I'm pretty new at the Forex game... I read an article a while back about the Foreign Exchange (FX or Forex) and what an incredibly huge market it is. In fact, it's one of the largest and most liquid financial markets in the world. According to the Bank for International Settlements, the average DAILY turnover in global foreign exchange markets is estimated at $3.98 trillion!
In the past, Forex trading was only available to large corporations and financial institutions. Since it became available to the public, the market has grown exponentially every year and with new tools, like the free MetaTrader platform, people like you and I can easily trade from the comfort of home. Forex trading is fast becoming a very popular way of generating income!
I saw a huge potential in the Forex market. It looked to be a much safer (and easier, as I will show you a little later on!) playground than stocks, futures, commodities, etc. It will never run out of money even if every single person in the world is trading. In fact the more people trade the larger the market becomes. I knew that with the right knowledge and tools, I had the potential to make huge profits off this largely untapped resource. So I started researching but was soon overwhelmed by all the terminology and vast amount of information out there. I read about all the different strategies people employed and promises of great success, especially if you "invested" large amounts of money in advertised products & guides.
I didn't know where to start, however I believed that most advertisers will just try to scare you with all the terminology and complexity, so you end up buying their “insider’s secrets” into the wide world of Forex. Not a lot of people will just give away their trade secrets for free. They won’t give easy to use guides that explain EXACTLY how this game works, how and when to trade in layman's terms, for free. But being the positive and tenacious person that I am, I decided to give it a shot anyway without buying guides or systems that Forex gurus “guarantee” will make you punt loads of cash…
So I went to a broker's website (I chose Alpari (UK), but you can use any Broker of your choice to start with). I downloaded their MetaTrader 4 (MT) platform. MetaTrader is free software you can use to trade live on Forex. Almost all Brokers offer it as a free download. It's very easy to use and comes with a bunch of free indicators and chart templates, etc. that can make trading easier for you. I installed it, opened a demo account (when you open it for the first time it automatically opens a pop-up window where you can instantly open a demo account) and a moment later I was staring at live currency feed graphs, ready to start trading... Phew, I was nervous!
I tried to read some market news to see what the markets were doing, but I didn’t really understand how the news affected the markets. I discovered however that the market somewhat consistently moved between these high & low peaks. It's a game of patience and if you wait it out, you eventually get the right peaks where you can open a trade and end up with a good profit. Just monitor the graph and you'll see what I mean.
I waited for the peaks and when it was very high (at the top) I opened a trade order to "sell" or "go short(in traders' lingo)", hoping that it will go down so that I can make a decent profit. When it peaked very low (bottom), I closed my sell position and at the same time opened a "buy" or "go long" position, then closed the buy when it reached a high peak and repeated the process.
Off course it’s not always that simple and it didn’t always go so well when the markets moved the opposite way of what you anticipated, but I just played around and started getting better... Manual trading is unfortunately something I cannot teach you within the confines of this blog and nothing beats some "screen" time where you stare at the graph for lengthy periods to learn the "rhythm of the graph" and do trade after trade manually. Remember you're playing with false cash so go crazy with it. The more mistakes you make the more you'll learn and when you wipe out your account, just open a new one and you're good to go at it again! You can open an unlimited amount of free demo accounts. If you struggle to get started, use the MetaTraders' help system. It's very easy to follow and will get you going in no time. You can access it by clicking on "Help" on the top menu bar and then click on "Help Topics".. So after a week of trading, to my pleasant surprise, I had averaged a daily profit of $600! I was very excited. After a few weeks I looked at my stats and calculated that 90% of my trades ended in profit, but it took a lot of time to constantly monitor the movements...
With my day job and working long hours as well as having other responsibilities, I just didn't have the time to constantly monitor the markets. I also found that it became a little bit addictive, especially when you’re making good profits and I got more and more emotionally involved which caused me to make mistakes by opening trades at the wrong time. You can get greedy when you see so much money rolling in, even if it's fake money!
I needed an automated solution that removes the "human" element and that takes the guess work out of Forex trading, so I started searching for brokers that offer automated trading solutions.
But then I stumbled upon something that I've never heard about before: Expert Advisors (EAs)! You get these Forex Robots (Bots) that monitor the market for you 24/5 (Brokers are closed over weekends) and once it's set-up and configured on your MetaTrader platform, all you need to do is have MT open with a live internet connection and the EA will open an close trades automatically following a pre-programmed set of rules. It will wait until the market is in a favourable position that matches these pre-defined rules, then open and close trades automatically for you. You don't have to do a thing! Except for initial setup off course. Most of the good EAs are also configured to close a trade when it reaches a certain (configurable) amount of profit OR loss, called “take profit” & “stop loss” so that you can make a safe profit, but also not loose too much money in one trade when the market moves the wrong way.
So here I was at a crossroad: Do I continue trading manually or do I actually invest in one or more of these EAs? Or do both? I knew I had to "go live" with my trading at some point. I also realized that I won't be getting into this game without an initial investment. I thought a little reality check would be a good idea at this stage...
So I asked myself:
The EAs were a little expensive (some, totally un-affordable!) and I needed to be careful here without leaving my wallet empty! I didn't know if I could trust what the EA developers were promising on their sales pages. So I set off to make it my mission to find a few affordable automated systems that will generate decent, profitable income consistently. Systems that could be trusted and didn't bite large chunks out of your account balance.
My initial goal (and you can easily use this as a possible solution if you don't have a lot of money to start off with, maybe $300 to $800) was to find a system that will make enough money to pay for itself($100) & the expert advice membership sites($100), then pay for the ($100-$500) money invested into the live Broker account. Then I could take that profit and purchase a second EA, join a good, trusted community for expert advice and open another live Broker account. Repeat this process and in a year or two I could have around three systems running, generating solid income while I go on with my life (or get more systems!). This is a game of patience (as any good investment), but you'll see, it will pay off in the end and will be much more than worth the wait!
Update: Off course if you have loads of cash available you can save a lot of time here and get a few EA's, join the respective member's sites and open a few live accounts ranging from $100 to $500 (always start with demo accounts first, then when you decide to go live, start small and when a system has proved itself over time, invest more or leave it running and look at other systems!)... So I veered a little off my initial decision to start with one system. I decided to squeeze a little more money out of my salary and invest in a few systems. I'd use the 60-day money-back guarantee and go from system to system. If one didn't perform I just get my money back and use it to check the next one out. So I decided to start with three. I will introduce them a little later on in this guide...
I have to mention that at first I tried some of the best free EAs out there on demo accounts but that didn't go down too well...
So I went and purchased my first EA, FapTurbo! I will go into more details in a later article...
Conclusion
So, who can we trust? Which products are the most successful? With your help we can find systems that really do the job as promised by the developers.
The purpose of this Blog is to review the best EAs that are perfect for Forex Newbies, beginners like me. I'll review systems that are easy to implement and need no (or very little) manual intervention once they are installed & configured. I will provide accurate and honest feedback about their performance. I will post links to my actual live trading stats so you can see for yourself how they perform (no back-test mumbo jumbo, only live stats from real demo or live accounts). Remember that NO EA is perfect and from time to time you will need to change the EAs' settings and install released updates for it to perform optimally with the market conditions at the time. But hey, who cares for a few minutes of work a week when they do all the rest of it for you!
I want to ask you to please provide your (honest) feedback of systems that you are/were using, good or bad. I would like to distil down a list of systems that people can feel comfortable purchasing and be confident that it will make a good, steady profit for them (without hurting their budget too much!). I want this Blog to be successful and not a hyped sales pitch site that fools people into buying systems that don’t perform well.
Please Note.
I need to make it clear that I'm currently not endorsing any Products, Websites, Services or Brokers. I will however "recommend" the systems, services and brokers that I use because I've had some experience with them and had very good results, but in the end it's all up to you to decide what systems/services you go for! Once I have months of live trading results on real live trading accounts that have proven itself, I will definitely endorse the best ones. But for now this Blog is just a true and honest platform for me to express my feelings, ideas and experiences I’ve had so far. I do not write about bad performing systems and if some of the systems that I've been "hyping" about ends up been crappy, I will surely remove it from my Blog, that's a guarantee. I will be very satisfied if this guide becomes a trusted source of rock-solid accurate information that could help people without them having to sift through the stupendous amount of cluttered miss-information and in-accurate "advise" that exists out there.
I want to be honest with you about the fact that I do earn commission if you purchase a system from a link on my blog. I also earn a small fee for every time that visitors click on the Google Ads links. So feel free to click away and help me earn cash! Nah just kidding!! But like every blogger it does encourage you when your Blog earns you a little cash on the side because it does take a lot of time and research to create a good Blog. So I believe there's nothing wrong with refferals or ads on a Blog, I just don't want my readers to think that my articles are biased towards systems that are "advertised" on my Blog.
I will stick to my code of The Quest For The Best! I really need to find systems that will bring in the cash, and when they do, I'll share them with you. I would like to help all new traders who get scared when trying out Forex trading for the first time and run for the hills when things go bad. It will be a great achievement for me to have one of the top free Blogs where people can get good advice and make a success without having to go through months of late nights and week-ends researching and ending up just cutting their losses and giving up.
There are lots of successful people trading Forex and I intend becoming one of them. Then, help you to become one of them! I love sharing my success stories and that's the 1st intention behind this Blog, the 2nd one being that this is a reference guide for myself as well.
Note #1: Please be careful when purchasing an EA. Make sure that they offer you a full, no questions asked, 60 day money-back guarantee. That will give you enough time to evaluate them and see if they work for you. Continue reading to see my top EA recommendations...
Note #2: When choosing a Broker first start with a Demo account. Choose a broker that offers demo accounts for free (most reputable ones do), with no time limit on the account. Open as many Demo accounts as you need to. Test, test, test!! Be patient until you're comfortable with your combination of EA & Broker, then go live! Continue reading to see my top Broker recommendations...
In the past, Forex trading was only available to large corporations and financial institutions. Since it became available to the public, the market has grown exponentially every year and with new tools, like the free MetaTrader platform, people like you and I can easily trade from the comfort of home. Forex trading is fast becoming a very popular way of generating income!
I saw a huge potential in the Forex market. It looked to be a much safer (and easier, as I will show you a little later on!) playground than stocks, futures, commodities, etc. It will never run out of money even if every single person in the world is trading. In fact the more people trade the larger the market becomes. I knew that with the right knowledge and tools, I had the potential to make huge profits off this largely untapped resource. So I started researching but was soon overwhelmed by all the terminology and vast amount of information out there. I read about all the different strategies people employed and promises of great success, especially if you "invested" large amounts of money in advertised products & guides.
I didn't know where to start, however I believed that most advertisers will just try to scare you with all the terminology and complexity, so you end up buying their “insider’s secrets” into the wide world of Forex. Not a lot of people will just give away their trade secrets for free. They won’t give easy to use guides that explain EXACTLY how this game works, how and when to trade in layman's terms, for free. But being the positive and tenacious person that I am, I decided to give it a shot anyway without buying guides or systems that Forex gurus “guarantee” will make you punt loads of cash…
So I went to a broker's website (I chose Alpari (UK), but you can use any Broker of your choice to start with). I downloaded their MetaTrader 4 (MT) platform. MetaTrader is free software you can use to trade live on Forex. Almost all Brokers offer it as a free download. It's very easy to use and comes with a bunch of free indicators and chart templates, etc. that can make trading easier for you. I installed it, opened a demo account (when you open it for the first time it automatically opens a pop-up window where you can instantly open a demo account) and a moment later I was staring at live currency feed graphs, ready to start trading... Phew, I was nervous!
I tried to read some market news to see what the markets were doing, but I didn’t really understand how the news affected the markets. I discovered however that the market somewhat consistently moved between these high & low peaks. It's a game of patience and if you wait it out, you eventually get the right peaks where you can open a trade and end up with a good profit. Just monitor the graph and you'll see what I mean.
I waited for the peaks and when it was very high (at the top) I opened a trade order to "sell" or "go short(in traders' lingo)", hoping that it will go down so that I can make a decent profit. When it peaked very low (bottom), I closed my sell position and at the same time opened a "buy" or "go long" position, then closed the buy when it reached a high peak and repeated the process.
Off course it’s not always that simple and it didn’t always go so well when the markets moved the opposite way of what you anticipated, but I just played around and started getting better... Manual trading is unfortunately something I cannot teach you within the confines of this blog and nothing beats some "screen" time where you stare at the graph for lengthy periods to learn the "rhythm of the graph" and do trade after trade manually. Remember you're playing with false cash so go crazy with it. The more mistakes you make the more you'll learn and when you wipe out your account, just open a new one and you're good to go at it again! You can open an unlimited amount of free demo accounts. If you struggle to get started, use the MetaTraders' help system. It's very easy to follow and will get you going in no time. You can access it by clicking on "Help" on the top menu bar and then click on "Help Topics".. So after a week of trading, to my pleasant surprise, I had averaged a daily profit of $600! I was very excited. After a few weeks I looked at my stats and calculated that 90% of my trades ended in profit, but it took a lot of time to constantly monitor the movements...
With my day job and working long hours as well as having other responsibilities, I just didn't have the time to constantly monitor the markets. I also found that it became a little bit addictive, especially when you’re making good profits and I got more and more emotionally involved which caused me to make mistakes by opening trades at the wrong time. You can get greedy when you see so much money rolling in, even if it's fake money!
I needed an automated solution that removes the "human" element and that takes the guess work out of Forex trading, so I started searching for brokers that offer automated trading solutions.
But then I stumbled upon something that I've never heard about before: Expert Advisors (EAs)! You get these Forex Robots (Bots) that monitor the market for you 24/5 (Brokers are closed over weekends) and once it's set-up and configured on your MetaTrader platform, all you need to do is have MT open with a live internet connection and the EA will open an close trades automatically following a pre-programmed set of rules. It will wait until the market is in a favourable position that matches these pre-defined rules, then open and close trades automatically for you. You don't have to do a thing! Except for initial setup off course. Most of the good EAs are also configured to close a trade when it reaches a certain (configurable) amount of profit OR loss, called “take profit” & “stop loss” so that you can make a safe profit, but also not loose too much money in one trade when the market moves the wrong way.
So here I was at a crossroad: Do I continue trading manually or do I actually invest in one or more of these EAs? Or do both? I knew I had to "go live" with my trading at some point. I also realized that I won't be getting into this game without an initial investment. I thought a little reality check would be a good idea at this stage...
So I asked myself:
- What if these EAs really worked? What if they really made good, solid returns? -> Wouldn't that be nice... :)
- How much money did I have available to invest in one or more EAs? -> I had $100 for one system to start off with!
- How much money did I have available to invest in memberships to website that give me expert advice for my EA, so that I can configure it correctly without going through months of painstaking testing, monitoring, etc.? -> I had $100 extra for joining a member's site
- How much money did I have available to eventually invest in a live Broker account? -> $500!, you can start lower if you want, but I won't advise going lower than $100
- How much time did I have available to trade manually and/or set-up & monitor the EAs? -> Tough question...
- Will it be a good idea to have one, or more than one, systems/strategies going at the same time? The term "Don't have all your eggs in one basket" comes to mind...
The EAs were a little expensive (some, totally un-affordable!) and I needed to be careful here without leaving my wallet empty! I didn't know if I could trust what the EA developers were promising on their sales pages. So I set off to make it my mission to find a few affordable automated systems that will generate decent, profitable income consistently. Systems that could be trusted and didn't bite large chunks out of your account balance.
My initial goal (and you can easily use this as a possible solution if you don't have a lot of money to start off with, maybe $300 to $800) was to find a system that will make enough money to pay for itself($100) & the expert advice membership sites($100), then pay for the ($100-$500) money invested into the live Broker account. Then I could take that profit and purchase a second EA, join a good, trusted community for expert advice and open another live Broker account. Repeat this process and in a year or two I could have around three systems running, generating solid income while I go on with my life (or get more systems!). This is a game of patience (as any good investment), but you'll see, it will pay off in the end and will be much more than worth the wait!
Update: Off course if you have loads of cash available you can save a lot of time here and get a few EA's, join the respective member's sites and open a few live accounts ranging from $100 to $500 (always start with demo accounts first, then when you decide to go live, start small and when a system has proved itself over time, invest more or leave it running and look at other systems!)... So I veered a little off my initial decision to start with one system. I decided to squeeze a little more money out of my salary and invest in a few systems. I'd use the 60-day money-back guarantee and go from system to system. If one didn't perform I just get my money back and use it to check the next one out. So I decided to start with three. I will introduce them a little later on in this guide...
I have to mention that at first I tried some of the best free EAs out there on demo accounts but that didn't go down too well...
So I went and purchased my first EA, FapTurbo! I will go into more details in a later article...
Conclusion
So, who can we trust? Which products are the most successful? With your help we can find systems that really do the job as promised by the developers.
The purpose of this Blog is to review the best EAs that are perfect for Forex Newbies, beginners like me. I'll review systems that are easy to implement and need no (or very little) manual intervention once they are installed & configured. I will provide accurate and honest feedback about their performance. I will post links to my actual live trading stats so you can see for yourself how they perform (no back-test mumbo jumbo, only live stats from real demo or live accounts). Remember that NO EA is perfect and from time to time you will need to change the EAs' settings and install released updates for it to perform optimally with the market conditions at the time. But hey, who cares for a few minutes of work a week when they do all the rest of it for you!
I want to ask you to please provide your (honest) feedback of systems that you are/were using, good or bad. I would like to distil down a list of systems that people can feel comfortable purchasing and be confident that it will make a good, steady profit for them (without hurting their budget too much!). I want this Blog to be successful and not a hyped sales pitch site that fools people into buying systems that don’t perform well.
Please Note.
I need to make it clear that I'm currently not endorsing any Products, Websites, Services or Brokers. I will however "recommend" the systems, services and brokers that I use because I've had some experience with them and had very good results, but in the end it's all up to you to decide what systems/services you go for! Once I have months of live trading results on real live trading accounts that have proven itself, I will definitely endorse the best ones. But for now this Blog is just a true and honest platform for me to express my feelings, ideas and experiences I’ve had so far. I do not write about bad performing systems and if some of the systems that I've been "hyping" about ends up been crappy, I will surely remove it from my Blog, that's a guarantee. I will be very satisfied if this guide becomes a trusted source of rock-solid accurate information that could help people without them having to sift through the stupendous amount of cluttered miss-information and in-accurate "advise" that exists out there.
I want to be honest with you about the fact that I do earn commission if you purchase a system from a link on my blog. I also earn a small fee for every time that visitors click on the Google Ads links. So feel free to click away and help me earn cash! Nah just kidding!! But like every blogger it does encourage you when your Blog earns you a little cash on the side because it does take a lot of time and research to create a good Blog. So I believe there's nothing wrong with refferals or ads on a Blog, I just don't want my readers to think that my articles are biased towards systems that are "advertised" on my Blog.
I will stick to my code of The Quest For The Best! I really need to find systems that will bring in the cash, and when they do, I'll share them with you. I would like to help all new traders who get scared when trying out Forex trading for the first time and run for the hills when things go bad. It will be a great achievement for me to have one of the top free Blogs where people can get good advice and make a success without having to go through months of late nights and week-ends researching and ending up just cutting their losses and giving up.
There are lots of successful people trading Forex and I intend becoming one of them. Then, help you to become one of them! I love sharing my success stories and that's the 1st intention behind this Blog, the 2nd one being that this is a reference guide for myself as well.
Note #1: Please be careful when purchasing an EA. Make sure that they offer you a full, no questions asked, 60 day money-back guarantee. That will give you enough time to evaluate them and see if they work for you. Continue reading to see my top EA recommendations...
Note #2: When choosing a Broker first start with a Demo account. Choose a broker that offers demo accounts for free (most reputable ones do), with no time limit on the account. Open as many Demo accounts as you need to. Test, test, test!! Be patient until you're comfortable with your combination of EA & Broker, then go live! Continue reading to see my top Broker recommendations...
I encourage you to post comments, with your help we can find the best systems out there. If you liked this article, Digg, Buzz or Tweet it!
2 comments:
Hi I am a very new newbie to the Forex game and this blog is a great source of info for me. Thank you for starting it and I will keep reviewing and if I have any successes - I am going to use Fapturbo and Ivybot - I will post them. Thanks
Carol
I am a complete newbie as well so your tips are so far very informative...thx heaps
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