Forex Automated Trading Systems & Expert Advisors
There are many automated forex trading systems out there. They come in many forms, shapes, and sizes. The most common format for these forex "robots" is the Expert Advisor, or EA. EA's are built to run on the ubiquitous MetaTrader 4 platform and are written in the MQL4 language. These robots are able to interact directly with MetaTrader 4, making all your trades for you, as long as your Metatrader terminal is open. There are also hosting services available which can host your robot on their servers to ensure that you don't miss any trades in case your internet connection goes down or your PC shuts down. The biggest advantage for EAs comes from the fact that there are so many forex brokers out there that use the Metatrader 4 platform. From well-known brokers such as Alpari and IBFX, to lesser-known new ones that spring up every day. The marriage of "easy to build" and "easy to use" is a happy one, hence the reason so many of these automated trading systems come in the form of EA's.
Among the thousands of free and paid EAs that are available on the internet, most of them are garbage. The fact that anyone can build an EA, combined with the fact that most individual forex traders fail, is a recipe for a crappy EA gene pool. It is important to understand that the entire process of creating an automated trading system is often flawed, particularly so when applied by those with very little knowledge of financial market dynamics.
There is usually no real way to tell how good an EA is because
- Previous results can be faked or "cherry picked" (meaning only profitable periods are shown)
- Previous results may not be available at all
- Previous results are not necessarily indicative of future performance anyway
- There is no way to tell what criteria the EA is using to base its trades on - it could be based on the phases of the moon
- Most EAs only work in certain market conditions
- Many EAs have a lot of settings, making it impossible to choose the right ones without "over-optimizing" based on back-testing data
Having said that, there are professionals out there who are capable of making a profitable EA. We list some of the popular commercial EAs in this section. We do not guarantee that they will be profitable for you, but we have had a positive experience with all of them, as have many other users. We will publish further results as they develop.
ZuluTrade Review
While ZuluTrade is not a typical automated trading system in that it does not itself generate any trading signals, it does produce the same effect - i.e. trades are executed automatically in your account. Let me explain: ZuluTrade is like a money manager market - it gives investors a chance to choose an active trader (or an automated system) to trade their account, without the investor and trader ever having to meet or contact each other. The ZuluTrade system works so that any trade that the chosen trader makes automatically gets mirrored in the investor's account.

IvyBot Review
IvyBot is a new generation trading system which has some very interesting features, allowing it to overcome some of the shortcomings of other, previous generation systems. Most importantly, IvyBot is constantly being updated by its designers in order to follow any fundamental changes in market conditions.
