Pepperstone Live Account

Since last July, I was using a particular EA and my fund was increased from under $6,000 to more than $30,000. I was a bit hesitant to disclose this account because I was unsure about its performance. But almost after half a year, it recorded more than 30% per month increase, which is about 100% every three months. And I'm somehow confident about the performance.

Funding Frenzy Promotion

When I funded about $2,000 to my FXPRIMUS account, FXPRIMUS had been offering "Funding Frenzy Promotion" which gives a customer a 100% credit. So I got my own $2,000 plus another $2,000 credit in my account.

In order to receive that $2,000 credit as a "withdrawable money," I had to trade a certain number of lots in 3 months period. In my case, it was $2,0000 / 6 = 333 lots.

Thanks to NumberOne, I made $5,000 from the initial $2,000 deposit. And, yesterday, I've just achieved to trade more than 333 lots in 3 months and FXPRIMUS gave me the $2,000 credit as a withdrawable credit. My deadline was August 10, so the time limit was only 1 week. I had never been able to trade such big lots in this short period of time without NO.

So, today, my fund has become $7,000. Woooow, I made 350% in 3 months!!! Thanks SOFX! Thanks FXPRIMUS!

Happy Losers

I've recently visited a discussion forum on SOFX author's Myfxbook, and found some naysayers' posts against the author.

They are so eagerly attacking the author and keep saying NO is not good. But everything they say is funny to me.

Got some drawdown recently? Oh, yes, so what? Do you know any EA that never go down?

Broker sensitive? I know. So what? Couple of brokers they introduced has earned me much much more than the EA and server cost, and still going much further than that. Broker risk is one of the risks I manage out of many other risks, such as proper mindset, lot sizing, right parameter settings, etc. And I haven't found a broker with zero risk. In this forex jungle, if you know 3 useful brokers, that's pretty good.

What those guys are dreaming about?

If I were them, I don't waste my time talking about something I dislike. But the funny thing is; they love wasting their time chatting about something they dislike. Weird guys! I would rather spend my time doing something more fun and enjoyable, or at least meaningful. They are so poor. Almost miserable.

They are acting like winners whereas actual winners are those who traded NO and earned pretty good money.

What's their interest, really?

They enthusiastically want to win in an argument. I am happy and satisfied with the money NO brought me. Getting a prize in an oratorical contest is not my interest.

I don't call them traders. They are losers! In my eyes, they look like "happy losers" or "funny men!" Yes, they absolutely look happy talking about what they believe, not the money they earned.

I believe what's already proven because it's a fact. They believe what they blindly believe and never try to look what has been achieved in the real world.

Miss what they missed and cry for it someday, poor men.....

Desperate Traders

I was reading forum posts on SteadyOnFx forum. There were bunch of traders worrying about brokers, execution, NO system, etc. Seems like people are so nervous and in panic after relatively bigger losing day.

After such losses, people desperately started to try to identify the cause of the failure. Some people say the problem is on the broker. Others say SOFX team has to modify NO.

I say "It was one of these days. It happened naturally, and it will happen again." Nobody can avoid these days. No EA is perfect. No EA can cope with every situation.


I would like to talk about common errors that traders can make.

Trader A: Trader A got a bad loss and he decided to modify his EA. He really wanted to make the EA immune to the previous loss case. After a couple of attempts, he successfully found the way to cope with such a market situation. However, overall profitability of the EA was reduced so badly because he concentrated too much on a single case, and didn't pay much attention to being a winner in a long run.

Trader B: Trader B reduced his trading lots, drastically, after a bad loss. When he traded with smaller lots, there was a very good winning trade, but, of course, his profit was small. He got frustrated and increased his lots again. Right after that, there came a bad trade. He lost his confidence again and reduced his risk again. He finally got nowhere.

Trader C: Trader C changed his broker after one bad loss. But other traders kept winning on the broker he left, and he started to lose on his new broker.

Trader D: Trader D accepted a bad loss. He changed nothing and kept trading because he knew losing is a part of the game. He got more losses and people started to think he is really stupid. But in a long run, he was the only winner among others.


What's the difference? It's consistency (or the lack of consistency).

Why such errors happen? It comes from fear and greed.


With that said, I will probably change my broker when it obviously made its trading environment worse. But unless I surely confirm such a change, I take a loss as just a loss, nothing more. Those who are not mentally prepared to face losing days can't win in a long run. I've seen so many of these people who surrender an EA so easily after a couple of losses.

Human being are so vulnerable. Such human errors are natural thing, too. But I want myself to be unnatural.

Did I write in one of my previous posts as follows?

"When such a big drawdown happens, traders are also tested."

#1

Recently, my account running Wallstreet Forex Robot got big losses. No worries. Honestly, I was mentally prepared because I knew such losses can happen according to my backtests. If you are patient enough, it's gonna get recovered somewhere in the course.

However, what surprised me the most was the performance of NumberOne. After one month, it doubled my account. Sounds really crazy, but true. Now, I'm wondering if I should keep running other EA than NO?

SteadyOnFx and its colleague trader called TheProTrader have introduced two institutional brokers exclusively available to NO customers, which is a big plus, too. For this type of tick scalper, the path to the future normally gets narrowed, but it seems the guys at SOFX has still been exploring another path to go.

Is the future really promising? I hope so!

Wally Custom Settings

Some people asked me to share my settings on Wallstreet Forex Robot. Frankly, I can't share my personal settings with others. Some may think that I'm mean, but whatever you say, I don't care. It's a giving, not sharing, because I'm not given anything in return.

Instead, I can give you very useful tips that can potentially turn into gold for you.

Ask yourself if you truly want to earn serious amount of money in a long run and you are mentally prepared for it. If the answer is yes, ask yourself again if you are truly willing to put your effort toward your goal. If the second answer is yes, too, then proceed with the next steps.

1. Obtain years of history data. It'll cost you, but compared to what you aim to get in future, it's not so expensive.

2. Do backtests using several potential pairs with various settings. It's daunting and will take so much time and effort, but again for the money you get in years, your effort may be a necessary up-front investment.

3. Run the settings you got in a real live environment and wait for the account to survive worst drawdown and grow like you saw during backtest.

4. Go live. Be confident. Wait for a couple of years. (I'm at this stage)

That's it. If you strictly follow those steps above, you won't regret for what you've done.

NumberOne After Half a Month

I'm convinced that NumberOne, or NO for short, is one of rare winning EAs out there. Like many other spike retracement traders, NO faces random slippages and errors, however, in a long run (still half a month though), it conquered those obstacles and brought its users constant profits.

The only thing is; you must be selective about brokers. It seems it works fine with FXPRIMUS and Pepperstone Razor, however, in one of my bold attempts, I've tried to run it on FXPIG, a broker people says good for the similar tick scalper. The results were still indecisive, but after half a month the equity is just a sequence of ups and downs due to so many and too much slippages.

A good news is SteadyOnFx and one of its users called TheProTrader have worked together to introduce exclusive institutional feed to NO users, and the broker is fully regulated. Earning more than decent amount of money with an EA is a dream life for every EA traders I believe. With institutional brokers, it could be highly possible as with those brokers, the ceiling is extremely high and liquidity never dies. And it may come to true with NO. We'll see how those steps turns out to be.

Tuition

I'm currently running three EAs.

1. NumberOne from SteadyOnFx: I never imagined that this one could work so well on a live account. In my past experience, this type of extreme scalpers worked only on demo.

2. Wallstreet Forex Robot: So many people will not believe that I'm making constant profits with this EA, but I do. EU and GU are the best pairs to trade, but I use my own settings to make the most of it.

3. Forgotten EA: I recently started using a very old EA that everybody already threw away and forgot its existence.

I think that the easiest way to lose your money is; just jump in every newly-released trading product. Because probably more than 95% of the products you encounter can't fulfill what they promised to achieve. So you are most likely to make the vendors rich, not yourself.

Probably, most of experienced traders had followed the same path, and spent so much money on crappy products. In this forex world, it's called "tuition." I paid a lot of tuition.

While I can pretty much confirm jumping in any newly released products will kill your bank deposit, it's also true that without trying those products, you'll never be able to find a rare good one. But I am recently thinking to stop paying tuition. If those 3 EAs above work as intended, I'll definitely graduate in three years. I really want to.

SteadyOnFx

I think what most differentiates SteadyOnFx, the vendor of NumberOne, from other developers is that SteadyOnFx is trying to make its EA viable or profitable enough in the live environment while many others don't care if their own EAs are viable with real live accounts or if their customers are actually making money using their EAs.

Ignoring customer's emails is a common conduct with so many developers out there, especially after they sold out enough number of copies. What makes things worse is many developers promote their products saying "hey, you gotta be hurry or this money making machine will be sold out soon!" It is obvious that they made pretty good money by selling their products, not by trading.

I bought NumberOne from SteadyOnFx because I found; they disclosed the stats of their live accounts; and they had been letting other traders try their products before the official release and those others seemed to be making money as well. So it was obvious that those live stats couldn't be fake and, also, the similar results can be achieved by others.

Some people say that the cost of the EA is too high. I don't deny such comments. Like I said in the previous comments, it's too early to judge anything with this EA. If the EA blows up your account, yes, it was waste of your money, but what if it traded splendidly well for you? Then you probably might think what you paid was more than worth. We'll find out.

I'm not too optimistic or pessimistic. Probably the biggest obstacle for this EA is the environment. When I was a news trader, I doubled my money every month, then all brokers started to shut the door to me. It can happen to any profitable traders or systems. In this forex jungle, many wise traders are already aware that to find a right broker is one of the toughest struggles, and it's almost a painful task.

But a good thing is SteadyOnFx is trying to explore this broker maze, and they also let their users openly discuss those things, which would have been quite tough if a trader has to struggle to find the way alone.

So I think that they become an IB with brokers is a healthy business conduct. This way, in order for them to keep getting stable income, helping their users, or providing profitable environment, becomes a part of their business. If they completely rely on one-time payment from purchasers, then just leaving customers behind is the easiest way. This relation is mutually beneficial for vendors and customers alike. When their customers are successful, they will start trading with bigger lots, which eventually brings the vendor steady source of income from IB rebates. Nobody hurts.

By the way, regarding the real outcome, NumberOne traded so well on both NFP and FOMC events recently, and most of its users seems to be happy with it so far. But I don't post my statement for now. Because it's just misleading. It's like an ordinary dubious vendor's catch.

Let's face reality. Showing a couple of good trades proves nothing. According to my backtest, the EA could take heavy losses somewhere in the course. Honestly, it may sound strange, but I would like to see it happen. I also would like to see how it recovers as well. When it survived, I can say that it's a real thing. When such a big drawdown happens, traders are also tested. I know many EA users threw away profitable EAs only after a couple of losses. I had done the same in the past, too.

So there will be many trials ahead. Could be fun, though. We'll see.

NumberOne from SteadyOnFX

NumberOne is an extreme tick scalper that trades on EURUSD 1m chart. It trades like Million Dollar Pips, and some people even blame SteadyOnFx, the vendor of NumberOne, saying NO (NuberOne) is a hacked version of MDP.

Personally, it's not a big deal at all. Many early asian scalpers are under the influence of FapTurbo. Almost all rock'n roll musician are under the influence of Beatles. But who has ever beaten or made superior music than Beatles? Probably none. SteadyOnFx might have done it. They might have produced something better than MDP.  They might have taken a basic trading concept from MDP, however, I believe that the coding and other essences are different, or I can at least say they implemented something different into the EA to make it work in an excellent manner.

I said "might" because I haven't fully witnessed their performance myself. I just confirmed they've been having winning history on myfxbook.

http://www.myfxbook.com/members/Lorenzo/numberone-impulsive-scalper/218855

And some other members are obviously making good money using it on their live accounts.

It's been a couple of weeks since I started using it live. So it's too early to say any comments about its real potential. As you can see from the stats above, some months are flat while other months are going up like crazy. So I guess it's gonna take at least three months for me to evaluate this EA.

So far I've noticed a couple of things. This EA needs user's attention. Not like Wallstreet Forex Robot that I'm currently using, you won't leave this EA hands-free. You must find a compatible broker and a VPS. Speed, or latency, is not the number one factor for this EA. FXPRIMUS is not so fast in terms of latency, but it seems to be working fine with them. You also have to constantly monitor its execution, slippage, and spreads. But I'm kind of having fun watching it and taking care of it.

Another noticeable thing is that SteadyOnFx is really open and supportive. Probably, in terms of support and care to customers, it's one of the best vendors I've ever come across. So I really would like to see the EA to work as the same as their live account.

USDJPY and USDCHF

In my previous post, I wrote USDJPY and USDCHF could be good pairs to trade with Wallstreet Forex Robot. But further backtesting has indicated that those pairs were somewhat questionable. If better than nothing can be deemed as good, then those are good. But further testing has to be done.

Recovery Mode

In the previous post, I wrote about Recovery Mode. But for those of you who don't know what it is, here's the simple explanation.

If you enable Recovery Mode, it will increase your lot size by about 10% after you take a loss. This 10% increment continues until your loss is recovered. But there is a parameter called AutoMM Max. If you set it to 20%, then the max risk is 20% even if Recovery Mode is enabled, and Recovery Mode stops increasing the lot size after 20% risk is reached.

After the max 20% risk is reached, your position risk is always 20% until you get fully recovered.

Recovery Mode is not martingale function as it's increment is only 10% at a time and the max is 20%. So it's very safe, and make the equity curve drastically smoother.

Backtesting Again

I've obtained tick data for 99% modeling quality, recently, and start backtesting Wallstreet Forex Robot Again. WSFR is almost forgotten by now. Last summer, this EA has taken consecutive losses and drawdown period had last about three months. Although the bot has nicely recovered after that and ended with a profitable year, so many people, including me, has stopped using it and moved to other EAs. So I decided to keep this EA for at least three years with serious money.

Why backtesting WSFR EA again? Well, I aim at better compounding results by finding as many profitable pairs as possible. So far, the pairs below are the potential pairs.

GBPUSD
EURUSD
AUDUSD
AUDJPY
CADJPY
USDCHF
USDCAD
USDJPY

Many people believe GU and EU are the only worthwhile pairs to trade for WSFR, but I found some very interesting fact recovery mode.

Pair        Setting     Capital  Risk  RecoveryMode   Result
AUDJPY  EURUSD   $1,000   10%   False               $4,799
AUDJPY  EURUSD   $1,000    5%   True                $9,320
(Period: Feb.8,2009 to Feb.8,2012)

See? If you enabled Recovery Mode, you would have made it doubled while risking only 5%. I've set AutoMM Max:20%, so the max risk is 20%, but it's acceptable according to my backtest. Moreover, RecoveryMode made the equity curve smoother.

However, this doesn't apply all the pairs.

Pair         Setting  Capital  Risk  RecoveryMode   Result
EURUSD  Default   $1,000   10%   False               $37,458
EURUSD  Default   $1,000    5%   True                $11,811
(Period: Feb.8,2009 to Feb.8,2012)

For a pair with already high winning ratio, RecoveryMode is not so effective. Of course, if you compare with the same 10% risk, it would be a different story. So I'll have to keep the backtesting going and find out which pairs to trade, which setting should be used, and whether RecoveryMode should be enabled or not.

Trading Point

I've been running Wallstreet Forex Robot on five different brokers, but one broker, Trading Point, reacts very differently. On Trading Point, WSFR opens a position at a very different level than that on other brokers and closes a position at a weird level. I've heard that some (or many) brokers use virtual plugin to make EAs useless. I don't know if Trading Point uses such virtual plugin or not, but WSFR on Trading Point opens a position where no other positions are found on other brokers, and also closes a position way too early or at a really crazy level where no such closing are identified on other brokers. So be aware when you intend to run an EA on Trading Point.

EUR33

I have also backtested EUR33 setting on Wallstreet Forex Robot. That was truly amazing. This setting surprisingly makes equity curve smoother. It'll allow you to increase the risk percent. It will also suit those of you who prefer safer trading.

Exotic Pairs for Wallstreet Forex Robot

I have conducted 3 year backtesting for Wallstreet Forex Robot. I've tested many pairs, but those that worked well were GBPUSD, EURUSD, AUDUSD, AUDJPY(EURUSD setting), CADJPY(AUDUSD setting), and USDCAD.
Someone in the donnaforex tested those exotic pairs and found some exotic pairs works really well. But I found something more. Although in his demo account CHFJPY and EURJPY worked really well for a couple of months, in my 3 year testing, those pairs didn't work well.

GBPUSD is the very best pair and well surpasses the second best EURUSD pair. EURUSD performs well enough, too, and it's worth enough to run. Compared to those two pairs, other pairs don't perform really well, however, AUDUSD makes a different equity curve than those pairs and may diversify the results in a good manner.

Someone in the donnaforex has done a forward demo test for a couple of months. During that period, while EURUSD kept losing, AUDUSD just kept winning. So I guess running AUDUSD may make a good compensation during a bad period for default WS pairs.

AUDUSD and AUDJPY are mutually correlated. AUDJPY and CADJPY are correlated as well. However, those three pairs take positions at different levels. Of course, they can take positions almost simultaneously occasionally, but such incidents can also happen between EURUSD and GBPUSD. As far as I observe, while such incidents increase trading frequency, the risk may not be very serious.

I've decided run above mentioned pairs for 3 years with very high risk. I'm mentally prepaired to lose the account completely, but if it's successful, it will be a huge success.

Lost Big

I've done a mistake and lost most of my account fund in all accounts I have. For now, I just would like to have fun doing a manual trading with a tiny fund left on one of my accounts.

I've taken long on USD/CAD @ 0.99820 with SL 0.99650.

EA claiming to make 150% a month

One of the EAs that I bought claims that it makes 150% per month. Normally, this kind of statement makes me feel very dubious. But after trading it on two of my live accounts, I changed my mind a bit.

Because it trades on 1M chart, you can't get a reliable backtest because backtesting on 1M chart is very innacurate (modeling quality is very poor). But the author says it works on a live account. So I did. I don't trust a demo account. There's no slippage or any execution problem on demo. Live trading is the only way you can find the true results.

It takes positions around the clock. In the past 14 hours, it took 30 trades and the winning rate is very high. Once it takes a loss, it tries to recover the loss by increasing the lots on the next trade. But it's not a typical martingale style of EA because such multiplying of lots is limited up to three consecutive losses. Once it finds it can't recover in three losing trades, it start over from the initial lot amount. So it's not a dead-or-alive type of EA.

It's too early to tell, but so far, it lost only one and got recovered on the next trade. On the other account, it took two consecutive losses and recovered on the next trade. The difference comes from the difference of spreads on each broker. Since this EA chases only 5 pips (stop loss is 30 pips), tighter spread is much better for this EA.

The werid thing is that the max consecutive losses is set to 2 by default, the EA multiplied the lots by 3. I don't know if it's a bug of the EA and it continues to multiply the lots forever till the account is brown up. I never know until I see more trades.

The author suggest to run this EA on $1,000 account (with 0.01 lot trading). If you test this EA on a nano account like IBFX Australia, you can start with only $100. I think the author suggests very safe setting.

Can you really make 150% per month? I don't know. I guess it's a bit exaggerated. I think making about 10 to 20% or so is realistic expectation for this EA if it worked as statad. If you start this EA with lower capital like $200 to $400, then maybe it is very possible. According to the author's blog, he started trading this one with only $70. If you start the EA with such a small amount, then yes such high percentage yeild is very possible. I personally think that you at least need $500 on a micro account or $50 to $100 on a nano account.

This is what I know by now. But I need more time to evaluate this EA. I think the way this EA trades is very interesting, but I don't know how big the drawdown would be and how risky or profitable this one is gonna be. I only know the 14 hours results.

Additional EAs

I've found two interesting EAs and added to my portfolio. Those are dubious EAs found on eBay. One of them is really funny. The way it takes position is something I've never seen, but it's very interesting. I bought one from Germany, the other one from Bulgaria.

SL on StepsOfGlory4

I've experienced the first SL with a blackbox EA named StepsOfGlory4. It was about $100 loss. But I'm quite relaxed.