Forex Megadroid

>> Updated: 15 Sept 2009

Today we’re going to take a look at Forex MegaDroid, a very popular Expert Advisor (EA) that is a fully automated trading bot.

The MegaDroid developers claim that this EA was developed as an Artificial Intelligence (AI) EA and although I’m not a big fan of fancy footwork and the hyped terms that these guys use I do think that it’s a somewhat relevant term used to explain the EA because of the highly accurate “prediction” of the short-term future movements of the market. They claim that MegaDroid has a success rate of more than 95%, come on, there’s no way! Or is there? So I decided to try it out after a lot of research and talking to some well respected traders.

MegaDroid, in its’ default setup and configuration, is a very slow trader and only makes a couple of trades a week, sometimes even skipping a week or two. It will not trade if market conditions are not matching what seems to be a very extensive and strict set of pre-defined rules, but because it’s so extremely accurate, you can set your risk settings and lot sizes quite a bit higher than most other EAs. There are also strategies that you can use to get it to make many more trades a week, and I will tell you how I did this in a short while.

MegaDroid really impressed me and I’m convinced that the developers really knew what they were doing when designing this system. What I especially like about this EA is that it trades in the similar timeframe as FapTurbo (the Asian session), it stays accurate and you don’t have to change your strategy/settings when market conditions change (which you need to do with most other EAs). It will simply not trade when these conditions are not right. MegaDroid is also configured to, by default, not trade on Fridays, Sundays, public holidays or at the end of each month, because those days are associated with higher risk. To me that's fine tough because the elimination of potential losses on htese days far outweighs the potential for getting a few winning trades and in the long run you'll see a huge positive difference in your account because of this safety feature.

Get MegaDroid Now

I have a $500 demo account with Alpari (UK) and I’m applying the same idea as with FapTurbo: Expert Advice. This time it’s in the form of a guide from Benjamin R. Cook called Advanced Droid Tactics (ADT). Applying his strategies (I use 4 x EURUSD 1HR (GMT +0, +2, +6, +8 on Alpari) I was so far able to get an incredible amount of trades compared to the standard 1-chart set-up, while at the same time reducing risk. My standard MegaDroid setup (1 chart, aggressive=true) that went live 18 Aug 2009 has only made 3 trades so far (I don't know if this is normal though...). MegaDroid with ADT has made 26 trades since 24 Aug, only 2 losses so far(which, by the way, was my fault as I'll explain below)!

You can see my live stats on my Blog sidebar. Just to explain my 2 losses: The -25.28 trade on 11 Sept: What happened here was that I crashed my VPS while a trade was open. I did some windows updates, which the support team clearly says you shouldn't do on their support page, but I was stupid enough to go do it and it took them some hours to restore my VPS to the state it was in before. When I logged back in, the trade had hit the Stop Loss and I felt like a real idiot because that trade now stands out like a sore eye on my stats! You can also discard the first transaction because I opened that one manually to initialise the ADT Profile Reset Tool to see if it works.

The ADT reset tool is an extra indicator you get, when joining the ADT website, that will reset your charts to make sure all trades are managed correctly across the 4 charts that you trade on (all being EUR/USD). You will definitely need this if you trade using the ADT system. I don't actually know what exactly the reset tool resets, but I know it works. I tried exactly the same set-up on another MT4 installation, without the reset tool and there were very few trades... I'll try to find out what it does and update this article.

Coming back to ADT though, I've had a 100% winning rate with the Hybrid strategy so far! Amazing...

While MegaDroid itself comes highly recommended, I think ADT is a must have add-on if you’re serious about increasing your trading frequency, while decreasing overall risk. The ADT strategies will turn MegaDroid into a trading monster and it will more than pay for itself as well as MegaDroid in less than two months even if you start with an initial deposit of $500 on your broker account, so just go for it! I think they'll only sell a limited amount of copies of the ADT strategy, so make sure you get in while there’s room for new customers. The price is $39.95, which for me is a huge bargain considering the incredible benefits that come with this system. You will also have unlimited support and receive free updates when they are released. Once I’ve come-up with my own version of this system, I’ll be sharing my strategies & settings with you for free. But for now I recommend just buying it. It really is worth it!

Get Advanced Droid Tactics Now

As I said before I strongly believe that MegaDroid was developed by real Forex gurus just because of the extremely high accuracy rate. It takes a lot of skill to develop an EA of this calibre and it trades as if it's making informed decisions and predicts the immediate future of the market with uncanny accuracy. It’s a very strong contender to FapTurbo and these two EAs are my top recommendations so far.

MegaDroid is a patient trader and grows your account steadily over time. I'm using very conservative settings but this EA is so good you can really bump-up your risk settings higher than what I'm using. Remember though that the best EAs are systems that make smaller, less-frequent trades that grow your account consistently over time. It makes them predictable and manageable and you can anticipate what your account size will be a year or two from now. That makes it a long term investment rather than a get rich quick gamble (the house always wins!).

Now I'll be honest with you: I didn’t even consider purchasing MegaDroid when it was released. I saw many ads and thought it was just another phony EA with a fancy name, but after seeing for myself how this system performs there’s no going back for me. I've now decided to go live with MegaDroid and will keep you posted once my two live accounts are running (The first one with FapTurbo and the second one with MegaDroid)

Get MegaDroid Now

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!

Intro #4 - Brokers Reviewed

>> Updated: 9 Sept 2009. I have revised my list of brokers to only list my top 3 recommended brokers. These are the only Brokers I use and after testing several brokers over a period of two months, these ones were by far the best. I'm getting great results with all three of them and you can be comfortable opening an account with any of them. Please first make sure that you can eventually open a live account with them from the Country you live in, before opening a Demo account!

There are many Brokers out there and I could not possibly review even a fraction of them, but there are a hand-full of Brokers that come highly recommended by many professional traders. We will be looking at some of the best ones that meet the following criteria. They should:

• Be newbie-friendly
• Offer great support and good training material to guide you, the beginning Forex trader, in the right direction to become successful.
• Welcome automated EA (Expert Advisor) trading and don’t cheat you on their side when it comes to live trading.
• Have low spreads to decrease your risk and broker fee per transaction, as well as improve your EA trading frequency.
• Allow you to start with small start-up capital ($100 to $500). Some brokers require you to start with a minimum of $2,000 or even $10,000!
• Allow mini lots (and ideally micro-lots) for starting with small trades and working your way up as you become more comfortable with the trading ability of your EA.
• Be reputable broker firms with a good track record and you can be rest assured that your investment is safe.
• Offer accurate and fast execution, with the added bonus of lower costs. Ideally you want to go with a Broker that offers Straight-Through-Processing (STP) for fast and accurate trading as well as low spreads. This is also important so that there are very little differences between trading on Demo or Live accounts. (You’ll need to go live at some stage and if the differences are minimal, great stuff!)
• Ideally not charge you a fee for opening a live account or any monthly fees for having a live account and also not charge you any commission on trades.

How do these Brokers make their money?

Let’s look at an example: If you buy one US Dollar from a Foreign Exchange Bank using Euros you will, let’s say, pay 0.70 Euros for that dollar. If you immediately (without the currency values changing), sell the Dollar back, you only get 0.69 Euros back. This difference between the “bid” and “ask” price is called the spread and that’s also how Brokers make their money. When you make a trade, the Broker will charge you the difference between the bid/ask price. It's a very small chunk of every transaction you (or your EA) make and it's almost always a much smaller amount than taking a % commission. We're talking a few cents or less here per transaction... I will go as far as to say that it’s negligible and you don’t even need to worry about this when trading.

So let's continue with the review:

1. Gallant FX

Gallant FX is a Foreign Exchange liquidity provider that offers a wide range of trading technologies and services. Their position as a liquidity provider allows you to take full advantage of transparent real-time pricing. This has enabled Gallant FX to create a unique Forex Trading environment that offers individual traders the same STP (Straight Through Processing) liquidity, execution and trading functionality demanded by interbank traders. There is a strong recommendation from many professional auto-traders that this is the preferred Broker for FapTurbo as well as other EAs. GallantFX is my first recommendation and I'm currently using them with FapTurbo. You can see my live stats (on a Demo account off course) at the top of my Blog sidebar. Funny enough when you activate your FapTurbo on a demo account in the member's section, you'll notice that in the example they use an account number that starts with 208813x. That is the account number created when opening a Demo account with GallantFX...
Benefits:

• Spreads from as low as 0.3 pips.
• Micro lots (starting from 0.01), mini and standard lots sizes.
• Hedging capability.
• Scalping capability.
• Minimum opening deposit on a live account: $500.
• FREE VPS hosting on live accounts. (Run your MetaTrader platform live on a Virtual Private Server 24/7)
• Straight Through Processing.
  

2. Alpari (UK)

Alpari (UK) provides institutional-level online FOREX trading services and technologies. They offer comprehensive market analysis and educational tools, as well as delivering world-class customer service. Alpari(UK) should not be confused with Alpari(USA). I personally would not recommend Alpari(USA) for several reasons. Alpari(UK) is quite popular amongst professional auto-traders.
Benefits:

• Spreads from as low as 1.8 pips.
• Micro lots (starting from 0.01), mini and standard lots sizes.
• Hedging capability.
• Scalping capability.
• Regulated by the FSA.
• Micro Account: Allow users to trade via MetaTrader4, with a minimum opening deposit of $200 on live accounts.
• Classic Account: Allow users to trade via MetaTrader 4 and/or Systematic (Alparis' automated trading solution), with a minimum opening deposit of $500 on live accounts
• 10% credit bonus on all new live accounts. (Between now and 30th October, the net deposits in your live account could get you up to 20% extra funds to trade with.)
• An automated risk management system that is designed to reduce the risk of your trading account being depleted to zero or turning negative.

3. FastBrokersFX

FastBrokersFXs' trading platforms are built on a solid, fast and efficient back-office infrastructure designed for one specific purpose – to let you trade. The pool of liquidity available gives you the freedom you need. While market conditions allow it, scalping, news or swing traders are welcome at FastBrokersFX. Their policy is simple: Trade the way you want! They come highly recommended by many well respected professional traders.

Benefits:

• Spreads from as low as 2 pips.
• Micro lots (starting from 0.01), mini and standard lots sizes.
• Hedging capability.
• They welcome scalping traders.
• Minimum opening deposit on a live account: $500.
• FREE VPS hosting on live accounts. (Run your MetaTrader platform live on a Virtual Private Server 24/7)
• ECN Broker
• Regulated by the NFA (National Futures Association) & CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission).
• 24/5 Customer support

How Electronic Communication Networks or ECNs Work

ECNs pass on prices from multiple market participants, such as banks and market makers, as well as other traders connected to the ECN, and display the best bid/ask quotes on their trading platforms based on these prices. Unlike fixed spreads, which are offered by some market makers, spreads of currency pairs vary on ECNs depending on the pair's trading activities. During very active trading periods, you can sometimes get no ECN spread at all, particularly in very liquid currency pairs such as the majors (EUR/USD, USD/JPY, GBP/USD and USD/CHF) and some currency crosses. Brokers that use Straight Through Processing (STP) offer somewhat similar benefits.

About The Financial Services Authority (FSA):

The FSA is an independent body that regulates the financial services industry in the United Kingdom. The FSA has been the single regulator for financial services in the UK since December 2001, when it was given statutory powers by the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (FSMA 2000).

All companies regulated by the FSA are obliged to meet strict financial standards including capital adequacy requirements. Companies are required to submit financial reports to the regulator on a regular basis. The FSA has the right to fine companies and/or terminate a company's regulatory status for violations.

The regulations require that the Broker:

• Maintains sufficient liquid capital in excess of the amount required to cover all client deposits, potential fluctuations in the company's currency positions and outstanding expenses.
• Undergoes a detailed annual audit performed by an independent financial auditor.
• Are under constant Supervision by the Regulator
• Segregation of funds protection: All capital not being used for margin purposes (doing trades) should be fully segregated into a special client account kept separate from the Broker company funds. In the unlikely event of the Broker's default or insolvency you still have your funds available to you in your non-broker account.

Brokers in different Countries are regulated by different financial authorities (some are un-regulated - stay away from these!) When choosing a Broker it is best to choose one that is regulated by a financial services authority. Although these brokers often operate under more limited conditions, you can at least know that they are properly audited and regulated. This will give you peace of mind that your funds are safe and that the Broker does not "cheat" you.

Risk Warning:

Before deciding to participate in Forex trading, you should carefully consider your investment objectives, level of experience and risk appetite. Most importantly, do not invest money you cannot afford to lose. Please be aware of the FOREX risk. Only invest money that you can spare and that will not change your lifestyle if you lose all your money. There are no guarantees in this industry, but with lots of research and help from you we can find trustworthy systems that will give us peace of mind and a steady stream of income!

Always start with Demo Accounts. You can open as many as you like for free and test them for as long as you like until you feel comfortable going live with real cash. To manage exposure, employ risk-reducing strategies such as 'stop-loss' and 'take-profit'. These strategies are built into most EAs, especially the ones I will be reviewing on this Blog. You can manually set these variables to lower amounts until you are comfortable with the performance of your EA. A good EA should earn high profits (more than 70% profitable trades).

If you are a beginning trader, I recommend not changing the default values that are already set when you install your EA, unless the developers notify you of new settings, or if you are getting advice from a trusted source.

There is Forex risk associated with utilizing an Internet-based trading system, including the failure of hardware, software, and Internet connection. If you're using MetaTrader, I suggest you have a dedicated trading desk at home or work and that you PC is running 24/7 with a live internet connection. Remember your EA has to constantly analyse market movements to make successful trades. If you don't have this sort of set-up available I suggest you look into having a Forex enabled Virtual Private Server (VPS) service that will run MetaTrader on their server 24/7 so you don't need to worry about down-time. We will have a look at this in the next article.

Conclusion:

At some stage, after having tested your system and being happy with it's performance, you may want to go live. Be sure you do this with the same Broker that you tested on. Results can vary significantly between Brokers! Before opening a demo account with your Broker of choice, please make sure that you can eventually open a live account with them from the Country you live in. Do this before you start, you don’t need the disappointment of finding out you can’t, after two months of successful trades on your demo account!

Some brokers require a very high minimum deposit for you to be able to open a live account. Although I rather stay away from these, you might have your own reasons for choosing such a Broker. If this is the case and you are getting the best results with your EA using one of these Brokers, you can sometimes get around this by depositing the minimum amount and then withdrawing some of it afterwards. I'm not sure if all Brokers allow this but I know some do. Do some research to find out if you can get away with it, although I would still recommend using one of the Brokers listed above. Start small and work you way up, baby steps!

I have posted the links to these Brokers' Websites on my menu-bar at the top of the Blog.

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!

Continue To Step 5: Improving Your Success ->

Intro #3 - Auto Trading Systems

In Step #2 of this Introductory Guide I introduced you to Expert Advisors (EAs, Robots). This automated form of Forex trading is my primary focus on this Blog.

Of all the systems listed under the "Auto Trading Systems" section of the blog menu bar, I have only had the opportunity to test FapTurbo, Forex MegaDroid, IvyBot & Alpari Systematic so far. Please help me by giving your feedback (and ideally links to your live trading results) of systems that you have had good experience with.

The most important thing I have learned so far is that you need to be very patient with your EA. Make it your quest to discover the best settings and set them early-on while testing it in your 60-day trial-period. Patience is truly required with this game. Consider this a long-term investment; there is no quick (and legal) trustworthy money-making scheme! If your EA has not performed well in 3 weeks, check your settings or change your broker. Again: Only open demo accounts while testing!

Please don't be discouraged if you need to change Brokers! Changing brokers sounded like such a mission for me when I started, but it's as easy as 123 (while trading demo accounts off course)... Choose a broker and download and install Metatrader, open a new demo account & set-up your EA. It will take at most 20 mins of your time. Changing brokers after you went live is a whole different story, so do it while you're demoing! Once you have found the right combination of EA, Settings & Broker, leave it running until you have at least 50 trades to get a good indication of your profit/loss factor. When you're comfortable with it, take the plunge and go live! If your EA has performed badly no matter what you've tried and you have spent the 60 days testing it, consider getting a refund. You can always re-purchase it later if the system has been improved, or you can purchase another one, there are a few good ones so don't be too scared to ask for a refund if you're convinced your system does not perform well.

A good idea might be to run your EA on different Broker accounts at the same time. This way you can see how your EA performs differently on each account (and believe me they do!). Once you go live with real money have your EA run on a live & demo account with the same broker & settings side-by-side on two MetaTrader platforms. This way you can see the difference between performance on live & demo accounts. You can also test new settings on the demo account while the live account is running the "safe & proven" settings. Once, after some time, you achieve better results with your "experimental" demo setup, move your settings over to the live account, and repeat the process.

Another piece of good advice is to join as many communities/forums as you can. Do your research and find the best communities that will give you all the information you need to become a successful auto-trader. There are plenty of free forums & newsletters you can join for good advice.

If all this information is a little overwhelming, don't worry too much! Read this guide a few times until you are comfortable with the various aspects of auto-trading. You have all the time in the world, Forex isn't going anywhere so be patient and take it one step at a time... When you purchase an EA, you also receive very informative set-up guides in the form of PDF documents and training videos that will take you through the process step-by-step, from downloading & installing MetaTrader to opening a demo account and setting up and configuring your EA.

Note #1: Currently the top two systems I would recommend is FapTurbo & Forex MegaDroid as I'm experiencing very good results with them. If you find that these systems just don't perform well for you, consider getting expert advice in the form of membership websites that you can join to get tips from some of the top auto-traders. You can find more info on this under the "Articles" section on the blog menu bar where I write about specific services available for each EA.

Note #2: Don't confuse the term Expert Advisor, with "expert advice". Expert Advisor (EA, Forex Robot) is the name given to systems/add-ons to the MetaTrader platform that help you trade or trade automatically for you. You can access your EA under the "Expert Advisors" section on the "Navigator" pane in MetaTrader. When I refer to EA in my articles, I refer to your EA system. Expert advice, on the other hand, is basically joining a trusted website/community/guide that gives you good trustworthy advice on how to set-up your Expert Advisor for best performance ;)

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!

Continue To Step 4: Brokers Reviewed ->

Alpari Systematic

I opened a new Demo Systematic Account with Alpari (UK). This system runs online on Alparis' Servers and you can access it through a web interface in your browser. No need to purchase a bot or install software on your PC, and no need to have a VPS (Virtual Private Server).

Once you have logged into your account you can add some automated strategies to your portfolio. You can choose from 20 predefined systems and combining each system with all the available currency pairs you have 1015 strategies to choose from. Pretty extensive... All of these strategies come free with your account. While reviewing the strategies (before adding them to your account), you can sort the systems according to profits, success rate, etc. so they make it really easy for you to find the best performing strategies. It is a hands-on exercise though and I would recommend that after you add one or more strategies to your account, check it daily, even if it is an automated solution. You can never be too careful and in doing so you can maximise profits over the long run (which is the most important factor in Forex trading)!

After initially testing this system on two strategies, and getting amazing results, my account totally got wiped out! Guess I was a little greedy... I was, very abruptly brought back to the harsh reality of forex trading. There is still a huge potential with this system and I will figure it out! I'm opening a new account and will start afresh, this time frequently changing my strategies while keeping a watchful eye on my account. I'm sure I can crack this code. Alpari (being a very popular and reputable broker with many successful auto-traders) will not offer these strategies if they didn't work and I'll persist until I am successful. I consider this as one of the strong contenders for the top 5 of the strategies I'll eventually use when trading live, real money, accounts.

Unfortunately I haven't figured out how to link to the live account for you to look at, but I will post screenshots that I will grab every time it closes trades. As stated before I will not tamper with ANY results posted on my Blog so you can be assured that this is truly accurate results. Since the Demo account is free to open, try it for yourself and give feedback so that we can compare!

I have removed my previous screenshot as there's not much to see after it being wiped out :)) I will however soon post a new screenshot once I'm getting better results... The idea behind this Blog is after all to provide you with the best performing systems/strategies/settings, so watch the space!

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!