Testing Forex Expert Advisors
What I find quite interesting about the current market on the internet for forex expert advisors, is the variety of different approaches taken by the vendors to market them. Most vendors seem to want to bamboozle potential buyers with science by claiming that their forex trading algorithm is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but an equally popular approach is to play on the emotions of people shopping for these forex robots either by telling (mostly fictional) rags-to-riches stories of how these forex trading programs have made forex traders rich beyond their wildest dreams, implying of course that you too can have access to fantastic wealth just by installing this simple software on your PC. And then there is the minimalist, simplistic approach where the website just provides the bare minimum of facts about the performance and specifications of the robot, and just lets that information speak for itself.
Of course the answer to all of this is to ignore the bewildering mass of information out there promoting the tantalizing possibility of a rapid ascent to wealth and prosperity, and just get down to brass tacks and test the thing. At the end of the day, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. So here’s my advice: pick one of the EA’s that looks promising, buy it, test it on a demo account, if it matches your expectations keep it and put it to work on a live account on the most conservative settings with the highest account balance that you can afford to lose.
If you can’t afford to lose at least $1000 then you shouldn’t even be delving into forex trading, quite frankly, because with the leverage available on a forex broker account losing is always a distinct possibility, but then again so is the possibility of doubling your money in a short space of time. There are strategies you can employ to minimize the risk, such as switching off the EA on a Friday, and closing all trades before the weekend, as quite often it is over the weekend that the market gaps up or down, presenting the possiblity of a margin call if trades are left open on an account with a low balance. But at the end of the day, forex trading is a high risk investment strategy, not necessarily a rich man’s game but certainly not for someone who is living from one paycheck to the next and has not saved some risk capital that they can afford to lose if the market goes the wrong way.
But having qualified my comments in this way, I would recommend that readers of this blog who are still interested in having a go at automated forex trading, purchase something like the Forex Gale EA and test it. As I hinted above, ignore any sales hype on the website (although the Forex Gale website is one of the more factual ones). I am not recommending this EA because of what their website says, in fact any type of sales spiel generally makes me sceptical, however because Forex Gale has been independently tested over a reasonably long period to be capable of making up to 7% per week, it is worth checking out. They offer a 30 day money-back guarantee, so you can use that to test it, and get your money back if you are not satisfied. At $195, Forex Gale is not the cheapest EA available, but not the most expensive either by a long way, in fact if it performs as tested, and as it has been reviewed, it is worth spending that little bit more to avoid losing even more in trading.
