Many have heard the term forex advisers or electronic advisers as the MT4 community refers to them. There are thousands of them available, many can be accesses directly from inside the MT4 Trading Platform. There are hundreds of free versions available for traders while others require a paid license. Forex traders can chose to run them alongside their own trading strategies or operate them in a trading account by themselves. They can be great for a number of reasons, but should also be approached with care.
EA’s need to be activated in MT4 which can be done by clicking the ‘Auto Trading’ button in the menu bar. More options are available by accessing ‘Tools’ and the selecting ‘Options’ or using the keyboard short-cut ‘CTRL + O’ from where ‘Expert Advisers’ tab allows forex traders to make more adjustments if necessary. In most cases an EA will function once the ‘Auto Trading’ button has been activated. The button can also be used to disconnect an EA in case the trader notices something out of order.
A forex adviser or electronic adviser, often also labeled a forex robot, is very similar to an account manager. An account manager scans the forex market based on a strategy and once a currency pair matches the criteria a trade is placed by the account manager. An EA is a coded strategy written in the MQL4 language which can scan the forex market based on the same criteria an account manager will use. Anything that is available in the MT4 Trading Platform for manual trading, can be coded into a forex adviser.
Some forex advisers follow a very simple trading strategy, for example a moving crossover strategy, while others run more complex trading algorithms. Forex traders usually have the option to adjust parameters such as lot size or capital the EA is allowed to trade with. Other parameters can include stop loss and take profit levels After the one-time set-up, forex traders add the specific template to all currency pairs which the EA should analyse and then all that is left to is let the forex robot execute its code and place the trades.
Most of the free versions include very basic trading strategies. This doesn’t mean that they are not good and often it may be a smart addition to a manual trading strategy if it can complement an existing trading approach. Another good use for a combination of manual and automatic trading is if the EA strategy is used to hedge the trading account. Some forex traders like to operate multiple trading accounts and use a manual trading strategy, a combo strategy as well as a pure automatic trading strategy.
This can help to greatly reduce the overall risk of the combined forex account. It is always good to diversify and when it comes to forex there is only a limited amount of currency pairs available which means diversification needs to extend to different trading strategies in different trading accounts. It is very simple to add sub-accounts and all can be managed from the same MT4 Trading platform. Forex traders can browse the expert adviser marketplace directly from their trading platform by accessing the ‘Experts’ tab at the bottom of the terminal.
Forex advisers are not a holy grail and do not guarantee profitability. There are very good ones available to all forex traders and then there are very bad ones. It can be compared to human account managers or PAMM accounts. The prices range from free to several thousands of dollars while others can be used through a monthly or annual subscription. In order to find the right EA for your trading account, style and personality it requires plenty of research, but the end results will make it well worth the time and effort invested. When it comes to trading forex successfully, there is no substitute for putting in the effort in order to create the best profitable trading results.
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