List of 5 Best EAs that Actually Work and make Money

[Rio]

what leverage are you running with?

because i can see that there is big differens in the lot size that magelan chooses on a 1:300 and 1:888 account with 1% in risk level

 

That's actually a good thing. A look at the code reveals that it takes the margin required information into consideration.

I have about 1:500 margin, although my broker may drop it to 1:400 soon as the EA builds the account.

[Rio]

After using Magellan for a bit, it's safe to say that it works best with one pair with NO MORE than 1.0 risk

Beyond 1.0 risk is too risky... and EURUSD seems to be the best pair with least averaging drawdown.

Tried GBP and CAD but both exceeded 30% drawdown... not optimised!

 

Also, with one pair, eventually trades will all clear out and give you an opportunity to remove funds from the account.

With many pairs, you could be stuck in drawdown for a long time (months!)

 

With only one pair on 1.0 risk you can't really expect much more than 5% per month... but that's OK anyway.

 

I read that even professional EAs are lucky if they make 40% a YEAR. So 5% per month is still doing really good.

[energetic]

I am running Megelan with default setting for 3 pairs for almost a month with starting balance $5000. It has now floating loss around $500.

I lost 10% monthly, rather than gain 5% monthly.

 

After using Magellan for a bit, it's safe to say that it works best with one pair with NO MORE than 1.0 risk

Beyond 1.0 risk is too risky... and EURUSD seems to be the best pair with least averaging drawdown.

Tried GBP and CAD but both exceeded 30% drawdown... not optimised!

 

Also, with one pair, eventually trades will all clear out and give you an opportunity to remove funds from the account.

With many pairs, you could be stuck in drawdown for a long time (months!)

 

With only one pair on 1.0 risk you can't really expect much more than 5% per month... but that's OK anyway.

 

I read that even professional EAs are lucky if they make 40% a YEAR. So 5% per month is still doing really good.

[Sepp Malec]

I am running Megelan with default setting for 3 pairs for almost a month with starting balance $5000. It has now floating loss around $500.

I lost 10% monthly, rather than gain 5% monthly.

 

you cant see much over 1 month with magelan, as there will always be some trades open when you are running it on more than 1 pair, so you will always have a some trades floating in red...

i have been running it from mid-august, and even if i just closed all open trades in loss, i would still have made money on this EA (ofcourse im not ****** enough to just close the open trades, as the averaging system has worked fine sofar).

 

i think RIO is right, a combined risk level of 1% is the best way to run this EA, i have been running with 1.1% combined, and havent had critical drawdown sofar.

[Rio]

Yep, Magelan can hold averaging trades for months. You would expect that with correct risk management that these trades eventually average out, and whatever successful balance gains that you make per month are kept.

 

The reason why I posed that 1% risk is best is because I ran the EA on three pairs with total of 3.0 risk and it very nearly blew my account up with over 75% drawdown.

That said, before that point, the EA was raking in 15%-23% monthly -- which by all standard of safe robot investing, was incredibly risky!... and the profits are only really good if the account DOESN'T BLOW UP!

 

Basically you can see in the charts that the GBPUSD and the USDCAD just went unidirectionally up with no retracement whatsoever. Even though I closed out my EURUSD trades to breakeven, those two pairs with 1.0 risk apiece were still capable of sinking my account. Neither of them could stay inside the 30% drawdown promised per 1% risk!

Additionally with more than one pair, the account was in constant drawdown. At some point it's nice to have balance and equity be the same (for cash withdrawal!)

So if I run Magelan again, I'm sticking to 1.0 risk on the EURUSD

 

....but I just don't like the way Magelan trades. I reverse engineered it, and it just chases rising and falling currency. It doesn't buy in dips and sell at peaks like you're supposed to, and often makes really silly buy/sell trades at weekly extreme highs and lows, for very few pips, and often getting trades trapped.

 

Also, I'm taking a look at Kalinka's other robots, and Tornado FX seems to be making more money with lower drawdown that Magelan at the moment:-

http://www.myfxbook.com/members/KalinkaCapitalEE/tornado-fx-1500-alpari-nz/766397

 

Then again I am thinking of hacking Magelan, keeping the averaging system, and teaching it to take better trade entries.

Edited January 25, 2014 by Rio

[energetic]

Hi, Rio,

We are looking forward to your hacking.

 

Yep, Magelan can hold averaging trades for months. You would expect that with correct risk management that these trades eventually average out, and whatever successful balance gains that you make per month are kept.

 

The reason why I posed that 1% risk is best is because I ran the EA on three pairs with total of 3.0 risk and it very nearly blew my account up with over 75% drawdown.

That said, before that point, the EA was raking in 15%-23% monthly -- which by all standard of safe robot investing, was incredibly risky!... and the profits are only really good if the account DOESN'T BLOW UP!

 

Basically you can see in the charts that the GBPUSD and the USDCAD just went unidirectionally up with no retracement whatsoever. Even though I closed out my EURUSD trades to breakeven, those two pairs with 1.0 risk apiece were still capable of sinking my account. Neither of them could stay inside the 30% drawdown promised per 1% risk!

Additionally with more than one pair, the account was in constant drawdown. At some point it's nice to have balance and equity be the same (for cash withdrawal!)

So if I run Magelan again, I'm sticking to 1.0 risk on the EURUSD

 

....but I just don't like the way Magelan trades. I reverse engineered it, and it just chases rising and falling currency. It doesn't buy in dips and sell at peaks like you're supposed to, and often makes really silly buy/sell trades at weekly extreme highs and lows, for very few pips, and often getting trades trapped.

 

Also, I'm taking a look at Kalinka's other robots, and Tornado FX seems to be making more money with lower drawdown that Magelan at the moment:-

http://www.myfxbook.com/members/KalinkaCapitalEE/tornado-fx-1500-alpari-nz/766397

 

Then again I am thinking of hacking Magelan, keeping the averaging system, and teaching it to take better trade entries.

[Rio]

Hi, Rio,

We are looking forward to your hacking.

 

If it turns out to be any good I won't be releasing it.

Between now and when it gets done is going to be a lot of work.

Reverse engineering Magelan took a lot of effort.... and perhaps I can release an EA framework so a talented programmer can drop in their own signals and use the averaging system.

[Rio]

Looks like Kalinka have updated their trend raptor EA with their averaging EA framework. According to them, it can get close to 100% returns in a month on one pair -- beating out Magelan now.

 

I'm tempted to have a look at it, but my account has to not explode first!

[cokhisaa]

Dear Rio !

 

What do you yhink about Pynamid Pro V8.01 ? I see statement in the web result very good .

http://www.myfxbook.com/statements/536293/statement.html

 

Thanks advance !

[Rio]

Dear Rio !

 

What do you yhink about Pynamid Pro V8.01 ? I see statement in the web result very good .

http://www.myfxbook.com/statements/536293/statement.html

 

Thanks advance !

 

It's slow and steady....and not aggressive... and some testing reveals that it will survive pretty much anything thrown at it.

 

It will get you about 5% a month... which if you are talking about EAs, is quite good... although some of kalinkas other EAs will get you about 10% on average with a more advanced hedging and averaging technique.

 

With pyramid 8, You can see that it took a little over a year to double the account though.

 

Putting it into perspective... if you have $1000, can you wait 10 years? ;)

 

1. $2000

2. $4000

3. $8000

4. $16000

5. $32000

6. $64000

7. $128000

8. $256000

9. $512000

10. $1024000

 

or maybe if you start with $10,000

 

1. $20,000

2. $40,000

3. $80,000

4. $160,000

5. $320,000

 

..at which point you're making $160,000 a year which may be enough for you to quit your work.

Edited March 3, 2014 by Rio

[Rio]

By the way, I tested out Trend Raptor 1.41 for a little under a month and it made 5% on the account -- no drawdown as all trades closed in profit.

Definitely not making the crazy money they have in their videos, but 5% is quite good. Let's not knock that.

 

Given that most of their EAs average over 5% a month (even though they are slated to make more)... it may be best to look at Tornado FX. It makes almost as much as Magelan with considerably less risk. At it's price it is also a bargain....

[Rio]

Just a quick update.

 

I had Magelan trades close out after staying open since November last year. That's a good 6 MONTHS.

So the hedging works, but you can fully expect some trades that are hedged to lock up trading for that long if you get unlucky.

 

It's important with Magelan to never use more than 1.0 risk total, because I had the USDCAD at 1.0 and on this 6 month odyssey it reached 60% drawdown at times and scared the **** out of me. On three pairs, 0.33 risk would obviously be safer... or just stick to the one pair.

 

Only problem with one pair is that, at least with the USDCAD trades, it was locked up in hedging for months and it wasn't able to make any good trades. On the flip side of that you could have multiple pairs going and racking up trades in the interim, but one of them would always likely be in drawdown, meaning that closing out the account and withdrawal could be a problem.

 

To that end, I am sticking with Tornado for now. The drawdown has stayed low on one pair (EU) at 1.0 risk.

Averaging per month it gets 7-8%. That's good enough for me. With any luck I can quit my job in 3 years in relative safety.

[verde]

i was looking at their live statement and it seems that tornado is Averaging about 4-5 % month on EurUSD pair, do you changed any parameters to increase %?

Thanks

[Rio]

Yes, you can increase the risk, but I would recommend against using more than 1.0 risk total on your account. The problem is the risk of hedging blow-up. It's no good pushing the risk right up if your entire account gets margined-out when a pair gets itself in massive drawdown.

 

Honestly, as far as I can tell, Tornado misses a lot of otherwise doable trades. If it just had a different strategy it would be more profitable.

Magelan trades more often however.... but it makes some silly trades and the possibility of a trade getting locked up in drawdown for months and months on end is a real possibility... but that's possible with Tornado as well.

 

I've spent months recoding Magelan to make better trades. It could be a lot better with a different strategy, I think.

Edited June 5, 2014 by Rio

[neworder]

Have you heard of trindcatcher?

Its very good

[Rio]

Play with fire long enough and you are going to get burned.

 

Tornado blew my account up on the recent EURUSD freefall. I used the preset amount of risk and only on one pair.

Essentially the Kalinka averaging system is a bust. It can't work long term.... and if so, the risk has to be wound right down to the point where it won't make that much money.

 

I notice that they have another new EA out called Pipsodog, which may be worth trying out, although after having my account toasted for a few grand, you can probably imagine that I'm more than a bit pissed.

 

However in the meantime, I have been building my own EA. No hedging, just solid trades, based off the Kalinka code. I would trust it more than their EAs at this point.

 

I think the only way to trade these hedging bots is to split the risk between multiple pairs. Max risk should be 1.0, but rather than lump that risk in one pair, spread it across 3 pairs and make them 0.3 risk. There is little chance of all 3 pairs being in drawdown, so the account will survive massive drops like the EU had

Edited September 28, 2014 by Rio

[Rio]

I have started my account again and am running Pipsodog on it.

This is yet another evolution of Kalinka's hedging strategy, and it works in such a way that it increases lot sizes (much like the old Pyramid did) as price moves away from averaging. The end result is that drawdown is hedged and locked up, and the averaging close out lines are shifted to always be close to price, so a move that shakes up and down will most likely close all the trades out.

It is similar to martingale, except for the fact that the hedging works in both directions... so it would be very hard to kill. Your balance would shoot up like a rocket on a unidirectional move with no retracement.... to the point where the drawdown is still low because of massively increased balance..., and the close-out line is within easy reach of price... so no waiting 6 months for price to come back (only for your account to explode!)

 

It is making about 30% a month, which is seriously good.

 

I'm really upset that my previous live account exploded, otherwise this EA would be making crazy money now... It will take about 12 months, by my calculations, to get my money back with this EA. *sigh*

That should be long enough to test it, and consider continuing to run it however.

Edited October 23, 2014 by Rio

[jsintl]

Did it ever blow up during your backtesting and how much is the minimum standard trading account it needs.

[sammy]

I have started my account again and am running Pipsodog on it.

This is yet another evolution of Kalinka's hedging strategy, and it works in such a way that it increases lot sizes (much like the old Pyramid did) as price moves away from averaging. The end result is that drawdown is hedged and locked up, and the averaging close out lines are shifted to always be close to price, so a move that shakes up and down will most likely close all the trades out.

It is similar to martingale, except for the fact that the hedging works in both directions... so it would be very hard to kill. Your balance would shoot up like a rocket on a unidirectional move with no retracement.... to the point where the drawdown is still low because of massively increased balance..., and the close-out line is within easy reach of price... so no waiting 6 months for price to come back (only for your account to explode!)

 

It is making about 30% a month, which is seriously good.

 

I'm really upset that my previous live account exploded, otherwise this EA would be making crazy money now... It will take about 12 months, by my calculations, to get my money back with this EA. *sigh*

That should be long enough to test it, and consider continuing to run it however.

 

Well its sad n m sorry that you blew up ur account. U r very right for the reasons.

 

Can u plz share the pipsodog as u hv done with ur othter EAs.

 

Regards

[Rio]

Well its sad n m sorry that you blew up ur account. U r very right for the reasons.

 

Can u plz share the pipsodog as u hv done with ur othter EAs.

 

Regards

 

There is no pipsodog previous to build 600 - so no decompile possible.

I do have earlier builds of Magelan - but that uses the older hedging strategy.

 

Looking at pipsodog, it is much like pyramid xe 5.2, except that it runs the grid and averaging in both directions. Pyramid only goes in one direction depending on which gets hit first.

I am thinking... if I merge the trading code from pyramid xe and the averging code from magelan - I could come up with something equally as good.

 

Pipsodog always has a buy and sell trade open. It opens both buy and sell as market orders with same lot size as soon as the robot starts up. Then it spreads a grid of buystop orders upwards (same lot size), and sell stop orders downwards (same lot size) about 200 pips away from price. Eventually price will hit one of the waiting stop orders, and open another pair of buy and sells. This time, depending on which stop gets hit (buy or sell, up or down), one of the new market orders on the side that was hit will have a larger lot size to offset the previous side that price did not reach. Then the Magelan style averaging kicks in on that side, and brings the averaging line closer to price. Then all the unhit stops are cancelled and the grid of stops are redrawn with new lot sizes to reflect the current state of drawdown, depending on side.

Of course, when the averaging line is hit at about +10 pip profit, profits are taken - a new pair of buy sell trades are initiated, stops redrawn and resized. Life goes on.

 

...at least that's how I *think* it works. I'm still confused by it.

Edited October 29, 2014 by Rio

[Rio]

Update on pipsodog....

 

It is still going OK, but drawdown is probably somewhat unacceptable. I am running the aggressive set. Drawdown is close to 50%, included the 30% gains it has already made.

 

I think I know how it works, and more importantly, how one might be able to code a hedging EA that "does not fail". I know that's a silly claim, but think about it logically.

 

1. We put a buy stop above and a sell stop below price (let EA input determine the distance from price)

2. If one stop is hit, and price keeps going, we take profit at certain pip profit value (let EA input determine this too)

3. When that stop is hit, the OTHER stop is replaced with a stop of larger lot size.

4. If price falls back and hits the OTHER stop, then a new stop is placed at the FIRST hit stop's price with a larger lot size.

5. and so on, and so on, until price breaks out on either side - hedged into profit.

 

Now the only problem I can see with this is if too many trades get opened from too much price bouncing around, and eat margin (1:500 margin or more would be best)

The other problem is going to be the "dead zone" in-between the two stops. At this point, the account will be in the heaviest drawdown with loaded margin, and it would be at this point that a margin call would be most likely to occur. So too much consolidation without breakouts and repeated hitting of stops would potentially kill this EA, but I think that average daily ranges would realistically never cause that to happen. Plus consolidation tends to form triangles on the charts... if the price levels stay the same until breakout and profit taking, then the stops won't be hit too often enough to cause problems.

 

Possible way to beat that "dead zone" problem would be to open a buy trade when hitting the sell stop (and vice versa) at a lot size that would still allow profit upon eventual breakout, and yet allow profit taking when the opposite stop side is hit.

That way, price could bounce up and down and the EA would still profit while holding down drawdown.

 

Lastly, perhaps some clever optimization on stop distances, take profit pips, money management, and lot multiplication would manage to prevent such a hedging EA from exploding?

 

Hmm... no idea unless I code the damn thing I suppose...

Edited November 14, 2014 by Rio

[Rio]

Another update on pipsodog,

 

The EA can blow up too. I've seen it hit over 75% on one pair on 1% risk

Again, you need to run this thing on multiple pairs and spread the max risk (1%) out amongst all pairs.

[Rio]

Pipsodog went and blew up on me. The EURUSD slide with zero retracement took it into trouble, and the recent CHF nonsense pushed it over the edge.

 

So I am done with this hedging business. It cannot work - and additionally I learnt something about how to trade correctly.

In every case with the Kalinka robots... the trade take profits were always small, but the dead trades stayed open as the long term trend drifted away.

If the trading was reversed (taking stopouts at take profit, and leaving winning trades running) I would have easily doubled my account and then some in the same time it took the EA to destroy mine.

 

So essentially, I could have made more money by simply trading a long term trend and using no take profits or stop losses, adding in more trades to increase my position as the trend kept running.

 

I also monkeyed around making an EA that hedged in both directions in a "pinball" fashion. That exploded as well.

So hedging can't work, no matter what you do.

[autofxpower]

AlgoTradeSoft Innovative EA

FxCharger

Forex Incontrol

 

If any one has one of these EAs, or any thing that really works positively, i would change them with some really good EAs ;)

[cinciri99]

Let's exchange of EA? I will do try my and you make me try yours? (AlgoTradeSoft Innovative EA)