*Click here to read my concluding review of this product*
You may remember my previous posts about the Forex Autopilot System and the 8 trading robots included in the package. I was in the process of testing all eight of them and I got as far as the second expert advisor called “StrongTrendAdvisor.” However, to my surprise the people behind Forex Autopilot decided to scrap all the previous expert advisors! I just found out about this sort of by accident when I decided to visit the members download section. To my surprise the zip file they distributed before now contains only one expert advisor. Unfortunately I did not receive any e-mail regarding this change so for me that’s a sign of poor customer service. All new customers will be downloading this new expert advisor but the old ones will have no clue unless they just happen to browse on by the download section and download the robots zip file again, and realistically how likely is it that they will do that . I won’t speculate as to why the dumped the former expert advisors but I kind have a hunch. Anyways, since there is no way you can own the previous trading robots I’m going to stop releasing demo & forward testing results for them and I will instead concentrade on testing the new trading robot.
On a first impression basis the new advisor seems impressive. At least when compared to the “ProfitStream” advisor I tested (which was a martingale type system) it is way better. It has a smaller drawdown, it doesn’t trade like mad, it seems to generate a very smooth equity/balance curve, etc. When I tested it with the MetaTrader 4 StrategyTester it showed some very impressive results. I took it upon myself to optimize the settings and using one of the optimized settings I was able to achieve some pretty impressive results. Keep in mind this was all in a backtesting environment. The real test will come when I put it on a demo account.One striking feature about this new expert advisor is that it trades on the M1 chart (1 minute time frame)
For the curious folk here is my backtesting performance chart (click the image below) :
For this I used settings obtained using the MetaTrader 4 Strategy Tester optimization function.
Here are the settings used:
Lots 0.1
LotsRiskReductor 1
MaxOrders 1
MaxLots 100
aaa 9
bbb 10
TakeProfit 25
StopLoss 0
TrailingStop 20
SpanGator 0.5
SlipPage 3
SafetyGapDemarker 0.2
SafetyGapWPR 0
The maximal drawdown using these settings was 28.46% - acceptable to me. You can achieve even better results if you fine tune the settings but the drawdown will be even greater.
I should also mention that my starting balance was $1000. The reason I used such a small deposit is because I wanted to get an idea of how it would perform on a “tiny” live account (what I usually do with trading robots that show promising results).
Anyways, that does it for this introduction to the new Forex Autopilot expert advisor. Stay tuned to this or my forex blog as I will be releasing performance results later on. Just give me about two weeks to see how the robot performs in a demo environment.
Until next time,
Alan
*Click here to see the first demo test results*
March 9th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
[…] Forex in web wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt You may remember my previous posts about the Forex Autopilot System and the 8 trading robots included in the package. I was in the process of testing all eight of them and I got as far as the second expert advisor called “StrongTrendAdvisor.” However, to my surprise the people behind Forex Autopilot decided to scrap all the previous expert advisors! I just found out about this sort of by accident when I decided to visit the members download section. To my surprise the zip file they distribute […]
March 9th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
[…] Forex in web wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt You may remember my previous posts about the Forex Autopilot System and the 8 trading robots included in the package. I was in the process of testing all eight of them and I got as far as the second expert advisor called “StrongTrendAdvisor.” However, to my surprise the people behind Forex Autopilot decided to scrap all the previous expert advisors! I just found out about this sort of by accident when I decided to visit the members download section. To my surprise the zip file they distribute […]
March 9th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
[…] Forex in web wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt You may remember my previous posts about the Forex Autopilot System and the 8 trading robots included in the package. I was in the process of testing all eight of them and I got as far as the second expert advisor called “StrongTrendAdvisor.” However, to my surprise the people behind Forex Autopilot decided to scrap all the previous expert advisors! I just found out about this sort of by accident when I decided to visit the members download section. To my surprise the zip file they distribute […]
March 13th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
[…] on my plate since I am testing way too many forex trading systems. But once I am done testing the Forex Autopilot system I will most likely move on to this one as I’ve definitely been looking for this type of […]
March 13th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
[…] Comments The Forex Assassin Trading System | Alan’s Forex Blog on The new Forex Autopilot trading robotbond on Gates dethroned - Buffett is now the richest man in the worldadmin on FXCM Sentiment Fund […]
March 21st, 2008 at 6:11 am
[…] This demo test is from my IBFX account. My blog posting about the new FAPS EA can be found here: The new Forex Autopilot trading robot | Alan’s Money Blog One thing I’d like to note: DO NOT USE THE PREVIOUS FOREX AUTOPILOT ROBOTS (the pack of 8 they had […]
April 10th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
[…] http://alansmoneyblog.com/2008/03/09/the-new-forex-autopilot-trading-robot/ […]
April 10th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
[…] http://alansmoneyblog.com/2008/03/09/the-new-forex-autopilot-trading-robot/ […]
April 12th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
[…] end up a winner then that’s not such a bad price to pay. I previously took a risk with the Forex Autopilot System and it turned out to be a winner. Maybe this product will turn out to offer the same […]
April 12th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
[…] Comments Automated Forex Cash Early Bird Special | Alan’s Forex Blog on The new Forex Autopilot trading robotForex Autopilot On a Live Account | Alan’s Forex Blog on The new Forex Autopilot trading robotForex […]
May 8th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
I bought faps on april 20 and started testing demo, when I made the backtest results were pretty good but, on may 1 and may 6 the system had a big big drawdown, here are the results
Balance until april 23th: 2756,35
position open:
2008.04.23 11:11 buy 50 0.20 1.5990 0.0000 0.0000 0.00 2756.35
position closed at:
2008.05.01 00:01 close 50 0.20 1.5621 0.0000 1.6010 -728.30
Balance: 2028.04
on may 1st drawdown of the system was -369 pips…
position open
2008.05.01 04:27 buy 51 0.20 1.5639 0.0000 0.0000 0.00 2028.04
position closed at:
153 2008.05.06 23:59 close at stop 51 0.20 1.5532 0.0000 1.5659 -211.09
Balance: 1816.95
On May 6th drawdown of the system was -107 pips
for a total of -476 pips in the first week of May…
I hope Marcus and his team are aware of this and make the changes and the adjustments on the tool soon, I dont dare to start with a real with this results
May 8th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Hi Jairo. Yep, my demo tests reflect pretty much the same reality. I am thinking to release my latest demo test results in about a week. I get the impression that FAPS was highly optimized to go LONG on the EURO. It takes VERY few short positions!
May 23rd, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Hey, hows trading been as of late for you? I am using the FAPS and I was wondering if you ever experienced my problem…My robot is not closing trades! I don’t know what to do, on my demo account I was blowing my account up. In the live account, where it really matters, my robot isn’t much help :(. I have my takeprofit set to 20 and I checked last night and noticed my profit was at 29 usd. I figured the auto pilot was waiting for it to do more, then I came back this morning only to find I was at -53 and no trades had closed! Do you know what needs to be done by any chance? Thanks man
May 24th, 2008 at 2:36 am
Actually it’s going okay so far. I’m learning a lot about how the Forex Autopilot EA trades. I’ve been also playing with some of the settings and have managed squeeze a bit more extra performance using custom settings. More on this on my next performance update which should be released maybe next week - I keep on putting it off saying I need more testing but I think it’s about time to update everyone.
As for your problem, I’m not sure, I never encountered this problem.
First of all I need more detail in order to troubleshoot your problem, but before you mention anything make sure you have the latest version of the Forex Autopilot EA. Go to your members section and download the latest if not (the latest is version 2.0)
Second, tell me this:
1) Paste the settings you’re using
2) What pair are you trading it on
3) What broker are you using
You can also get additional support from other forex autopilot users at this blog’s forum over here:
http://www.moneyguruforum.com/expert-advisors-metatrader-4/6089-forex-autopilot-system.html
Drop on by and say hello…
Thanks for visiting my blog btw :) Hope you found it informative.
Happy trading.
May 25th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Wow you are very informative. First I just want to say thank you for taking the time to respond to my message. A lot of people see it as not their problem and tend to ignore me but once again thanks! Anyways here are the settings I use
I have started with 250 usd And I trade in EurUsdFXF
I am using the MetaTrader 4 platform and signed up through the Forex autopilot website. I think the broker is forexte or something along those lines
Lots 0.1
LotsRiskReductor 1
MaxOrders 1
MaxLots 100
aaa 13
bbb 14
TakeProfit 20
StopLoss 0
TrailingStop 50
SpanGator 0.5
SlipPage 3
SafetyGapDemarker 0.2
SafetyGapWPR 0
May 26th, 2008 at 1:29 am
Anthony since your broker is what they call a “5 digit broker” (their price quotes carries to 5 decimal places) you have to change your settings in order for the EA to be setup properly.
The settings for a 5 digit brokers are outlined in the manual in fact. Add an extra 0 to Take TakeProfit, TrailingStop and Slippage.
So your setting should look like this:
TakeProfit=200.0
TrailingStop=500.0
SlipPage=30
So overall what results are you getting?
May 26th, 2008 at 3:01 am
Well for the demo account I found that to be true, but for live accounts it is 4 digits. It says that in the manual as well. In my demo account when I had it set the way you just described I earned about 300 usd in 2 and a half days. This was amazing to me so I had to start right away. When I set up a live account, my auto pilot would open a trade, but never close the trade. My live account had -49 usd profit when I manually closed the trade. I was just so frustrated that it didn’t close the trade when I had seen the profit at 28 or 29 usd.
May 26th, 2008 at 3:16 am
Hmm…I see. I have no experience with ForexTe (the brokerage firm which supposedly they recommend - I have a feeling they run it since it is a whitelabel from forex.com). I stick with 4 digit brokers like IBFX, Alpari, FXDD, etc….
Also one suggestion is be careful on the leverage that you use! If your account is smaller than $2K and you’re on a mini account use 0.10 mini lots.
May 26th, 2008 at 6:33 am
[…] Comments admin on The new Forex Autopilot trading robotAnthony on The new Forex Autopilot trading robotadmin on The new Forex Autopilot trading […]
May 26th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
I’ve just found your blog, and have found it to be informative indeed so far, but am a little unsure about configuring Forex autopilot.
I intend on using Alpari, with an opening balance of $200. Can you recommend what settings I should be using please?
May 27th, 2008 at 1:55 am
I’ve responded to your comment over here:
http://www.moneyguruforum.com/expert-advisors-metatrader-4/6089-forex-autopilot-system-21.html#post9921
May 29th, 2008 at 12:32 am
If I use .10 lot on mini account then my profit will only be 2 dollars per trade.. but i invested 2000 dollars so i use 1 mini lot which gives me 20 dollar profit per trade..am i doing something wrong?
May 29th, 2008 at 3:32 am
with a $2K account your fine..just don’t use anything more than 1 mini lot if your account dips below $2K…
try this: as your account size SLOWLY increase your lot size and as your account size SHRINKS decrease your lot size. Money management is the key to surviving and profiting in the Forex business.
Forex Autopilot supposedly has built in money management, but I just don’t trust it. Give it a try on a demo account though. What you do is set the “Lots” variable to “0″ (all explained in the manual I believe - somewhere)If you find that it works okay let it do the money management. The “LotsRiskReductor” variable dictates how much of your account’s equity is going to be risked at per trade - keep in mind that with this EA you can have only ONE active trade.
May 29th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Thank you for your reply but i have 1 problem..i had 7 successful 20 dollar profit trades but yesterday i had a 180 dollar losing trade which puts me -40 dollars overall..how can i manage that??even if i have 10 winning trades it could still wipe out my profit with only 1 losing trade..but i can’t set the stop loss too close because than i will be having more losing trades..what do i do?>?
May 29th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Hmmm, that has happened to me as well. Eventually the account turned around.
Is this your first losing trade?
As for stop losses the best way I think to play around with that is to try different combinations on a demo account or if you don’t have the patience for demo forward testing use MT4 Strategy Tester.
Right now Forex Autopilot is holding on to a -220 pip position on my LIVE account.
I guess it’s time to find out if a) there is a difference in performance between demo and live
b) if InterbankFX is a good broker to use with this EA
I’ll update everyone on how things go.
Visit the forex autopilot thread on my forum as there will be the first spot I’ll post updates.
http://www.moneyguruforum.com/expert-advisors-metatrader-4/6089-forex-autopilot-system.html
May 29th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
yes alan it is my first losing trade but 1 losing trade made me a negative:( right now is 9 successful and 1 losing but it made me a negative because the losss was like 200 dollars
because the profit is only 20 dollars per trade:(
May 29th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Change the take profit to something higher if you’d like. If you’re gonna do that don’t forget to increase your trailing stop.
Mike I strongly suggest you do some backtesting for the last 4 years to figure out a risk/reward ratio that suits you.
Right now I too am holding on to a rather large losing position. Hopefully the Euro will hit a bottom soon, otherwise this trade is gonna be a big loser.
My current setting going live are:
aaa = 9
bbb = 10
TakeProfit = 25
TrailingStop = 15
May 29th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Thank you for your quick reply..you are the man! anyways what is a trailing stop? i changed the take profit at 25 ..the trailing stop is currently 50..what should i change it to?
and also i am trading 1 lot in a mini account..so if i choose to trade 2 lots it will make 40 profit instead of 20..do you think this is crazy? thank you for your help
May 29th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
15 would be a good number in my humble opinion…having the trailing stop at 50 is kinda wacky when your take profit is lower!
Ummm…I’d suggest you NOT increase the lot size until you see this thing in action for a longer period and until it has at least give you say $1000 in returns that way you are sort of playing with “house money” as they say.
btw, a trailing stop is defined as:
A stop-loss order set at a percentage level below the market price for a long position or above the market price for a short position. The price is adjusted as the price fluctuates depending on the trailing stop value (ie it gets moved, it trails it - hence the term trailing stop loss)
May 29th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
oh excellent..thank you for your fast and informative response..you are 1000 times better than the Forex autopilot customer service..i hope i can make some money with this just like you because so far its a minus :) I should buy you a beer
May 29th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Hmm, yeah I hear a lot of complaints about Forex Autopilot’s support crew - or rather the lack of it! lol
Well, I’ve made money but sadly it was only virtual money. You can buy me a beer once you double your account ;)
Cheers,
Alan
May 29th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
I thought you had some live accounts running with your FA ..how come you only name virtual money?
May 29th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
I set it a while back on a live account but took it off as I wanted to test another EA. It won me a few trades though :)
How come I name virtual money? Well, I like to extensively demo test any forex product before I let it loose to play with real $
May 29th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
oh thats a good idea:) the only problem with this is that there is no stop loss..and if you set your own stop loss you are screwed..so basically you have to just be lucky or something since the bot can stop a trade anytime he wants.i heard people talking about 1:3 risk/reward ratio but witht his bot you can’t do that because if you set a stop loss you will lose all the money eventually..i dont know what to do
May 29th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
I must admit I have no clue how this thing decides to close trades. I know that it WILL close losing positions at the end of the month. Keep that in mind.
I’ve played around with it so many times and backtested the heck out of it and yes your right if you set a reasonable stop loss (I’m thinking 150 pips) you end up losing in the end.
Maybe what you can do is just decrease your leverage. Use smaller lot sizes and set a stop loss at say 400 or 300 - some value that it would end up closing anyways. The biggest loss I’ve seen in backtesting and demo was about 450 pips.
So this way you can at least know what you’re prepared to lose.
I have a suspicion that this EA depends very much on the strength of the EURO to make it’s wins. It takes very few short positions - something that troubles me indeed!
Update on my live trade : -270 pips and counting :( dammit..the thing bought right at the market peak.
Sigh..at least I’m earning some swap since it’s a long position.
What broker are you using btw?
May 29th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
i am using interbankfx:) i dont mind losing trades as long as i have a profit at the end but after 9 successful trades and 1 single big losing trade i am on negative..thats what i dont like about it.. i hope it gets better over time..do you think it will do better later? or at least get a positive ROI?
-270 thats a lot of loss..i bit 2 lots once so that means it would have been -520 pips..wow thats a lot to lose..i should change it to 1 mini lot and increase the t/p 25 intead.:)
May 29th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
I’m on IBFX too. Yes I know how much it sucks when you see those successive wins and then baam, a giant loss. The makers of this EA claim a 96% win rate - so far in demo forward testing this has proven to be roughly the case (see the pdf statements).
I can’t promise anything Mike, but I think you should give it bit more time.
Out of curiosity how long did you demo test this product before you placed it live?
I’d strongly suggest you NOT use 2 lots for your account size try 0.50 or max 1 - 0.50 would be best AFTER you’ve regained your loses. For every 2K add an extra lot. This should be a fairly conservative way to trade yet.
May 29th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
oh ok..i will follow your intructions:) ive tested FA for 3 weeks before going live and on my test i didnt have a single losing trade so felt confident but then when i started live trading baam a huge losing trade..i also believe that 96% of positive trade is correct because i haven’t lost any on my demo but 15 successful 20 dollar trade with 1 negative 500 dollar trade doesn’t make sense:)
May 29th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
wow..haven’t lost any on your demo..I think eventually you would’ve had you let it do its thing for a while longer. I’ve demo tested this thing for 3 months before going live. And even then I’m still not 100% confident in it - hence only a “tentative recommendation” at the end of my latest review.
I was thinking maybe the reason you had no loses is parhaps because you just got lucky and the EURO was in its strong uptrend at the time. Did the EA place any short positions? If not then I can bet you your entire account that it was mainly due to the bullish trend in the EURO.
May 29th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
yea it had lots of short position..and many that took 2 days before closing with a 20 profit..but i was surprised that i had no loss..i was thinking that i will be making 6 figure income soon but when i started live..the story changed..it actually gave me 7 consecutive positive trades and i was so happy..but the last one just went -200 and then i had 2 more positive trades after that
May 29th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Ok, good that it opened short trades - I’d be worried if it did not.
Lol..6 figures eh, c’mon now :) come back to reality…do you think if that was the case this Marcus Leary guys would sell us the EA? He makes more from selling it than he could from trading it - willing to bet on that. Also I found myself getting called by their marketing team soliciting me for personal forex trading courses - and no they weren’t cheap. Ok, maybe this is a bit off topic and I’m ranting a bit, but I’m sleepy darn it so I think I’ll retire for the day.
It’s been nice chatting with you Mike. I’d suggest you visit my forum and hunt the Forex Autopilot thread. We can continue this conversation over there.
Cheers.
Alan
May 30th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
hey how are you? 1 question so if my current trade is -20 that means by sunday it will close that trade automatically? then how can i control that? should i stop all the trades today?
May 30th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
since it closes all the trades on the 1st of every month so if i have a floating balance of
-40 that means i will lose all the trades?
May 30th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
I’m not to sure of this but I think it takes into account the size of the position and the length of time it was open for. If you looks at one of my demo performance statements you’ll notice a losing trade being closed exactly at the end of the month. I can’t remember exactly but another forex autopilot user confirmed this.
Here is what I found on another site (response from FAPS support):
“…If it does not happen (no market condition to reverse the trend) then the system will close the losing trade on 1st of april.”…..
May 30th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
I don’t think you should stop the trades. Let the robot close it by itself. Also I hope you lowered your leverage too.
May 31st, 2008 at 2:18 am
i did i lowered it to 1 lot but i did increase take profit to 25 :) is that ok?
May 31st, 2008 at 3:53 am
that’s fine :)….better safe than sorry..now at worst the most you can lose in a sing trade is say around $450. You can decrease the lot size to 0.50 if you feel more comfortable trading with 50 cents per pip.
May 31st, 2008 at 8:45 pm
as long as i make profit at the end i am ok with it:)
May 31st, 2008 at 9:23 pm
yes, that’s the general idea…if it don’ta bring you prof’it, you must’a quit!
May 31st, 2008 at 11:11 pm
but most people who use this make money so i am pretty confident :)
June 5th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Alan i have a question! today is thursday but tomorrow is 1st friday of the month but if my autopilot is still trading until tomorrow what do i do?? do i have to stop the trading?? or can i switch the autopilot with the NFP pilot? what do you recommend?
June 6th, 2008 at 1:27 am
Well, if you believe the NFP report will go against FAPS’s current position then you may wish to turn it off and close its current position.
When I demoed the FAPS I just kept it on and let it take whatever the market can dish.
It’s up to you, but you may want to leave FAPS alone AND attach NFP Pilot to a different chart and let it trade the NFP report.
June 23rd, 2008 at 10:58 pm
Hi,
I too am testing the FAPS but I do not understand what use the trailing stop is. The bot will keep trading until it reaches the 20 pip gain so what use is the trailing stop as it will close the trade when it has made the 20 pips.
Regards
Ron
June 28th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
im invest in finanzasforex :)
ajtimfx@gmail.com
Regards
July 1st, 2008 at 1:48 pm
I heard and know about finanzasforex, but for some reason I don’t trust them. I definitely will NEVER go with a pooled account. If I’m not mistaken they have a traditional manged forex account option as well, but I’m not too sure.
I conclusion I think I’ll stick to manual trading and a select group of EAs.
I wish you luck with FinanzasForex however :)
Cheers,
Alan
July 5th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
They say if it is too good to be true it probably(certainly)is. Is that not what we are up against here, gentlemen.
I set up both FAP and Range Trader and went on a holiday about 10 days later. Range Trader made two trades, lost $7 and quit. FAP traded OK but had what I thought were some pretty serious drawdowns($300 on a $5000 account). I asked about Stops. “oh we don’t use Stops.” I left for an 18 cruise and on my return found both sytems shutdown, RangeTrader still -$7 but FAP had experienced a $2300 drawdown and had shutoff.
I received a new version of RangeTrader about month ago - set it up. Week 1: +$1100(Peter, I love you); Week 2: -$1500; Week 3: -$800(on a $5000 Demo Acct fortunately).
I hear a new version or update is pending for both platforms. Is this not what we used to call “curve fitting”. A couple of weeks pass and we’re not doing so well. So we tweek the system based on the last 3 wks. It works well for a week or so. The market takes a turn - heavy losses. Back to the drawing board, a couple more tweeks and out we come with a update and so the cycle continues.
I am probably well past the period of a “money back quarantee” but I am not certain that I deserve a quarantee. The fact that I “fell” for the idea that I could trade successful while I sleep deserves to be hoodwinked out of a couple hundred dollars.
But do we ever learn. I will get 2 or 3 eMails next week and I will swallow their product “hook, line and sinker” If I had all the money I have spent over the last 15-16 yrs on trading system, software, too say nothing of my loses in real $$ I wouldn’t need to trade. I could simply sit in my home office and clip coupons.
Good Trading, Everyone
Butch
(Alberta, Canada)
July 9th, 2008 at 10:19 am
I am slowly coming to the same conclusion Butch. After the disappointment with the old version of the RangeTrader “Peter Parsons” finally released a new version 3.91 - so it remains to be seen if this version is any better. Other users have mentioned that this new version is very dangerous for small accounts, and from my live testing I can definitely see this too so I’m going to stop using it.
As for the forex autopilot I’m currently testing the latest version (the one that allows you multiple open trades) and will report my findings over here.
If you wish to discuss this EA (forex autopilot) I’d recommend you visit this thread on my forum:
http://www.moneyguruforum.com/expert-advisors-metatrader-4/6089-forex-autopilot-system.html
or to discuss RangeTrader visit my other forum at:
http://www.rangetraderforum.com
October 2nd, 2008 at 1:26 pm
I have used the settings at the begining of ths blog for 2 days and lost almost all my demo money.
am i doing something wrong?? it looks that the standard setting was doing great and a couple of blows got me almost to the starting point.
Thanks
October 2nd, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Dan are you using the absolute latest version? Move your mouse cursor on top of the Forex Autopilot EA in your MT4 Navigator menu and see what text comes up. It should say “ForexAutopilot sep08″ at the end.
If you don’t have this latest version go to the download section of your members website and download it.
Also with the latest version you may want to trade with default settings. My custom settings above were intended for the previous version. Since then I stopped using them so I don’t know if they work well on the new version of FAP.
Also what lot size are you trading with? You said you nearly lost all your demo money, so I’m wondering if you took on excessive risk by over leveraging your account. So I’m wondering what type of demo account you have - mini or standard - and what what lot size you’re using.
October 19th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Hi,
I’m recently new to FX but have bee studying for just over a month using these EAs. I’ve purchased FAPS, ForexKiller, PointBreak5.0 and ForexSuccessFormula. I’ve traded stocks and futures before so I’m not entirely green to trading. I did spreadbetting for a short while so it was a good introduction to currencies.
I’ve found that FAPS will need adjustment from default settings. I wasn’t comfortable with the riding drawdowns, especially when I’m monitoring it. I believe it uses the Moving Average as a fundmental rule for placing the trades, before using whatever internal indicators to trigger entry/exit. (Note: I’ve not joined the premium Users Group, nor read all the posts Alan’s made, so I can’t verify the MA trigger for certain). I’ve “optimised” for $1000 starting capital as that is my intended Live amount. (This is not backtesting optimisation, just my tests during this last week).
Using EUR/USD M1 settings: Lot size=0.5, Max open trades 4, Stop Loss=0, Trake Profit=10, Trailing Stop=10. Monitor at end of day and exit any drawdowns between ($300) - ($500) but this can be discretionary: I look at trends from other timeframes to see if drawdown has potential to reverse back into profit (eg. D1, H4, H1 timeframes). My initial test had me start a $5K Standard IBFX demo account. This is now $7753 after 3 days last week, beginning with default settings, then after minor tweaks. I think it’s better to take $50×20 a day (eg this was on the 16th OCT using the above settings), than to TRY and get 1 trade @ $200 or even $100. Eg.I saw 20 PIPS take profit almost hit target, but then watch the trend reverse at 18 PIPS. This happened alot when I first ran using default. So I stress reviewing drawdowns at End Of Day.
Alan, do you have any views on strategies for Mini Accounts? I want to run this live on a IBFX mini with $1K startup.
Cheers,
Vlad
October 19th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
To be honest I haven’t demo forward tested FAPS with such a low Take Profit level. At the moment I use 35 pips take profit with a 15 pip trailing stop.
If you’re gonna run it on a $1K mini account I’d suggest you trade with very small lot sizes - perhaps 0.05 - 0.10 mini lots (this is assuming with 1 max trade) If you are going to use more than one trade at a time I’d suggest you lower your lot size to maintain the same risk ration. 2-5% of your account’s balance is a reasonable risk level.
You can also set a relatively wide stop loss if you’re nervous about taking it live. I’d suggest a SL somewhere between 300 to 600 pips. I’m currently using 300 and so far it has been sufficiently wide to cover market swings.
October 24th, 2008 at 5:51 am
Hi. Overall FAP is aiight. Unfortunately, I’ve had 2 monitor it every hr or so because it occasionally enters trade positions @ very wrong times. Been trading (with very high risk, i might add) for about 2 weex now on my live account. Lost approx £4980 so far, made £6720 so i’m £1740 up. I can live with dat. Hopefully, I get 2 make d same amount 4 d next 2 weex.
October 24th, 2008 at 9:53 am
One solution to that is to set a modest (300+ pip) SL.
Checkout my performance statement here:
http://alansmoneyblog.com/2008/10/23/forex-autopilot-is-kicking-ass/
Best of luck with your account!
September 28th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Hy all:)
I just gonn live with this http://FTP.
Aim using SL-30,TP-16,maxorders-1,TypeMa_0_3-1, 0.02 fix lot.
I have now 394$ I started with 380$ and within 1 day i make 14$ ,1 lossing trade of-6$ .
You can see me live at–
http://gabgab27.mt4stats.com/
People share your settings!!! so that we can get Stronger!! this is excellent software!!
what do you think of my settings?
have a great day ppl!:)
September 28th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Gabriel, the best place to share FAP settings is at the Forex Autopilot Forum over here:
http://www.forexautopilotforum.com
December 16th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Here’s what works for me every time: Lot size 0.1 Stop Loss 20 PIPs and Take Profit 20 PIPs. I set no Trailing Stop.