USDBOT
Overview
| EA Name | Homepage | Pair | Timeframe | Takeprofit | Stoploss | ECN | 5-Digits | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| USDBOT | Click Here! | EURUSD / USDJPY | D1 / H1 | 100 | 100 | no | manual |
Forward Test (Demo)
Status:
Last update: (GMT)
| EA Name | Statement | Weekly Net P/L [Pips] | Weekly Profit | Weekly Trades | Winning Trades | Max/Min [Pips] | Closed P/L [Pips] | Open P/L [Pips] | Total Profit | Max. DD [%] | Weeks in Test |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Statement | 0 | 0% | 0 | 0% | 0 / 0 | 0 | 0 | 0% | 0% | 0 | |
Backtest
| EA Name | Statement | Period | Pair | Closed P/L [Pips] | Open P/L [Pips] | Trades | Winning Trades | Max/Min [Pips] | Max. DD [%] | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| USDBOT | Statement | 2009 | EURUSD | 1297 | 0 | 90 | 99% | 100 / -100 | 8% | |
| USDBOT | Statement | 2008 | EURUSD | 1616 | 0 | 83 | 99% | 100 / -100 | 8% | |
| USDBOT | Statement | 2007 | EURUSD | 2046 | 0 | 96 | 99% | 100 / -100 | 8% | |
| USDBOT | Statement | 2006 | EURUSD | 747 | 0 | 88 | 90% | 100 / -100 | 52% | |
Homepage / Vendor
Mark Trenton is the perceived owner of USDbot. In the website, he narrated his experiences in Forex trading, and on how he came up with the idea of developing a Forex robot.
On the USDbot website, the author claimed that backtesting results are complete bogus. While it is true that backtest results will not guarantee the same results in actual trading, they are still invaluable tools for assessing the performance of expert advisors. In fact, the said website also showed backtest results in order to prove the effectiveness of their Forex robot. Moreover, these strategy tester results aren’t enough to give credible information, since they did not specify what parameter values were used.
Snippets of account summaries were shown as the website makes huge promises such as growing an account with profits of $524.70 in 11 Days, $3186.91 in 21 Days, and $11,413.79 in 89 Days. Those claims maybe true, or otherwise. The website also published some screenshots telling its visitors that the EA made $1517 in three days. However, after a close analysis, one should be able to see that almost 80% of the alleged profits came from only from 2 trades, each having $600 profit. This led us to think whether the profits reaped by the EA were really due to the its trading strategy or only came as a result of market spikes.
The site also featured Mr. Mark Trenton’s account, showing the profitability he has enjoyed while using USDbot on a real account during a period of 8 days only.
Delivery
Here’s what you’ll get once you purchased USDbot:
- A USDbot guide of 13 pages (PDF)
- The USDbot ex4 file
- Some bonus material
Installation / License
USDbot consists only of one executable file. It doesn’t come with any customer indicators, dlls, or template files. This makes installation easy since you only have to copy one file.
During the checkout there is an upsell for an “adaptive USDBOT”.
How does it work ?
USDBOT trades using 1-2-3 patterns based on the zig-zag indicator. To exit trades a fixed takeprofit / stoploss and a partial scale out mechanism is used which moves the SL as well.
Settings / Money Managment / Broker Requirements
USDBOT has a lot of settings which are not described in the documentation. The settings allow to enable an alerting about trades and mainly to define the exit criterias like the scale out mechanism used. The robot has a built in money management function which allows an automatic calculation of the traded lotsize. 4- / 5- Digit brokers are not automatically detected and require manual adaption of the trading parameters. As the EA want’s to partially close open positions a broker is required which allows this behavior. Usually this will not work on ECN style brokers.
The truth behind USDBOT
We got a hint from one of our members that USDBOT is a free EA from Forex Factory forum. The scam investigation team worked on the issue and contacted all involved parties.
Let’s compare the external trading parameters first:
| USDBOT | Opto123 |
|---|---|
| Remark1=== USDBOT Settings == MagicNumber=14995 SignalsOnly=0 Alerts=0 SignalMail=0 PlaySounds=0 ECNBroker=0 PipBuffer=0 EachTickMode=1 Lots=0.10000000 MoneyManagement=0 Risk=0 Slippage=50 UseStopLoss=1 StopLoss=1000 UseTakeProfit=1 TakeProfit=1000 UseTrailingStop=0 TrailingStop=300 MoveStopOnce=0 MoveStopWhenPrice=500 MoveStopTo=10 Remark2= Remark3=== Other Settings (ZIG ZAG SYSTEM) == ExtDepth=2 ExtDeviation=1 ExtBackstep=1 Remark4=== Partial close lot management == Remark5=== Two options for Partial closing; == Remark6=== Close Percent of Initial Lotsize == Remark7=== or Close Percent of Remaining Lotsize == Use_Partial_Close=1 CloseFromInitialLotsize=1 PipsTarget_1=100 CloseLotsPercentage_1=10.00000000 Move_SL_1=10 PipsTarget_2=200 CloseLotsPercentage_2=10.00000000 Move_SL_2=0 PipsTarget_3=400 CloseLotsPercentage_3=10.00000000 Move_SL_3=0 PipsTarget_4=600 CloseLotsPercentage_4=10.00000000 Move_SL_4=0 Remark8=== Partial close lot management END == |
Remark1=== Main Settings == MagicNumber=27123 SignalsOnly=0 Alerts=0 SignalMail=0 PlaySounds=0 ECNBroker=0 PipBuffer=0 EachTickMode=1 Lots=0.10000000 MoneyManagement=0 Risk=0 Slippage=50 UseStopLoss=1 StopLoss=1000 UseTakeProfit=1 TakeProfit=1000 UseTrailingStop=0 TrailingStop=300 MoveStopOnce=0 MoveStopWhenPrice=500 MoveStopTo=10 Remark2= Remark3=== Zig Zag Settings == ExtDepth=2 ExtDeviation=1 ExtBackstep=1 Remark4=== Partial close lot management == Remark5=== Two options for Partial closing; == Remark6=== Close Percent of Initial Lotsize == Remark7=== or Close Percent of Remaining Lotsize == Use_Partial_Close=1 CloseFromInitialLotsize=1 PipsTarget_1=100 CloseLotsPercentage_1=10.00000000 Move_SL_1=1 PipsTarget_2=200 CloseLotsPercentage_2=10.00000000 Move_SL_2=0 PipsTarget_3=400 CloseLotsPercentage_3=10.00000000 Move_SL_3=0 PipsTarget_4=600 CloseLotsPercentage_4=10.00000000 Move_SL_4=0 Remark8=== Partial close lot management END == |
And as a next step the trading results of 2009 Backtest:
USDBOT (EURUSD, Daily)
Statement
Opto123 (EURUSD, Daily)
Statement
Both sides, the original authors and USDBOT have been contacted. USDBOT explained that they did buy the EA from a “Developer” and the original authors confirmed that they don’t know about and did not authorize this.
Here a comment from one of the original authors:
I don’t currently use the EA as it seems to only perform for certain periods of time and on certain pairs. For instance, EU and UJ performed well in 2008 and 2009 (100% return in each year, some pairs acheived 200%), but barely broke even in 2005 and 2006. Any optimizations I then made to the EA felt like “curvefitting” to the historical data, so I never took the EA live due to this uncertainty in its performance.
The Opto123 expert advisor can be downloaded from our homepage.
USDBOT V2
After that discovery USDBOT did launch a new version of their product: USDBOT V2.
How does it work ?
According to the documentation USDBOT V2. trades EURUSD and USDJPY on the M5 timeframe. The trading logic is very simple and totally different from the original USDBOT. It enters trades based on a moving average. The close of open positions is done by simple takeprofit / stoploss. If it was a losing trade then the next trade will be done with double the lotsize of the last one (martingale). This new version automatically adapts to 4- / 5-Digit price quotes but does not work on ECN style brokers. The lotsize to be used needs to be set manually.
Backtest 2009
Statement
Trading EURUSD with a martingale EA and simple entry logic as almost a guarantee to get a margin call and lose a lot of money. This is exactly what the backtest shows trading 0.01 lots on a 1k account.
Conclusion
The original version was not bad in terms of its trading functionality, this one we will keep in our forward test. To replace an illegal copy of software with a cheap product which risks the whole account is not a solution. First of all it does not compensate the original authors but in addition it puts all customers in danger as they believe to get an update for the expert advisor they did buy according to the information on the homepage and they may use already based on their test results. Our adivse: STAY AWAY from USDBOT V2 and get your money back !
The whole story is just a shame.