BrendanTTA
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Sorry about that, the name is quite misleading.
hi guys
havent posted for a while but have followed this from the start,
sandy hope you are well and doing good,
off topic got mailed from the following, cant get a search on him, any info anyone
Colins Private Member Club
"system500" apparantley banned
trade share plus
any feedback appreciated
havent posted for a while but have followed this from the start,
sandy hope you are well and doing good,
off topic got mailed from the following, cant get a search on him, any info anyone
Colins Private Member Club
"system500" apparantley banned
trade share plus
any feedback appreciated
If you search for system 500, you get a very similar site to Colins Private Member Club. Eric Cole is apparently MD of trading company that is also listed on Colins site. All a bit dubious to me......
I am a member of something similar, with genuine guys, running what is essentially an live trading room, but with an educational bias. They trade live, so I am able to take trades while I learn how to do this for real. It's not for everybody, but if you are interested in this sort of thing, they are FX500 Club.
I am a member of something similar, with genuine guys, running what is essentially an live trading room, but with an educational bias. They trade live, so I am able to take trades while I learn how to do this for real. It's not for everybody, but if you are interested in this sort of thing, they are FX500 Club.
Just looking back over Concept results for the year to date, if anyone is still taking the signals, it looks as if the pair not to trade is the EURJPY, as it has only had losses. I remember from all the analysis I did last year that this pair tended to produce loss after loss, but just once in a while produced a really good profit.
Updating my previous posts re forex trading with robots:
2008
1 Dec Starting Capital £100
19 Dec £100 withdrawn.
31 Dec Equity at £2,070
2009
30 Jan Equity at £3,248
27 Feb Equity at £2,953
27 Mar Equity at £3,698
30 Apr Equity at £4,576
29 May Equity at £5441
5 Jun Equity at £5746
12 Jun Equity at £6060
19 Jun Equity at £5702
26 Jun Equity at £5679
A disappointing week! I just hope things pick up next week, but I have a bad feeling. I had high hopes that this month I would hit profit of £1,000 or more, but now I think I’ll be lucky to just break even.
Both FAPT and MegaDroid only trade at night when the market is supposed to be quiet, but recently there have been uncharacteristic price movements. Both these EAS are scalpers ie look to take profit on very small moves, so are very sensitive. Last time I had a poor month was in February, but that was down to another robot which I stopped as a consequence.
I am in the market for some good new robots, if only to diversify, but they are hard to come by. In the meantime I am doing some manual trading on my other account, trading the break-out from the opening range of GBPUSD, and restricting myself to one trade a day. Manual trading for me is usually disastrous, but so far so good!
Updating my previous posts re forex trading with robots:
2008
1 Dec Starting Capital £100
19 Dec £100 withdrawn.
31 Dec Equity at £2,070
2009
30 Jan Equity at £3,248
27 Feb Equity at £2,953
27 Mar Equity at £3,698
30 Apr Equity at £4,576
29 May Equity at £5441
5 Jun Equity at £5746
12 Jun Equity at £6060
19 Jun Equity at £5702
26 Jun Equity at £5679
A disappointing week! I just hope things pick up next week, but I have a bad feeling. I had high hopes that this month I would hit profit of £1,000 or more, but now I think I’ll be lucky to just break even.
Both FAPT and MegaDroid only trade at night when the market is supposed to be quiet, but recently there have been uncharacteristic price movements. Both these EAS are scalpers ie look to take profit on very small moves, so are very sensitive. Last time I had a poor month was in February, but that was down to another robot which I stopped as a consequence.
I am in the market for some good new robots, if only to diversify, but they are hard to come by. In the meantime I am doing some manual trading on my other account, trading the break-out from the opening range of GBPUSD, and restricting myself to one trade a day. Manual trading for me is usually disastrous, but so far so good!
As you yourself say, trading yourself usually proves disastrous. However, since you became a caretaker of robots I can see you have found your niche. The name of the game here is to make money and that is what you are now doing with your team of robots. Far better to manage winning robots than to trade your own analysis and lose...
The problem with the mass market robots is that the traders employed by the MT4 brokers aren't all brain dead. They may be half asleep in the late evening, but if a hundred or so trades all come in at the same time on the same pair their antenna pick up. Change the magic number then they won't know.... Great idea, but some won't. A quick analysis by the broker will reveal many magic numbers the same. Bingo! as the brits say, we know which robot this is.... 'Let's sabotage them'....
I suspect that over the next few years robotic trading will continue to improve. However, be aware that MT4 is a platform that exists for the benefit of the brokers and has inbuilt into it features that you may find rather undesirable, and most certainly not for the profitable benefit of its users.
In the meanwhile, trading price action based on what you see is all that's needed.
The problem with the mass market robots is that the traders employed by the MT4 brokers aren't all brain dead. They may be half asleep in the late evening, but if a hundred or so trades all come in at the same time on the same pair their antenna pick up. Change the magic number then they won't know.... Great idea, but some won't. A quick analysis by the broker will reveal many magic numbers the same. Bingo! as the brits say, we know which robot this is.... 'Let's sabotage them'....
I suspect that over the next few years robotic trading will continue to improve. However, be aware that MT4 is a platform that exists for the benefit of the brokers and has inbuilt into it features that you may find rather undesirable, and most certainly not for the profitable benefit of its users.
In the meanwhile, trading price action based on what you see is all that's needed.
Yes, it's a jungle. There is no technically pure automatic trading. And even in manual trading the little guy is at the mercy of the big players who muck about with the price action. We each just have to find an empirical method that "works".
BTW my two disappointing weeks are mirrored by many others who are using the same robots, just as winning weeks have been.
BTW my two disappointing weeks are mirrored by many others who are using the same robots, just as winning weeks have been.
The advantage is with the small trader who trades his own analysis. Operating alone she slips under the radar of the broker until her lot size becomes large enough to attract attention. Assuming she trades successfully over a period her broker is likely to trade with her under those circumstances. Mass market robots and systems such as Concept will always attract broker attention from the off. After all, there's a huge gain to be had by simply opposing the 500 or so parallel trades and doing your utmost to ensure the stops are spiked out.... How many times have Concept users, for example, found their platform takes them out and then heads straight off in the desired direction. Some may be genuine moves but many will be broker action using their own price data overlay and broker friendly features and plugins inbuilt in their platform.
Robot production is no doubt increasing exponentially. This is because the Forex Mafia appreciates just how profitable they are (selling them to you guys, not trading them) There will be the odd one or two that work ok amidst a sea of junk. But, being mass market, the brokers will quickly be on to them and rapidly neutralise them. The ones that do work well aren't mass market. They operate singly and are used in the shark pool by financial institutions. They are not available to the average Joe.
Sorry to sound so negative, but the more I read these boards the more I see the need for a dose of realism.
Remember, your broker ain't your buddy.
Robot production is no doubt increasing exponentially. This is because the Forex Mafia appreciates just how profitable they are (selling them to you guys, not trading them) There will be the odd one or two that work ok amidst a sea of junk. But, being mass market, the brokers will quickly be on to them and rapidly neutralise them. The ones that do work well aren't mass market. They operate singly and are used in the shark pool by financial institutions. They are not available to the average Joe.
Sorry to sound so negative, but the more I read these boards the more I see the need for a dose of realism.
Remember, your broker ain't your buddy.
Willy
Junior member
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Many brokers aren't but why use them as long as there are other brokers who offer MT4 without interference?
Two I know of are Interbank FX and FXCM, there are probably several more. And if your trading is not MT4 dependent there are many choices - brokers just offering quotes from many banks and spreads as low as half a pip. Of course you'll then have to pay commission but that's much cheaper than a 2 pip spread.
I may have overlooked something but why would people use all those brokers they are suspecting of foul play when there are alternatives?
You make it sound very simple, but it isn't. The ECN and STP brokers have flexible spreads, because they take prices directly from the liquidity suppliers. Yes, sometimes the spreads are exceptionally low, but equally they can widen considerably, and far beyond what is offered by the bucket shop brokers, if liquidity is thin. For scalping this can cause serious issues, and destroy or deny trades that might have worked with a bucket shop. Another issue is whether or not you get a fill at the first attempt. Do not assume that an ECN or STP broker offering market fills will be any better than the bucket shop offering instant fills. Seeing a price quoted is not the same as getting a fill at that price! I believe that broker messing with prices is possible, but most often they are keen to see you get a fill, and in this they provide a service, which the harsher "open market" doesn't.
Several bucket shop brokers also offer an STP service, and some insist that all scalping is done on STP.
I am with Alpari UK, nominally a bucketshop. They give an excellent service and accept scalping. Soon they will offer an alternative STP service, and I wonder if they will insist that scalping traders move to that......
If it were as simple as you appear to think, everyone (brokers and traders) would go the same route!
Subscription Renewal
Have any Concept uses had a request for the yearly renewal of the signal subscription fees. For most of us who started approx this time last year it must be about due, mine is and the silence is deafening!
It must say something about the validity of the company/service if they cant be bothered to request a subscription renewal from existing subscribers what do we know the new users dont?
Or is it a case of "don't ask as a refusal may cause offence"
Simon
Have any Concept uses had a request for the yearly renewal of the signal subscription fees. For most of us who started approx this time last year it must be about due, mine is and the silence is deafening!
It must say something about the validity of the company/service if they cant be bothered to request a subscription renewal from existing subscribers what do we know the new users dont?
Or is it a case of "don't ask as a refusal may cause offence"
Simon
As it happens, today is the anniversary of my starting ConceptFX. I haven't had any renewal offer, but then I am assuming I am in bad odour having been so knocking of it on this thread once I "woke up to it". How about you stevespray, you started in May if I remember correctly with a big account, and were keen to keep trading even in the downturn. Have you renewed?
Hi Sandy,
I notice that Concept FX do show a loss for the second half of 2008 from the end of June balance of £93,090 down to £89,625 at the end of December, a loss of £3,465, although the overall gain for the year was £64,625. Looking back over your posts it appears that you started to doubt Concept FX in September 2008 having joined on 1 July. Does this mean that you didn't give the system long enough / you were unlucky enough to join when Concept was having a bad patch?
Their overall long term results seem to be very good and they did show a £64,625 gain for 2008 as a whole. They are currently showing a £6,940 gain in 2009 to date. Is it that you joined at the wrong time, or is it not possible for a subscriber to match the results they publish?
Edit: I have just made a graph of the performance results from the Concept FX web site and it is clear that drawdowns of six months are to be expected. 2008 was clearly the best performance so far, but all of it happened in the first half and the second half was a loser. If you look at other years: 2006 (yellow) didn't do much in the first six months but then took off for a period between about 140 and 220 days and then stagnated for the rest of the year, 2007 (green) had a long down period between about day 70 and day 270, 2005 (orange) part of "building the bank" didn't do much until about day 190. Having looked at this graph I am changing my thinking about Concept FX. IF (and for me it's a big if) the results on their web site are to be believed AND can be reproduced by a punter, then over a long period the system looks very profitable. Maybe that's why they don't chase people for subscription renewals; if someone has worked the system over a year and achieved these results then they will be anxious to renew . . . I feel I need to add at this point I have no connection with Concept FX and have never even spoken to them, just received emails from them.
Regards - David
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Reasonable question.
If I had started on 1 Jul 08 with a trading account of £25,000 and followed precisely every trade that Concept signalled until today 1 Jul 09, I would now have an account worth £25,225. That is to say I would have made less than 1%! During that time I would have suffered a drawdown of around £7,000 (I haven't calculated it precisly), and suffered a lot of heartburn. What is much more to the point is that I paid £2,000 for the privilege of receiving the signals, and even that discounted cost would not have been amortized by Concept using a large trading account. So overall, starting with £25,000, I would have lost around 8%. Someone who paid £4,000 (and many did) would have lost more like 16%. And all that assumes I had followed the signals exactly and that every trade had triggered precisely.
Most of us did not always get the trades triggering successfully, and some no doubt made some silly mistakes to their disadvantage (Some silly mistakes in trading can of course work in your favour!)
Now take the more likely position of someone who decided to start with an account of only £2500. In the most perfect circumstances he would have made the grand sum of £22.50 in the course of the year. But he would have laid out money buying the signals service, amounting to £2000, £3000 or £4000 depending on the deal. And remember the service is supposed to terminate unless you pay an annual renewal fee of £500. So effectively the layout ends up as the fee for only only one year of signals. Clearly the percentage of loss for someone who paid £4000 and started out with a minimum account of £2000 is around 66%. I started with an account of £4000, and had no trading losses to speak of as I intervened to stop losing trades. I paid "only" £2000 for Concept, so my own net loss was 33% of my layout.
Early adopters may have made some money or at least recovered their purchase price, assuming they didn't lose later.
This system was put on the market as far as I am aware in about April 2008. And results on the website do seem to be a reasonable record of what would have happened if you had followed the system from that date or thereabouts. Many people who have written on this thread can testify to that.
What is much less clear (actually I would use the word foggy) is whether or not the so called results which predate the market launch are actual live trading results, and not a curve fitted backtest. The ConceptFX people simply claim the results just to be "results". They do not categorically deny the backtest hypothesis or confirm that these are live trading results (still less offer or agree to give audited evidence!). The more you press this matter the more evasive the Concept guys get.
I strongly suspect that the results up to at least Dec 2007 are curve fitted back tests. The fact that the results of what may be forward testing (and possibly live testing) from say Jan 08 are positive is consistent with the curve fitting hypothesis. However when the market "changed" as is claimed, ConceptFX couldn't keep the profits flowing.
Don't trust the so called long term results prior to Jan 08. And don't buy ConceptFX on the basis that they give a reasonable view of what the future could hold.
If you buy this system for say £4000 and start trading with £2000, you will need to treble your money in a year just to break even. From what I have seen, you are more likely to lose 2/3rds of your money!
Check my sums.
And if you are still thinking of jumping in, read the small print and BELIEVE IT. Do not get carried away, like I and many others did.
sharpesville
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Sharpesville
Hi Sandy
Sorry to pop up out of the blue (and apologies if it's not allowed as a newbie) but I've just spent some time backtracking and reading your commentary on the MegaDroid system. I started trading about 6 months ago using Wealthbuilder with limited success and recently graduated to Winning Dow Signals with significantly better results. I picked up MegaDroid the other day and wondered if you were still making serious profits and if you had any settings reccomendations?
Cheers
Hi Sandy
Sorry to pop up out of the blue (and apologies if it's not allowed as a newbie) but I've just spent some time backtracking and reading your commentary on the MegaDroid system. I started trading about 6 months ago using Wealthbuilder with limited success and recently graduated to Winning Dow Signals with significantly better results. I picked up MegaDroid the other day and wondered if you were still making serious profits and if you had any settings reccomendations?
Cheers
Hello Sandy,
Looking at the timestamps I guess you may have been writing your reply as I was editing my post to add the performance chart - sorry about that. Now that you can see the performance chart and accompanying waffle, would you care to comment on what if you had started Concept FX with a £25,000 trading account on 1 Jan 2009 rather than 1 Jul.
Your comments about the validity of the Concept "results" data prior to Jan 08 are interesting - but is there reason to question the results after that? 2008 looks like a very good year for Concept if you take the whole year, not just the second half. And if you could reproduce their results of course . . .
I would also be interested to hear more about your experiences with FAPTurbo and MegaDroid. I am planning to give MegaDroid a go myself as a result of your writings.
Regards - David
Depends what you mean by "serious profits"! I am not a MegaDroid guru, and I think you would find more value in visiting the Donnaforex community forum MegaDroid thread at Forex Mega-Droid.
sharpesville
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Hi David,
I did a huge amount of Excel analysis and graphing of ConceptFX results before I bought it, but that really proved nothing other than that they were plausible! I think a forward test over a one year trading cycle is a reasonable test of any system, and a system which can only break even in that context is of very questionable value! Yes of course the ConceptFX results from 1 Jan 09 do show an increase of nearly 28% so far. I don't question that, but you do need to make some allowance for the fact that these results reflect only what you would have got by following the signals exactly. In that sense they are perfectly honest. I doubt they are actual live trading records. Someone starting with an account of £25,000 could reasonably have made nearly £7,000, and that would have covered the cost of Concept and left some over. But would you personally start with so much capital at risk!? If you had started with £2500, you would have made only £700 and you would now be starting to despair of Concept paying for itself within the next 6 months, and before the first year of paid for signals expires!
I don't really question the results from Jan 08 onward, and certainly not those after April which were adequately corroborated by signals users actually received.
I can't add much more as regards FAPT and MegaDroid to what I have already said. Except perhaps that FAPT is struggling a bit at the moment and I am starting to doubt it in the long term.
That is not to say I put it in the same category as ConceptFX: far from it. I have made good money with it and effectively recovered money wasted on ConceptFX and Tradewin before that. The one big practical problem with ConceptFX, whatever validity it may or may not have as a system, and whatever view one takes of the characters selling it, or of the historical "results", is that it is exceptionally expensive relative to the size of trading account most people would want to use it with, and therefore may not even pay for itself.
Why not visit Donnaforex's forum at donnaforex.com
I did a huge amount of Excel analysis and graphing of ConceptFX results before I bought it, but that really proved nothing other than that they were plausible! I think a forward test over a one year trading cycle is a reasonable test of any system, and a system which can only break even in that context is of very questionable value! Yes of course the ConceptFX results from 1 Jan 09 do show an increase of nearly 28% so far. I don't question that, but you do need to make some allowance for the fact that these results reflect only what you would have got by following the signals exactly. In that sense they are perfectly honest. I doubt they are actual live trading records. Someone starting with an account of £25,000 could reasonably have made nearly £7,000, and that would have covered the cost of Concept and left some over. But would you personally start with so much capital at risk!? If you had started with £2500, you would have made only £700 and you would now be starting to despair of Concept paying for itself within the next 6 months, and before the first year of paid for signals expires!
I don't really question the results from Jan 08 onward, and certainly not those after April which were adequately corroborated by signals users actually received.
I can't add much more as regards FAPT and MegaDroid to what I have already said. Except perhaps that FAPT is struggling a bit at the moment and I am starting to doubt it in the long term.
That is not to say I put it in the same category as ConceptFX: far from it. I have made good money with it and effectively recovered money wasted on ConceptFX and Tradewin before that. The one big practical problem with ConceptFX, whatever validity it may or may not have as a system, and whatever view one takes of the characters selling it, or of the historical "results", is that it is exceptionally expensive relative to the size of trading account most people would want to use it with, and therefore may not even pay for itself.
Why not visit Donnaforex's forum at donnaforex.com
Willy
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Hi Sandyw,
My post was a question, not a statement.
And thanks to your reply I now know a lot more. But what does STP stand for?
Willy
STP = Straight Through Processing. That is to say your order goes straight through to the liquidity providers without going through a dealing desk at the broker. But the broker adds a little to the spread, without charging commission.
ECN = Electronic Communications Network. With an ECN your order goes straight to the liquidity providers, and the broker leaves the spread alone but charges commission instead.
MM = Market Maker. This can be called a bucketshop and in this type of brokerage the broker makes a market, ie decides what the bid/offer prices are, based on an underlying market. That is to say he employs dealers, but the dealing may be done automatically for small trades. When the trader wins the broker loses, but still makes something on the spread. Strictly speaking the broker is dealing against the traders. This makes some people suspicious.
SB = Spread Betting. This is a synthetic market, and though it is effectively a way of trading, technically it is betting on price movements. I will leave it to someone else to explain! Big advantage is it is free of Income Tax and Capital Gains Tax. The SB company is dealing against the punters. This also makes some people suspicious.
Anyway, that is my basic understanding. If anyone with more knowledge than me can correct me, they are welcome!
A search on Google may get you better info.
