10 PIPS AT A TIME

[bredin]

Patch, I also spent an inordinate amount of time writing, testing, modifying and finally dumping EAs. If I'd just spent that time learning to trade I would have been so much better off. Ive done grids (similar to what kugan wants), buyzones, psych lines, ma crosses, pivots, a couple of "systems" found on other sites, and as EAs they are all too unreliable to give any real money to. I do test all of them for base profitability (ie can they actually cover the spread+1 pip) and some are 98%+ for this. The real problem is coding exits: so much stuff is painfully subjective.

Yes Ive written an EA that makes money in a relable way: trouble is it only trades 30 or so times a year, and makes so much less than I do trading manually.....

Cheers
G

[newschool]

I can truely relate to your experiences... Same opinion about selling EAs, that why I do everything free here...

What I can say thought, is that money management is probably equally important than the method on wich the EA is based. Wich means an acceptable SL that doesnt gamble all of your account.
Because this is what we want to do with EAs in the end : put it live without being stressed to death when you are not in front of the computer...

What I am leaning towards to, is an EA that can double an account each year. Yes with some lucky trades or a proper manual trading I can do the same in 1 month. But we have to think relative : the EA would be put on a 100k account, wich means 100k of profit with a small drawdown (with a good money management and acceptable SL like I mentionned before).

EDIT : I will add few things...

Concerning the over-optimization , you also nailed it. When you code something and backtest, you modify it to be positive and then you are really happy. But when you add 3-4 months to the backtest, its magically negative again.
This is the changing market. And exactly why I am now certain that the key to a good EA is SIMPLICITY. Thus I believe in price movement. I am also checking some way to trade based on volume alone, since its the only true indicator.

[Patch]

blubbb - bredin - newschool

The last few posts here have been absolutely fascinating; Thanks !!!

I've been thinking about them all weekend and pondering my direction. I just can't stop believing the future in trading is Auto Trading. One thought that keeps coming back to me is that it has got to be simple. Certainly MA squiggly crosses are simple. But squigglies none the less. The simplicity of the BuyZone is the very thing that keeps drawing me back to it. As I've been thinking about simplicity and the BZ this weekend I may have come up with something simply, tying the BZ with the one way trading Rat, be it red or green. I will keep you posted.

Patch
In VA
The BZ Rat