The Vicious Cycle of Expert Advisor Testing

A few days ago I read a comment by someone on a blog saying that he had nothing against expert advisors but that he never participated in discussions or reviewed expert advisors because of the way they are currently being tested and commented on. I couldnt agree more with him. The way most expert advisors are currently being tested and reviewed by the general public is not only wrong in my opinion but also problematic, misleading and fruitless. After studying several community review sites and forums I came to the conclusion that there is a vicious cycle happening which people hardly ever notice. The cycle always seems to go through the following steps :

1. Discovery - A new system is discovered and people start to hype around it. This can be a free or a commercial system. People start to do backtests and to encourage the development of the system as a group. There is a high expectation for the system and the way it performs. Generally the strategies are short term profitable, with high risk to reward ratios.

2. Early Forward Tests - Some people now start to put the experts on demo accounts to see if the backtesting they have done has anything to do with reality. Generally the experts produce good amounts of profit in small amounts of time, further encouraging the hype produced on the earlier moments.

3. Failing Period and Reoptimization - A period starts when the ea begins draw down accumulation and people start to change it, introduce new parameters, optimize current settings, etc. The hype starts to go down because people find that the system did not work across all market conditions.

4. System Trashing - By this moment all the hype has gone down and people are already in the discovery phase of a new trading system. All testing of this expert advisor is discontinued and testing is focused on new expert advisors. This ea will probably go through this cycle once more when someone rediscovers the system in a year or two and becomes exited by the initial forward and backtesting results.

The problem with this cycle ? The people here lack a good understanding of how automated trading systems actually work in the long term. People tend to generalize results that are obtained in very reduced time spaces (2 months for the longest, less than a week for the shortest) and they often try without any success to modify the ea in order to prevent draw downs on those small time periods. The problem I guess, is that most of this people are not really profitable with any automated system and they are just desperately trying to find one that works, trying to extrapolate very small trading tests towards the whole profitability of the expert advisor. Their efforts are fruitless because no meaningful trading information is gathered and they also misguide people since some of the systems they trash are actually profitable in the long run but experienced a period of draw down (which can last months for long term profitable systems).

My readers should know that this is the complete opposite of how I do my testing. All of the experts I trade have their logic rigorously examined and backtested before testing, they then have extensive periods of forward and even live testing in which I know the draw down that is expected (hence I do not run if the system enters draw down). I do not trade systems with high risk to reward ratios and I always look for systems that are consistent performers in the long run (at least 10 years). I am not interested in short term profitable systems because I am interested in long term profitable systems which often have draw downs that last for 3-5 months and I am ok with this because I know, it is just the way the market works with forex automated systems.

If you would like to learn more about the systems I have tester or I am currently testing please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed the article !

Its Simple Either Youre Honest or Youre NOT !

Through most of my career as an EA reviewer and an automated trading system creator I have been shocked by the large amount of dishonesty in the selling of commercial automated trading systems. What most people dont realize is that NONE of the commercial expert advisor sellers out there are being totally honest with them and all of them (that I know of) use one or another type of deceitful tactic to win over their hard earned dollars. This post will be dedicated to the discussion of this fact and the fact that there is a very simple truth: Either you are an honest seller doing your best possible effort to proof the profitability of your trading system and show it to others or you are a dishonest seller trying to sell something to your customers which you know or suspect wont work. Its simple, either youre honest or youre NOT.

Lets start from making things a little bit clear about what I mean by dishonesty in the world of automated trading systems. I am not simply talking about the fact that expert advisor creators lie about simple things such as "the number of copies available" or the "testimonials" or other aspects of their systems. I am talking about the most important aspect when buying a commercial EA which is merely the evidence provided by the author to backup a trading systems claims.

The simple fact is that today there are some simple standards of evidence which ALL automated trading system sellers should know about and put up on their websites. This evidence is nothing fancy but it can be inferred by using simple common sense. As a matter of fact, if the development of the trading system went on without taking into account that this evidence had to be created then the EA would already be not worth purchasing before the homepage is even made and the sales pitch created.

The evidence required is actually not that difficult to get if you are honestly working towards the development of long term profitable systems. You simply need a 10 year backtest of the trading system with 6 months of live testing (with investor access to the live account available to confirm the statements are REAL an UNALTERED!!) with a 6 month backtest of the same live trading period showing back/live testing consistency. Of course, this requires you to achieve a very long period of profitability in backtesting WITHOUT hindsight or the exploitation of backtesting faults plus the will to test your system on your own money on a live broker to compare your results with your simulations for a 6 month period in order to validate your claims.

The truth is that long term profitable system development is NOT an easy task and these systems do not have the profit and draw down targets everyone loves to hear about. The easy way out for sellers is clearly to be dishonest and tell you misleading half-truths which make most people buy systems which WILL fail in the long term. If people simply discarded ALL the trading systems that do not show the above suggested evidence, they would be left with NONE. Why ? Because NONE of them are honest enough to show all this evidence without omission because for 999 out of 1000 it would mean the end of their sales pitch and for the 1 or 2 who would be able to show long term profitability it would mean a drastic reduction of their profit and draw down targets. Always keep in mind that the aim of commercial EA sellers is NOT to make money from their systems in the long term. Their aim is to make money from selling their EAs to you.

The truth remains the same, either youre honest or youre NOT. Either you are willing to show all possible evidence that your system is profitable or you have something to hide. If you would like to learn more about the systems I have programmed with long term profitability in mind and how you too can learn to design and program systems like these please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or joining Asirikuy to receive all ebook purchase benefits, weekly updates, check the live accounts I am running with several expert advisors and get in the road towards long term success in the forex market using automated trading systems. I hope you enjoyed the article !

Living From Automated Trading System How Much Money do you Need

Well, since most people start trading forex to get out of their 9 to 5 jobs and gain financial independence, I decided to write an article just about that. This article will try to cover several aspects about how much money you actually need to become independent and star to earn a living from forex automated trading. You will see that is not as straight forward and easy as most people make it seem and it requires far more skills than the ones expert advisor sellers would like you to believe.

First things first. Can it be done ? Yes, I have been doing it for the past 6 months. Sure, I still work (because I love my job) and also have other streams of income like this website. Would I leave every other stream of income to live from forex automated trading ? Probably not, and there are several reasons why this is not the case.

But well, realistically, how much money do you need to have in order to maintain your living standards and quit your day to day job ? I would have to say that you would need to have at least 2 times your yearly income saved up. Any other way, you are just going to get grinded by the market or youll not make enough money as you do now with your full time job. The reason why this happens is called market exposure. In real life, it is very difficult to make money in the forex market (that is, make money you will be able to keep) and when you put your money out there and make some, you are exposing your capital.

So what does this mean ? Well, it means that the more you make, the more you are likely to lose. In profitable systems (in my experience) this means that you will sometime lose 50% of what you will eventually make. So for example, a 25% yearly profit would have a maximum draw down near 13% (not exactly, depending on the system and other variables but sort of). So if you want to be safe, you could be making 20-30% of your capital each year but to live from this, that 25% must be equal to your current yearly income so you would need 4 times your yearly income or at least 2 times your yearly income but your capitals risk would be higher (50% profit with about 25% draw down).

Now if you are currently making 40K USD a year, do you have those 80K USD saved out there ? My best guess is that you dont since most of the people who want to live from forex are generally in debt or have a small amount of savings generally in the order of 10 to 20% their yearly income. Now you know another reason why so many traders lose money. Most of them are undercapitalized not to say undereducated (forex wise).

Why will I continue to work ? I would not consider living completely from automated trading systems since they are, after all, high risk investments and they lack continuity in the way they make money. Most profitable trading systems will have draw downs which can last for 2, 4, or even 6 months and well, I do need food every month. So I consider automated trading systems as a saving strategy towards an early retirement. I would like to have a few million in 20 to 40 years and I really do not mind if there are a few draw down periods along the way as the money that is invested is money I do not need at that very moment.

Well, if you would like to learn more about commercial and free expert advisors I use to trade, experts I have programmed, bought and reviewed, please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed the article !

Why Keynesian Model Doesnt Work for the U S Economy

After the great depression, in 1936, John Maynard Keynes argued that should the government play a significant role to steer the economy out of recession through public spending, they would not have had a prolonged recession.

In Keynes 1936 article, "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money", he argued that the solution to the Great Depression was to stimulate the economy through public spending such as government investment in infrastructure. Investment by government injects income, which results in more spending in the general economy, which in turn stimulates more production and investment involving still more income and spending and so forth. The initial stimulation starts a series of chain reactions, whose total increase in economic activity is a multiple of the original investment.


This is a wonderful concept and many politician applied this economic model through "stimulus packages" during the recent financial crisis, Barrack Obama for one is a firm believer who has trashed trillion of dollars into the US economy, Malaysia - RM60b, Australia - A$42b and many more. The results? These economies have a V-shaped recovery but looks like its only temporary and many economists are projecting a double-dip recession. So what went wrong with this wonderful Keynesian model?

After Keynes passed away in 1946, Milton Friedman (Monetarist theory) criticized vigorously that Keynesian model did not work well post World War 2 and that Keynesian policy led the country into stagflation (high inflation and high unemployment), which they did during the early 1970s and further deteriorated in 1973 the oil crisis.


In 1942, during the World War 2, Keynes published an article, titled "How to Pay for the War", he suggested that the war effort should be largely financed by higher taxes and compoulsory savings, rather than deficit spending in order to avoid inflation. However, the deficit as a percentage of GDP was as high as 30% per year during that time under the hands of President Roosevelt which planted the seeds for the major economic problems the Americans are facing now.

People may have twisted Keynesian theory a little by saying its not working but they did not understand that Keynes advocate prudent spending. What is not working is the lack of disciplinary action by the country leaders who are afraid of losing popular votes by taking the easy way out.

In any economic models, there are strengths and weaknesses. Personally, Im the the follower for Keynesian model. Despite the fact that this model violates Adam Smith "invisible hands" theory which is essential for any capitalist economic system, but if we look around those successful economies, they actually have a stint in socialism!

Finally, in answering the question whether Keynesian model works for the US? Well, Warren Buffett has mentioned about tax raise, but I think maybe some forced savings like our EPF system maybe a good start for them.

Happy investing,
Pauline Yong

Trading the Forex market for Profit as a team

During the past few months, I have been closely watching the experiences of several people new to the forex market in search for some answers about why they are profitable and why they are not. I am a true believer in that anyone is a potentially profitable forex trader, but I also believe that trading the forex market profitably is outstandingly difficult.

One of the people I have spoken with who started less than 6 months ago trading the forex market told me that he read about 10 books about fx trading before deciding to enter the market with live money. He also paper traded for two months before entering the market and he was actually making money everyday on paper (havent we seen this before ?).

Now, when he entered the market it was a different story. He put two thousand dollars inside a forex account and started to trade, then he started to make mistakes, started to do things he knew he should not and after a fight with his wife (about money), he ended up losing all his capital in only five hours. This seems to be the summary of most peoples starting story inside the forex market (mine included !).

Somehow, this is the way the forex market does its baptism on his and her followers. But can this be ended ?

Well, I started to look at traders who did not lose their first accounts, I started to look at traders who seemed successful and had somehow, "conquered" the forex market. My conclusion is quiet simple. Losing is a consequence of trading by yourself.

I am now utterly convinced that most peoples money could have been saved if they had been trading with someone else. At least, the most stupid, ravaging, emotional mistakes would not have happened if you have had someone on your side saying "NO ! dont be stupid !".

This is why I am starting a manual trading group and I am actually seeking other traders who may want to join me (as I have some more free time now for trading). We would meet once each week trading day, probably sometime along 9 p.m - 10 p.m EST and we will analyze pairs and determine which entries to make, we will trade demo first and then live when our skills and team work are sharp. The meetings will be arranged through skype and hopefully this will make us more knowledgeable and void of our own mistakes. If you are interested please email me at ekans_ at hotmail.com or leave a message in the chatbox located in the left sidebar.

Of course, this is only an experiment and by no means does it change the fact that I am still experimenting and learing from automated trading software, which I think, is the real solution to the forex trading profitability problem. If you have liked this post or any of my work please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed the article !

To Trade or Not to Trade A Little Bit About Friday Trading

Can I disable Friday trading ? This is perhaps one of the most common questions I hear from people who try automated trading systems. Certainly the reason why most people are concerned with Friday trading can be easily understood but when you really look into the evidence people have to avoid trading this day of the week you will find that - for most systems - it is nothing more than a senseless superstition. What is so wrong and different about Fridays ? Should you avoid or not avoid Friday trading ? On todays post I will try to address these questions. I will first explore the reasons why traders avoid Friday trading and what the evidence actually says about trading the last day of the week, after that I will give you my conclusions about Friday trading and what you should do in order to know if you should or should not avoid trading Fridays.

What is the problem with Friday ? There are many reasons traders - especially new ones - give when you ask them why they are so reluctant to trade on Fridays. The first and most valid of these reasons is carrying positions over the weekend. Since traders know that getting a position through the weekend involves the risk of facing an unfavorable gap, they will attempt to avoid the carrying of positions in order to preserve their capital and avoid worse than stop loss trades. It is no mystery that if the market moves against you on a weekend and open up beyond your SL your broker will close your position at the next available price level which is - probably - much worse than your SL.
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Of course, the possibility of disaster changes depending on the trading strategy you are using. Systems that use 100-200 pip stops with a 1-2% risk will almost never lose a significantly large amount of money on a weekend gap (for systems like this the worst case I have found has been a 3-4% loss, just about two losing trades worth) while strategies that take huge risks on tight stops would run the risk of wiping the account on a large gap. For example, if you are trading a system with a 10 pip stop risking 10% (yes, there are systems that trade such an unsound money management) leaving a trade opened through the weekend is suicidal as a moderately large gap of 100 pips will wipe you out and an even larger gap of 200 pips can leave you owing money to your broker (yes, this is possible but I will discuss it on a later post).

The truth is that for all the systems I have tested that use sound trading tactics the largest loses due to weekend gaps have not surpassed a 3 consecutive loss count. It is also worth mentioning that the opposite effect (being on the right side of the gap) also happens with roughly the same frequency so in the end (over a long period of time) the effect of leaving trades over the weekend for these systems is almost the same as leaving trades open during any other day of the week.

Then we also have the fact that none of the systems I have ever tested and found reliable take any benefit from removing Friday trading. As a matter of fact- since Friday contains NFP releases and some other important news events- removing trading for this day of the week causes all the systems to lose a good part of their profitability, causing their net profits to go down and -even worse- damaging the average compounded yearly profit to maximum draw down ratio. Many important trending movements seem to begin on Fridays - with news as the catalyst- and for this reason removing Friday trading has never shown to bring positive consequences for any of the systems I trade.

In the end it seems that the removal of Friday from trading is more of an irrational fear caused by the psychological impact and "probable loss" from gaps than a good practice based on statistical evidence. When using systems that have sound trading tactics and modestly large SL and TP targets it has been evident that removing Friday trading has only detrimental effects on their long term performance. Of course if you would like to learn more about the development of sound trading systems and how you too can use, design and program your own systems based on realistic profit and risk expectations please consider joining Asirikuy.com, a website filled with educational videos, trading systems, development and a sound, honest and transparent approach to trading systems. I hope you enjoyed this article ! :o)

Forex Expert Advisors GBPBOT an Unbiased Review

As always, my weekly search for new expert advisors plus the suggestion of two Asirikuy members has led me to the finding of a new automated trading system called GBPBOT. On todays post I will review this expert advisor based on the evidence provided by the authors website. I will compare the actual facts given by the evidence with the claims made by the creator and well be able to see if the trading system is actually able to generate the profits the author claims or if it simply cannot. I am also going to analyze the trading systems trading tactic through the evidence and I will tell you my opinion about the GBPBOTs likehood of being long term profitable. With all this analysis in mind, in the end I will be able to tell you if the expert advisor is worth or NOT worth buying and testing.

I have to say that from the start the GBPBOT website appears to be the same as all the other over-hyped and over-valued expert advisors which are more sold on the virtue of good marketing than on profitability. The website greets us with a very bold claim saying that the system can make more than one million dollars in 19 months. It is not surprising to see that these claims are merely based on simulation which, to make things worse, are NOT even remotely reliable as the modeling quality used is 25%. Who are these guys kidding ? Who are they trying to convince with such a low modeling quality ?It is a FACT that the results obtained with this quality are WORTHLESS since it means either that the data is awfly incomplete or that the EA is trading on the 1 minute time frame, voiding the results due to the one minute interpolation errors.

Going a little bit away from all these worthless backtesting results we can see that the EA has some "live trading" results. To begin with, these live tests are awfly limited and tell us nothing about the profitability of the trading system. The EA has been "live trading" for less than 2 month, a period which is simply too short to say anything. Even if longer live testing periods were available, the complete lack of reliable simulations makes the evaluation of long term profitability extremely difficult. Moreover, the so called "live tests" are not reliable since we dont know if they are real accounts, with live money, or demo accounts or even imaginary accounts. The truth is that these statements can easily be made up or modified to show whatever an EA creator wants to, reason why having investor access to the accounts or investor access verification by a third party (such as myfxbook) is VITAL to believe the results obtained from this so called "live accounts".

Things become even worse for the GBPBOT when we analyze the soundness of its trading technique. From the statements it seems that the GBPBOT uses a trailing stop and a relatively small TP with a very wide and even not strictly limited SL. The lack of an SL within the statements tells us that either there is NOT an SL or the SL is hidden and executed internally. Nonetheless, the backtesting statements do show some loses and these loses appear to be MUCH LARGER than the profitable trades of the EA making it have a very unfavorable risk to reward ratio as shown on the image below. As I said before, the backtesting is unreliable due to the very low modeling quality so profitability is much likely GREATLY overestimated due to this fact.
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What do we have with the GBPBOT ? We have a trading system with unreliable simulations, very limited unconfirmed live testing and a very unfavorable risk to reward ratio definitely a system NOT worth buying and testing. I would advice the creator of this EA, which also seems to be the creator of other forex automated trading systems, to think a little bit about the traders he or she is selling these systems to, to think about the capital loses he or she is causing and to put more effort and time on testing to show reliable evidence of long term profitability and less time on marketing. To me, this is simply a major flaw in honesty and ethics, who would even consider selling a system without knowing for certain that everything that could be possibly done to confirm its long term profitability has been done ? Apparently many people, something which is very, very sad.

If you would like to learn more about what I have learned about automated trading systems and how you too can learn to design, program and trade long term profitable expert advisors please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or joining Asirikuy to receive all ebook purchase benefits, weekly updates, check the live accounts I am running with several expert advisors and get in the road towards long term success in the forex market using automated trading systems. I hope you enjoyed the article !