4:36am
Quoting jlpi
Yes exactly, personaly the EAs that work for me are on H1.
I'm sure a lot of traders will find your comment of interest.

You have EA's that work - i.e. profitable EA's?
  • #10
  • Mar 7, 2007 5:00am Mar 7, 2007 5:00am
Hi
I vote yes, and deftly they are much better than human emotions.
I have EA that works very well and in 1M time frame!, they work better then my strategies, because they simply do it, instead of waiting to close a trade, guess what’s happen next, listen news, etc…
For me the secret is money management, imagine you start with $1000, you must then put in your mind you lose it!, don’t give great expectations on it!
Then you must define for example if my account goes to $10000 I will withdrawal $7500, and do it! Always!, even if I don’t take the money my EA don’t use it! Is in the program!
And also important trade always with SL and TP, if there are strange moves on market, you know how much you will lose or win.
The rest is as your account increase by $1000, you double the risk, in program!, what could happen, you lose and return to $1000 or less, or you win and double again the money you invest!, take note your money is only the star $1000, other is not your money until you withdrawal you first $7500 with a huge profit!
For me this is the secret to trade forex, and to rest the are very good strategies based on EA or in manual trading for me it doesn’t matter.
Good trades for U all
OldSchool
  • #11
  • Mar 7, 2007 5:04am Mar 7, 2007 5:04am
Quoting mr.marketz
I'm sure a lot of traders will find your comment of interest.

You have EA's that work - i.e. profitable EA's?
Yes, at least up to now...
I have 1 EA that I consider working and I am confident with and one that seems to work but I am more cautious with it and I keep it on demo only and we will see in 3 months or so.

As I see the following questions coming I answer by advance

I don't share my working EA's for 2 main reasons:
- they requested a lot of my time, not to make them but to follow the long process of learning and reach the point where I got strategies that look robust and I am confident with. (of course I am still learning to be able to find new ideas for modifying the strategies later when market changes)
- The key idea that was decisive to make them work don't come from forums. It comes more from books and specifically one book were I found something that ringed a bell. I modified it a little bit because it seems more logical to me and up to now it looks good (ok it has been running live only for 3 months so I am still cautious). Sorry I will not give the book title because I am a bit paranoid that many people may find the same idea and that it may affect my results. And I think it is up to every individual to find the idea that fits his market perception and where he will say " that makes sense and it should really work".

Just one info, my EA that I consider working is a trend following EA, takes around 1 trade per week in average (very boring you can imagine) and have a neutral zone (doesn't reverse systematically)
That I can tell you because you can try to build many different systems with that, they will all be different.
  • #12
  • Mar 7, 2007 5:34am Mar 7, 2007 5:34am
Congrats, I don't use EA's but I'm sure many here on the forum would love to get their hands on what you've got... but then again maybe not.

Let's keep those votes comming... need more stats.
  • #13
  • Mar 7, 2007 5:39am Mar 7, 2007 5:39am
It's almost 50/50 on the votes. I'm a bit surprised... half the people believe in EA's as stand alone money makers, yet every other thread I read is somebody looking for profitable EA's or complaining about their accounts being blown out by one. HHMMM.
  • #14
  • Mar 7, 2007 5:49am Mar 7, 2007 5:49am
Quoting mr.marketz
It's almost 50/50 on the votes. I'm a bit surprised... half the people believe in EA's as stand alone money makers, yet every other thread I read is somebody looking for profitable EA's or complaining about their accounts being blown out by one. HHMMM.
Yes but you forget that also a lot of people are able to blow up their account without the help of any EA. ...
So in my opinion it is not up to the EA but up to guy who makes the EA. if he looses manually, the EA he will make will probably loose as well.
The EA is not magic it is just an automated way or performing something you can do by hand. In my opinon the benefit is only that it can run 24h a day and that it is not affected by emotions. That's all.
  • #15
  • Mar 7, 2007 6:15am Mar 7, 2007 6:15am
Quoting jlpi
Yes but you forget that also a lot of people are able to blow up their account without the help of any EA. ...
So in my opinion it is not up to the EA but up to guy who makes the EA. if he looses manually, the EA he will make will probably loose as well.
The EA is not magic it is just an automated way or performing something you can do by hand. In my opinon the benefit is only that it can run 24h a day and that it is not affected by emotions. That's all.
I don't disagree with you on that last statement. By the way lets look at this with a different twist.

Suppose you're a business owner, you run an investment fund. You have an employee (EA), lets call the (EA/Employee) Bob. Bob will do as you tell him, he's a great worker... actually he's the perfect worker!!! He always does what you tell him to, he doesn't gossip at the water cooler, and he's a workaholic (works 24 hors a day 5 days a week. Unfortunately, Bob is a border-line imbecile. He does not know the first thing about the markets. But he knows what MA crosses are. So you, THE BOSS and OWNER of the firm, instruct him on how you want him to perform his duties. You spot a long term trend forming on the GBP/USD pair, so you instruct Bob to watch the 1 hour chart and only buy (EA properties BUY ONLY) on the MA cross. Give him the SL, and TP parameters and of you go.

Bottom line is - YOU need to be the administrator and the executive decision maker in this relationship. One of the biggest problems with the MT4 platform is that they call the automated system EXPERT ADVISER. this so called expert is as dumb as rocks. The only thing that Bob knows is that 2+2=4... and that ain't much amigos. If people can at least start to see it a bit more this way, we would have less posts on the forums about "PROFITABLE EA REQUESTS".

THE TRADER IS THE EXPERT, AND NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.
  • #16
  • Mar 7, 2007 6:20am Mar 7, 2007 6:20am
Do I have one? No.

Is it possible? Absolutely

The human brain(despite all it's flaws), is more than capable of writing a small script that takes advantages of repatition and nuances in the markets. If we didn't believe there was any way to tip the scales in our favour, and at least have some insight on what the future direction of price might be when specific conditions exist, alot of us wouldn't be trading.


I also think their often seen as all or nothing to often. They can be very helpful with things like specialized trailing stops, alerts and so on. I think it's more realistic to have several very distinct and specific EA's, and the trader identifies current market conditions and uses the proper EA. It's actually not to hard to write an EA that is great for it's purpose, then gets crushed in other circumstances.

Anyhow I think a "set it and forget it" EA is very challenging, but not impossible.

Keyword is think though!!!!! It hasn't been proven yet as far as I know.
  • #17
  • Mar 7, 2007 6:25am Mar 7, 2007 6:25am
on long term they don't work because the market changes it's behaivour, they work only on short term.
My answer is a definetly NO
"Abandon all hope, you who enter here" La Divina Commedia, Dante Alighieri
  • #18
  • Mar 7, 2007 6:28am Mar 7, 2007 6:28am
Quoting mr.marketz
THE TRADER IS THE EXPERT, AND NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.
Yes I fully agree with you.
It's true that the name Expert Advisor is not well chosen (I never thought of that before) as it is only a stupid executor.

Anyway the stupid executors are very useful nowadays when many things are built by machines and robots. And we can see that in many fields the "machines" can be as good or better than most of the people (think about chess playing, 25 years ago people said that never a stupid machine will beat a chess champion)
The EA is just like a small robot entering trades while you sleep
  • #19
  • Mar 7, 2007 6:32am Mar 7, 2007 6:32am
Some pretty interesting poll results so far...still 50/50. I'm thinking it's going to tip to one side pretty heavy at some point.
  • #20
  • Mar 7, 2007 6:34am Mar 7, 2007 6:34am
Quoting semar
on long term they don't work because the market changes it's behaivour, they work only on short term.
My answer is a definetly NO
OK the market is changing but then you adapt the EA.
It is like for manual trading. If you don't adapt your manual trading it will fail. So do you say that manual trading doesn't work?
No because you will adapt your strategy with the market conditions. Same thing with the EA, I don't see any difference.
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