Trading robots have the potential to increase your trading frequency, your trading discipline and your profitability but only if you use the robots sensibly and with an understanding of the limitations of the robot you are using.
One of the big advantages of MT4 is that it simple to use trading robots know as Expert Advisers (EAs). There are easily uploaded to your personal MT4 platform and can be implemented on any chart at any timeframe you wish to trade it on.
Why use a Trading Robot EA?
An EA can dramatically increase your trading frequency and its possible to use this increase in frequency to build a small trading account quicker and more efficiently than manual trading. If you could for example take four times as many trades automatically then you could decide to reduce your individual risk per trade and still build your account much quicker.
Many traders find that using an EA helps them to maintain better trading discipline, they follow the strategy and allow the EA to take profit and loss at the appropriate place.
Do I need to use a Virtual Server for a MT4 Trading Robot?
No. Running MT4 on a virtual server does enable you to run a trading robot EA 24/7 but this is not always necessary and can actually be counter productive to your trading. If you are trying to benefit from intraday trading then EA’s are best used in conjunction with you as a trader making decisions when to allow the EA to run and when to turn it off. This means you can run an MT4 EA on your own desktop. The best traders assess the market each day and decide which EA’s to put on for their trading session and then close the EA’s when their personal trading session ends.
Where do I find Trading Robot EA’s
There are many places online that you can search for and download trading Robot EAs that you can test. We do not recommend that you purchase expensive EAs, the claims of massive returns are often false and miss-leading. Instead we’d recommend that you search for simple strategies that you can use intraday.
The MQL5 platform has a great deal of detail on using EAs and is a good resource but a little difficult to find exactly what you may want.
One site we do recommend is PZ Trading. They are specialist MT4 EA developers and have a number of good EAs that are available free for you to test yourself. We’d recommend that you maybe try the well known strategies such as the simple Bollinger Bands EA and the Flexible Breakout EA. You can download these free here. Always test EAs on a live demo account and when you start trading on a real account make sure that your risk is initially set very low.
How do I upload and EA to MT4?
There are many guides available online and we won’t repeat them here. Instead go to BabyPips for a simple guide.
Sharing Member EA Experience
Please share with us and other members any positive EA trading experience you have. Let us know what EA’s you are using and how they are helping your trading.
There is a room in the member chat specifically for trading robots and EAs.