Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Forex Tracer EA and its Profitable Breakout Trading Pattern

Comments from mkeys :

Thanks! This is really helpful. Most sites overhype EAs or go to the other extreme and say they're all scams. It's nice to see the real-time performance comparison. One request: could you track Forex Funnel? It appears to be from the same folks who sell Tracer.

From looking at both sites (Tracer and Funnel), the Funnel's backtest looks better. It covers a much longer period and has a smaller drawdown. I've heard its real-time performance has been better, too, but can't confirm this.
Sure mkeys. Before I get to Funnel, I would like to give my further thoughts on the Forex Tracer expert advisor program.

From what i've observed so far, Forex Tracer appears to be a perfect expert advisor program to trade the Euro if you are operating from a longer time-frame perspective.

From the backtest results (as seen in the homepage), it has successfully 'traced' the EUR/USD recurrent breakout pattern (thanks hector for the chart) over the last two years. The last run-up took place in Jan - Apr 2008 which saw the price rocketed from 1.5000 to 1.6000. As a result, the EA has pocketed over 1000 pips profit during this run-up move.

And since then, the EUR/USD pair has been ranging sideways for about 2 -3 months. And thus, I am yet to see the strong performance as promised by the Tracer program. The program is probably ready for the next another significant 1000-pip move. Unfortunately, no one for sure knows when this is going to happen.

Back to the Forex Funnel EA - from its backtest results, the system appears to do well over the last 4 years consistently trading the USD/JPY market on 1-Hour timeframe. Like Forex Tracer, I will be investigating its performance in details and tracking its proftable trading pattern in the upcoming posts.

3 comments:

ICG said...

Thanks! I look forward to seeing how the "Funnel" on here.

One other note on the Tracer. The backtest on the site runs from June 06 to June 08. During that time, the EURUSD had a great run-up, with mostly minor retracements. I'd like to see how it did in 2005 to mid-2006. In that period, the EURUSD went from trending up, to a 2000-pip drop, then to choppy, rangebound trading until the Spring of '06. Many trend-following systems died a painful death in that period...I remember it well!

Stan said...

I have been running Tracer and Autopilot side by side in demo accounts and Autopilot gives up some big drawdowns beacuse of no stop. I personally don't ever want to be in a live money situation without a stop loss in place. I am also starting to test the Dean Saunders 10 minute program and have some good preliminary results-not enough to post yet but will on all the systems when I have enough data.

Stan

Lloyd said...

mkeys: You've got a point there and therefore I would also like to see its past year performance. I will definitely run some backtests on Tracer and also Funnel.

Stan: I also dislike the idea of having no stop with forex autopilot. Luckily, its monthly reset feature means that any running position will be closed out by the end of the month - the only safety measure if you've decided not to use stop. Btw, I am also testing the 10-min forex wealth builder program on futures. And I am having some beginner's luck with the oil market. You guys can now follow its results and track record here.