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In my strategy to passing the FTMO challenge I use Petko’s robots and robots I create. I also use 10K challenges. I will start a new challenge every two weeks. There are periods when the markets trend upward, move sideways, and trend downwards. By opening a new challenge every few weeks I spread the risk caused by these different market conditions. Also, if I fail a challenge the replacement cost is not so high. Right now I have six 10K challenges running all with different strategies. This spreads the risk. I also test the EAs using a live 10K challenge for one month using small lot sizes so as not blow the account. During a typical month the market will go through periods of drawdowns. Testing for one month then allows to determine maximum account drawdown. I then increase the lot size for the account to a more appropriate size based upon the drawdown during the test to complete the challenge. My trading strategy is not to try and complete the challenge quickly but to control risk.
Some Observations:
I tested FTMO v4.1 in a demo account where I had to restart it every 14 days. It took 3 months to pass the challenge. I then moved it to a 10K challenge but it is currently going through a drawdown period.
I currently have v4.3 in two challenges. One challenge uses all the EAs and the other challenge uses the top 3. What I am currently observing is that the challenge with all the EAs is doing better than the challenge with the top 3. I find that interesting.
I also started v5.0 this week. One 10K challenge has all 8 EAs running with a small loss for the week. A second 10K challenge with the Top 3 EAs has a small profit for the week.
I also have my own portfolio of 10 EAs trading in a challenge that is up 2% for the month.
Alan,
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I don’t have sufficient real time trading results with my FTMO account to determine top performers. All I can go on is backtesting the v5 EAs using EA Studio.
There are only two top performers over the last 1 month, they are USDCHF and AUDUSD. These two EAs have upward sloping balance lines with pullbacks less than 1%. Trading for these two EAs were typically flat over the last one week. Typically after a period of trading flat trading can go in either direction in the future. Typically what you need to do is to monitor these two EAs to see which direction they start to trade in and then make trading decisions on those initial movements.
Over the last one week there were two EAs that had the deepest pullbacks of approximately 1.5%, they are EURUSD and GBPAUD. Typically after a large pullback or drawdown, same thing, trading starts to resume in the direction it was trading before the pullback started. What is unknown is if the pullback is now complete. With a pullback of 1.5% my guess is that it is close to being complete. Again, what needs to happen is to watch these two EAs to see if they start to make profitable trades again and then start trading them.
Having said all of this I don’t worry about what will happen over the short term such as one week as EAs will either be profitable, flat, or in drawdown. What the EAs do over the short term is unknown! What I look for is the longer term performance knowing that over the short term the EAs will either be profitable, flat or in drawdowns. I am interested in being profitable over the next several months and longer.
This is what I am interested in:
*This chart is from my own portfolio of 10 EAs.
Notice the periods in which this balance line moved higher (profits), moved sideways (flat), and moved downward (pullback or drawdown)? However, over the longer term the balance line moves upward indicating long term profits. In this case it shows approximately a 12% profit in just over one month. This is what I look for is a nice upward profitable balance line over the long term. Keeping your eye on the short term is fruitless, in my opinion.
Keep in mind there are no absolutes, only possibilities in trading.
Hope this helps!
Alan,
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Hey Alan
Thanks for this, seems like a solid strategy. Unfortunately, I do not have the money to open a new 10K account every two weeks. Have yet to pass one challenge and hopefully build from there.
I have my own strategy which I trade manually. But it is a VERY slow process. That is why I bought this FTMO EA. I was hoping it would help me achieve success a bit faster.
Unfortunately to date, this has not been the the case. I have been running the EA’s on a test account for two weeks, no clear winner except maybe AUDUSD, which I have enabled on my live 10K account with ZERO trades opened to date.
I have to be honest, been burned so many times, especially in the EA space, HUGE promises, and then you buy the EA, then basically nothing happens or there’s excuses. It is sort of beginning to feel like that here now as well.
I think it would make quite a bit of sense for Petko and team to update us weekly on which EA’s to use, which ones are best performing currently. Not everybody can afford a VPN running and testing all the time. MANY of us here are beginners taking on our first challenges, that’s why we are here…but alas. Not a positive experience to this point for me.
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Hey Nicholas,
I understand your concerns completely. But, the market determines the results. Some weeks are incredible, with massive gains. Others, are very slow. The key is constancy. Keep the EAs on a demo account, Monitor their performance and move the best performer/s to your challenge account. The reason we, as the team at EA Trading Academy, don’t simply publish the best performers, is because the broker and trading conditions play a big factor. We may have better results with one EA than another, but that doesn’t mean the results would be the same with another broker.
I know you’ve been running the EAs for 2 weeks, and this seems like a long time, but really, it’s not. That’s the reason most prop firms have removed the time limit. It can be almost impossible passing in just 30 days, while still adhering to all the rules. Be patient. Follow the strategy. Don’t take unnecessary risks. Trade only EAs that have performed well. If none have in that week, don’t trade any. You will be successful. If this was easy, everyone would pass easily.
Good luck,
Ilan
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Hey Ilan
But you see, that’s what I do not get. We DO NOT use different brokers, we all use FTMO. Or at least in THIS forum, it is an FTMO EA that does ONLY FTMO.
So why can you not publish to this community focused on FTMO, the best-performing pair for FTMO. FTMO is the same anywhere in the world.
Explain this to me please? And do not say since brokers are different and some people may use different brokers. I think most people here would be intelligent enough to KNOW that the best performing EA’s you are really supposed to send to us is actually for FTMO.
Note the name of the forum: “FTMO Robot”
So why not just share on a weekly basis the best performing EA’s? And that’s what I get really angry with, on these “EA’s” – there is always some bloody excuse why they do not work as SOLD. We paid for the FTMO bot. We have the EA files. Give us the best weekly performing EA’s as tested by you, a professional team, and we can then swop out as required. SIMPLE. Those that cannot afford a VPS but runs on their local systems now ALSO have the weekly best performers.
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I will need to answer here to clarify it! 🙂
As far I understand you got ‘angry’ because we do not publish the trial/testing account with the FTMO Robots so everyone can see which is the top performer.
To do this, it should be on myfxbook, with all green checks and Live updates (which is easy to do).
BUT if we do this it will become a signal provider – a FREE Signal provider. It will be easy for everyone to copy the trades. Which is something we want to avoid.
Plus, it is super easy for everyone to open a trial account with FTMO and place the 8 EAs and track the performance. It’s nothing hard, and everyone can do it.
And I don’t think you saw fake promises with us because we never said that we would provide the weekly performers. You can not find in the landing page of the FTMO Robot, and it has never been in there.
So I hope you understand why we can’t do publicly BUT we will try to figure it out how to make it private for everyone who purchases the FTMO Robot. Then even if one uses it for signals, that is alright. We will let you know.
But don’t be angry, because we never promised that! 🙂
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Hello Petko
I am NOT angry about you not posting top results. Although your comment on signals does NOT make sense AT ALL. Here is your post from earlier called “FTMO v5 results” what am I missing? Is this not “signals” but asking for top performers are signals…sorry, but you would have to give me a better answer. I do not care about MyFX and green ticks and all that jazz. Are you not constantly testing the FTMO Robot on your end to ensure you can make updates etc? If you are not, this would be VERY concerning. Please share these results with us on an ongoing basis. Why not? Do you NOT trust your results?
Here is what IS making me super angry though. And this comes from my past experience with EA sellers that make big promises and then do not deliver. As a reminder, please read your sales page.
You state: The Robot will help you pass challenges faster and stress-free!
It has NOT been stress-free AT ALL. In fact, it has been very stressful. I do not get answers, I do not get clear and concise guidance, I have to DO MY OWN TESTING. I mean…really. And then I get statements from you and your team like:
We cannot provide the top performers because tomorrow this might change. So what is the point of running a bloody three-week “test” and then “oh but wait, we cannot take responsibility, since this might change tomorrow” – bullshit.
Another favorite response from you and team: Test the robot on a testing account and use the top performers. I have been “testing” for three weeks now, no clear winners.
Another one: The market might change and the robot might stop working. Might, might, might. No. I remind you: The Robot will help you pass challenges faster and stress-free!
And the best one yet, we cannot provide the best performers because people might be using other brokers. WHAT! Really, on an FTMO Robot forum, this is an answer we get from your team. No, we are NOT using other brokers. We are using FTMO
The Robot will help you pass challenges faster and stress-free!I have yet to even make a small dent using your robot in any live account. No accounts passed yet. Not stress-free. None of your promises on your sales page have applied. But, and I am purposefully being SUPER sarcastic here. I have probably not passed any challenges because: I have not tested enough. I might be using a different broker. The market might change. All these excuses are either me not doing things right or some external factor. Not you and your team NOT delivering on the promises on your sales pages.
THAT is what is making angry.
I am NOT passing challenges stress-free, instead, I am constantly in the bloody forum asking for help and writing essays for answers!!!!!
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Hey Nicholas,
I’m sorry to see you had bad experiences in the past from other sales, and I’ve seen a lot of people angry after they lost money.
However, we did not make any promises that we did not keep. A promise would be to say” You will pass the challenge 100% in 2 weeks’ time”.
I’ve built the system to help others pass challenges. Sometimes it takes longer, that is where patience comes in place. I actually launched this FTMO Robot publicly after FTMO Removed the 30-day period.
And indeed, I trade absolutely stress-free. I follow the results, and If I see winning assets I use them. If not I wait. That’s it.
If you or anyone else doesn’t like the system, we have a 30-day money-back guarantee.
I really do not have time and the energy to argue or explain why I did it this way.
PS We are already discussing putting the FTMO Robots on a dedicated VPS and sharing the account with everyone who purchased the Robot but it won’t be public in the forum or the website. It will just save the efforts of everyone to test them. And if you don’t know how one public account can become a free signal, please do the research.
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Hello Petko
Firstly, thanks for responding, it is much appreciated. I understand that there are things I do not understand about the signal aspect you mentioned. All good there, there no need for me to understand anyways, I accept their insight I do not have on this point.
It is fantastic news that you guys are busy setting up a VPS, thank you for listening to us here. Looking forward to that getting in place.
I do not want a refund. I want to robot tat helps me pass challenges and continue to make money after I did pass the challenge.
I am listening to you concerning the patience aspect. I hear you. It has been a frustrating journey to this point. I do not have enough capital of my own to start trading sensibly. Thus the choice to take the prop firm road. But it is slow, frustratingly slow. I will practise my patience though.
Thanks for clarifying and listening.
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Hi Nicholas,
I have been on vacation the last week. Just got back and trying to catch up on the Forum. I saw your responses to this Topic. Sorry to hear about your frustration with the FTMO Challenge and the robots. I have been trading the FTMO V5 robots on a live FTMO Challenge now for just a little over one week now. Or, I should say I have been testing the robots on a live FTMO Challenge. I currently have the lot size for each robot set about 1/5 of the normal set file size during my forward testing. Over the last week I see that the account has been going through a drawdown period. This is normal. All robots will go through a period of profit, a period of moving sideways, and a period of drawdown as I have explained before. My plan, right now, is to wait for the account to move back above breakeven. This will tell me the robots are in a profitable period. Once the account breaks even I will adjust the lot sizes upward. Not sure if I will increase lot sizes back to the set file amounts. Might wait until account reaches 1% or 2% but I will increase lot size to some larger amount once the account breaks even.
The following is my MT4 Detailed Account summary:
So, hang in there, and lets take this journey together!
Alan,
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Hey Alan
Thank you for taking the time and responding. And thank you for your detailed response. It is appreciated. This trading journey has been a tough one. Hundreds of hours of practise and strategies and videos etc. One gets to a point where you just want to feel you are moving forward. And by that I mean, actually start making some money on a consistent basis.
Thus the reason why I turned to prop firms. Many warned me it is a scam mostly to get the “challenge fee” and then make it almost impossible to pass and easy to fail.
But I do not have the capital to enter trades that will at least give me the chance to earn significant money and get out of the rat-race, because that is the goal…
Thus the reason for turning to EA’s. I have been testing this EA on other funded challenges on 0.01 lot sizes, but the EA is not successful there. Really does only seem to work best on FTMO. I am not getting super clear winners and results yet. AUDUSD seems to be the only real winner.
But I march forward three steps and get knocked back two steps and so we go 🙂
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Hi Nicholas,
I wanted to respond to your statement “Thus the reason why I turned to prop firms. Many warned me it is a scam mostly to get the “challenge fee” and then make it almost impossible to pass and easy to fail.”
It is a well established risk management rule that successful traders use that when a trade losses 2% in one day that the trade is closed out. Also, if an account losses 6% all trades are closed and the trader takes a break from trading for a period of time, normally one month. This is done with the hope the markets will change back in favor of the traders strategy.
So in comparison, FTMO does not close out your account until you lose 5% in one day instead of the established risk management rule of successful traders which is 2%. Also, FTMO does not close out and account until the drawdown reaches 10% versus the established management rule of successful traders which is 6%.
So, in contrast between the established risk management rule of successful traders and the risk management rule of FTMO, FTMO’s risk management is quite relaxed to give beginning traders a more opportunity to be successful while at the same time protecting their account from unnecessary risk.
So, its not about scamming, its about risk management!
The one thing FTMO does that other prop firms don’t is they provide a free demo account for traders to use until they feel confident in their strategy before committing to the fee of a Challenge. So again, in my opinion, FTMO is trying to help the trader to become successful. Having success full traders trading their account helps FTMO spread their risk as the various traders trade different strategies.
Alan,
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UPDATE ON MY FTMO STRATEGY V5.0
One of the FTMO strategies I am using is Petko’s FTMO v5.0. This strategy has been losing lately and has currently drawn down my FTMO 10K Challenge account by -3%. This is not a significant draw down of the account as it only takes a profit of 3.1% to get back to breakeven. What is a serious drawdown would be for an account to drawdown by 50%. In a $10,000 account this would mean the account value would then be $5,000. An account would then have to profit by 100% to get back to breakeven. This could take considerable time and that time represents a period of time where the trader is not able to use to grow his/her account from $10,000 to a larger amount. With a drawdown of 50% the cost to a trader is time and profit lost.
Since this account has only drawdown by 3% I will continue to trade FTMO V5.0 in my current 10K Challenge and see if it will start to move back upward.
I will not be adding any new FTMO 10K Challenges until after the first week of January due to the expected slow down in volatility during the holiday season!
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UPDATE ON MY FTMO STRATEGY V4.3
From October 26 through November 15 I was testing this strategy using 0.01 lot size. In mid November I found EURUSD was performing the best. I then increased the lot size from 0.01 to 0.1 for EURUSD. Unfortunately, from mid November through today the account has gone through a drawdown of about -1.5% but has regained most of that loss. This will happen from time to time when you enter a market or increase a lot size the market goes through a drawdown; this is normal!
Looking to see how all the symbols in the strategy are doing I cannot go by looking at New Profit. The reason for this is that EURUSD lot size is 10 times the lot size of all the other symbols and will obviously generate most of the profit. So, how to do you compare all the symbols equally? To do this I look at Net pips. Looking at the table below I see EURAUD is now in second place. I will now increase its lot size from 0.01 to 0.1 lots. I don’t want to get more aggressive than this so I want to keep EURUSD and EURAUD at 0.1 lots as I am expecting low volatility in the market until after the first week of January.
Alan,
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