Top 40 Forex Robot Reviews

What is a Forex Robot? (Expert Advisor)


Automated or automatic forex can be defined as the ability to trade forex with the use of a trading program or forex trading robot , without needing a human to physically trade a forex system. With forex, automated trading is an emerging field that began not that long ago.

There are 2 general categories of automated trading:

1. Automated trading through managed forex . Some, though not all, forex managed accounts are traded via automated forex. In either case, the trading is passive in that you don't have to do it. But in the case of automated forex, the trading program or robot executes the trades of their trading system, rather than a human team.

2. When you program your own or someone else's forex system into a program with programming and automatic trading abilities such as WealthLab , or other trading program. Wealth Lab required programming skills (the programming language used is similar to Pascal), while other programs just emerging that will allow you to select parameters and test your system performance.
Advantages of automatic forex trading systems (Forex Robots)

1. You do not have to physically trade the system.

2. Automated trading can take trades at anytime of the day or night. This is particularly important for systems where the performance is increased when taking a majority of trades in the system, which occurs in systems where trading opportunities occur at times when the person may be sleeping or otherwise cannot get to the computer. So being available for trading 24 hours a day, unlike a trader can, will the profitablility of these systems.

3. You can trade multiple systems , such as systems that rely on different types of indicators, or which trade shorter or longer time frames, in order to diversify risk, as well as to smoothen out your equity curve and reduce drawdown.

4. An automated system is unaffected by a trader's psychology , which can sometime cause a system to be not traded properly. If your trader discretion causes you to improve performance, then that is fine, but if it causes a worse performance than if you traded the system mechanically, then this is an issue that is overcome by automated forex.

5. Enables the development of new systems that may be difficult for a human to trade, such as systems with a high frequency of trades using tick data. Designing a system is no longer be limited by how practical or easy it is for a person to trade it.

These benefits of automated forex of course is based on the fact that:

• You have chosen a profitable forex system and has acceptable drawdown, as evidenced by historical performance.

• The forex system is not just mechanical, but is fully programmable .

• You are aware, with either active trading or automated trading, that you must monitor the performance to see that the system is still working as well as its past performance.




This information about Forex Expert Advisors that run on the MetaTrader 4 trading platform.


What is an Expert Advisor ?


A Forex Expert Advisor (a.k.a. Forex Trading Robot, EA, MT-4 EA, Automated Forex Trading Software) is a mechanical trading system written in the MQL-4 programming language and designed to automate trading activities on the MetaTrader 4 platform. Expert Advisors can be programmed to alert you of a trading opportunity and can also trade your account automatically managing all aspects of trading operations from sending orders directly to your broker’s server to automatically adjusting stop loss, trailing stops and take profit levels.

Expert Advisors for MetaTrader 4 are all unique and different in the rules they follow to enter and exit the market. Expert Advisors eliminate emotional trading decisions that cripple novice trading accounts. Forex Expert Advisors allow investors to exercise a very strict trading system without falling outside pre-programmed parameters and it is this rock solid consistency one of the features that make these programs so attractive to serious investors. Am Expert Advisors can also eliminate the emotional trading decisions that usually cripple novice Forex trading accounts. Forex Expert Advisors exercise unmatched discipline when trading and can be designed to evaluate more parameters at the same time than any human could keep an eye on at once.




All of the technical indicators that are available in the MT-4 platform can be brought to bear in the logic used by an Expert Advisor in almost any way that one can think of thanks to the MQL-4 programming language. All types of moving averages (simple, exponential, etc.), RSI, CCI, etc. You can also create your own custom indicator and call upon it from an Expert Advisor.

There are many different types of MT-4 Expert Advisors depending on their intended application. Some are designed specifically to trade news events and remain out of the market all other times while other MT-4 Expert Advisors are meant to remain active 24x7. Experienced traders who have their own fine tuned manual trading systems sometimes hire MQL-4 programmers to automate their systems thereby creating custom MT-4 Expert Advisors. All expert advisors have the same goal and that is to automate trading operations and generate a profit while doing so.

Expert Advisors make use of technical indicators in order to assess market conditions and make trading decisions. In order for the Expert Advisor to work, it must be attached to an individual chart on the MetaTrader 4 Forex trading platform. An MT-4 Expert Advisor can take into consideration dozens of different factors in an instant in order to decide what to do next. This ability to consider such a broad range of price influencing factors coupled with the discipline of a mechanical trading system devoid of emotion leads to a very successful trading combination.

Throughout the pages of this web site you will find more detailed information about Forex Expert Advisors. If you have a question about Forex Expert Advisors for the MetaTrader 4 platform and you don’t see it here please send us an email and we will try our best to respond as soon as possible.


How does a Forex Expert Advisor work ?


The program works by calculating the different indicators that it was designed to use and take actions when the market conditions meet the correct criteria as described in the source code of the Expert Advisor.

Fore Example. A simple expert advisor may say something like this:

"If the 9 and 20 day moving averages cross with the 9 day MA above the 20 MA and the RSI is higher than 50 then open a long position (buy)"

That is just an example. You can assign countless conditions for entering and exiting the market as well as managing trades for trailing stops and multiple take profit levels.

An MT-4 Expert Advisor is usually divided into three parts: A startup or ‘init’ function, a main function and a ‘deinit’ or cleanup function. The Expert Advisor will run through its startup function once upon startup and will run through its ‘deinit’ or clean-up function once at the end. In the mean time, the MT-4 Expert Advisor program runs through a cycle of its main function over and over with every incoming tick while it is attached to a chart and active. Once running, the Expert Advisor will not start another cycle for a new tick if it is still in the middle of processing the previous one.

Here is a simple outline of what a simple expert advisor could be programmed to do.

(This would be the 'main' part of the EA and takes place every time a tick comes in.)

1- Check my account. Is there enough equity to open a trade? if so, continue. If not, end.

2- Are there any open trades right now?

2a- If there are, do they need to be closed or do they need their trailing stop adjusted? (do so if needed and exit.)

2b- If there are no open trades, are the market conditions right to open one? (do so if needed and exit. )

3- End.



How to use an Expert Advisor

In order to make use of an Expert Advisor you have to install it on MetaTrader and then attach it to the appropriate chart on MetaTrader 4. This is fairly simple as will be described below. If there are any instructions included with your Expert Advisor you should read them in their entirety.

#1- First, you have to put the Expert Advisor in a place where MetaTrader 4 will be able to use it. In most installations of MetaTrader 4 that place is C:\Program Files\MetaTrader 4\experts The actual Expert Advisor is a file without an icon that ends with .EX4

#2- Now that the Expert Advisor is in the correct location within your computer, re-start MetaTrader 4.

#3- When MetaTrader 4 starts up again you will now see the new Expert Advisor on the left navigation menu.


Learn to Make your own Expert Advisors

In order to make your own expert advisor you have to learn the MQL-4 programming language. If you already know C programming then MQL-4 will be very easy as they are quite similar. If you do not know either language, it would be prudent to take a course in C programming. Then, once you understand the structure of C language, MQL-4 will be a snap. If you are not a programmer, do not let this stop you from learning to make your own Expert Advisors.

The following web site has all the official documentation on the MQL-4 programming language.

http://docs.mql4.com



The Different Types of Expert Advisors


There are various different types of Expert Advisors for the MetaTrader 4 platform. Here we will discuss some of the more common types. This is by no means a comprehensive list. There can be other types of Expert Advisors based on the creativity of the programmers who make them.

News Expert Advisor - This is a type of hedging EA. The News EA is designed to take advantage of news events and the large price shifts that can occur during financial news releases.

Breakout Expert Advisor - Designed to open a trade when the price breaks through predefined support and resistance levels.

Hedge Expert Advisor - This is any EA that plays two separate and opposing positions and minimizes the loss on one while facilitating maximum profit on the good trade.

Scalper Expert Advisor - This is the type of EA that will get your account canceled or at least heavily restricted by a broker. It aims to secure small profits as soon as they are available.

NEW! Adaptive Expert Advisor - A new type of Expert Advisor as taken front an center in the struggle for profits. This second generation EA is much more adaptive to its environment than its predecessors and hence much more profitable.

Traditional Expert Advisors are static. You plug in some parameters and the Expert Advisor goes to work with those parameters and makes no adjustments for changes in the market or its own win/loss ratio. This is a rudimentary approach to the challenge. Many folks attempt to find good settings and although they often find parameters that are profitable on the short term, they ultimately fail to find settings that are consistently profitable over time because the systems simply do not have the capability to adapt to the changing market.

Enter Adaptive Expert Advisors or Second Generation EAs.

Adaptive EA are systems that are capable of perceiving their environment, categorizing it and using the resulting information to make adjustments to their own operations with the purpose of achieving higher profitability with minimum draw down.

There are different ways to accomplish this. Some EA use automated optimization, others use multiple money-management systems that are triggered at different times depending on the situation. Some, like HalcyonFX’s new M7 Sidewinder PRO, do all of the above.

Intelligent systems like Sidewinder are new to the market and have had very little exposure to mass trading which makes them even more attractive as fresh, unspoiled systems are often more profitable than the beaten down ones that have already been around the block a while already. However, because of their relative novelty, there is virtually no long term data to firmly determine their benefits over traditional systems.


What is MQL-4 ?

MQL-4 is short for Meta Quotes Language version 4. This is the programming language created by MetaQuotes Software Corp. (http://www.metaquotes.net) that automates the MetaTrader client terminal.

The following web site has all the official documentation on the MQL-4 programming language.

http://docs.mql4.com


*What is MetaTrader 4 ?

MetaTrader 4 is a free trading platform developed by MetaQuotes Software Corp. (http://www.metaquotes.net) and supported by many different Forex brokers all over the world. MetaTrader 4 easy to learn and very user friendly.

One of the unique qualities of MetaTrader 4 is the ability to automate trading activities through the use of an Expert Advisor.


Can I run more than one Expert Advisor on the same account/client terminal ?

Yes. You can run multiple instances of an Expert Advisor on the same MetaTrader 4 client terminal. As long as all of the Expert Advisors that you are running in the same client terminal have been designed to get along with each other on the same terminal. (not all Expert Advisors can get along on the same terminal) Mainly because they will try to manage each other’s open trades. Programmers get around this by using magic numbers in the market entrance part of the source code of the Expert Advisor.

There are also platform limitations. Only one Expert Advisor can communicate with the trading server at any one time. If multiple Expert Advisors are active on the same terminal and more than one try to communicate with the trading server you will get "Trade context busy" errors in the logs when this happens if you have too many Expert Advisors on one client terminal.



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