Hi all,

 

I am new to the EA game and have been learning and testing for the last 6 months. I have not gone live yet but will do that next week.

In the meantime, as I write a trading plan which will keep me in check and stop me from being too greedy as the current results are very promising, I needed to set my expectations of what is possible. For that I wanted to ask the group, what returns are you guys getting or what goals have you set for yourselves?

To give you my numbers as an example, I created 200 EAs and bundled them into 2 portfolios. USD EUR 15M. Based on the backtesting I can expect 10x equity over 4 years. Now that would be about 175% return a year. Sounds already crazy. I then use a statistical method which I have been testing which basically double to triples the profitability. Sounds even more crazy. Based on my demo account over the last month…..it is bang on. WTF right???

I am currently fine tuning the statistical approach by each 200 EAs which takes about 3 days for my simulation in PowerBI to run…..so hopefully that will give me an additional increase before going live on Monday.

Pulling all of this together I am looking at 200-400% return a year. Is that in the area of actually being possible or am I just crazy?? Because that would mean I can quite my job about this time next year.

What are you guys aiming for and what have you seen is possible?? I understand that this might be sensitive for many but just an indication would already be helpful!!

Thank you

Bastian

I thought I share the last 32 days of the 200 EAs below. These ones are the vanilla EAs from EA studio that we picked. Performance is good but not mind blowing. Ignore the equity and balance, i use 500 EAs on that account. Based on the current drawdown I would run it on 5k account.

 

 

Here the exact same EAs but with my pimped statistical method. I would run that in an 8k account.

Hello Bastian,

I am glad to see you sharing the results. A few years back I realized that such a thing is possible only with Strategy builders like EA Studio and FSB pro. This is why I decided to implement them in the academy and in the courses.

Your purpose now is to stabilize the portfolio and avoid the drawdowns that you see (such as the one you had in the beginning).

One of the ways to do it is to use different assets or add different currency pairs. And the second way is to create more different strategies from a SL and TP perspective. For example, strategies with very small TP and a huge SL and vice versa.

Personally, my goal is 50% a month. That is what I have been following and it is very achievable. However, I don’t show this in the courses because it really sounds crazy. And most people won’t believe simply because most lose!

Keep up the good work!

 

Wow!

These are great results Bastian!

Good job!

What I can suggest to you from using the software since the beginning is just to stop thinking if you are on a live or on Demo. Focus on the strategies themselves!

At one moment, when you are ready with the portfolio and the general strategy that you follow, you will just switch to live and everything will continue…

Keep up the good work!

 

Hi Andi and Petko,

your thoughts are much appreciated and very encouraging!

Just a follow up question, please?! My understand is that it all comes down to profit / draw down ratio. I understand that adding more strategies with SL and TP and diversification through uncorrelated assets/currencies will improve my profit / draw down ratio further. But how do you determine your equity need for a portfolio?:

e.g. if I have $10k equity in an account at day 1. Assuming I have a 50% month on month return, I would theoretically have about $1.2m by day 365 (12 months later) assuming I compound every months wins and increase the lot sizes accordingly. If my max draw down would be just 10% more than my equity at day 1, that would not be an issue as I can easily put in $1000 bucks. But if I suddenly need to push in $120k because I have $1.2m in my account, that would mean a margin call.

So how do you determine the required equity for your portfolio across multiple strategies, currencies, asset classes to mitigate a margin call?

Or do you just not increase the lot sizes at the same pace as the account grows to minimise risks but make less return as a trade off?

Big thanks in advance for your thoughts!

 

Bastian

 

 

 

Hey Bastian,

Your questions are very logical, and this is a big topic…so I am glad that you started it.

Well, many factors will not allow you to go gradually with your plan all the time.

For example, if you have issues with computers, VPS, and the internet. Somethings small things might cause unexpected results.

Also, we are humans, so quite often, we make mistakes for any reason. The one I remember the most is one trader complained that he fell asleep with the tablet in hands. All night rolling around, he opened and closed many positions… 🙂 I know this won’t happen to you, but yes, it happens that we make some mistakes. This is why it is very important to deal with EAs and trading in general when you are very fresh and not tired.

Another thing, I would suggest you is always to withdraw some of your profit for something nice…family, vacations, improve your standard of life. Invest in some business or anything that will diversify your income even more.

A lot of traders make profits, and they never withdraw. Just increasing the account doesn’t make sense if you don’t enjoy in some way.

For example, I always withdraw 20% of the profit…but that is a personal choice, of course.

 

I have been trying an ea portfolio trading methodology for around 18 months to 2 years using EAs from some of the courses. Unfortunately I have not seen any great success with it. I had a period of around one month when my live account was up around 30%, the majority of the time I’ve been largely flat, although I am now down 50%.

I have stuck with it to now despite a lack of success as I feel there is merit in this approach however I haven’t been able to realise it. I’m really stuck now on how or even if to proceed.

I wonder is anyone managing to make profits in their live accounts? If so, how many EAs are you running in demo and typically what percentage of those you run in live at any one time?

Hey Matt,

Did you analyze that one month where you were up with 30% and compare it with the other months?

What did you trade differently? Did you use the same EAs during the whole period or you are updating every month?

Are you using EAs from the courses or you create your own? If you use the courses which broker do you use?

Also, if you create your own how do you do it?

Let me know so we can give you some more tips.

Also, ho come you had a month of +30% and the other flat, but in general, you are -50%?

Hi Petko,

Your expected profit is 50% per month. May I know how many percent of capital you invest to reach that amount of profit?

Also, may I know what is your drawdown? Can you maintain profit every month?

I starting to lose some capital but I think mainly because I didn’t change the EA. Wanted to set some reasonable expectation here.

Hello Simon,

What do you mean by how many percent of capital I invest?

There is the capital, and you always risk the amount of all SLes in the strategies. This is the risk.

I avoid drawdown bigger than 10%. I remove all EAs from live accounts that show a drawdown of 10%.