Since the inception of Binary Spread Betting, the market has been alive with brokers offering tools to the public to get involved in trading these markets. It is betting in its most basic form and is more or less akin to doing ‘ red/black’ at your favourite casino. But, with one main difference …. unlike your roulette wheel, you are not betting at EVENs. From what I have seen, the brokers will offer in the region of 70-80% return for your trade. So at best, placing a £10 trade will lose you £10 if the market moves against you or return £18, including your stake.
The concept of binary options trading is simple. You are taking a position: placing either a CALL (trading on the upside of the market) / PUT (trading on the downside of the market) . The options/positions taken on these markets ‘expire’ generally 45 min-60 minutes from open so it is a very short turnaround for your trades.
Binary markets offer a new opportunity for software vendors to offer betting bots to assist potential traders in this market. OPTION BOT is one, but understand that this tool is not a fully automated trading bot in the true sense of the term, it is a tool for offering monitoring the markets and simply suggests which currency pairs it considers MAY be viable trading opportunities. You are required to be on-hand to physically place the trades.
The fundamental concept to profitable trading using Option Bot is that it looks for a specific movement of a given number of pips, figuring a reversal ie. change of direction, is due. It is these reversals the bot is aiming to give you a helping hand to spot and make a profit from.
It is simple enough to install and requires the Microsoft .Net framework install pack to work correctly, (this is available as a free download). To get the most out of the software it is advised that you open a handful of accounts with binary trading brokers/platforms. These accounts are free and easy to open with minimal fuss. Within 15 minutes I had opened 4 accounts – later to use only 3 , as one was no longer supported by the software yet was visible in the demo video I watched. You will also need to decide on what funding to apply to each account, and be aware that one or two brokers do have specific levels of account requiring a minimum trading deposit.
Once this is done, you simply open the bot – and load each brokers’ trading platform and the bot gets to work…. there is a running ticker tape across the top of the screen that initially reports nothing but a string of zeros and for a while I was wondering if all was well, but once the bot has gathered sufficient data in the chosen time window – the ticker tape bursts to life and displays market movement data for the major currency pairs.
The bot displays the currency pairs it believes are worthy of note having seen the required pip movement (default : 3 pips) in the time frame selected ( default : 15 mins) . You are advised to place a trade taking the opposite of what has been monitored, this is the key concept in using this tool. So, if the bot display GBPUSD CALL for example – you are to place a PUT option. If the bot displays a EURUSD PUT – you are to place a CALL option. Simple as that!
Before I had run the software, I was under the impression that trades would be few and far between but this was not to be the case. The software has a simple built-in and effective alert sound and icon prompt, that will advise when the trades have been spotted and you are expected to attend to those trades within a few minutes of the alert firing. I wasnt given much peace as the alerts were going off with some frequency ( volatile market conditions of late perhaps?). The pip movement the software scans for and the period over which it scans are fully customisable if you wished to change the frequency of alerts.
From the frequency of the trades suggested I felt that perhaps the algorithm under pinning this software isnt as comprehensive and perhaps as selective as maybe it should be. As a result, every 10-15 minutes, the software was alerting me to trades throughout the day which became a little monotonous as I was hoping to run along my day-to-day working which soon proved to be too much for me. So, although you can do other things whilst running this software you will be prompted a few times each hour about the trades it has found (unless you widen the pip movement the bot is looking for).
As some of the markets are open until early evening (around 8pm I believe), this could appeal to those who wish to ‘dabble’ after a 9-5 working day for an hour or two.
So to my experience of using the software…..The first day (using £10 stakes), I made an easy £75 but the following day in a lesser space of time managed to lose it again but because of the time I was spending and to some degree the fact that my hard-earned was being used to effectively demo trade I decided to call time on its use.
I do regret not being able to offer a longer review but it was proving too much for the time I was prepared to give it.
In summary : a simple software tool that despite its creators suggesting it has been over a year in the making, I feel that the trade opportunities are not selective enough. You can easily reduce the opportunities it finds by changing the pip movement it is scanning for and it does the job of finding the movements on those currency pairs, admirably. But, you are unlikely able to cover all the trades it suggests (particularly on the default 3 pip movement setting) as there can be many off them – and not all currency pairs are supported across all of your broking platform accounts.
From what I have seen thus far, I believe you could see profitable runs and the two or three testimonials I viewed on their website seemed genuine enough and I have no reason to doubt that among the many Beta testers of this product some (but not all), experienced very profitable returns indeed who were able to devote the time to it. As no two testers would have taken all of the trades nor the very same trades.
But there is one thing that does set some alarm bells ringing. As most of us know only too well, a sufficient ‘usable/unemotional’ cash reserve and carefully considered staking plan is key to longevity in the betting game. Yet, the vendor of this software advocates using 25% staking spread across all of your trading accounts. 25%!!!! So, 4 consecutive losing trades and your bank is blown! Furthermore, you may see upto a dozen pairs suggested as trades – I wasnt able to glean anything from the website/instruction manual that suggested which trades are to be chosen above others ( rather odd given their suggested ‘1/4’ bank staking plan!)
Naturally, I took no notice of this, instead choosing a far more moderate stake for my bets.
For single users, the purchase price is $97 – which is a one off fee including email support and lifetime updates, (this seems very reasonable for what you get in my opinion).
NO demo account facility and also a minimum trade of £10 per trade maybe too risky a proposition for many. So, I have decided to sit on the fence with this one – it may be worth a cursory dipping of the toe if you feel inclined to see what this market is all about and you could make some quick profits too, but you will only be making a maximum return of between 70%-80% of your stake. A few consecutive losing runs could well deplete those profits all too quickly. Using the software will require you to react quickly as they appear, given the short ‘life’ of each trading opportunity. This can be done in a few minutes with minimal fuss once familiar with each brokers trading platform.
They offer a free 7 day trial – you will of course have to open accounts with a number of the suggested brokers to use it though and risk your own cash during your trial, to boot! After 60 days, they also offer a no questions asked refund.
Overall, a useful tool for taking a snapshot of the binary/options markets and suggesting trades to take across a variety of currency pairs.
NEUTRAL rating – it could be quite time consuming and with no demo facility but minimum staking options for most brokers – this may only appeal to a relatively small group of trading enthusiasts/newbies.
You can try Option Bot on a 7 day free trial here:
https://www.cash-master.com/OptionBot.php
