Money Management The most important most neglected aspect of automated trading

It is funny how people in forums and people who program expert advisors in general seem to address the problem of finding a profitable system and making it profitable. It seems that most of the time, most of their time and testing is spent on evaluating the entry and exit strategies of the trading strategy. People seem to think that the actual money in the forex market is gained by getting perfect entries and exits all the time, or most of the time.

I have seen people in forums go around for months trying to modify their strategies to make them profitable, they will add filters, add indicators, change the rules, optimize the variables, the indicator periods, add volatility filter, to sum it up, they will do everything they can to further perfect their entry and exit strategies. To further worsen things, most of their efforts are concentrated in the entry to the market, which is the most trivial and unimportant part of forex trading systems (see more on this on my ebook).

I have found out that the most important part of a trading system is not the entry or the exit of the strategy, but the money management. What ? Many people will just be awed by this fact as this is hardly even spoke of and people always neglect its importance when they program an automated trading system. When people buy an EA, they dont really care about how the EA actually manages their money, which is, as I have already said, the most important aspect of the system.

Usually people will use a money management system that just trades a fixed percentage of equity or a fixed lot size. They couldnt do any worse. Trading like this only relies on your account balance, not on the market and any money management system that makes sense, gauges the market to know how much money should be invested. For example, would you invest as much on the stock market now as you did last year ? The answer is NO. Why is this the answer ? Because how much you trade depends on how the market is behaving, is it a "good time" or a "bad time" ? Your money management must depend on both your account balance and market behavior, this is the way professional traders manage their trades. They dont trade X percentage or a fixed lot size, those money management strategies are just naive and precarious.

As I have shown previously, I have been able to take several systems that showed no profit at all and simply by removing all the additional filters that had been added and adding a money management system that made sense I was able to make them profitable. This is something you should NEVER neglect and something in which your attention should be focused. A money management that makes sense will make a system that makes sense and that trades according to how the market actually moves.

If you would like to learn more about automated trading systems, how I evaluate them, test them and how you to can build and program your own long term profitable automated trading strategy please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed the article !

An Important Decision No More Reviews on the Front Page

Through the past several months of everyday posting, I have realized that my Asirikuy visitors are divided between two specific types. There are some people who are quite new to automated trading and find my website through search engines and those who have been following my website for a while and read it almost everyday. By talking to people and analyzing their browsing habits on both sides I have reached an important decision for my blog. From now on I will not be posting any reviews on the front page. On todays post I will be explaining the reasons behind this decision and I will also explain the consequences I think it will have related to both types of website visitors.

If you have been a frequent visitor of Reviewing Everything Forex, then perhaps you have already seen that most of the commercial systems out there are not worth buying and testing for me. In the end, reviews start to get very boring and they seem to repeat the same story over and over and over again. I have been accussed of upselling my own products (because that would certainly make me a millionaire :o) - sarcastic note) and even of bashing every system without any consideration.

Those of you who have been Asirikuy members or readers for a while know that I am a very rational person and that I only review the evidence I see. As a matter of fact, I almost never say that a system is unprofitable but what I say with exhausting repetition is that systems do not have enough evidence to be considered profitable. In the end, if commercial sellers want to prove their point, they should just provide reliable evidence. Nothing more ! I am not asking for 30 years of live testing, I merely ask for 10 years of backtesting with 6 months of live/back testing consistency analysis. But what a difficult thing this is to provide when your system is actually not reliable :o) (my own attempt at drawing a cartoon shown below)
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I however consider reviewing an important part of this site since getting people away from commercial experts that simply cannot backup their claims of profitability is a vital aspect of my social job in automated trading. Even if people never buy one of my products, the fact that they didnt fall prey to any one of this unethical affiliate sellers or scammers out there is valuable enough for me as a personal achievement.

In the end I have seen that people who find my reviews of commercial systems do so through search engines while they often never find them through forum links or direct access. Publishing reviews on the first page therefore only has the effect of boring my faithful readers (who arent that interested in commercial system reviews) and driving very little traffic from non-search engine sources. For this reason I have decided that reviews from now on will be published within the website but they will never show on the front page. Everyday there will be a fresh article about automated or forex trading and any of you interested on a systems review can search it through the label drop-down list on the left hand-side menu or simply google fxreviews and the name of the expert advisor to have it show up. I think that in the long term this solution would satisfy both my long-term readers and the new forex traders looking for some insights about the latest forex product.

What do you think about this decision ? Do you agree, disagree ? Any input will be highly appreciated ! Of course, if you would like to learn more about my work and would like to support me without any upselling pressure please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or joining Asirikuy to receive all ebook purchase benefits, weekly updates, check the live accounts I am running with several expert advisors and get in the road towards long term success in the forex market using automated trading systems. I hope you enjoyed the article !

Important Facts about the Forex Trading System

Forex is considered as a financial system on the foreign exchange. It allows the trader to purchase foreign stocks or currencies. The forex trading system is popularly increasing in the internet in leaps and bounds each day. It provides useful information about the companies wherever it is located. The traders stay informed so that they can make a wise decision when purchasing and investing their money. Several forex trading systems are allowing the traders to make withdrawals, online inquiries and purchases so that they can create additional wealth by using their invested money.

Forex trading systems involves money investments from a company which is located overseas. Learning more information regarding the company is helpful because you can obtain the latest available programs and processes. You can also double or triple your invested money within a short period of time. You can avail of the forex trading system that only requires a small amount of investment, as low as 5 dollars, while other forex trading system can require a large sum of money to be invested, as high as 500 dollars. Remember, one forex trading system is different from another forex trading system. Each has its own terms regarding the duration period of your investments.

If you are wondering how long your money will remain invested, then you must carefully read the company's fine prints where you are investing your money. Some company may require a 48-hour investment while others may require a 30-day turn around time. Always read the information being provided. It will explain your current money status upon investing it and its future outcome.

Forex trading systems allows the trader to purchase companies, stocks, or other country's investments. It does not matter where you live since forex trading systems are also located in any parts of the world, as well as the company where you are investing your money. The traders can invest their money in companies located in China, Japan, United States, Russia, Germany, Africa, and other countries which are recipients of the investments on forex trading systems. It does not necessarily mean that you have to be living in the country where you are planning to invest. This is the secret of the forex trading system. Your personal wealth and personal preferences can be enhanced while investing.

This is also the major reason why forex trading systems are well known. It can really make extra money by investing the cash since forex trading is about putting the money on another currency either for a short or long term period in order to earn bigger sum of money. Most forex trading systems are typically based on how stock exchange works. You will find out that forex trading systems can permit currency rate investments, currency change from one country to another, and investment from a foreign company. Hence, forex trading systems are built upon global investors, global companies, and global currencies.

Remember, there is no difference between online and offline forex trading systems with regards to the projected results. However, online forex trading systems can quickly access your money. The traders can move, invest, remove, and trade their money faster compared to offline forex trading systems.

Somehow, it could bring wealth to the investors who are willing to invest and trust the brokers when making additional decisions. But the question is who you are going to trust. It is advisable and helpful in any kind of trading systems or company investments to trust the person whom you are transacting with. It is a wrong company if you cannot reach the representatives on forex trading systems either by fax, email, phone, or even in person. A company which utilizes forex trading systems and offers opportunities to the traders to worldwide investments is good. However, they should communicate with the traders any time during business days.

Moreover, it is advisable to look for a company that uses forex trading system that puts your invested money first and foremost, how you are going to invest it, and listen to the things you wanted to do. If a forex trading company is just calling you at all times and giving you little space for decision making, then avoid doing business with them. Remember, this company should realized that being the end user and consumer of their forex trading systems, they should listen to you and learn about your plans regarding with investing your money before making the investment.

Liquidity in Forex Part No 1 What it Means and Why it is Important

The term "liquidity" is used a lot in trading and finances since it is a vital aspect of market behavior. However, people often use this term very liberally in forex trading often without understanding its exact meaning and the implications of high or low values of this particular property. On this article I want to explain to you what the term "liquidity" is, what it exactly means, its implications within a given instrument and why it is such an important characteristic of the market.

Imagine that we had 20 people standing on a circle with 19 of them holding empty glasses and one of them holding a glass full of water. Now we want to see how much time it will take for the person with the glass to pour it onto the next one and so on until the water reaches him/her again. What we find is that it takes a long time for the water to be exchanged along the full circle because only 2 players are able to participate (the one holding and the one receiving) while all the others have to stay on the sidelines, waiting for their glass of water. Now imagine that we give half of them a glass of water, the process is much faster since the number of active participants has now increased to include everyone, all the people are actually exchanging water all the time.
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Liquidity on the market is nothing else than the "water" in the above example, it is the amount of volume exchanged of a given instrument over a given amount of time. When there is high liquidity there is a lot of volume being exchanged and when there is low liquidity there is little volume being exchanged. When we have a lot of volume people can get in and out of the market easily (since there is always a buyer for every seller and vice versa) while when there is low liquidity the market gets "stuck" as people have to fight to get in or out of their positions. When there is low liquidity you also get harsher price movements since a person holding a position may be forced to drastically change the offering price to match what the other end - which is very scarce - wants. So while under high liquidity exchanges are easy and swift, under low liquidity prices move more erratically since the offered and accepted prices tend to have larger gaps between them. The consequences for the little trader are unpredictability and spread widening while for the large players the consequences are mainly not being able to get in or out of positions due to the lack of available exchange capacity.

Liquidity in the forex market is extremely difficult to read and study since the market has no central exchange but it is handled over a wide variety of banks worldwide in an over-the-counter manner. The volume of a given contract that has been exchanged during a certain period of time therefore becomes hard to read since it depends on the particular provider you are talking about. Even though the market is praised as being extremely liquid and huge, the fact is that this is only be true if you can access to all - or a lot - of liquidity providers (banks). If you limit yourself to just a few you will see that the liquidity you have access to is nowhere near the trillions of dollars people talk about.

When we are going to trade the foreign exchange market, knowing the liquidity levels of the instruments we want to trade is important since currency pairs with higher liquidity tend to be "easier to trade" since they show more inefficiencies characteristic of crowd behavior while instruments with low liquidity tend to show a more random walk much more characteristic of individual investor behavior. Therefore, instruments that are very liquid tend to be easier to exploit using mechanical trading systems while those that dont tend to be much harder to trade. However, as the time frames get bigger liquidity starts to become a less important factor and crowd-based inefficiencies still arise. This is the main reason why you should look for strategies based on larger time frames and longer period indicators when attempting to design systems for illiquid instruments.

On tomorrows post I will discuss the inner aspects of liquidity in the forex market a little bit more, I will discuss some of the currently available literature about the subject in economics and the liquidity characteristics of different currency pairs. If you however would like to learn more about automated trading and how you too can start designing and programming your own systems based on realistic and sound strategies please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or joining Asirikuy to receive all ebook purchase benefits, weekly updates, check the live accounts I am running with several expert advisors and get in the road towards long term success in the forex market using automated trading systems. I hope you enjoyed the article !