I can’t believe it’s December already. The year has flown by so quickly and yet again I’m left wondering where the year has gone. What a year it’s been though! I don’t think there’s been a more exciting time to be involved with financial markets.
But if you are thinking of getting involved with trading on the financial markets, the many systems and auto trading software that are available out there are sure to bamboozle you. The latest is a dubious auto-trading program called FAP Turbo.
FAP Turbo – the latest Auto Trading Easy Cash Forex Trading Mega Robot (TM)
The latest Auto Trading Easy Cash Forex Trading Mega Robot (TM) is FAP Turbo. This is an updated version on Forex Auto Pilot. Over the last year I’ve written a few times about what I called the Forex Mafia (TM). These are the guys behind dubious trading programs such as Forex Killer, Forex Auto Pilot, Forex auto cash robot and now FAP turbo.
They’ve got a slick website with lots of video content, but don’t be fooled. The picture of Marcus Leary is actually that of an actor from the Live Face on Web service. The Forex Auto Cash Robot was a terrible product that claimed never to have lost in nine years. As I revealed, they could only make this claim because none of those results were live, they were all backtracked and to make matters worse, the system has a massive stop loss that would mean risking hundreds of pounds to win just one pound.
Many people were sucked in and I heard from a few subscribers who took up the offer and unsurprisingly hit losing trades very quickly.
FAP turbo is from the same team and after forex auto cash robot I vowed never to have anything to do with them again. The system boasts some impressive live results, but it has all the hallmarks of a forex mafia publication. The system again has a big stop loss in relation to profit targets which means you need a big strike rate to make money. It also means in the short term that it might look like it will make you money, but in the long haul, those big stop losses will eat into your profits. The system boasts some good testing results, but I doubt it would still be profitable if you tested it over a longer period of time.
This is where I need help with Meta trader. To run more tests on such systems. If you can help, please do get in touch.
System watch
My Easy Forex signals
I’m going to kick this one into the long grass. Although I’ve reports of some members doing well with it, my results do not tally with his and to make matters worse, my queries haven’t been responded to. Unless I’m missing something, there’s no instructions on how to trade his signals or what sort of stop loss to use.
It may be a difference between my datafeed and his, but quite often he does seem to take the best case scenario. For example if a trade went 10 pips in profit then crashed down 50 he’d claim the 10 pips. There are no losses reported in his daily emails which is impossible. To be fair to him, he does often seem to get the general direction right, but with no clarity over the rules, it is impossible to match the results that he reports. For example on Friday there were a number of trades like this one:
Email received 09:00 on the 28th of November:
All pairs have just hit their respective entry points, so a retracement candle awaited.
USD/CHF go Long at entry point 1.1960 with a Target of 1.2010.
EUR/USD go Short at entry point 1.2940 with a Target of 1.2893.
The report on Monday said “The EUR/USD opened at 1.2920 and closed at 1.2712 giving 208 pips.”
They were good trades, but how does he define a retracement? Is it all the way back to the entry point? In which case, this didn’t happen. Does he define it as the first 5 minute candlestick that pulls back? In which case this didn’t happen until 1.2867 at 09:35.
Unless I get more clarity on his trading rules I’ll be leaving this one well alone, because at the moment, there’s too much potential for creative accounting in the reporting of results.
Vince Stanzione
If any members went on the latest Vince Stanzione seminar, I’d love to hear from you.
Share Maestro
On a more positive note, I had a nice lunch with Glenn of Share Maestro last week who took me through his market valuation software http://www.sharemaestro.co.uk. The software is used to make long-term valuations of the FTSE and individual shares. It’s mainly for long term investing, but I’m also interested to test how useful it might be to time shorter term moves on individual shares.
The software has a good track record and Glenn is a good example of how to develop a system. He developed a model, tested it live, found it to work THEN back tested it and found it to be robust in the past also. All too often it’s the other way around, backtest first, tweak something to make it work. This gives you a system that works in the past only, but with doubtful ability to work going forward. I’ll be reviewing Share Maestro in the new year.
Calling all testers!
My ever-ready team of testers are doing a great job looking at a number of systems for me, but I’m getting requests to trial so much at the moment that I need a few more testers.
I try split the team up between those that can do short term day trading and those that can only do end of day trading, so there should be something there for everyone. There’s no pay, but you do get to be the first to get your hands on a bunch of promising new systems. I’m also going to raid the Market Maven system cupboard as prizes for the best testers over the last year.
I need testers to take it seriously and report back on progress at the end of the testing period. So have a think about whether you’d be able to do it justice. If you are interested, please drop me and email and a short paragraph explaining why you think you’ll be a good system tester.
I need a geek!
This is more of a technical issue. If I’m being honest, I’m a bit of trading geek, but I need a bigger geek than I to help me with my testing of various EA programs (Expert Advisor, auto trading programs). Most of these use MetaTrader (Free download from http://www.alpari-idc.com/en/metatrader4/). I can work and test this fine, but I need someone with better technical knowledge than I have to work out various what if scenarios. If you think you can help, get in touch, it would really help me nail some of these dubious auto-trading programs.
My trades
There continues to be some great moves on the S&P 500 futures with a massive drop yesterday, erasing half of last week’s gains. My system as such is to filter through the comments from http://www.quantifiableedges.com/, http://www.sentimentrader.com and http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/. Add a little bit of technical analysis and some a bit of discretion and I find my approach works reasonably well. I use the three sites above to weigh up the likelihood of possible short-term moves. When they are in alignment, the market more often than not will move in the suggested direction. When more split, I’m more cautious. Otherwise, the wizard continues to pick up some great futures trades and the forex signals have just about managed to keep their head above water over the last week or so.
This week’s hot trading buttons
Thursday sees the MPC release the official bank rate. Last month they shocked everyone by slashing rates down to 3%, and there is likely to be further cuts this week. Analysts are currently predicting a cut of between 50 and 100 base points down to 2.5 or 2%. The ECB is also expected to cut rates by at least 50 base points, down to 2.75%. Friday brings the all important US Non Farm Payroll figures. Analysts are expecting a drop, but downward revisions to previous announcements could also be an important factor. On a technical level, INO’s market club have indicated a short for the GBP/ USD on the daily charts and have been short since 1.7549.
Trading wisdom
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.” – Aristotle
