Manual Trading Versus EAs Trading, Which Do You Prefer?

For me, I prefer Manual, cos am in total control not some Damn EAs, i have not use one and will never use one.
   Which do u prefer?

every ea works just in a specific market condition, and if that condition changes it will loose. a good coded ea has security features build in to prevent loosing the hole balance if the change occurs. however, a skilled manual trader can beat every ea, because he can adapt to every market condition in no time.
also in order to write a profitable ea, you need to be able to trade manual profitable first.
so there is really no need to use an ea. often people say they have no time to trade manual and thats why they use an ea, however you can be profitable with a decent return with just spending 1 hour every week for your analysis, trading weekly e.g..

so manual trading is the best :). the only reason i can see many are using eas is cause they are lazy. just search google for an ea, attach it to chart and expecting to get nice returns with no work. unfortunatelly thats not how it works, even in life nothing comes without work, discipline, passion and desire.

to_ul posted:
    every ea works just in a specific market condition, and if that condition changes it will loose. a good coded ea has security features build in to prevent loosing the hole balance if the change occurs. however, a skilled manual trader can beat every ea, because he can adapt to every market condition in no time.
also in order to write a profitable ea, you need to be able to trade manual profitable first.
so there is really no need to use an ea. often people say they have no time to trade manual and thats why they use an ea, however you can be profitable with a decent return with just spending 1 hour every week for your analysis, trading weekly e.g..

so manual trading is the best :). the only reason i can see many are using eas is cause they are lazy. just search google for an ea, attach it to chart and expecting to get nice returns with no work. unfortunatelly thats not how it works, even in life nothing comes without work, discipline, passion and desire.

u are absolutly right

I prefer using EA's. Sure, a skilled manual trader may beat an EA, but these skilled manual traders are few and far between, present company included.

As to EA traders being lazy, well, I hear that a lot. I don't know why people think that.....perhaps it is people that have failed at automated trading trying to justify to themselves why they couldn't cut it.

compuforexpamm posted:
    I prefer using EA's. Sure, a skilled manual trader may beat an EA, but these skilled manual traders are few and far between, present company included.

As to EA traders being lazy, well, I hear that a lot. I don't know why people think that.....perhaps it is people that have failed at automated trading trying to justify to themselves why they couldn't cut it.

I think it is strictly based on one's EGO. To say, My way is better is always a judgement of 'I am better than you' or 'I am smarter than you', strictly speaking just a segregation of value from one person to another. I just want everyone to know that 'My Uncle will beat up your uncle' any day of the week!!! :) That goes for you too Kenny!

Gil, sorry mate, I do not have an ego problem. I know where I stand in the order of things. But I do take issue with people who say I am lazy. I stand by my view that they speak out of failure or ignorance when they say things like that.

Kenny,

I wasn't saying you have an EGO issue. I was saying the argument is invalid because it doesn't matter. :)

You say tomatoe, I say Tomato... etc...

We all like our pizza, woman and politics a little different right. :)

Ah, ok, apologies. I mis-understood:-)

I hear you......

Easytrader,

Although I trade manually, I would love to be able to have an EA trade for me whilst I take some time off to do other stuff or to simply enjoy some extra family-time without compromising on trading-time.

I think EA's are a fantastic way to trade provided they work as well as the author of the EA trading manually. I guess an EA can be successful in the long-term, provided the author keeps tweaking it whenever 'needed' to keep it performing at its best with changing market conditions.

But as someone who enjoys trading and spending time analyzing the market, if I could I would certainly try and enjoy the best of both worlds, to be able to enjoy trading whilst not having to spend hrs at my station.

At the end of the day I guess it all boils down to what works best for each one.

compuforexpamm posted:
I prefer using EA's. Sure, a skilled manual trader may beat an EA, but these skilled manual traders are few and far between, present company included.

As to EA traders being lazy, well, I hear that a lot. I don't know why people think that.....perhaps it is people that have failed at automated trading trying to justify to themselves why they couldn't cut it.

i didnt say every ea trader is lazy, but the big majority is. writing eas takes a lot of time, but as i said, this time is only spend right if you have a manual way to trade which works. many guys start coding mql4 without being able to trade profitable manual, thats the point, trying to find some magical combination of indicator settings which works.
its a nice experience when a trader finds out he doesnt need any indicator at all.

and thats nothing of i am better than you or shit, i went through all those stages and just point out the mistakes many people make, and i made too. (now dont think i say i am at the end of my journey).
sure an ea can be profitable, i dont argue with that, but only if one traded _profitable_ manual first, coded the ea himself and knows everytime why and what went wrong if something happens. thats the point. i bet 90% of ea users have no clue about the code of the ea they are using and are doomed to fail. (now dont think i say your one of those, just pointing out)

i would suggest anyone to trade manual first, cause its a great experience to realize its not all about the method they are using.
trading in the zone is a nice book to get some deeper look into trading :)

a great way to see if commercial ea writer are honest is e.g.:
if someone tells, i am just giving away x copies so it will still work, thats just bs, and you see those guys have really no clue about why markets move... sure there is the issue of requotes, but its not hard to code a protection into the ea to not take the trade anymore if it gets requoted x times.

Acutally you can have the best of both worlds. I like to have a EA that will tell me when a certain condition exists. For example, say I want the stochastic to be above 80 before I will look at a possible trade. I code the EA to monitor the market, and it sends me an email, that I route to my phone as a text message, when the stochastic closes above 80. That way I can go about my business, and when the conditions are right, I can go back to the computer and decide if I want to place the trade. That way I am not glued to the computer, waiting. It also helps by not spending so much time staring at the charts that I talk myself into trades that I should'nt ever get into.
So my point is, that an EA can be whatever you want it to be, sure, it can trade for you, but it doesn't have to to be usfull. It can be another tool in the trading toolbox.

Forex trading can sometimes turn out to be a contest of ideas isn't it? As I have always said, there is no one right successful Forex trading template. There are as many trading strategies as there are forex traders. It is a question of finding a trading strategy that suits you and fine tuning it. Some prefer manual trading, some automated trading and there are those who prefer a mix of both. I can vouch for the last strategy. I am not lazy, neither do I want to spend my day glued to my screen waiting for an opportunity to trade. Some like that but that isn't my cup of tea. A bit of EA's here, a bit of indicators there combine to give me the signal to enter a trade. That's my style. I am an apt manual trader for that is where I started, but I also like working smart.

I totally agree as it is personality based. If you are a control freak, you would never give up anything. If you are a person with vision and wisdom, you know that 2 heads are better than one. If you have a company, would you prefer 1 employee (you), or 6 employees (you plus 5 trading systems). This way you can go to the beach, and still racking in the $$$. If you create a proper infrastructure, you company can run without you being there 24/7.

Think of a good EA as an employee, you have good months and bad months. You don't fire an employee based on a single bad month of performance. I did not create just one EA so that I can put all my egg in one basket. I created 5 EAs with low correlation so that I can diversify and reduce my risk. I look the results based on the net portfolio performance and not at individual EA. It is similar to looking at the big picture and don't micro manage.

My advice on trading with EA: 1) use multiple EAs 2) reset your expectation i.e. 35% per year not 2,000% 3) don't compound your trading lot size 4) don't buy the $98 EA - if it really works why would they sell you for that price.

winsor posted:
3) don't compound your trading lot size

Why would someone not compound it? Yeah, your risk does decrease if you don't compound, but so does your % profit. IMHO if you trust your EA enough, compounding shouldn't be an issue (unless it's some crazy martingale/no stoploss strategy)

ECMartin posted:
    

winsor posted:
3) don't compound your trading lot size

Why would someone not compound it? Yeah, your risk does decrease if you don't compound, but so does your % profit. IMHO if you trust your EA enough, compounding shouldn't be an issue (unless it's some crazy martingale/no stoploss strategy)

Have you heard of a forex trader who compounded his trading account and became an multimillionaire in a few years? If you do, let me know. Compounding is used by scam artists to suck people into trading or to sign up with their trading courses. You probably heard of Warren Buffett who took 30 years to become a billionaire. Rome was not built in one day.

I have to agree with windsor. Nothing personal but everyone says if you compound your profits, you will be a millionaire. Just not realistic. Over 10 years then absolutely!

winsor posted:
    

ECMartin posted:
    

winsor posted:
3) don't compound your trading lot size

Why would someone not compound it? Yeah, your risk does decrease if you don't compound, but so does your % profit. IMHO if you trust your EA enough, compounding shouldn't be an issue (unless it's some crazy martingale/no stoploss strategy)

Have you heard of a forex trader who compounded his trading account and became an multimillionaire in a few years? If you do, let me know

Well, first off, compounding is proven to be a very good decision for me so far. Since April 2010, I went from $1,000 to $2,750 using compounding, while without compounding, I would be at about $1700. That's $1750 profit with compounding against $700 profit without compounding (yes, live account).

I agree that due to liquidity, compounding cannot continue without end, so you cannot make billions of dollars like the backtests or demo accounts show (because they don't count on liquidity; sometimes they aren't shown to scam you, but just from pure ignorance of the marketers), but yeah, you can make a few millions before the compounding stops working due to liquidity (depending on the trading system, this can be 1 million or a few million - THEN you stop compounding and collect much larger profits than you would without it). Compounding is where the biggest potential of the Forex market is, actually.

Also, if you think about it, except liquidity, there's no reason why the compounding wouldn't work (provided you have a quality system and broker), so simply put, it will work until you start having problems with liquidity, but until then you can use it, there's no reason not to.

BTW, Warren Buffet is not a trader, he is an investor - his average 'trade' duration is several years ;-) But yes, there are forex millionaires and most of them wouldn't be where they are without compouding, because they started with a few thousands at most. I don't know any personally, but then again, I don't personally know ANY millionaire and yet, I believe it is possible to become one ;-)

I advise everyone who doesn't believe it is possible to make big profits from anything (not just the Forex market) to read some books by Donald Trump. Your thinking will probably change and your bank account will grow accordingly, whatever you're doing, whether it's Forex trading or anything else ;-)

In the end, one of my favorite mottos is 'If you think $1,000,000 is a lot of money, how the hell do you want to become a millionaire?' :-)

I dunno Windsor,

That compounding is extremely critical in growth. I read an interview a year or two back with a trader who did make millions in a very short period of time. So much so he told all his clients to fob off.

I for one am a very, very firm believer in compounding. If I can add 1 cent to a trade I do. That's why O is such a good broker.

The compounding doesn't help if you have a bad strategy. But on a good strategy it makes the world of difference.

Elkart posted:
    I dunno Windsor,

That compounding is extremely critical in growth. I read an interview a year or two back with a trader who did make millions in a very short period of time. So much so he told all his clients to fob off.

I for one am a very, very firm believer in compounding. If I can add 1 cent to a trade I do. That's why O is such a good broker.

The compounding doesn't help if you have a bad strategy. But on a good strategy it makes the world of difference.

Agreed. I have to learn how to express myself in short like you can :-)