Forex Growth Bot (FGB) Expert Advisor REVIEW and Performance for 2011

[pharoh777]

Forex Growth Bot Review Expert Advisor (EA) Review and Performance

Ahhhh, Forex Growth Bot (FGB). So much can be said about this EA. I have had a very interesting time with this expert advisor since it was released. It can be one of the most powerful money making EAs out there and can also be one of the most frustrating!! When there is a strong trend and big movement, money fills your account at a rate that really makes you say “WOW, this was a good week!”. But it also has a major tendency to retrace and give up some profits, lose many orders during choppy periods, and continue to open orders after a big move. I have resolved most of these problems in the settings I use now and that will come later in another thread. But first:

What Is Forex Growth Bot?
If I remember correctly Forex Growth Bot or “FGB” was released in the fall of 2010. I started trading with it towards the end of 2010. I started keeping sorted records of all my trades starting 2011 and those are the numbers I will be using for the review. FGB is an expert advisor “EA” for the forex market. What EAs allow one to do is place trades automatically based on the rules of that particular EA without intervention in the trade.
Forex Growth Bot is for the Eur/Usd pair and trades on the 15-minute time frame. This EA is a TREND RIDER. It trades 24 hours a day while the market is open. It trades all sessions but really only opens trades after London opens because it requires pretty strong moves with good volume to open trades. If the market is really thin and week, FGB usually doesn’t open trades. So you won’t usually ever see a trade opened during the Asian session or late NY session after London Close. That doesn’t mean you won’t have orders OPEN during that time, it just usually won’t trigger an initial trade. The “ideal” trade works like this:

1. Euro moves pretty strongly in a direction
2. After 15-minute candle closes, FGB opens the first order in the direction of the movement
3. It continues to open orders in the same direction at the end of 15-minute candles as long as the conditions for the trade are still correct.
4. As the market continues to move in the direction, more orders are opened at the end of candles until the max orders are reached (user adjustable)
5. It has a hidden s/l and t/p and orders are opened without either
6. It will close out profitable orders based on internal calculations and these are not straightforward. If the pair retraces it will close the losing orders out and maybe some profitable ones.

There are 3 different versions of FGB although the condition for entry and exit by default is the same for all 3 versions. The original version has a very simple setting setup and not much can be modified. It sells for $99. The advanced version allows some more settings to be modified. It is an additional $73. The “Power Source” version has all the features of the advanced and adds Fibonacci wave trailing stops and has a “reinvest capital” setting. It also allows all settings to be adjusted and they give you some source code for the EA. This version is $84.99 after you purchase the original version. I currently use the Power Source version myself. Additional original licenses can be obtained at the discount price of $49.99.

Before I get to the numbers from 2011 and why this EA made the portfolio I want to discuss why this EA can be very frustrating to use and potentially dangerous to your account during certain times. I also want to mention why my numbers for 2011 are not the best representation of how powerful this EA is. 2011 was a very big learning process for me and I fiddled around A LOT with different techniques trying to make this EA not drawdown so much.

1. Why This EA Can Frustrate: FGB needs a good trend to make lots of money. It keeps adding orders as the market moves in your favor and can compound some very hefty wins, BUT if the market doesn’t move enough or keeps swinging around back and forth then FGB loses A LOT of orders, and very often consecutively. I cannot stress enough how low of a lot size you should use. BE VERY CONSERVATIVE. Also, this EA is NOTORIOUS for making you watch 3-4 orders go 50+ pips sometimes into profit and then go into a loss and take stops on all orders!! This is can be infuriating sometimes. It doesn’t use a hard s/l and t/p nor will you ever know what those numbers are. Sometimes stops are less than 20 pips and sometimes they are over 50+. It uses dynamic calculations so those numbers change all the time.

1. Why My 2011 Numbers Should Be Read With Caution: It tried A LOT of different techniques to squeeze more profit out of FGB last year. I moved stops to entry when trades got a certain distance through a resistance area, I closed out some orders manually when certain profit levels were reached (since there are sometimes 5 open orders at once). I also let it trade certain times when I shouldn’t have such as NFP and sideways markets. I am confident 2012 WILL BE BETTER than 2011 and I will use consistent rules so everyone can follow along with the trades if they wish. This is a very powerful EA, and I am more sure now I should let it do it’s own thing rather than try to interfere too much. Also profit factor came out horrible despite the fact the EA made almost 500 pips in 2011. That is 100% my fault since I changed lot sizes so much because of all the experimenting I did, so it slanted the actual $$$ that FGB made. I would look at the pips and then think of a fixed lot and that is reflective of the performance of the EA, rather than the dismal performance of managing FGB by yours truly (hey it’s how I learned more about the EA in the first place).

Why FGB Made the Portfolio and 2011 Performance:
Quite Simply: MONSTER WINNING TRADES!!! I have made over 800 pips in one basket of trades, IN ONE MORNING! Need I say more??

1. Reward/Risk Ratio Is Excellent: Average win is double average loss
2. During a strong trend you get VERY BIG gains. One basket of gains blows the little consecutive losses into a distant memory.

Forex Growth Bot 2011 LIVE Trade Results (01/01/2011-12/23/2011):

Net Gain: +18.45%
Total Trades: 355
Total Win %: 41.7%
Total Pips: +454.3
Average Win: +44.33 pips
Average Loss: -29.5 pips
Best Win: +217.3 pips
Worst Loss: -115.7 pips (NOTE: This was a SINGLE occurrence of over -100 pip loss, it was a huge gaining candle that closed waaaayyy far away by the end of the 15 minute bar)
Max Drawdown: -30.49% This number is very high, but then again the system can go long periods where it loses before it catches a very big trade.
Profit Factor: 1.00 (Please see explanation above)

Pretty solid numbers I think although I know 2012 performance is going to be much better. I cannot stress enough that risk should not be exceeded and I am going to get to much more of the ins and outs of trading FGB when I do my thread on “Settings and Live Updated Performance” for Forex Growth Bot. I wanted to get everyone started with this thread to give some background.
If you are interested in joining me in trading this EA, please use the link provided below. Again, I am not an affiliate of ANY product I discuss or test here BUT purchasing through the link on the forum site helps this site out so we can all continue to bring you only the best and honest education, support and reviews! Don’t hesitate to ask any questions and we can all make 2012 a big year for FGB and our accounts!!

Forex Growth Bot (FGB) Vendor Site

Stay Tuned for settings and Live Trade Updates Soon!!!

[munnyman]

Hi Omar, looked through vendors site but didn't see any mention of different versions, am I missing something?
John

[pharoh777]

Hi John!!

After you purchase, they will offer the "extras". Just so you know my friend, this is a trick many forex vendors do. They offer the version you just heard so much hype about for say $99. Then when you purchase, it takes you to a site where a "once in a lifetime offer of blah, blah, blah" for only an extra $149. Then when you click that, another pops up asking if you want some kind of support for $49 per month. What I described is a generalization and doesn't specifically refer to FGB, although FGB does offer upgrades. I always just buy the original version first of ANY EA that has multi-version (I did the same for MDP). I make sure that works, then I think about why I should want to add anything. Simpler that way. I cannot remember if the basic version allows modification of t/p and s/l settings and you may need at least the advanced version to change those since they are part of my custom settings (I use power source version but only a few changes from advanced). Keep in mind, that advanced version will give you all the customization needed to run BOTH my M5 settings and M15 custom settings! I hope this helps explain my friend. Let me know if you need any clarification!

[munnyman]

Thanks Omar, very clear. I will wait till I see some of your results and recommendations before I think of doing anything.
Thankyou very much for all your help and patience.
Regards
John

[pharoh777]

Well Thank You John,

I appreciate that! I have just finished my FapTurbo settings and performance update and I shall begin work on the Forex Growth Bot Settings now. I shall get that in a new thread here soon! Hopefully these settings produce excellent results in 2012, so far they seem to be looking pretty good (got my first trades with them this morning). I'll get all that to you in the new thread. Talk to you soon!!

[patsid13]

Omar how are you?

Does FGB require ECN or is that just limited to MDP

Cheers
Patrick

[raa]

Hey Omar, how come you managed only 18% gain for 2011 year with 30% draw-down when the basic original version with default settings managed 200% for 2011 with same 30% draw-down? Just curious.

[pharoh777]

Hi Raa!!! Excellent question!! I fiddled WAY, WAY, WAY, too much with manual intervention in 2011. I tried all sorts of stuff. The reason that the default result are better is because leaving this EA alone is much better than trying to control it manually although you have periods of drawdown. I also tried many different settings. Like I said in my writeup, I played wayyyy too much with FGB last year. This year, I have good settings and I'm going to let it run like it's supposed to.

Everyone take lesson from that, you CAN RUIN the performance of a profitable EA by messing with it too much!!

Oh, and FGB settings will be posted today when I get home from work. I meant to do it yesterday and I ended up falling asleep!!! So sorry!!!

[raa]

Yeah I hear you. I did play with FGB too much as well but plugged off before the big period of losses started last year. FGB is a fine bot, but we need a configuration that won't have a bigger than 10-12% drawdown, this is what I personally aim for. I did manage to find such a configuration during back testing, but so far on forward testing it just was going nowhere in Jan, closed month with lost 1.5% while standard bot printed some nice gains.

There is a way to put a limit on a max loss in pips (40 usually is sensible) and some break even (I find that 30-35 usually makes sense), but the back test shows it is best overall to leave it alone.

[pharoh777]

HI ALL!

First off, I seem to have missed Patrick's (good day kind sir!!) question. Patrick, you don't need ECN for growth bot BUT, I recommend and ECN broker for ALL EA trading!! It just makes sense since your scalpers will make more trades because you will most likely be getting much lower spreads. Your EAs that thrive on execution (MDP) need ECN for speed. And even your trend riding EAs will flourish in an ECN environment because no wacky stuff like extreme spread increases, stop hunting and all the other tricks of the market-maker trade won't happen to affect them. So technically, NO, but realistically, PLEASE USE ECN.

Raa!! Thanks for the input my man! My system in 2011 for FGB was this. A 5-trade basket would open with 2 orders with deep sitting profit, usually 3 & 4 were medium profit and the last one was usually close to price. I would close one of the the first 2 orders immediately(70-100+ pips), move the stop on the second behind the nearest major resistance by 20 pips, then I would move the stops on orders 3 & 4 to entry and let the 5th ride unattended. Sounded good to me on paper but in reality as you saw the FGB default settings left alone were much better returns!!!

For 2012 I went "back to the drawing board" and decide to meet myself in the middle. I scoured the forums, talked to friends that used the program and found out that:

1. Stop loss tightening IS possible but FGB uses a ratio stop so it's not a hard stop.
2. Take Profit lowering is possible so that it doesn't let orders retrace and go back to 0 or negative as much (THE SINGLE MOST FRUSTRATING THING ABOUT FGB)
3. The conditions by which the EA enters the market is VERY, VERY adjustable and I have had the benefit of some people that have worked very hard backtesting SO MANY variables and I'm hoping the settings I use this year will beat the default
4. This EA can be traded on multiple timeframes (5-min & 15-min) but risk tolerance is very different for both
5. It is best to LEAVE THIS EA ALONE and not pretend I'm a better trader than the system and fiddle with all the trades like I described above.

We shall see, I'm going to go write the settings and live trade performance from the new settings as soon as I finish this post!