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Reviews

Book Review: Jim Rogers – Street Smarts

Jim Rogers Street Smarts

I recently came across Jim Rogers’ new book – Street Smarts: Adventures on the Road and in the Markets – and I’d figure some of you may enjoy reading a brief review of it.

For those of you who do not know who Jim Rogers is, permit me to give you his brief bio.  James Beeland Rogers, Jr. (born October 19, 1942) is an American investor and author. He is currently based in Singapore. Rogers is the Chairman of Rogers Holdings and Beeland Interests, Inc. He was the co-founder of the Quantum Fund with George Soros and creator of the Rogers International Commodities Index (RICI). Jim is a well-known investor who has appeared on numerous financial TV shows.

He has written several other books, some of which are: Adventure Capitalist, Investment Biker, A Gift to My Children, Hot Commodities, A Bull in China. I haven’t read any of his other books but I plan on grabbing a copy of each one soon.

Now on to the book. First of all I should mention that this book is not a “how to” guide on investing. Instead this books is part memoir, part investment primer, part history lesson, part travelogue, part sermon, and just an all around good read. Jim Rogers is a strongly opinionated guy and I for one can definitely appreciate and respect that. He has a wealth of investing experience so what he says is not a bunch of hot air or rehashed investment cliches. So if you get a chance to read the book (and I suggest you do) and you get to a parts where Mr. Rogers espouses his passionate opinions, take a deep breath and consider what he is saying before you react in a sort of “knee-jerk” fashion.

I’m not a literary critic by any means but if I was to comment upon how the book was written I’d say that Jim did a fine job. His language is simple, clear, concise, and empty of any jargon or run on sentences. Put simply, it is terse and pithy, which is precisely how a book should be in my opinion. It is also not a super long read either, so I think if you dedicate an hour tops per day you should be able to finish it in a week or two.

In this book Roger puts forth several personal viewpoints that I believe are worth considering. Some of them you may not agree with some of them you might. I found myself agreeing with quite a few of them. Some of them I can’t comment on as I do not happen to have the relevant background experience (such as the US educational system – I was not educated in the US , etc). Here are some of the interesting “core” ideas in this book:

  • The US is declining as fast as Asia is rising.
  • If you want to give your kids a good education, make sure they learn Chinese.
  • The best investment opportunities are in Asia.
  • The US spends twice as much on healthcare as the average nation and gets terrible outcomes.
  • High healthcare and litigation costs are the major reasons why American carmakers can’t compete globally.
  • The fourth leading cause of death in the US is hospital infection.
  • The US will go the way of Rome, Timbuktu, Morocco, Portugal, Spain and Greece.
  • The cure for high prices is high prices.
  • Jim Rogers is always two or three years ahead of the curve.
  • Because governments are debasing currencies, commodities are the best investment.
  • Don’t believe government statistics.
  • According to government stats, there are more pets in Japan than children.
  • The school system in Singapore is far superior to any in the US.
  • Marco polo did not have a passport.
  • Throughout history, the most prosperous societies have been open ones.
  • In the US, the primacy of the individual has become subordinated to the state.
  • If you want to save America, change to a consumption tax, change our education system, institute healthcare and litigation reform, and bring home our troops (from over 100 countries.)
  • The only real failure is not to try; the only improper question is the one unasked.

What do you think? These ideas are definitely unconventional, but wisdom is rarely conventional – especially when one truly has a pioneering ideas. History will prove Jim Rogers right or wrong, and thus far he’s been right with a remarkable level of accuracy.  Let me know what you think of his ideas and if you get a chance to read his book let me know what you think.

So this concludes my humble review. Overall id’s give this book a score of 9 out 10. It is in my opinion a good read and I definitely recommend it. Now on to ebay and amazon to find me some copies of his other books.

Happy investing to you all!

Cheers,

Alan

Expert Advisors, Forex Robots, Reviews

Forex Over Drive Review

2 Comments

Hello everyone. It has been quite a long time since I first blogged about my decision to test the Forex Over Drive robot. Since then I’ve posted numerous performance updates, and like I said in my last post related to Forex Over Drive the time has come for a final review of this forex product. I believe I’ve given it enough time to prove itself, so now is the time to draw some final conclusions.

If you wish to read all my blog posts related to this EA, here are links to all of them – in chronological order:

1) Forex Over Drive – New forex robot to test
2) First “Forex Over Drive” Trades
3) Forex Overdrive Performance Update #1
4) Forex Overdrive Performance Update #2
5) Forex Overdrive Performance Update #3 – Last One

Now let’s get into the heart of the review. I would like to first mention that I will let the performance statement do the talking. There isn’t much detailed criticism I can heap on this EA as I really do not know how it works internally. Before I talk about this EA’s performance I’m going to spend a few minutes describing what it is and some details that may be of interest to those of you who have never heard of it.

What is Forex Over Drive?

The Forex Over Drive robot is an expert advisor for the MT4 trading platform. It is capable of trading on many currency pairs but its authors recommend that it be used with only the GBP/USD & EUR/USD currency pairs. The time frame it trades on is M5 (5 minute chart)

Now let’s talk performance. I started testing this EA back in 2010 – 05 – 05. So it has had what I believe to be ample time to prove itself. But I am afraid to report that throughout this testing period the EA pretty much went nowhere. It caused quite a number of dramatic swings in my test account’s account balance – as you will see for yourself on the performance statement I will share shortly.

I used settings suggested to me by the EA’s creators, so I don’t think this poor performance can be blamed on me screwing around with the settings and mangling things. I personally think the strategy it employs is just not suited to the market conditions present from 05 – 05 – 2010 till today. What this means in simple terms is that it just plainly doesn’t work!

Have a look at my demo IBFX account performance statement here:

performance statement

*it’s in PDF format – so just click on it to open or right click and save the file somewhere*

As you can see the relative and maximal drawdown figures are downright scary! There is no way I would accept a 58.97% drawdown and neither should you!

The core of the problem with this EA is that while the number of successful trades (it those closed at a profit) is greater than the number of losing trades those losing trades are quite big losers. When this EA’s stop loss gets hit it takes a mighty big bite out of your account balance. Another way of putting this is that its risk to reward ratio is quite bad.

There isn’t much more to say about this EA as it stands. I have as of today stopped testing it and I shall move on to other – and hopefully better – EAs. Now without further ado let’s get to the conclusion.

Conclusion: Not Recommended.

Stay tuned to this blog for more reviews and fun forex robot testing experiences.

Useful link: The Forex Robots Forum thread dedicated to thsi EA. If you want to voice your opinion to the world I suggest you do it here: http://www.forexrobotsforum.com/showthread.php?t=29

Thanks for your attention!

Cheers,
Alan

Expert Advisors, Forex Robots, Reviews

Forex Turbo Drive Review

Hi everyone. Alan here with another review. This time I am reviewing a commercial forex robot (EA) called “Forex Turbo Drive” I’ve began testing this particular product on a demo IBFX account starting from July 27’th. Thus far I am afraid its performance has not been satisfactory to me.  The demo account started with $10,000 and now it’s down to $8,405.  It has a very odd trading style. It fired off quick buy/sell orders sometimes even in a strong trend. This thing is like a forex machine gun.

I think a picture will give you a better understanding so check it out here:

Sadly though the strategy does not appears to work too well at the moment. Have a look at this equity graph:

You can also download my complete forward demo test account performance statement here:

http://alansforexblog.com/files/Forex_Turbo_Drive_Statement.zip

As you can see by that graph above, the account’s balance just keeps on going down and down. Thus as of today I’ve decided to stop demo forward testing it. I’m going to get in touch with the authors of this EA and see if they have a fix for this bad performance. If they do I may consider giving it another shot.

However for now I would give this EA the rating of: NOT Recommended.

Update: Ooops I forgot to add that if you wish to discuss this EA and share your experience/performance with everyone you can do so at the Forex Robots Forum thread over here:

http://www.forexrobotsforum.com/showthread.php?t=51

That does it for this brief review.

Until next time!
Cheers,
Alan

Recommendations, Reviews, Trading Signals

LIVE FOREX TRADING ROOM did 10,678 PIPS from May-Dec of 2009

7 Comments

A Better Way to Trade!

I have to admit it…for all of the so-called Forex “pros” out there, not too many of them will actually trade in-front of you everyday in a live webinar.

This guy however, I have to say, is the real deal.

Colin Atkins started trading Forex about 10 years ago and is now one of those 5% of successful traders unlike the other 95%.

He began doing seminars in London at first, before he was finally convinced to put his skills to better purpose…

What he’s done now is created a LIVE WEBINAR ROOM for members to enter 5 days a week, with 3 sessions daily. You can simply watch him trade (a few trades per session, nice and simple) and DUPLICATE what you see him doing! It’s truly simple stupid.

He averages around 60 pips a day, and managed to do 10,678 in the LIVE ROOM in the first 7 months of opening it up!

Really, anyone who can simply WATCH this guy trade can duplicate his success. This is DEFINITELY worth a look.
NO more “signals” or “systems” that never work like you want them to. This guy is going to be in the same trades with you, and talking to you live. This is the answer for 95% of Forex traders…long-time traders, and newbies alike.

You need to take a look at this, click…
www.WatchLiveForexTrades.com

Reviews, Trading Systems

I Started Testing Forex Rebellion

19 Comments

forexrebellion.jpg

Hi there. A few days ago I introduced you to a new manual forex trading system called Forex Rebellion (see this post.) Well, after seeing some very positive comments regarding this trading system on a Forex Nirvana forum thread I decided to jump on the bandwagon and give it a try.

So, I now officially own the Forex Rebellion system and have it nicely setup on a demo FXCM UK MT4 account. The system’s creator uses FXCM UK MT4 so I figured I may as well use the same platform to make sure I follow his setup “to the letter.” For me this setup works quite well because once I decide to go live I’ll be placing trades on FXCM’s TradeStation II platform.

Since I don’t have as much free time to trade as I once did I opted to run the system on the H1 chart. The author claims the system can be used successfully from the 15 minute time frame all the way to the daily (D1.) For me H1 strikes a nice balance, but if I find myself missing too many signals I’ll move on up to the H4 time frame – we shall see.

Here is how Forex Rebellion looks like when it’s setup (click on the image to see the full screenshot):

Just before I took that screenshot, Forex Rebellion gave me a very clear short GBP/JPY signal which I promptly executed, and as I type this I’m roughly $100 in profit. And just before that I had two other successful trades. Here they are:

9109009 2009.10.12 10:02 balance Deposit 100 000.00
9109492 2009.10.12 10:11 buy 1.00 eurusd 1.47305 0.00000 0.00000 2009.10.12 11:09 1.47552 0.00 0.00 0.00 247.00
9120808 2009.10.12 14:17 buy 1.00 usdjpy 89.929 0.000 0.000 2009.10.12 14:22 89.932 0.00 0.00 0.00 3.34
0.00 0.00 0.00 250.34
Closed P/L: 250.34

Not too shabby if you ask me! So far I can honestly say I like the system. It seems well thought out and quite accurate so far. My only concern is how well it will trade when the market is choppy. Also I do hope the system will continue to work far into the future. The system’s creator mentioned in the members only intro video that he’s been trading the system for several years, so hopefully it has many more years of life left in it.

Before I end this post I should mention something so you folks don’t end up being confused. In the above screenshot you may see that there is an “EA” attached to the chart. It is NOT an EA that automates the system, it is merely a trade helper tool.

That about does it for this post. I will be back with regular performance updates as I continue to test this system for the long term.

Now, if you wish to grab yourself a copy of this trading system please see the Forex Rebellion homepage at:

http://alansforexblog.com/links/forexrebellion

Happy trading!

Cheers,
Alan

Expert Advisors, Forex Robots, Reviews

PipBoxer V4 Review

2 Comments

bull-and-bear.jpg

Hello everyone. After a long long time demo testing the PipBoxer V4 Expert Advisor (forex robot for all you newbies out there) I’m finally ready to pass some meaningful judgment upon it, hence this review.

First off I should mention that the version I’ve been testing is NOT the latest one! The latest version is V5 and it uses a different trading strategy than V4. Thus my review may be of limited use, but nonetheless I left that I should at least publish my findings. Maybe V5 is better, maybe not. I might find out later on if the good folks at Investatech (company behind PipBoxer) send me the PipBoxer V5 demo package. I’ve fired off a request, so let’s see if they respond favorably.

Before I go any further I would like to kindly thank the Investatech crew for sending me the PipBoxer V4 demo package for testing – without that this review would not be possible.

What is PipBoxer?

PipBoxer V4 (important to note that the latest version uses a DIFFERENT trading style) is an expert advisor (aka EA) that uses a breakout trading strategy.

Capabilities

PipBoxer V4 analyses the market 24/5 to find the best opportunity to enter a new trade. Compared to V3, this version of PipBoxer could enter a trade any time of the day. PipBoxer V4 does not use any indicators. PipBoxer V4 uses a price action mechanism to recognize the direction of the market. The elimination of the indicator makes PipBoxer more dependent on what market shows right now rather than what has happened in the past.

Features it lacks

PipBoxer V4 is only partially compatible with fractional pips (5 digit price feed) and does not send out email signals.

Forward demo testing results

Alright, now let’s get to the meat of the story – how PipBoxer V4 performs. I’ve set it up on a $50K Liteforex demo account on February 25’th, 2009. Until then I’ve had it running nearly 24/7, except for a 3 week period where I was on vacation, and I got the following performance result (click on the PDF icon below to download my performance statement):

pdf_icon.gif

As you can see from that statement, my original $50K account slowly drained itself down to roughly $27,000 which represents a loss of around $22,000!

Conclusion:

Well, as you can clearly tell by taking a look at my performance statement PipBoxer V4 is not profitable. I thus would not recommend PipBoxer V4. You can’t buy this version any more from the PipBoxer homepage so it’s unlikely that you’d come across it anyways, but if you do somewhere I’d suggest you avoid it. If you feel adventurous try PipBoxer V5.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, if the folks behind PipBoxer honor my request and send me a demo copy of PipBoxer V5 I would gladly test it out and let you all know how it performs. But until they do (that is IF) I am moving on to other EAs.

I wish you all profitable trading – be it automated or manual.

Cheers,
Alan
http://alansforexblog.com

Reviews, Trading Systems

Forex Rebellion

3 Comments

There is a new commercial forex trading system buzzing about the forex community. The system is called Forex Rebellion, and its creator goes by the name of Russ Horn. I first heard about this system from Mark McRae of Old Tree Publishing who as far as I can tell is providing the website/marketing support system for Russ’s system. By the way, Mark is the guy behind the Surefire Trading Challenge – but that’s not really all that relevant to this post, so why am I typing it. Anyways, moving on!

Forex Rebellion is a MANUAL trading system NOT an EA – all you EA jockeys look elsewhere. On first impression the system looks interesting. I saw Ross’s video (on the Forex Rebellion homepage) where he gives people an example live trade and it looks like the system is based around a few indicators for the MetaTrader 4 platform (MT4) on the M15 time frame. What Ross does is generate the trading signals on the MT4 platform and place the live trades on another non MT4 broker – FXCM being the one he used in his video.

As far as how profitable this system is Ross claims 90% Winners – 36.37% in 5 Days. Seems lucrative but I’d like to experience this myself. That’s why I’m thinking of getting myself a copy to test/review. One thing that may appeal to some of you (such as I for example) is that the system used the M15 chart which means that you should be getting a large number of trade setups. On the other hand the disadvantage of this time frame is that when a pair is stuck in a range the system may breakdown. But then again I really should not comment without first fully understanding how the system works.

I’ll get back to you guys with more news/updates regarding Forex Rebellion. For now though if you’re curious to learn more than just the brief overview I’ve provided I recommend you simply visit the Forex Rebellion homepage.

Also there is a forum thread where you can discuss this forex trading system. See this link:

http://www.forexnirvana.com/f19/forex-rebellion-1078/

Take care everyone,
Alan out

UPDATE: I started testing the Forex Rebellion system (yes I bought it finally!) See this post for details:

http://alansforexblog.com/2009/10/12/i-started-testing-forex-rebellion/

Expert Advisors, Reviews

I bought the Forex MegaDroid EA

7 Comments

Forex MegaDroid

Greetings fellow forex traders. I hope the market is treating you well. Today’s post is going to be short and to the point. As you may or may not know, I’m a big fan and user of automated (aka expert advisors – EA) forex trading systems, and I’m always on the lookout for new EAs to play with. So after hearing some very positive comments about the Forex MegaDroid EA in this thread over at the Forex Nirvana forum I thought I’d jump in and join the fun, so I grabbed myself a copy.

I’ve got it attached to a EUR/USD H1 chart on a live FXDD account and I’m ready to hit the markets. From what I’ve heard this EA needs the spread to be as low as possible so a bit later on I’m thinking of moving the testing over to a MB Trading MT4 account or perhaps just leaving this FXDD account run and also install it on the MB Trading MT4 account as well – basically testing with two live accounts. I haven’t decided over this yet, so for now all my testing shall be on the FXDD live account only. Now, as far as settings, I’m using all the default settings except I’ve got it set to to conservative mode – I’ve turned the “aggressive” mode off.

If you’ve been following my blog for a while you already know how I like to do things. After some extensive testing I will write a full review and along the course I will post regular performance updates.

Wish me luck!

Some useful links:

1) Forex MegaDroid homepage

2) Forum thread where you discuss this EA

Cheers,

Alan