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Pros and Cons of Forex Trading with Robots Hey traders, Forex trading robots (EA) are commonly perceived as a sort of magic button. Once it is clicked, the system starts trading automagically, generating consistent profits. What can be better? However, many pitfalls are hidden behind its simplicity. In this educational article, we will discuss the advantages and disadvantages / pros and cons of trading with Expert Advisers (EA) / robots. Advantages of Forex Trading Robots Let's start with the positives ➕: 1. The first major advantage of EA is the fact that it works 24/7 , without delays and coffee breaks. Once it is launched, it will keep working till you stop it. 2. The second advantage of EA is that it is non-emotional and objective . It strictly follows the algorithm and rules determined by a program. It is not influenced by psychological biases, making each trade extremely precise. 3. The third strength of trading robots is the processing speed and its limitless scalability . EA can monitor dozens of trading instruments on multiple time frames simultaneously, not missing any bit of information. Hence, it requires less time for decision-making and trade execution. 4. The fourth advantage of EA is the simplicity of its backtesting . Once the algorithm is written and the order of execution rules are described, it can be quickly and easily tested on a historical data. Disadvantages of Forex Trading Robots So far, sounds like a panacea, right?! But now, let's discuss the negatives ➖: 1. Similar to any software, app or program, the EA is vulnerable to bugs, and may occasionally lag . Therefore, it requires a constant oversight and maintenance . In order to fix the bugs and maintain that, a high level of experience is required . One should have the advanced skills both in coding and in trading. 2. Moreover, admitting the fact that the market is constantly changing and evolving, one should regularly update the EA and adapt it. In comparison to humans, trading robots are not learning, they do not evolve, update themselves. 3. Leaving the robot without supervision, updates and patches, it may blow the entire account in a glimpse of an eye without any embarrassment. 4. One more important thing to add about EA, is the fact that it is technical analysis based . For now, there are no solutions on the market that would allow the integration of fundamentals in the algorithm. Unfortunately, most of the traders overestimate the strengths of trading robots, completely neglecting its obvious weaknesses. If you decide to apply EA in Forex trading, always consider its pros and cons that we discuss in the post.
OANDA:XAUUSDEducation
by VasilyTrader
1
Bots vs Brains; The hidden edge of Human touch in tradingBots vs Brains; The hidden edge of Human touch in trading A random Google search on the internet about forex trading robots reveals thousands of forex robots exist. With all these trading robots promising handsome returns in the shortest time, the forex trading industry should be minting new millionaires daily. However, statistics from forex brokers paint a sad picture—a failure rate as high as 90%. In 2024, you can’t go a day without reading or watching a reel about Artificial Intelligence (AI). The high failure rate, especially in the world of finance, is baffling given all these technological advancements. This led me to take a deeper look into the world of automated forex trading, also known as bots or Expert Advisors (EA). Overview of Automated Trading A trading bot is software developed to analyze financial markets and execute trades on your behalf. Semi-automatic trading bots analyze the markets but do not execute trades. Large financial institutions, such as banks and hedge funds, use specialized algorithmic trading bots. These institutions bring together mathematicians, programmers, and economists to develop sophisticated algorithms. Needless to say, it requires significant financial resources and time to develop these bots. Development can take at least six months, followed by an additional six months of testing. The high cost makes these bots inaccessible to retail traders. Retail traders, however, are not left out. There are individuals and software platforms where you can develop your own trading bot. These bots are often marketed as being developed by experts with deep market knowledge—or so I thought. Trading bots follow specific rules based on the developer’s strategy, which ideally should mirror the success of an experienced trader. Therefore, if a trader is profitable, the bot should at least mimic their results, if not surpass them—more on this later. Before launching these bots, developers conduct extensive backtesting and refinement to optimize them for ideal market conditions. Advantages of Automated Trading Developers of trading bots often market them as superior to manual trading. They emphasize the need to eliminate human error and emotions, highlight faster execution speeds, and promote the ability to trade 24 hours a day as long as markets are open. Additionally, bots can save traders significant time that would otherwise be spent analyzing markets and executing trades. On the surface, purchasing trading robots seems like a smart decision. Limitations of Automated Trading Bots rely on historical data, assuming the future will mirror the past. However, global events are unpredictable. Take, for example, the 2008 financial crisis or the sudden shock of COVID-19—events like these can completely throw off a bot’s programming. Robots struggle to adjust to such volatility unless they’re frequently updated with new data, which many are not. This is a major limitation, especially when you consider how quickly the forex market moves with trillions of dollars in circulation. Earlier, I mentioned that robots are supposedly developed by profitable traders. But to my surprise, I found that with little trading experience, anyone can create a robot on platforms like EA Trading Academy. All it takes is registering, selecting a few parameters, running a back test, and then selling it. It’s really that simple. The ease with which these bots can be built raises questions about their reliability, especially when they aren’t crafted by experts. I even plan to build one myself, and I’ll give you feedback in a year’s time. Why I Think Robots Don’t Work The main issue is that there’s a shortage of consistently profitable traders. A trader who dedicates the time and effort to developing a reliable robot is likely to charge a hefty fee. The likelihood that they would focus solely on developing robots instead of trading themselves is very slim. This makes me wonder—who is actually building all these robots? If most profitable traders are busy trading, it raises concerns about the experience level and expertise of those creating the majority of these products. Secondly, trading styles vary significantly from trader to trader. Purchasing a robot based solely on profitability or low cost is unwise. In addition to checking a developer’s track record, you should assess whether their risk tolerance and trading approach align with yours. For instance, buying a scalping robot when you prefer swing trading could be a costly mismatch. Finally, purchasing robots without a solid understanding of the markets is irresponsible, and the disasters that follow are often justified. Many experienced traders who have tested and reviewed bots on YouTube agree that 99% of them are either scams or simply don’t work. I encourage you to watch some of these reviews to see for yourself. The Future: Automation vs. Human Touch Mastery in trading comes from a combination of skill, time, and experience. While bots claim to save you the time spent on analysis, it's precisely that time—the deep learning and constant market study—that ultimately leads to true mastery. There are no shortcuts. Bots may be designed to minimize human error, and in theory, they do. But the reality is that even the most sophisticated bots are not infallible. They can and often do fail, sometimes catastrophically. When accounts are blown—whether by a human or a bot—it’s still the trader who bears the loss and the disappointment. So, while bots may reduce human error, they can never eliminate the human responsibility for those errors. Trading the financial markets is a craft like any other. Automation, AI, and machine learning can be valuable tools in your journey to becoming a skilled trader. They cannot replace the critical thinking and adaptability that come with human experience. AI can assist by analyzing large sets of data, flagging trends, or executing trades faster than a human could—but the nuanced understanding of market sentiment, global events, and individual risk tolerance is something only a human can develop through dedication and practice. Automation might help you refine your craft, but it's the time spent learning, making mistakes, and adapting that leads to true mastery. As promising as they are, AI and bots are tools—not substitutes—for the expertise that comes from being deeply engaged in the markets. Others before you have achieved mastery, and with enough commitment, you can too.
CAPITALCOM:DXYEducation
by morrisgitau
3
Trading With Robots (EA) | Your Pros & Cons 🤖 Hey traders, Trading robots are commonly perceived as a sort of magic button. Once it is clicked, the system starts trading automagically, generating consistent profits. What can be better? However, many pitfalls are hidden behind its simplicity. In this educational article, we will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of trading with Expert Advisers (EA) / robots. Let's start with the positives ➕: The first major advantage of EA is the fact that it works 24/7, without delays and coffee breaks. Once it is launched, it will keep working till you stop it. The second advantage of EA is that it is non-emotional and objective. It strictly follows the algorithm and rules determined by a program. It is not influenced by psychological biases, making each trade extremely precise. The third strength of trading robots is the processing speed and its limitless scalability. EA can monitor dozens of trading instruments on multiple time frames simultaneously, not missing any bit of information. Hence, it requires less time for decision-making and trade execution. The fourth advantage of EA is the simplicity of its backtesting. Once the algorithm is written and the order execution rules are described, they can be quickly and easily tested on a historical data. So far, sounds like a panacea, right?! But now, let's discuss the negatives ➖: Similar to any software, app or program, the EA is vulnerable to bugs, and may occasionally lag. Therefore, it requires a constant oversight and maintenance. In order to fix the bugs and maintain that, a high level of experience is required. One should have the advanced skills both in coding and in trading. Moreover, admitting the fact that the market is constantly changing and evolving, one should regularly update the EA and adapt it. In comparison to humans, trading robots are not learning, they do not evolve themselves. Leaving the robot without supervision, updates and patches, it may blow the entire account in a glimpse of an eye without any embarrassment. One more important thing to add about EA, is the fact that it is technical analysis based. For now, there are no solutions on the market that would allow the integration of fundamentals in the algorithm. Unfortunately, most of the traders overestimate the strengths of trading robots, completely neglecting its obvious weaknesses. If you decide to apply EA in trading, always consider its pros and cons that we discuss in the post. ❤️Please, support my work with like, thank you!❤️
FOREXCOM:XAUUSDEducation
by VasilyTrader
8
Retail gamblers found the holy grail... To be a rogue trader!I just had a little look into "robots". I've known from reading some of the BIS reports that Forex quants mostly vanished after 2008. But I wanted to go on these FX retail sites that are heavy in the "automated" very short term "trading", which is not actually day trading as they run these programs 24/24 there is no "end of the day so let's stay out of the market for 2/3 of the time to compound profits faster" 😄 Here is how I expect an exchange with an "automated" day gambler would go: My day gambling strategy works muahahaha it does well on backtest for 1 years.   Me: "That's simply because the pair you tested it on has been trending for 1 year you numbskull" Well you just have to apply it in the right conditions!   Me: "With your crystal ball? If you know what they are, why not just manually take 1 trade?" Aha! Because of the power of compounding! Rather than risk 1% to make 5% I will make 2% 25 times.   Me: "Your brain on holiday? Forgot you would also compound spread costs and losses?" Well forget it, if you rly zoom in and can't see anything it looks magical! Doesn't depend on the 1 year trend!   Me: "Then it depends on the 1 month trend?" No! no matter what you say I have an idiotic answer! Usually starts with "You just have to"! I'll throw idiotic answers at you until you get bored and give up on me because I am hopeless!   Me: "Well done I give up" "Thanks for the laugh though" 😂 Take a good friend of mine, UDNCNY: I can tell you for a fact that an "automated strategy" of the kind I am going to describe would work. Don't even need to backtest it. The strategy is as follow: Take about any indicator (RSI, Bollinger Bands, etc). When the price goes down (< 30 RSI or lower band) then goes back up to the middle (RSI 50 or center of Bollingers) you sell. And of course the same on the opposite with buying. Yes that strategy would work, we can quickly eyeball it: In practice this is not even what they do. A risk-to-reward ratio as enormous as puny 1-to-1.8? That's like 1% of retail. Never! What they do is have super distant stops, or no stops. And quickly by looking at USDCNY you understand how they can win. Shorts at a loss are all in a pullback, and the price never goes very far, so by just waiting they will turn into winners at some point. In my example which wasn't the best part of the USDCNY trend, there are 6 short signals, and 3 longs. The longs that are not winners quickly, will "never" recover so they'll take a loss on a far away stop here. But some longs are winners, and most to all shorts are winners, the smaller the reward and bigger distance the stop is, the close to 100% winrate it gets on shorts. To sum up, with their ridiculous high winrate strategies applied in the right conditions: - The vast majority of trades are going to be winners no matter what - Maybe 1/3 of the losers are in the wrong direction and will be big bags - Maybe 2/3 of the "losers" are in the correct direction and eventually will recover These troll retail gamblers are zooming in a flower to the molecule level and wondering why it suddenly went invisible. Must be magic! They have no clue. There is an insect on the flower, that's why you can't see the flower molecule anymore you numbskull. This indicator strategy I mentioned works on a trend, how about a nice thick really gross sideways? Constantly stopped! But have no worries for the retail gamblers have a trick up their sleeve! With a very wide stop such as the risk is 20 times the size of the reward you will keep winning! Hurrah! Martingale! And then it will start trending in the wrong direction and the clowns will get wiped out. And I can assure you, this happens more often than 1 in 20 times 🙂 Now we are getting to my favorite part: The holy grail in the title. I went to myfxbook take a look at system. By default they show you only the ones with positive returns, and many of those are very recent. No no no no no. let me change that filter to at least 1 year of activity, and any returns. What's this? More than half show red returns? Oh my that's a lot of -99% 🙂 Most people quit before getting to -99. How about I pick one of the "winners"? Weird, why are their open trades private? Another one. Private. Another. Private. And another, private again! Oh I found one! TrumpBot. Interesting, that's a lot of red sir. 70 open trades, almost all in the red. USDCAD, EURUSD, USDJPY. All EURUSD are sells, and all the ones ones are buys. He took plenty of short term trades (well long term now as he's been holding the bag for a while) LONG on the USDOLLAR. Oh no! Remember USDCNH? Well these bags go back to early in the USD downtrend. He's been holding for nearly a year 🙂 L - O - S - E - R Just takes 1 L to wipe out these clowns. They can hack some site to make losses vanish, and obviously the dum dums that buy these kinds of systems are too lazy to really do their research so they never notice it, but if it's real money IT'S REALLY GONE. There are some guys that have been struggling to make money for 20 years and have sold robots for 10. Is it cruel if I... roll myself on the floor while I laugh to tears? 🤣 What about all these "private" systems? They're holding bags too? There is a name for this. It starts with an F. And ends with raud. It is the rogue traders specialty. They do a bit more (pros), call them "hedges", manipulate accounting for example, take opposite positions to cut their losses while keeping them secret (unrealized)... Here is a regulator release on famous Karen Bruton, known as "the supertrader". She was made famous by Tom Sosnoff that had her appear on his show. The SEC fined her and a partner to over a million dollar. She lost way more than that. No jail. www.sec.gov Tom Sosnoff is a market maker from the 80s that created a popular trading platform that he sold, and now teaches people to sell option spreads. With no edge or risk it will return little money, like 1%. Karen the Supertrader got superresults by leveraging that strat. Which causes it to LOSE money. Looks like Karen couldn't figure out high school level maths, nowadays this got to be 2nd uni year, the levels has collapsed it's amazing, my sister aiming for med school doesn't even HAVE math classes since 16 year old, science with no maths, genius government. "But kids don't like it", ye so let's make them even dumber than they already are! Yes but Karen convinced investors, and even Tom Sosnoff and his colleagues, that she made money! Ye, just like all the myfxbook trolls. She never closed the losers. Plenty of realized gains, and much larger unrealized losses. Pathetic. And the flip side? Warren Buffett has held unrealized gains on Coca-Cola since 1987. Never held losses very long. Ever. Some uni nerd looked at it. We know because he has to report all positions. Losers (and crooks) hold losers. Winners hold winners. That simple.
Education
by MrRenev
Do Robots (including Expert Advisors) work?> Robot you code yourself -> Risk Taking -> Market making/arbitrage In both cases the robot will likely not be overly simple. You will need to know a thing or two about programming. Learning to trade is like getting a degree, learning to code is like getting a second one. -> Risk Taking This may very well work. I do not know of anyone that does this and is profitable over more than just a few lucky months, but does not mean it does not exist. I have heard of people that tried it, even people that told me they would let me know how it went they swore they cracked it, have not heard a word since then. Also, myfxbook is full of automated systems that end up blowing up. If it is possible, you have to monitor the market all the time, be careful about events, look for evolving conditions. I do not see how a fully autonomous robot - you can go to holidays and come back and find money in your account - could be programmed. Would be so complex... Are there any profitable traders that are interested in this? -> MM & Arb There are plenty of hft and quant firms out there. Among other things they buy order flow from Robinhood and soon other "zero commission" brokers. Old market makers that did not want to move to algos just quit and did something new. I see them mostly as mm or parasites. They can be so anoying. I used to market make on crypto 2 years ago, the parasite would just jump in front me all the time. Any order I place he'd hop 0.0001 higher/lower. Front running bots. It's not all front running bots of course. Soros & Jim Simons (I think) run statistical arbitrage funds. Computer farms to treat a ton of data help. It works obviously. For stat arb you will need: Learn the basics about the market (6 month course), an intermediate programming degree (1 year), a statistics phd (8 years). Good luck. For market making you will need: Learn a bit more than the basics about the market (1 year, don't need the speculating course), a programming degree (1 year). I am being nice with the numbers I think. > Fully automated robot you purchase Pros and Cons Also, I don't even know how it is legal, it's pretty dangerous. They sell you some fairy dust and also you get advised to "hold on" "do not be emotional with fear just hold" "be strong during drawdowns they are normal" it's actually risible. New traders that might be a little gullible, a little greedy too will end up with some fairy dust that is guarenteed to bring their account to zero, they do not understand the markets, AND to top that, they hear that they should not panic about losses and just persevere because drawdowns are normal and they are just experiencing fear, this is what will make them lose, and this is what the robot is here to fix. "Just trust". What you have here is a recipe for disaster. > Robot that executes for you/semi automatic Why not? I see a few possible uses: - You want to buy alot of shares of a small company long term, you set a bot to purchase some each time the stock has a strong down momentum with volume (fills you without moving the market) - You want to sleep / take a few days off, you run an algo that will move your stop loss each time the price goes up, would not be too hard to say "use the smallest of EMA 20 0.236 ATR something else, if consolidates move closer, if price == .... then do this, ifelse the price surges then move my SL closer" etc. - You could have a feel for the market and be very bullish, just set a bot to buy an inside bar bull break with a couple of conditions, or a pullback of a certain % but still above a certain level/MA followed by a pin bar. Sets and trails the stop loss too until you intervene because conditions have changed and you do not want to stay in or whatever reason. - Big one: monitors correlations for you. I'd actually recommend that. A robot to warn you of your global portfolio correlation, maximum risk, and makes some recommendation (shows what are you most correlated positions making a problem, and lists stocks/currencies/futures that are uncorrelated or negatively correlated) > Robot that alerts you Plenty of people use that. Makes perfect sense. Something just warns you when the price does something particular or whatever. I myself mostly use trading view price alerts. I just set an alert on Bitcoin MA50 & MA200 makign a death cross, should fire up by Halloween. I would not go overboard on this for "advanced" things, because it could get complicated, and a quick glance is even better anyway, you want to focus on what pops out "obviously", you want to see what other people are seeing on the chart. You may want to be long on certain currencies, the bot could tell you when the price is starting a pullback... > Indicator (sold) There are people that dish out indicators and show people "See? Here, here, and here, my indicator fired a signal right before Bitcoin went up", and people actually get excited by it and want to purchase... And guess what? It works extremely well with crypto enthusiasts that invested in imaginary magic internet beans. Who would have thought they were gullible and dreamt of easy money fall out of the sky? The coders use the right combination of indicators, for example EMAs and candlesticks, to generate great signals IN THE PAST. I made such an indicator myself just to show it's bollocks. I think some people still used it seriously. Black box "predict the future" nonsense ==> Obvious scam. So watch out for those. If you are interested in something, make sure you understand WHAT IT DOES. Example: If the indicator provides you with order book info and idk things like this that you don't have with your broker and charting service, it obviously has value...
Education
by MrRenev
1