Can be automated trading be profitable?

Most traders have strategies that work for a short time. When it stops working they stop it and move on to the next.

Most EA's don't do this. So you will see EA's that are profitable for a certain timeframe then it will fail. This is why you need to monitor you EA and see that it is not failing. If it is then stop it and come up with a new strategy. Your EA is only as good as your are as a trader. It can assist, but it will not give you the answers.

I created a couple of dozen EA's, had a couple that are working and consistently making money for me.

Automatic trading has worked for me so far , i'm not a pro forex specialist or anything i just filter through the signal providers and choose the best for a certain time. Signal providers will fail at some point , that's forex so i'm careful to change them when the time is right.

I certainly think EAs cannot make you rich. In the long term they always fail because they are based on past performance.

I came to ask here if copy trading is a good idea , i see a rise in social forex network websites such as etoro and zulutrade. I find it a good idea to follow and copy trades from sucesfull traders. I know it differs from automated trading like you use it in this thread , but in some way it is similar.

I have different ideas about EA. From the one hand it is good when robot makes trading for you-it has No emotions and it's a big plus.And from the other hand I haven't seen profitable EA yet. Personally I use EA partly. It opens orders and I close them manually

Its not a good idea, mainly because most new traders wont be able to differentiate between good and bad.

You see it all the time on these social networking sites. A trader making loads of money = good, trader losing money = bad. Its not so simple once you start to factor risk into the equation. The metrics that these types of sites use to classify their traders are usually quite dangerous, and designed for their benefit, not yours.

The only way you get to learn this stuff is to experience it, and by the time you have the experience, you are almost there.

On top of all that, the possibility of getting someone who trades in a style that matches your own personal temprement is very low.

If you can, try to find out who where the best traders on zulu, or collective 2 or curensee etc 2 years ago, then ask yourself what happened to those guys. Some of these people made money for months and then lost accounts in hours.

I'm not saying dont follow a signals service, or use a managed account, but its not as easy as just finding someone whose making a ton of cash and following them... thats usually the easiest way to lose a lot of money.

99% of EA's are mostly programmed for use with MT4, and guess which brokers use Mt4, 'market makers!

And believd me, they know the statistics. Majority of EA's loose money faster than a drunk newbie.

For the few that are profitable, the brokers leave them for some months to see how good they are, if it turns out that the EA is very sturborn(profitable), all they have to do is just widen spreads and requote the EA to death! Youll have a hard time proving this cause it was a robot trading and robots dont talk!
This insider info i got from a friend that worked with a MM.

The market makers are not fools! If you think you can buy a $500 robot at a street corner,load it on your pc then travel to Jamaica to watch bikini clad women at the beach for a month, come back and then find $1,000,000 in your account, then I really need to know what you're high on!

LEARN HOW TO TRADE!!!

Ok i agree with some of your points. Obviously manual trading is a better option , but i believe that many people dont want to learn how to trade and these social networking websites are trying to make forex trading a lot easier and profitable for those people. If clients wont earn money they wont register for those services , and those services will stop existing, but i see a rise and that made me think that clients do earn something there , i dont say its million dollars.

You can always go ahead with a demo or a small live acc to test drive Etoro and other sites. But remember, in order to make it big, you need to put in the effort and go manual..

Theoretically possible (even yes, its only for short run)
In practice in our time.. the answer is NO.
My 2 cents

You could always try their demo accounts , almost every copy trading platform have a demo , except maybe for currensee which is intented for more wealthy. If choosing between eToro and zulutrade i would go for the second option as it is a more professional one.