Don’t waste your precious time testing Forex Systems inefficiently

.

This Article is part of the Expert4x Mentorship Series

Don’t ever waste your precious time testing Forex Systems inefficiently

 

Life is not a rehearsal. It is the real thing. Do things properly the first time – don’t waste your time looking for short cuts with important things.

This session is intended for intermediate and advanced traders. If you are not ready for this information yet just treat it as such – information.

One of the most common problems Forex traders who come to me for mentorship is that they don’t know how to leverage their time – especially when learning and testing Forex systems.

Learning and testing a new system is a very basic, indispensable, Forex trading skill which you MUST have. Further – Testing, learning, creating and building confidence in Forex strategies that work should not take long at all – your time is way too precious.

Here is the fast track: All you need is FULL competency at using 2 basic Forex trading testing tools.

When my students do not have competency using those 2 basic Forex trading skills the mentorship stops straight away and they have to go away to learn them and become good at using these tools before I am happy that we can move on to better and things. Most of what we do in the mentorship is based on using these tools to prove trading concepts.

Now, in the old days (10 years back) we used to test most systems using manual back trading methods. This basically involves selecting a trading strategy and then going back 2 or 3 months on historical charts and then moving them forward 1 candle at a time. At each new candle you would ask: According to the strategy I am testing what would I do now? And then you would move on to the next candle. What a waste of time – but that is all we had.

Thanks goodness those days are over.

So let’s have a look at 2 basic tools you need to master and become expert at. All our Expert4x trained traders and our financially independent traders can use these tools in their sleep. They have used them so much.

 

The first tool is the manual Forex Testing Tool.

This is an automated MANUAL Forex back testing tool. So you mainly use this for MANUAL systems. It simulates the Forex Trading market with full realism using an MT4 like interface. So you can set your charts up as you would when using MT4 with many currencies, timeframes and your favourite indicators and then test any manual system by placing orders, stops and targets according to the system you are testing or learning.

Now where the time saving comes in is that you can, for instance, trade a years’ worth of trading in a weekend when the market is closed. Is that not the very best use of your time? Condensing a years’ worth of trading into a few hours and doing it when the market is closed anyway.

There are hundreds of manual systems to test on www.moneymakingforextools.com and the Forex Testing Tool can be downloaded from this link: – FOREX TESTING TOOL

The second testing Forex Tool is the MT4 Strategy Tester.

There are a few similar tools now available but this tool tests and optimises Expert Advisors. It is the most underutilised Forex tool because people mainly and sometimes only use it to optimize and test for settings.

With this tool you can determine

  • the best currency to trade,
  • the best time frame to trade,
  • which EA settings are important and which are not,
  • which market conditions are ideal for a particular EA,
  • market conditions to avoid trading this EA,
  • the account size required to trade it,
  • How a particular EA works,
  • What the strengths and weaknesses are of a particular EA,
  • Weaknesses in the EA that can be overcome adding filters
  • …..and much more.

Given a brand new EA skilled users of the Strategy tester can determine most of the above within less than an hour. How good is that as a time saver.

The MT4 Strategy Tester can be found on the MT4 Platform

strategy tester

Don’t trade the Forex market

So in a nutshell: Don’t waste your time trying to trade the Forex market if you are not competent at using the above tools unless you are or feel very lucky and are not really that serious about Forex Trading.

How do you become competent?

  1. You select a simple manual system requiring multiple timeframes and start testing it on the Forex Tester until you are fully competent at using it. Then move on to more complicated trading systems.
  2. You select a simple Expert Advisor and test it using the MT4 Strategy Tester to the point that you can answer the above mentioned questions regarding currencies, timeframes, settings, market conditions, how it works, its strength and weaknesses, the account size required etc. The move on to more complicated EAs.

Don’t even think of trading a Forex Strategy or Expert Advisor until you are FULLY competent and expert at ALL of the above activities. They are the ones that turn Forex Traders into millionaires – ask me I know. In the end, total, quantified, confidence in a trading strategy or EA is what will make you succeed.

 

 

I am only interested in mentoring Forex traders who what to succeed. You are either going to be highly energized by the above session or highly demotivated. This personal feedback is important to you. Think about it – why are you energized? or why are you demotivated?

Either way this article could  be saving your precious time in one way or the other.

Obviously this article was just an introduction to some of the basic skills successful traders have and can not cover the topics mentioned in detail.

 

You decide the next step you are going to take and let me know below. Any comments and questions will be welcome.

 

 

.

4 Comments

  • DForex

    February 23, 2016

    I am going to do exactly what you recommend, although time is a very scarce commodity here.

    How long should one take on average to get these 2 items under the belt?

    Thanks in advance

    DForex

  • Henry Muskus

    February 23, 2016

    After reading the above article I bought the FOREX tester, downloaded and installed it. I am busy reading the manual and will start using the program in a couple of days. Cheers ! – Henry –

  • Alex du Plooy

    February 24, 2016

    Thanks for your feedback

    How long it takes depends on you. As with most things there are people that 1) never start, 2) master something in 2 to 3 days, 3) others take a few weeks and 4)others who never master something.

    The best way to find out which group you are in is to start.

  • Alex du Plooy

    February 24, 2016

    Well done – taking action is always a good start

Leave A Response