The US election is FINALLY out of the way, and I’m sure everyone is getting their fill of opinions, autopsies and so on from all directions.
So – despite the title of this post – I’m not going to go into politics this morning. Instead I want to discuss how to trade volatility at times like this, relying on forex robots.
Because the markets have certainly been erratic, with wild swings in both directions.
In the past week or two my inbox has been filled with invitations from various pundits and trading gurus.
All these experts were claiming their special webinar or live trading room that covered election day, would somehow give insights into how to trade volatility when events like this roil the markets.
Of course most of these approaches concerned themselves with short-term, manual trading opportunities. Most seemed to want to get on board a new direction, if one presented itself. The problem was, the market did present such opportunities, first one way and then the other.
Personally, I decided to stand aside from manual trading for the duration of election day. Certainly there were opportunities, and any owner of the Price Action Engine would have seen them in the way price burst through certain levels and finally confirmed a reversal at others. That’s because the Price Action Engine covers just exactly these market dynamics: how to pick the levels at which price will turn in the future, as well as giving you the tools to trade that.
But leaving aside the issue of manual trading, how did my Forex Robots cope? If we want to know how to trade volatility, do we even want to be in the market at times like this, and trust our forex robots? I’ve posted a link to a quick video showing the performance of my robots, towards the bottom of this article.
See how some of my Forex Robots performed spectacularly during the volatility of the US election.Click To TweetMost traders I know turn off their robots at times like this. I must admit I was tempted to do the same, but one fact stopped me. Simply put, the robots I have been building (based on the Price Action Engine) were back tested and forward tested without taking into account times when the market was extremely volatile.
For example, almost all of the robots that my various software programs generated for consideration, performed fairly badly during the GFC. Let’s face it, if you ever wanted an environment in which to learn how to trade volatility, the Global Financial Crisis was it.
I therefore decided to leave my robots running for the entire duration. The results were extremely interesting. Many of the robots which had been disappointing up until this stage, performed even worse. But interestingly – and encouragingly – the relative few that had performed profitably up until now, made an absolute killing.
I have been trialling about 50 forex robots. Some of them have been running for more than three months, others for a period of only a few weeks. The software I use to generate these robots for consideration in trading, has helped me to get together such a portfolio. However, it hasn’t had a 100% track record in picking winners, that’s for sure. That’s why you need to run the robots in real-time for a period of many months before actually including them in a live portfolio.
In another 3 to 4 months I will be putting together a portfolio of the best performers, and trading it on a live account for public demonstration purposes, AND…
If all goes well, these robots will form the basis of a signal service I will be announcing next year!
In the meantime, I’ve put together a short video to give you a sneak peek into just how these robots have performed, especially during the period of high volatility over the last 24-36 hours. I hope you enjoy this, and I’ll keep you up-to-date on developments over the coming months. You can view the video here:
Keep in mind that this is early days for the robots I am developing. Especially, remember that these robots are based around the principles of the Price Action Engine. At the moment, incorporation of those principles into the robots is at a fairly basic level, but this will be a part of the continuing evolution of the portfolio over time. Hope you enjoy it.
And please remember to leave feedback below 🙂
Take Care & Trade Well,
Erron
Pretty impressive, I’d like to get my hands on some of those robots.
All in good time, Steve!
Hey Erron, at first I thought maybe he’s just got lucky. But then I saw that your auto systems traded right through the seesaw of price up and down. Very nice 🙂
Thanks Barry, I also was pleased at the performance of some of the robots as price first went one way and then another.
Erron
Hi Erron,
Thanks for the informative email and the video on your robots it looks interesting and I for one would be interested in your signal service based on your best robots in the new year.
Thanks for the support you give us,
Best Regards,
G.B.
Interesting results, Erron. I am always glad to see when robots work good during events like US election or Brexit. I always say if it’s automated then robots should work non-stop no matter what event is ahead of us.
Thanks, Rimantas. I agree, especially after this experience.
Dear Mr. Adams,
I got hand in order, finally from this trade, due to brokers they hold pressure, try to the lure with bonus his. they are scam, can’t tja was believe money my! practically it work for me, took fund.te thank you for the help!
Kind regards…
My pleasure!
Felt so hopeless looking for answers to my qun.tioes..suntil now.
Hi Erron,
I notice that your robots are running on demo accounts. Demo results can be misleading, especially during times of high volatility (like the election) as they don’t realistically reflect slippage. Wouldn’t you be better off conducting your forward testing on live accounts?
Hi Stephen,
Yes, they can be misleading, but I’ve always found – so far – that the broker I use for demo accounts (IC Markets) uses virtually exactly the same feeds that they do for their real accounts. But I agree: I will only know for absolute certain which robots are worth persisting with, when I trade them on a real account. This phase of the production process is an intermediate phase. Why use demo accounts at the moment? Quite simply because I don’t want to blow a whole lot of real dollars testing forex robots at this stage, most of which will fail this stage anyway.
Thanks for your feedback,
Erron
You really provide excellent Information on this site and in your mails: it is transforming my trading. Thank you so much. Please do let me know about any signal service you might offer. Best
Thanks for the kind words, David! I will definitely let you know about developments.
Erron
an email query:
“Erron:
Two heads or more are better than one’s. I may subscribe to your signal services if reasonable, do you plan on copy trade too?
Thanks
M.”
and my answer:
“Hi M,
At this stage I plan on offering signals via SMS & email, as well as a straight copy trade via an EA. There are several options with the copy trade, one of them is that you don’t even have to have MetaTrader running yourself. Still working out all the details as I go along and familiarise myself with the technological aspects.
Best wishes,
Erron”
Quite interesting, i have been receiving messages from you concerning trading, but i am not a trader, i don’t even know how to start. so please how do i start trading, things i need to learn, especially practical aspect. please inbox me.
Sorry, I just don’t have the time these days to do one-on-one mentoring.