Forex Autopilot / Wizard / Sports Betting Champ Update 10/11/08

Happy Saturday Everybody!

I have an exciting progress report from my Forex Autopilot demo account. The account is set up with default settings (2 max trades). Take a look. Yes, you read it correctly, 2,060 pips from 9/4/08 to 10/10/08 with only one 60 pip losing trade! Your first thought might be "Craig, it's time to close the blog because you just found the Holy Grail!"; however, there's one important tidbit that you can't see from the statement. At one point, the FAP was floating two losing trades with total negative pips of roughly 1,500. That's an amount that could blow out an account that isn't using proper money management! I thought the FAP would close out a huge loss at the end of September but thanks to the crumbling U.S. economy, the trend reversed and the month was saved. So here are my thoughts: You can't take away the fact that the EA closed an astonishing amount of pips in just over a month; however, I do think these are extraordinary times. Just look at the stock market and the insane volatility. I feel that this run might have been a stroke of good luck for the EA. Time will tell. My only advice is that if you do decide to use the EA on a live account, make sure you could weather a 1,500 pip drawdown OR set a high stop/loss.

My Wizard testing has come to a standstill thanks to the crazy stock market. The first week or so of trading was good but then everything came crashing down and I stopped trading. I don't think anybody can predict the markets from one day to the next at this point. Once things calm down and are a bit more predictible I will definitely try The Wizard again. Right now I feel like my best financial move is to use cash to pay down line of credit debt and just sit on the sidelines. If you're like me and still need to get a little action, here's something I've been doing. Check out the top day's losers on CNBC about an hour before market close. Find out why each stock is down significantly. Most likely there's a news story that preceded the drop. Today's market is driven by fear. It is very likely that the stock was oversold and there will be a bounce in the near future. Take a look at the company's fundamentals as well as the gravity of the news. Pick up some shares if you determine that this stock was oversold. Your goal is to sell it in the near future when the stock rebounds and cash in your profit. This is risky so don't commit too much of your portfolio. I'm sure there are plenty of deals out there for those willing to buy and hold.

I would like to remind everybody to check out my past posts about the Sports Betting Champ System and the Betting System Maximizer. The NBA season is fast approaching. Last year's record was an impressive 71-1.

Forex Autopilot and The Wizard Performance Update

Hi All,

I'll start with my weekly update of the Forex Autopilot. It is running on an IBFX demo account with default settings, 2 max trades, since 9/4/2008. The good news is that the FAP has closed 800 pips. The bad news is that it is floating 2 losing trades totaling 630 pips. Net result is +170 pips for the month. Interestingly only 3 of the 40 closed trades were buys. It is definitely picking up on the downtrend; however, both my losers are short (1.3902 and 1.4104).

I am also testing The Wizard signal provider for stocks. I have used it for a week now and have done fairly well. I had one losing trade that I closed out for a 6% loss but 4 other winning trades. One of my trades was actually up 27% in one day! I sold half of the position at a 12% profit as the system instructed. It's way too early to make a recommendation on this system. With a $99/month cost it has to perform well to make it worthwhile. I will say that I feel there are some bugs in the portfolio feature. This allows you to track your open and pending trades. I had one trade close out although the position should have really stayed open. The support person has been responsive but is basically claiming that it's working as intended, although I know that it's not. Oh well, I bought it for the signals anyway.

Until next week,
Craig

New Forex Autopilot Results 9/11/08

I've been running the new Forex Autopilot EA on a demo account since 9/4 with default settings. On 9/8 I changed the max trades setting to "2". Here are my current results.

As you can see it closed an amazing 660 pips between 9/4 and 9/11; however, floating losses total 424 pip. Although the net is still a very respective positive (+236 pips) I still feel that trading without a stop loss is a scary venture. I for one am not convinced that this EA is totally "fixed". I am going to continue to run this EA on the demo account and will update you when I have more info.

I have decided to take some time away from Forex trading. I've been trading since the beginning of the year and have found Forex to be an extremely difficult market. I have made nice profits, only to give them back to the market just as quickly as they came. I have decided to go back to my first love, stock trading.

I am testing a new (in '08) service called The Wizard. The site offers specific entry and exit signals for stocks, futures, ETF's, and even Forex. The site is more of a tool than a stock picking site. Their proprietary trend indicators pick the direction of specific industries and then recommend stocks within those industries. The idea is always to trade with the trend. As far as I can tell the results have been great. This week's results are always posted on the homepage. The site was created by Gene Stunkel, who from a quick Google search appears to be a legitimate trader/speaker/banker/real estate investor. You pay a monthly fee for each product. The stock site is $99/month, so you probably want to have at least $5,000 to trade with to use this product. I will begin picking stocks this week and will update my blog periodically. I would love to hear if anybody has used this service and if so, what the results were. I have not found much in the way of reviews as this was launched in spring of '08.

Til next time,
Craig

Follow Up Post on Forex Autopilot

I just wanted to share some exciting results from the new Forex Autopilot EA. This is running the default settings and starting only yesterday. The EA is set to trade a maximum of 2 trades at the same time. Take a look at the 15-min chart (reds=sells, greens=buys):



That's a total of TWENTY 20-pip profitable trades over 24 hours for a grand total of 400 closed pips!! I have 2 floating trades which net to +13 pips. 24 hours doesn't mean much in the long run but it was a heck of a start. I look forward to posting more results next week.

Have a great weekend,
Craig

Bogie-NN-v8 Performance Update and NEW Forex Autopilot Info

Hello All,

Now that summer is winding down I should have more time to stay current with my posting.

The Bogie-NN-v8 experienced issues picking up on the change in market direction in early August. I basically gave back all of the profit that I had made the weeks prior. I turned the EA off for about a week or so then started it up about two weeks ago. A week later and I was up about 15%. Today I turned the EA off after once again giving back all of the profit I earned. I am very disappointed as I had hopes that this EA was something special. Please take a look at CK's live results here. CK's EA was set to the original settings; however, it should be noted that Boatright issued new settings a few weeks ago. Unfortunately I was using some custom settings so I don't have results using the recommended settings.

I received an interesting email from Forex Autopilot yesterday. They claimed to be offering a new FAP that was capable of picking up on both up and down trends. I was actually amazed that they finally admitted that the weakness of the EA was that it couldn't pick up on downtrends!! Anyway, the new FAP is free to download for past purchasers so I gave it a try. My demo account closed 7 20-pip profitable trades since yesterday. Interestingly, most of the trades were shorts so I guess it is now capable of picking up on a down market.

I also discovered a site called FAP Winner. It was created by Charles Floyd, who claims to be a professional trader. The site includes a FAP EA with custom settings (you don't need to buy one separately), access to a fairly active forum for questions/answers about FAP, a custom trading plan, and a weekly trading strategy. I found the weekly trading strategy to be useful. He will note things such as: "set EA to only longs this week" or "set EA to trade only during European session". These recommendations seem to be well thought-out. I was concerned about something they call the "March to a Million". Charles will send you a custom trading plan set to your account balance and based on how you can reach a million dollars in two years. My first recommended trade was 1 standard lot for my $10,000 account. If you recall, FAP doesn't have a S/L so there is a potential for huge drawdown. A 400 pip DD would put me at 40% DD based on the trading plan. I don't feel that this is proper money management.

I am currently trading both the FAP Winner EA/trading strategy and the standard new FAP on a live account (set to 1 mini lot trades). I'll plan to share my results with you soon.

Cheers,
Craig

Bogie-NN-v8 Performance Update 8-7-08

Hello,

This has been a disappointing week for the Bogie-NN-v8 Expert Advisor. Last week at this time I had closed a 10% return after only 2 weeks of trading. At this moment my account balance is -3.6%. So what happened???

July 31st through August 5th the market was basically sideways. Big pip gains were not easy to come by with the EURUSD trading in such a tight range. On August 5th the trend became strongly bearish and we saw the price drop over 350 pips since August 4th. I experienced three big losses, all on long positions. Immediately people on the discussion forums were proclaiming that this EA can't handle a downtrend. After studying the charts since the inception of this EA (June 1), the entire month of July was basically a downtrend and the EA still posted a 27% return according to the Bogie Blog site. This would dismiss the idea that it simply can't handle a bear market. So I asked this question directly to the developer. Here is William Boatright's response:

"We are also seeing these results. Not sure if just short term. Subscribers may want to only run a Demo right now or reduce input Risk=1 (1%) until we see what is happening. Also, it is difficult for EA to trade in this current lateral choppy market. End of July through August is not good trading time as many US and European large institutional traders are on vacation. The success of this EA has been to take advantage on wins and try to minimize loses. But losses will happen."

I have not completely given up on this EA. If you take a look at CK's demo results you'll see that his account is still boasting a 79.5% return since 5/29/08. That is still a spectacular return.

I hope that Boatright can make the adjustments (if neccessary) to right whatever is wrong. If you got a chance to listen to his interview you know that he is constantly optimizing his EA's and subscribers will have access to the most current version each month. As for now I have my live EA set to only take short positions. I will do this until I see that the demo accounts are performing correctly.

Thanks for reading and please feel free to share your comments on this EA. Don't forget, if you do decide to purchase this EA please click on the Bogie logo to the right of this post to take advantage of the special 20% discount.
Craig

Bogie-NN-v8 Performance Update 7-31-08

Hello Everybody!

My second week of trading has not been quite as profitable as the first; however, an almost 10% return (almost 11% counting my floating profit) over two weeks ain't too shabby!

This week has been tough for the EA. The EURUSD has been consolidating and trading in a tight range over the past three days. The Bogie-NN-v8 prefers trending markets. The goal is for 60% profitable trades according to developer William Boatright; therefore, the wins must be significant to achieve the kind of return that this EA has demonstrated. The longer I use this EA, the more I learn about its strategy. I got some insight from a great interview with Boatright that you can find here. Thanks to CK Owyong for setting up an informative question/answer forum. If you are truly interested in learning more about this EA I highly recommend you take an hour to listen to the full recording.

I was frustrated twice this week to see two profitable trades slip into a loss and a minimal gain. It seems that this strategy is the "go big or go home" strategy. When it picks up on a nice trend it attempts to ride it as long as possible. We will need to live with the occasional win-turned-loss if we want to cash in on the 200-300+ pip wins.

Tomorrow morning is the Nonfarm Payroll Report. During Boatright's interview he recommends shutting down the EA during major news reports. I am contemplating whether or not to shut it down tomorrow. In my case if I shut it down I will miss the entire day of trading; however, I could avoid a big loss if I'm in a trade and the currency gaps in the wrong direction. Boatright feels that the major reports to avoid are the NFP and the US and EURO prime rate change meetings. Take into consideration that results shown on Boatright's website are trading 24/5, through the news reports.

I continue to be optimistic about this EA for a number of reasons:

1. I have confidence in the developer. Boatright placed 2nd in the Automated Trading Championship last year. Listen to his interview, he is very low-key and is not simply hocking his product. He seems genuinely interested in creating a profitable EA. His motto is "Steady Equity Growth is the Name of the Game". He does not claim to make you an overnight millionaire.
2. The structure of the purchase ensures that the developer will continually be refining the product. If this EA turns out to be a failure his subscription income will cease. Boatright recently quit his "day job" and is now making his living from the results (ultimately in subscriptions) of this EA.
3. I have scoured forums and other forex sites. I have found forward tests beginning in the end of May that show significant profitability and limited risk. I have seen charts that show the EA entering and exiting positions with uncanny accuracy. The EA had the first back-to-back loss this past week since testing began in late May.
4. Stop losses are custom set to the user's specs. I know that I cannot lose more than 10% equity on any one trade. This ensures that I don't have a runaway trade that bankrupts my account.

I plan to add more money to my account shortly and potentially a greater chunk if results continue. As always, my to-date detailed statement is posted below. Keep in mind this is on a live money account which started at $3,611. Here are my settings: UseEmail=true ; UseMM=true ; MiniAcct=true ; Risk=50 ; Lots=0 ; TakeProfit=0 ; StopLoss=200 ; TrailingStop=170 ; BuyTrigger=54 ; SellTrigger=74 ; MagicNumber=12345 ; NoTradeDay1=6 ; NoTradeDay2=6 ; RenewalWarning=true.

If you plan to purchase this EA, please use my special discount link (banner to the right of this post) to get a 20% discount (only $40 per month).

Til next week,

Craig