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Forex on AutoPilot, Robot, AutotraderForex trading automation works in practice, but there's no real guarantee of profit. Be aware there are scams out there: products that do not perform.
Forex
beginners and even inexperienced computer users can follow simple instructions
to set
up automated forex trading using autopilots and robots, many of which
sell for around
$100. Others cost more, but they are not always value for money. Some
are trash which will blow your account if left unmanaged or set up
incorrectly, with risk being the key factor.
Update: Juliya's "No Name Bot" will be available after Aug 17. Juliya Ivanov is a "chick trader who has no time for B.S." (her words). She's about to release her own forex robot to the public. This lady also despises a market flooded by new automated trading robots (mostly low quality) that pop up almost daily, many from fake gurus hooked up with slick marketers. Juliya sees no point in giving her robot a "ridiculous name" either. She has a degree in computer science and knows Metatrader like the back of her hand. Not only can she trade, she can code her own robot. Not that she's bragging about it; she just wants traders to know that she uses her own software to make money from forex trading. Juliya Ivanov's NoNameBot only trades the EUR/CHF pair on a 15-minute chart. That already makes it different. It uses several technologies which do have names and acronyms, but if they work as she can prove with her live account, there's no need to mention them here. She will reveal all on her website and video. One bonus Juliya provides with her personally-supported robot: it will also work on the new MetaTrader 5 platform which is not yet available for live trading, but indicates her being one step ahead of most of the other robot developers. Take a look at the performance of Juliya's NoNameBot in an eye-opening video available from 9 a.m. EST on Tuesday August 17. Robot trading vs. manual; perhaps a hybrid (combination) is best There are very few of us who would willingly fly in an aircraft completely under remote control, without qualified pilots on board to 'take the reins' if things started to go wrong. Long ago, while training to fly and eventually becoming an airline captain, my finger was never allowed near the autopilot switch. Access to that only came once I was fully qualified and licensed to fly manually. You certainly don't need to be a professional aviator to trade forex. Lengthy training followed by simulated and live experience are not necessary for forex robot trading per se, but all trading has risk and robots are not infallible. You need to understand that risk and how you are going to manage it. Getting basic but good quality forex knowledge and training will definitely help increase your profits by reducing the losses that every trader incurs. In this respect the Forex Nitty Gritty course from Bill Poulos provides a good starting point for the novice trader, including anyone tempted to leave all the decisions to robots. Only after some training will you be able to start trading forex confidently, with managed risk, either by placing your own trades based on the information and trading techniques you have learned, using data you receive through the news, chart analysis using indicators, a forex signal service, or using forex robots or autopilots, properly set for your chosen amount of risk and other factors. Trading forex on autopilot should be seen as flying in a simulator i.e. trading with demo accounts first, before risking your money. Also make sure any forex robot you buy is offered with a money-back guarantee. You will have no problems in that respect with a Clickbank purchase or other vendor products recommended below. |
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Introduction to Forex Trading with a Robot or AutoPilot Foreign currency pair trading, or forex as it is better known, is finally coming down to the level of 'ordinary folk'. Once considered the domain of banking or financial trading professionals, fund managers, economists and the like, the past few years have seen programs, manuals and systems on sale or subscription that suggest (some even promise) that any purchaser can make money from forex trading. Most fail to warn that it's just as easy (more so in fact) to lose money, which is what over 90% of participants do. The mechanics of forex trading are simple, there's little doubt about that. You use an easy to understand software interface between you and your bank or forex broker who places trades on your behalf. Actually it's all done electronically and in fact there are no physical 'exchanges' located in major cities around the world, such as with stocks.
Looking for an Australian VPS? Most robots work with the MetaTrader 4 platform. MT4 build 220 or higher (226 is the latest). There are also versions for mobile and smartphones. This free forex trading platform is also offered by many banks and brokers, and is required for virtually all current trading autopilots or EAs. Although it may look complicated if you've never used a forex trading platform before, all becomes clear very quickly and there is also a downloadable user guide. Further advice and support is available from your own forex dealer, bank or broker. Here's what the MetaTrader trading screen looks like while running a forex robot or EA (expert advisor) on multiple currency pairs in this case the popular FAP Turbo.
How to set up MetaTrader 4 with a forex robot/expert advisor/EA Download MetaTrader either direct or free from a broker like Kinetic FX (easier) and install it. Follow the instructions that come with your robot which usually means copying a small .ex4 file into the Experts folder of MT4. Open a demo account at one of the brokers listed in MT4. Open a chart window for the first currency pair you want to trade. Set the time-frame. Drag the EA on to the chart and use the Properties dialog to set a few recommended parameters (including Allow Live Trading) and perhaps a licence number for your robot. Turn Expert Advisors on. Add new charts for other pairs or the same pair with a different time frame. The robot software will automatically enter trades when its criteria are met. Trades will show as either Buy or Sell, the size of the lot and the entry price. Stop Loss and Take Profit levels may also be set automatically. A log of transactions gives you all trade details of profit or loss and account balance, and you can print a full report of trades with profit/loss analysis and an equity graph. If you want to suspend or stop the robot from trading for any reason, make sure there are no active trades, then turn Expert Advisors off, disable Live Trading or simply close Metatrader down. Some robots allow you to choose the hours you want to trade and enable/disable Friday trading and other options. You can theoretically open an unlimited number of installations of MetaTrader, choosing different brokers or dealers to run both demo and live accounts. However, the likelihood of actually staying in profit, without spending time studying the methods of experts with proven track records, is uncertain. Even the so-called gurus and professional traders fail to make profitable trades all the time and at some point may show negative equity (drawdown) before a recovery into profit again. That fact is well known. Trading consistently for profit was never seen as simple as trading product publishers and marketers made out that is until the advent of the trading robot, and now a whole new 'sub-industry' has emerged: autotrading. "Forex on auto-pilot" is a term that has been bandied about for several years, but is now promoted extensively, especially to new or small investors, some with only a very few hundred dollars to risk. They are tempting. Forex autotraders or robots come in different 'sizes'. As with most things, you expect to get more or less what you pay for. On the internet, though, this is not always the case. Several recently released products are making waves right now, but there is a significant price differential, from less than $70 to $5,000 or more! In principle they are all designed to do basically the same thing make profitable trades unattended. However, they don't all use the same methods; some have limited features or flexibility which becomes apparent when you compare them by running these automatic traders side by side. We don't just write about robots at Forex-On-Auto.com; we've tried many ourselves including Forex Boomerang, FAP Turbo, Forex Detector, PipZu and PipZu Extrapolated, Forex Terminator, Pips Leader, Forex Maestro, Automated Forex Grail, Forex MegaDroid and others such as one of the most expensive, GOmega Trader FX and its descendants GOmega Xray and GBPJPY. Results vary a lot, not only between robots but how they are set up and used. The choice of broker is important too. Use forex robots, expert advisors and autopilots on demo accounts first to get a feel for automated forex trading, but don't expect the same results after you 'go live' due to the different factors involved. It's not just about 'spot' prices. Before you buy your first robot, here is a friendly word of warning. Risk of loss is increased for the forex trader who doesn't really understand Leverage and Margin as offered by brokers. This is basically trading on credit, and almost all traders do it. Profits are multiplied, but so are losses. Every trader has to accept some losing trades as well as winners and that's an undisputed fact. Many popular robots have limited controls for risk management. Every trader needs to decide for himself and herself how much to risk, including lot size per trade and the number of trades or orders that can be entered and left running simultaneously.
The Forex Nitty Gritty
is a downloadable course suitable for forex beginners, and available for $39.97.
Is Forex Autotrading suitable for people without prior forex trading knowledge or experience? How long might it take a beginner to set up an Autotrader and enter a first trade? Yes, it is suitable even for the beginner because very little knowledge is needed to use them. After the initial setup, which can be usually achieved in minutes, trading will begin automatically when suitable 'slots' are found. To use one of these automatic trading systems you first you download MetaTrader 4 (Version 220 and higher, with 226 being the latest) from http://metaquotes.net and install it on your computer. You can do that right now, and see what this trading platform looks like (picture above), or wait until you purchase one of the programs when you will be given complete instructions and possibly videos to follow. In any event you will open a free demo account and even start trading by yourself. It doesn't really matter what you do as you don't risk any money! In spite of what was said above, the more knowledge you have, the easier it is to understand what's going on with forex. It can certainly be a bit overwhelming to the total beginner who has only recently become aware of forex trading. How do you install, set up and use your auto trader program? After purchasing your forex robot or autotrader program, you may need to activate it with a license number. Following easy instructions from your installation guide and manual, you install it as an Expert Advisor in MetaTrader and set it up for live trading. You just copy a few default settings for each currency pair/timeframe. You can make changes later if you want to, such as how much to risk on each trade when you are eventually using a live trading account with real money. Risk management is one of the most important aspects of forex trading. If the forex market is open (24/5.5 Sunday through Friday afternoon New York time) an Expert Advisor will look for a suitable trading 'entry point'. This may not happen immediately; it might be within minutes or hours, maybe even days. However, with a forex robot doing the work, you don't have to do anything. Compare this with 'conventional' or manual traders who must sit in front of a computer constantly, any time day or night (remember this is a market which operates 24 hours a day in different global regions) waiting for the right opportunity to buy or sell their favorite currency pairs. Once found, the forex autopilot will automatically execute a trade on your MetaTrader account. You will see indicators on the chart depending on whether it has entered a buy or sell. Below the chart are logs showing open trades and their profit or loss status, as well as your account balance. Once the system has opened a trade it will also be closed automatically when the time is right. Some trades may stay open for a few days and others may be closed within a few minutes, depending on what the market is doing. You can override the system and close the trade manually if you feel enough profit has already been made. Once the trade is closed it can then be viewed under the Account History tab along with all the other closed trades and a running total of your profit. VPS Hosting and running MetaTrader on a PC compared with using a VPS (Virtual Private Server) For an auto-trading program to work properly, it must run continuously, connected via its trading platform at your brokerage, and ready to make trades whenever the opportunity arises. This means the computer and programs must be kept running and online at any time trades are running. The markets are open 24 hours daily between Sunday and Friday afternoon in New York (local times will be different in other regions and time zones). If there is a problem maintaining this online connection, new trades cannot be initiated and open trades cannot be closed by the software. The chances of loss or bad trades are greatly increased if your computer loses its internet connection, shuts down or reboots unexpectedly especially while you are away from it and is not set to power up, go online and resume the program connection automatically. A reliable system and internet connection with minimal downtime are important aspects of automatic forex trading. An alternative to trading and monitoring directly from your own machine is to have MetaTrader and its EAs hosted on a third party Virtual Private Server which runs 24/7. Any maintenance or down time is usually on the weekend when the markets are closed. This is like having a self-contained Windows Desktop with programs, running on a secure, firewalled server, managed and maintained by professionals. The VPS Remote Desktop is seen as a full screen or resized window on a PC or notebook, and reacts to keyboard and mouse movements just like any other; you can seamlessly switch between local and remote Desktops too. See full screen shot enlarged. For traders 'on the move', this is ideal. A remote VPS system can be accessed securely from an internet computer anywhere in the world. Ideal for traders with dealers and brokers in the UK, Europe, USA and Australia.
VPS is useful for anyone and not only for forex trading. A US-based VPS also acts as a Proxy Server (with a US IP address). This is very useful if you are in a country where information and website access is restricted. You can access the world wide web from any VPS which has IE, Firefox or other browser loaded, as well as send and receive email. However, the main advantage is reliability and continuity of software services that need to run all the time. VPS services are usually available by subscription, for $25-$75 a month. Considering the overall benefit, this is not a great deal to pay to keep your trading account open and running continuously 24/7, freeing up your own machine for other tasks, and reducing your internet bandwidth (a cost consideration for some) at the same time. You simply access the remote server from time to time, from any PC, and see how your trading accounts are doing. The hard way (which in the end achieves little or nothing)... Setting up a VPS (remote server) for the first time can be complicated, and possibly beyond the capabilities of someone who really just wants to press a few keys and begin trading on a remote server. Read about this and download a free pdf guide to see what is entailed, and the possible problems of setting up a VPS service for MetaTrader manually from 'ground zero'. After spending some time studying this (and scratching my head), I did a bit more research and found the right solution. An easier way to VPS forex autopilot trading... Fortunately, virtually all the fiddly setting up can be bypassed by choosing a VPS that is pre-configured for MetaTrader. All you need to do is upload the EA (robot software) which you have purchased. You can also run multiple instances of MetaTrader with the same or different broker accounts both demo and live. The publishers of FAP Turbo, a popular robot, recommend ForexHoster or EZ Forexhost VPSs costing about $70 per month. There are cheaper services too, but you need to be careful as they don't all offer the same facilities. As I know the advantages of running MetaTrader on a VPS, I started using ForexVPS in January 2009. Their Starter Desktop at $35 monthly was adequate only for running a single instance of MetaTrader 4 reliably. This is pre-installed as well as other software. You can add your own either by direct download or upload from your own PC, but memory limitations may slow down or stop the service from time to time. For traders or users who want to run multiple EA's and other programs remotely, ForexVPS offers a Professional Desktop for $65 (double the memory, bandwidth and disk space) and Ultimate Desktop (4 times) at $115. Another alternative, as they have servers in both the USA and the UK, is the $30 per month 'starter' service from Commercial Network Services, serving clients in over 100 countries since 1995. CNS provides pre-installed Windows Server software and other programs including the MetaTrader 4 platform. An upgrade is probably needed for multiple EAs. CNS have servers located in San Diego, CA and New York for both East and West coast-based US brokers and in July 2009 introduced a third node based in London, UK for traders with British or European brokers and clients, reducing latency for their clients significantly. For traders using Australian broker Kinetic FX, MetaTrader 4 is best run on a VPS from Crucial with its data centre in Sydney. See Latency below. LATENCY ISSUES FOR VIRTUAL SERVER TRADING especially with 'scalping' robots. It is important for the remote server and broker locations to be in as close proximity as possible, whereas the actual trader or 'end user' can be based anywhere. Latency is an issue that can have an adverse effect on forex robot performance. Latency is the delay in milliseconds for an instruction to be acted on by the broker. This is due to the signal being passed through many connections before reaching its destination. The longer the delay, (latency) the less chance of prices requested being accepted and possibly other traders getting in ahead of you. For example, a Europe-based trader with broker Alpari UK using the CNS London server with less than 2ms latency would have different and probably better results than someone using a server in New York (79ms) or on the West Coast (156ms) better for a trader with their account at Alpari US. A trader with Kinetic FX, based in Sydney, Australia would have best results by using a local VPS such as Crucial Paradigm; they have special forex and MT4 accounts available.
Remember, most forex trading robots come with a 60-day money back guarantee. NOTE: Although forex robot trading is automated, you can and should maintain some vigilance and override it if need be. You can do this only if you have a basic understanding of forex trading. The Forex Nitty Gritty is a multi-option downloadable course for forex beginners from $39.97. Also check out the new video series from Bob Iaccino, the Forex Ultimate System.
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