I have been asked by Graham to blog and monitor Zulutrade.

Zulutrade are a company that list a host of Forex Signal Providers that traders can assess and trade through by using the traders knowledge and experience. Some trade by EA others will have their own manual methods.

You have to sign up with one of  Zulutrades referering broker partners for Zulutrade to receive their commission on your trades so it is not a free service by any means or if you already hold an account with one of the brokers you need to notify your broker that you wish Zulutrade to act as an intermediary and transfer permission over to them.

The trades placed are done so remotely, so that the signal provider has no details of your account. There is also no need to keep your PC on either as all trades are executed from Zulutrades server.

You can choose a signal provider based on a range of their listed performance figures, whether it be trading style, pips won, success rate or drawdown et al., the choice is  entirely up to you. It is possible to limit how many orders providers can have open at any one time and the size and number of lots also.

I have a demo account of 50k set up and will report back my experiences of both Zulutrade and my chosen signal provider(s).

6/3/2010

Another good week for the bots. 24 trades in the five days, 50% strike rate.

P/L This week +$333; overall, from start of trial +$538.00

I am giving the USDbot a run on a $100,000 demo account with ODL. Default stake is 1 minilot. With a stoploss of 30 pips $300 would seem a reasonable bank size to operate this.

The Ebook which introduces this $149.00 (approx £96) automatic robot doesn’t mention strategies, it simply and clearly leads you through setting up a broker, downloading and configuring a suitable account and how to set up the bot on both the EUR/USD & USD/JPY 5 minute charts. It is possible to vary the amount traded and stoploss etc but the vendor suggests that the bot performs best with the default settings. I shall be trading this from 8am-10pm, which covers the London and US markets. The vendors also suggest that it should be left on 24/5 but this is not something I want to do and any responsible person who shared my knowledge of the mare’s nest of cables and connections and banks of plugs behind my desk would surely approve.

So, on to the voyage…..

I originally set this up and ran it for three days with a complete absence of any trades. On contacting the vendor, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a prompt reply and immediate interest in why it wasn’t performing. After some Q & A and some screenshots back & forth, I was then told I needed Version 2 and directed to a download link. This had not one, but two EAs to use together and also an offer for a VPS service to host the bot 24 hrs a day for either $65 or $115, depending on which level of service you chose. I declined this generous offer and installed the new EAs, rather wondering why Graham had been supplied with V.1 in the first place.

These immediately started trading, with mixed, but overall, fairly successful results. I won’t go into the minutiae of the trading here, what matters to us all is whether it will make some money. So far it is doing that. I am trading on the default settings, as recommended and this means that I am trading minilots, as mentioned. However, it isn’t that simple, there are evidently internal settings which vary the amount staked as the trades proceed, so I will simply quote the cash figures which result, without attempting to decide how many pips they represent.

The bots have been running now since Tuesday, so only 4 days this week. Early days, of course, but shaping up nicely.

P/L: +$206.05

ATM-FX is a new trading system from Keith Cotterill, the brains behind The Ultimate Forex Predictor. You get a 62 page manual and a CD containing video tutorials showing you exactly how to set everything up and get going.

Unlike TUFXP, ATM-FX doesn’t require any standalone software or data feed subscriptions as it all runs using IG Index and their Advanced Charts. The advanced charts are free so long as you place at least two trades in a month.

Once set up, you save the chart as a template and it’s just a matter of loading up the chart each morning and waiting for the correct signal.

The trade signal is easy to spot and everyone using the system should get the same trades if trading at the same time.

The manual is very well written and contains everything you need to know assuming the reader knows nothing about trading. This means anyone with any previous experience can skip great chunks of the manual and just get to how to set up the chart and what is the buy/sell signal.

This system comes with access to a members only website with an extensive video (about an hour and a half long) which goes into detail about trading this method and includes pointers on what to look for in a potential good trade and what to be wary of for potential bad trades. The video is done by a guy called Neil Spare who, fortunately, has a voice and manner that doesn’t send you to sleep. I actually found the video very useful. Whilst the system itself has a mechanical entry point, it’s worth paying attention to certain factors outlined in the video as it will help you stay out of bad trades.

I traded the method for four weeks aiming for a profit target of 20 pips per trade and quitting for the day if I made 20 pips. This mean’t that if the first trade of the day won, then I would quit. If the first trade lost, I would take another trade. If that won then I would take one more trade and quit regardless of the result. If it lost, I would quit for the day.

The pip results were as follows:

18/1 +20
19/1 +20
20/1 +20
21/1 +20
22/1 +20

25/1 +20
26/1 +20
27/1 +10
28/1 +20
29/1 +20

1/2 +15
2/2 +20
3/2 +20
4/2 +20
5/2 +20

 8/2 +20
 9/2 +20
10/2 +15
11/2 +20
12/2 -72

Total: 288

As you can see, almost every day resulted in hitting the 20 pip profit target. Three days started with a losing trade followed by two winners making 10-15 pips on the day and only one day, the last day, had two losing trades.

I finished the month trial with 288 pips profit which, at £10 a pip level stakes, is £2880. Not bad at all considering the vast majority of days were finished before 9am.

I really do think this is a great trading product. The manual is written for a complete novice and the video tutorials make setting it up quick and easy. Once set up, all you have to do is open IG Index in the morning, load up the chart that you have already set up and saved, and wait for a qualifying signal. Once you see it, the entry point for the trade is easily calculated and away you go.

I see no reason why the chart set up couldn’t be used on other trading platforms and I imagine the method would work on any currency pair too, although I only tested it on GBPUSD five minute chart.

The product also comes with full support and I found replies to my e-mails were prompt and helpful.

All in all I would say that this has to be the best entry level forex system I have found to date. It’s good value, it’s easy and it works. Ok, it doesn’t have audio alerts like tufxp and you will have to watch the charts to spot the trades but since most of the days trading is done and dusted within the first hour or two, that’s no great hardship considering the income you can generate with it.

If you’re looking for a way to make a pretty decent income from trading using a mechanical system that consistently identifies winning trades then ATM-FX is the one to buy.

You can get ATM-FX here:

http://www.cash-master.com/ATM-FX.php

Friday 12th February

Would you believe it? The last day of the test and we had a losing day. Still the only losing day of the whole month.

A 32 pip loss this morning stopping out at 7.40. The next trade got stopped out at my maximum loss of 40 pips.

Looking at the charts, the entry points were within the overnight highs and lows so probably not sensible trades to take as no definite trend had formed and it would have been better to leave it another 15 or so pips to confirm a trend, still, I’m following the system mechanically and this is what I got.

Profit Today:-£720
Total Profit: £2880

Still a profit on the week, even if it is only £30!

I’ll do a write up of this method over the weekend.

Thursday 11th February

Dived straight into a trade first thing this morning as the entry criteria had just been met and the market was still bobbing around the entry level. 20 pips profit done and dusted by 7.30.

Profit Today: £200
Total Profit: £3600

Wednesday 10th February

We had a losing trade this morning costing 25 pips by 8am. The next trade was a winner making 20 pips by 10am. And the following trade was again a winner making 20 pips by midday. Again, I stopped for the day at a profit.

Profit Today: £150
Total Profit: £3400

Tuesday 9th February

First trade a winner again making the 20 pips. The trade came a little later today but still done by 9am.

Profit Today: £200
Total Profit: £3250

Friday 5th February

20 pips on the first trade today.

Profit Today: £200
Total Profit: £2850
 

Monday 8th February

First trade a winner again making the 20 pips.

Profit Today: £200
Total Profit: £3050

Today we come to the end of the trial for Dubai Strategies. I volunteered to trial the system because the author was confident enough to offer the system up for testing. It was, originally, going to be tested for 4 weeks but I was that surprised/disappointed with the results, after seeing what it has achieved in the past with back testing, that I decided to give it another week. I suppose that’s the nature of forex, or anything else, though. You just don’t know when the sunny days are going to arrive.

I’m pleased to say, however, that this is one system that does everything it says on the tin. I’ve wasted so much time in the past testing totally useless systems, so this makes a very nice change. I’ve communicated a lot with the author and he is obviously a trader that uses his own system, as opposed to the usual marketer that simply wants to sell systems. He seems very genuine and transparent. He also has a blog where he keeps an update of everything and buyers of the system also have access to his live trading room, which is handy to confirm trades.
I think the author was very unlucky with his choice of testing period as the results achieved are below the average. I’ve back-tested these systems before trading with my own cash and was very confident with the performance. Even though the results in the test were below par, a combined profit of 72.5% in a five-week period (with little drawdown) is pretty good by anybody’s standards and I’ve managed to secure a decent profit.

There are two basic systems within Dubai Strategies; the first is a day-trading scalp system where the author aims for 4% profit per day and the other revolves around the ‘open’ of the GBP/USD market in the morning and the ‘open’ of the EUR/USD in the afternoon. Whilst the scalping system is the most profitable, I particularly like the morning and afternoon system for their simplicity and ease of use. Once the trade is triggered you can basically forget about it for the day. There is an option to monitor it and adjust the stop to break even at a certain point but I prefer to set it and forget it (most of the time). I might add that this system seems to work very well with other currency pairs also, so I’ll be doing a lot more testing in that area. I’m sure that incorporating this with other currency pairs would make it even more profitable and I think the author is looking into this area.
The downloaded manual is easy to understand with plenty of illustrations. There was just one problem I had but after emailing the author he was super quick in responding, which might also confirm that he was actually sat at his computer monitering the charts.

I would be the first to dismiss this sytem if it was no good because of all the time, effort and money I’ve wasted over the years. Some of the sytems have come from established, reputable firms that should know better. I don’t know how they have the nerve to market such rubbish. However, I will be recommending that this particular system should be added to the approved systems’ list.

My only worry, if I was a buyer, would be that there is no guarantee offered. This might just be my acquired cynical nature. I can only presume that the author is worried about people buying the system and simply returning it for a refund. But I also suspect that the author is inexperienced in the area of marketing as the presence of a guarantee would invoke a lot more confidence. He is, after all, a genuine trader and not a marketer. I’ve mentioned this to the author and we’ll see if he changes the guarantee aspect of it.

If you are interested in forex I would highly recommend Dubai Strategies as an easy to operate and profitable system, particularly the morning and afternoon systems.

You can get Dubai Strategies here:

http://www.cash-master.com/dubaistrategies.htm

Day 25

GBP/USD +4.5%  (+4.5%)
EUR/USD +5%     (+28%)
Scalps     +4%     (+40%)

Day 24

GBP/USD  +4.5%  (0%)
EUR/USD  +5%    (+23%)
Scalps       0%     (+36%)

Two nice trades on the GBP/USD and EUR/USD today but the scalps resulted in a break-even day.

Day 23

GBP/USD  Break-even trade (-4.5%)
EUR/USD +5%                   (+18%)
Scalps     No trades            (+36%)

Today’s EUR/USD was another trade that was left to its own devices overnight and duly obliged.

Wednesday 3rd February

An easy, straightforward winner this morning.

Profit Today: £200
Total Profit: £2450 

Thursday 4th February

Another winning trade first thing.

Profit Today: £200
Total Profit: £2650

Day 22

GBP/USD  -6% (-4.5%)
EUR/USD +5% (+13%
Scalps     +2% (+36%)

Today’s EUR/USD trade was held overnight and eventually hit the target.

Tuesday 2nd February

A winning trade this morning although it initially retraced 30 pips the wrong way. Thankfully the stop was placed just beyond the recent high 40 pips away, which is my maximum stop.

Profit Today: £200
Total Profit: £2250

Monday 1st February

Started the month with a losing trade costing 25 pips. Then two winners for 20 pips each at which point I called it a day.

Profit Today: £150
Total Profit: £2050

Day 21

GBP/USD +1.5%        (+1.5%)
EUR/USD  no trade     (+8%)
Scalps      no trades    (+34%)

Day 20

GBP/USD  -3%  (0%)
EUR/USD  +5%  (+8%)
Scalps      -4%  (+34%)

We’re slowly moving into profit with the combined GBP/USD and EUR/USD trades. However, it’s disappointing compared to the profits I’ve seen in the past from these trades. After saying that we’re 42% up on the account with the combined profits in the 4 week period, which has got to be pretty good by anybody’s standards.

Friday 29th January

It looked like I was going to have a loser this morning as the trade reversed shortly after entering but fortunately it didn’t go to the recent low and turned back again to make the 20 pips by 8.15.

Profit Today: £200

Total Profit: £1900

Another good week for this system. Nearly two grand in two weeks at £10 a pip.