9 rules of success in working with "dangerous" Expert Advisors

Hello everyone. Recently there has been a noticeable renaissance of forex advisors on martingale (“monkeys”), netters, averaging and other robots, which personally I would call dangerous. What is so dangerous about them? And is it possible to make stable money on Forex with the help of such experts? Read on and I will reveal to you 9 main secrets of working with marmosets and other similar Expert Advisors.

First of all, what are the dangers of martingale, order grids and other over-sitters? All such robots are based on the idea that the price in most cases returns to some average values. And based on this idea, the strategies of such Expert Advisors include opening additional orders when reaching a certain level of unclosed loss, increasing the lot when losing, building pyramids of orders, etc. But the market does not always return to the previous prices and trading with “casino” strategies you can easily lose all or most of your deposit overnight.

But big risk means big profitability: monkeys, as a rule, earn many times more than other Expert Advisors. It is like with MMM – as long as the pyramid does not burst, it brings good profit. Nevertheless, it is possible to earn on dangerous Expert Advisors and even quite stable, if you follow certain rules, which we will talk about below.

The main mistake that inexperienced traders make is using a micro or classic account. Martingales, over-sitters, etc. should be placed only on a cent account, because in 99% of cases they require a lot of money in the “account balance” column: a lot of orders are opened, plus additional orders with an increased lot (depending on the specific robot).
For example, the same Forex Hacked requires at least $10000$ for a normal maneuvering if you want to trade it on a micro-account at Alpari. On a cent account, when working with this Expert Advisor, you can do with just a hundred dollars.
For more information on cent accounts, see the Micro and Cent Accounts post

Some fool somewhere said that the higher the leverage, the greater the risk. And since then some traders think that with minimum leverage they take less risk in the market. That’s complete nonsense. Risk depends on position size and stop loss. To understand the principle of leverage I advise you to read the article The whole truth about leverage.

So. When trading monkeys, net and other things, we need a large leverage as air, the optimal variant is 1:500. Why? A large number of orders in minus, even if not fixed, can lead to a margin call and subsequent stop-out (see the above-mentioned article about leverage). Naturally, we are interested in postponing this moment as far as possible, giving orders a chance to turn into profit, so without great leverage we risk losing a pyramid of orders and, in addition, a large part of the deposit.

In most cases there are recommendations on the minimum deposit, lots, pairs, etc. in the package with dubious Expert Advisors. But the majority do not care about them: they stupidly scroll through the text to the “Download” button and close the page.
Do not be idiots!!! Recommendations are given because people already have experience working with this or that bot, they have developed strategies of success, figured out which pairs are worth trading, which are not. Why should you repeat someone else’s mistakes?
If it is written that an Expert Advisor needs at least 300 dollars, then it makes no sense to hang it on a depot of 10 dollars. Such things happen everywhere: either people are too lazy to read, or they think they are the smartest, it is unclear… I repeat: do not be fools, follow the recommendations.

Other people’s experience is good, but you should also check everything and apply it to your specific case. Namely: before you put an Expert Advisor on real money, be sure to test it in the MT4 strategy tester. And set exactly the size of the deposit, with which you are going to trade, and the settings with which you will work on a real account. You need to know what drawdown you will face, whether the size of your deposit will be enough (maybe it should be increased), etc.
As a reference, you can watch the video How to test an Expert Advisor.

No matter what super results you get in the tester, no matter what “genius” settings you have chosen, sooner or later a dangerous Expert Advisor will lose all or most of the money on your account. Believe me, it will definitely happen. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in a year. But it will happen. You should not be afraid of it or hope that the drain will happen not now, but “someday” – you should take this factor into account and take into account that the “collapse of MMM” can happen any day.
Therefore, set some kind of schedule for yourself: once a month or once a week, and constantly withdraw your earnings. Ideally, your goal is to withdraw your initial deposit and continue to play “casino money”.

Do not rush to put a robot for real money, forex will not run away from you. Be sure to study the Expert Advisor you are going to trade with: how it opens positions, how long it holds them, what are its weaknesses and strengths. A simple run in the strategy tester is not enough: put the bot on a demo account and watch it for a month or two. This will help you save a lot of money later when trading on a real account.

If while studying an Expert Advisor (see point 6) you noticed that it often holds positions for several days or even months (there are such bots), you should choose a Swap-Free account. This will help you avoid additional losses in the form of swaps (commission for moving a position to the next trading day).

Imagine that your Expert Advisor has opened a pyramid of orders, and at the same time the electricity in your house suddenly goes out for a couple of hours, or your provider decided to make unscheduled repairs and cut off the internet. Force majeure? That’s the one. Because of such an unfortunate accident, you can not only miss profit, but also lose your deposit, because without internet and/or electricity the Expert Advisor will simply not close orders.
You can avoid such unpleasant situations by using a VPS server for trading Expert Advisors.

The smaller the spread – the better. Agree, if a pyramid of orders does not close just because the spread was not enough 1 point to take profit, and then goes into a minus, it will be very, very frustrating. It is better to pay an additional commission for opening an order, but trade with smaller spreads.

Of course, there are nuances in working with each specific Expert Advisor, but following the above set of rules will help you get a stable (as much as possible) profit when trading “dangerous” Expert Advisors and make them safer.