(4.88 out of 5)Forex Funnel Review
(13 votes, average: 4.08 out of 5)
Loading ...The following is a review of Forex Funnel. This review is an update of an older review and has benefited from the feedback of others who have commented on my previous review.
Word of Caution: Please don’t accept everything I write here blindly as being correct. Whilst I have tried my best to present my understanding of Forex Funnel, my understanding might be flawed. Therefore, you should do your own independent evaluation of Forex Funnel before forming your own opinion on it.
Forex Funnel is a metatrader 4 (MT4) Expert Adviser (EA). If you read their website you will see some aggressive marketing of their system with bold claims, like:
- “ANYONE can profit from the Forex Funnel system even with no knowledge and no trading experience“
- “This system has been designed so that even the most computer illiterate person can setup and profit from it. Even if the most you have ever used your internet for is browsing ebay or checking emails, you will still be able to use this system to funnel money”
- “100% Idiot Proofed”
- “No knowledge of the forex market required”
Ludicrous claims aside, if you look deeper, you will see they present a back test result over a four year period where you could theoretically have made over $462,000 from $50,000. They achieved this result with a mere 15% maximal draw down and what is more interesting is they present a back test equity curve which is so smooth it is almost at straight line. In addition to this they presented a forward test result where they also showed a $12K profit in little over a month and a half in live trading on a 50K account. With a result like that, I was intrigued, so I signed up to see to check it out.
Cost
The system costs $137. Compared to other commercial expert advisers, this is at the low end of the range.
The website has a claim on it warning that the “cost may go up at midnight”. While this statement is probably true, because the price could indeed go up at any time, but after visiting this site over the last few months I wonder if this is just a high pressure marketing tactic to get you to buy now.
The system, because it is sold through click bank, does come with a 60 day refund policy. I did try and get a refund for this system myself, but after two attempts at sending an email to the Forex Funnel guys and receiving no reply, I had to go back to Click Bank to get my refund. Once I did this step, Click Bank organized the refund in a mater of days. Once you ask for a refund the system is then disabled and your registered account is no longer able to use the funnel.
What do you Get?
When you sign up, you get a compiled expert adviser (no source), a DLL and a manual that tells you how to install Forex Funnel and what levels of risk you should use. The system also comes with another free indicator, that is not directly related to the system.
The system itself is licensed for a single account. They provide you with a web page to let you change which account the funnel works with. For example, if you start off demo trading and at a later date you want to change to a funded account, you just use the web page to update the account. I presume that the DLL that comes with Forex Funnel is used to support this feature, because this is not a regular feature of Metatrader.
The EA itself is highly streamlined with very few features that are setable by the user. The settings available to the user include the ability to set the preferred position size and the days of the week you prefer to trade. Again compared to other EAs, the number of things you can control about this system are minimal. I presume this has been done to minimize the support burden on the Forex Funnel guys.
Forex Funnel is advertised as a system which is designed to trade the USD/JPY pair on a 1 hour chart. Despite this claim, you can run it profitably on other pairs. However, when I back tested it on other markets it did not get the linear equity curve presented above, but it is profitable on a number of the major pairs. So there is some property of the USD/JPY this system is designed to exploit.
Who Wrote Forex Funnel?
I know very little about the people behind Forex Funnel. All the support provided is done completely anonymously. Because we know so little about the author of the system, we don’t know how much experience they have and we don’t know even if the author is prepared to risk a reasonable amount of their own money or not on Forex Funnel.
From what I have read on the internet, the same people who developed Forex Tracer also developed Forex Funnel. Both of these systems seem to be marketed by the same company, NC Media in Canada, and the layout is almost identical.
If you read the forex tracer reviews on Forex Peace Army (FPA) on Forex Tracer, they are not very kind. However, you need to take some of the reviews there with a grain of salt at times and you need to make up your own mind. Anyway, according to review on FPA, Tracer was developed by Peter Parsons and Tracer has had some what mixed performance over the years.
The other clue as to who the author of the system comes from the sign up process. When you sign up you use a web page by switch capital management, According to the website, Switch is run by Rachmand Gagahlin Soendoro and Stevanus Romy. They both have been involved in trading for 6 to 7 years and Switch Capital Management is 2 years old. Rachmand comes from an IT back ground and Stevenus seems to have come from a business background. Switch does run other people’s money (OPM), but the size of the fund is unknown.
Now, whether Funnel comes from the guys at Switch or if it comes from Peter Parsons is unknown. My best guess is the lads at Switch.
Uniqueness of the System
Based on comments I have seen on another blog, I don’t think this system is unique. It seems to be a variant of the FXProMaker and the free expert advisor Bliss. The key difference is FXProMaker is biased towards the long side and ForexFunnel is biased towards the short side.
Now who is reverse engineering whom, I do not know, but like most commercial EAs, I suspect it is a variant of one of the numerous free systems put up on the metatrader forums. The difference is some additional tweaking has been done.
Support
The Funnel only comes with an email based support. If you send emails to the support line, you do get answers, but the answers are usually very brief. Compared to other systems, the documentation is subpar. It does not tell you anything about the system, how it works, what kinds of market conditions it is suited to, etc. Also it does not come with a support forum or online community. There are no courses or mentoring for this system either.
Performance
If you read the discussion thread attached to this review, you will see a couple of users have reported quite good results. However, how this system performs long term is a major problem. I have forward tested this system and on three occasions, my account has blown up.
In back test this system is quite promising. In my back testing, I did manage to reproduce their 4 year result. Here is my back test equity curve:
Others have reported a similiar experience to this. For example, see here.
I went back to the email support person and asked them to please explain. The Forex Funnel support person explained that I needed to use at least 200:1 leverage in order to keep the drawdown to a minimum on the account. I was using a 100:1 leverage on an Alpari demo, so naturally my maximal drawdown was much higher.
Account Size, Position Sizing and Leverage
When you set the system up, the documentation provides a guideline that you should use 0.01 standard 100K lots for every $2500 (or 0.1 mini 10K lots for every $2500). Because of the Martingale nature of the system, if you use more than that your equity curve will experience very wild swings and you will risk blowing your account up.
Based on the above, the minimum account size you can use for mini accounts is $2500. Anything less and you will also see wild swings in your equity curve.
If you do trade this system, you are going to need at least 200:1 leverage. I would suggest even getting 400:1 to 500:1 leverage.
This means that even though they sent you an email recommending you download the Alpari platform to demo trade on, you cannot safely trade with the default 100:1 leverage. However, if you ask nicely, Alpari will give you 200:1 leverage.
The theoretical back test result they provide over 4 years may not necessarily be produced in real life without separate accounts with smaller amounts in it. This is because accounts with more than 100K or 250K in them usually have much lower leverage than 200:1. However, you can of course get around this problem by splitting the trades across multiple accounts.
How does Forex Funnel Work?
Forex Funnel is a grey box system, meaning that the logic is proprietary and the user has a few parameters they can set. Compared to other systems, the shade of grey on this system is closer to a black box than it is to a white box, because it is quite difficult to figure out what the system actually does.
How the system actually works, I must admit I have no idea. Fortunately, one of the readers of the blog, Paul, has gone through the trading logs and put together the following pieces of the puzzle:
- Funnel enters as soon as you start it up. It opens a Buy trade, a Sell trade, and a Sell Limit trade [Macrotactician: The system also places in a tight profit target and a wide stop].
- Funnel exits a trade when the TP of the open Sell trade is reached. If there are other Sell trades open, they are all closed at the same time (not the Buy trade, however) and a new Sell is opened with a lot size of whatever you have it set to. It also opens a new Sell Limit, again at twice the lot size of the current open Sell.
- If price reaches the Sell Limit order, Funnel changes the existing Sell trade’s TP to match the new Sell that was just opened and it immediately opens a new Sell LImit with a lot size twice as big.
Just looking at the rules the system seems to have a bias towards the short side of the USD/JPY market. However, users of the system report that the system doesn’t seem to loose money on the long side of the market, but it does not make much either. The USD/JPY also seems prone to gaps over the weekend. So, you can expect to see some bumpyness on the equity curve on monday morning. However, if you are appropriately position sized, you should be able to weather both the monday morning gap and the bullish trends on the USD/JPY.
Weaknesses in the System
Again because the system is somewhat of a black box to me, I am unsure was to where the real weaknesses in the system. However, due to the martingale nature of the system, there is potentially quite a risky side to this system. For example, in the back testing logs, I have seen position sizes in excess of 250 lots, so there is a reasonable downside risk to this system if your pockets are not deep enough. In the case of my forward tests, I have blown up three demo accounts, because my pockets were not deep enough.
The kind of scenario that is likely to create this kind of situation has been pointed out by one of the readers of this blog, Paul:
It increases the position sizes in a rising market. If the Sell Limit price is reached, it opens another Sell limit at 20 pips higher than the current Ask with a lot size twice as big. This is where it can run into trouble, but with a size of .01 it would take a long, extended rise in price with little or no drops.
The other thing to be wary of is your broker’s rules. For many accounts less than 100K in them your broker would never let you hold 50 lots open. As a result it is extremely unlikely that you would get to the stage in the back test result of having 250 lots open. This is why you should never trust a backtest result alone as there is always some catch.
How best to trade the system
If you do decide to trade the system, you need to beware of the wide stops and the martingale nature of this system makes this system a high risk system. The majority of traders I know steer clear of martingale systems. I as a rule do as well. However, if you really must trade this system, some prudent things you should consider include:
- Keep your initial deposit reasonably small, but still larger than $2500 US recommended by the developer, and never trade this system with a large amount of risk capital that you cannot afford to loose. If you do not have $2500 to risk – then do not trade this system.
- Pick a broker that will give you 400:1 or 500:1 leverage as this will allow you to ride out some bad trades
- Regularly withdraw a large portion of your profits from your trading account as one big loss will take it all away
- Avoid trading this system in a rising market
- Keep an eye on the escalation of martingaled positions in rising markets. If you catch it building up more than 4 – 5 martingaled positions, consider wearing the loss sooner rather than later.
- As much as you might be tempted by greed, do not exceed the developer’s recommendation on leverage setting as this will only accelerate your chances of blowing up your account
Closing Thoughts
Whether you buy Forex Funnel or not is completely up to you. I am not going to tell you to get it or not.
Based on feedback I have received on my blog, initial results with this system seem positive. However, the martingale nature of the system does raise some concerns as there is always an reasonable risk in such systems of blowing up your account. Personally for me I am no longer trading this system. Three blow ups in a row is too much for me.
If you are interested in this system, don’t be sucked in by the marketing hype. Like all things in life, this system is not an idiot proof / risk free cash machine that will “funnel money out of the markets”, so please go in with your eyes open and do your own testing on this system before committing risk capital to it.
August 29th, 2008 at 5:45 am
Unfortunately the market drives these ‘easy money’ products. The biggest demand for systems or education is from those with the least knowledge. It would be almost impossible to market a real trading system to such people because they could not accept the draw-downs and uncertainty that comes with real trading. No amount of warning people will keep them away from these schemers. Its just a natural cycle that each person must go through. Better judgement comes from poor experiences.
August 30th, 2008 at 3:34 am
Great article. I left a lengthy comment on the Forexhound.com site, but I don’t think it has shown up yet.
John
August 31st, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Hi jsp
Your comment does not seem to have appeared on forexhound. If you repost your question here, I can attempt to answer it for you
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:21 pm
MarcoA’s comment is right on. There is simply no amount of warning that will prevent the target audience from diving in. A few years ago a good friend of mine, who had an advanced degree in statistics mind you, blew a 20K account on one of TRO’s systems. He was a good sport about it. I warned him beforehand that the idea of the systems might be good, but they rarely perform longer than a couple of months because of faulty risk management and changing market conditions. He has since recovered from the loss and now trades his own systems. For every one of these guys who have a bit of education and recover, however, there are a hundred or more who just give up, never knowing if they may have succeeded on their own efforts.
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:24 pm
The gold rush is a great analogy, by the way.
September 4th, 2008 at 1:28 am
On the ForexHound site, I basically said Forex Funnel looked interesting, though I strongly distrust systems with viral marketing, paid review sites, etc.
What’s unique about the Funnel is that it trades the USDJPY (a tricky pair, IMHO) and had a 4-year backtest. During that time, the USDJPY had uptrends, downtrends, rangebound periods, etc.
By contrast, EURUSD EAs like Forex Tracer and Silicon appear to be based on the EURUSD’s uptrend. I looked at both backtests, and neither one included early 2005 (a 2000 pip drop for the EURUSD) or the recent drop. They also don’t include “live updates” like the Funnel. Most of the Tracer’s backtest trades were longs, and 100% of Silicon’s were long!
Back to the Funnel: your investigation of its high-risk Martingale approach isn’t too surprising. I figured there had to be some “catch.”
As a final note, I’ve seen some recent reviews of Silicon Forex that claim it’s done well recently. Maybe it would be worth a review in the future, since it’s also backed by Clickbank. Like you, I’ve found much better success going straight to Clickbank when vendors refuse to honor their “100% ironclad” refund guarantees.
Oh, and I also noted that your gold digger analogy was spot-on.
September 4th, 2008 at 11:22 am
thanks for your comments.
MarcoA is probably right that no amount of warning will prevent people from pruchasing forexfunnel, but if it prevents at least one person from blowing their account on it, then it was worth it.
jsp, I did back test forexfunnel on other currencies, including the EUR/USD, and it does return a positive result. My guess is the marketers behind funnel chose the usd/jpy because it had the straightest equity curve for the longest period of time. The impressiveness of the 4 year result in the USD/JPY is not so great when you read your way through the trade history. there are some trades that are held in drawdown for a long time until the system can make up for it with a win and close it out. If you run the back test for period shorter than 4 years you often get a 80% drawdown.
regarding forex silicon, I may get around to reviewing it, but it looks so similiar to forexfunnel, I am not sure I will get much out of it. I am tempted to have a look at the new version of FAP and pipboxer in the near future but until then though I am working on an article on fundamentals.
September 4th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Macro,
Thanks for the reply. I enjoy this site and your articles on grid trading, EAs, neural nets, etc. You seem very fair and objective, which is a rare find in the FX world.
September 13th, 2008 at 5:40 am
I found your comments on fores funnel very enlightening. Do you
suggest any meta 4 forex auto trader software? What about a suggested forex broker?
What’s your thoughts on Forex Auto Pilot software?
What’s your thoughts on Forex Broker AKForex?
Or Ikon Forex Broker?
September 13th, 2008 at 8:07 am
Hi Lynn,
I can’t recommend any specific brokers. Probably the best thing to do is to look at the reviews over at forexpeacearmy.com and start from there. The other thing you can do is look at the CTFC website for complaints/legal actions. Also look at forexontop.com as it will give you an idea of how deep different brokers pockets are. Lastly, look at what country your broker is from and think about what protections their legal system will provide you if the broker is on the nose.
In terms of Forex Auto Pilot (FAP) it is on my to do list to review, but it takes me a while to get around to these things because family and work comes ahead of trading and blogging. So may be sometime in the future.
If you want to look at other bloggers recommendations for expert advisors, ck’s blog over at http://ckowyong.com/ is pretty good.
September 14th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
I read through your review of Forex Funnel with definite concern and some disappointment. Unfortunately I fit snugly into the category of Forex newbie that purchased the Funnel. I bought it a little over a month ago and ran it for two weeks on a demo account. The results were good enough so I opened a live account with an initial deposit of $3000. Earlier this week my balance passed $6000, so in less than 3 weeks it gave me a 100% return. Obviously I’ve been pretty happy with those results, but from your review and some of the comments, I won’t continue to see results like this?
I should say at this point that I’m not marketing the Funnel, I’m just a user of the software. One thing I’ve liked about the Funnel is it’s conservative approach. It doesn’t try to hit home runs, it makes a 20-pip profit and closes the trade. For me that’s been around $32. I will admit the drawdown has concerned me, but *so far* it hasn’t been a problem. The most drawdown trades I’ve had in a row is 4, with the 5th trade overcoming the losses. 2 or 3 trades is far more common.
So what to do?? Should I keep my fingers crossed and continue to let Funnel run? Should I take the profit and get out while the getting is good? Yep, you’ve scared me!
Paul
September 14th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Hi Paul,
What you do is entirely up to you and I don’t know what your financial situation is and how important $6000 is to you.
If $6000 is really really important (i.e. pay your rent style important or feed your family type important), then I would withdraw it all and thank your lucky stars for a winning streak.
If it is not important and risking $6000 is not going to hurt you financially, then you could see if your winning streak continues and take a chance. If you are going to do this I would watch your build up of draw down like a hawk and maybe even move the money to a broker that will let you have 400:1 leverage. At some stage you should consider taking a profit.
If you are somewhere in between, then you could withdraw most of your money from the account and use some of your profits to spend on trading education and your next trading account. You may also decide to keep funnel running with a small amount of your profit to see if your winning streak continues.
If you do decide to keep on letting the funnel run, then I would encourage you to back test the funnel accross a range of different market conditions (i.e. pick slices of the market where the market is trending, ranging, high volatility, low volatility, etc). You should do this to build a solid understanding why and how funnel works and use it to learn when you should pull the pin on the funnel.
Any way you look at it, you should also use this as a really good opportunity to learn a whole heap about trading as this more than funnel or any other ea will be ultimately more valuable to you.
best of luck
September 14th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Thanks for the quick response, I appreciate it. I’ll admit I’ve been pretty excited about the Funnel because of my results and your review took some wind out of my sails. A good dose of reality is never a bad thing, though.
I don’t need the $6000 to survive so it won’t be devastating financially to lose it. I’d rather not, of course! I’ll probably keep running the Funnel for a while and keep an eye on the draw down. So far it hasn’t left any lingering draw down. When the market hits a sell limit it adjust all open trades to the same take profit as the sell limit, so if it reaches the take profit it closes all open trades at the same time. Yes, all but one are losses, but the one win is large enough to overcome the losses by about $30. It’s how it works. I know I’m naive, but it’s been working so good I hate to stop it at this point.
Paul
September 14th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
ok – best of luck.
let us know how it goes. If it goes well I would love to go for a test drive in your new Ferrari. If it doesn’t go well, make sure you learn all you can from the experience.
p.s. greed is a very powerful thing. if you catch yourself wanting to add more to your account to get to that Ferrari sooner, go for a verrrrry long walk and think about it hard
September 15th, 2008 at 5:51 am
Funny you should mention adding money to the account … the thought has crossed my mind. I’m going for a really long walk now …
September 15th, 2008 at 7:04 am
Hi Paul
Here is something to think about on your walk: How would it feel IF you had a whole stack of cash in your trading account, so much that it matters to you a whole lot if you can withdraw it. Now imagine you are in 10, 30, 50, 80% drawdown and you cannot with draw that cash quite yet until the funnel makes up for the drawdown.
Ok – now you have that feeling in mind – now go back to your backtest trading logs or your current trading logs and look for anything that might create that situation
Now go for another long walk. Think about wether or not the funnel has an edge because of current market conditions? Think about how the funnel might survive a NFP style news event? Think about if the market changed direction very violently for a few weeks what would it mean if you were left holding a position? Think about what would happen if you were away from your computer and something bad happened? Think about what would happen if your server or your brokers server crashed (as ibfx did a few weeks ago)? Think about what would happen if the EA has a bug in it? Think about what it would mean if you got sick or hit by a bus going for a long walk? Think about all kinds of things that could cause you crap yourself
Ok – now that you have thought about these kinds of things you are now in the right mind set to know wether to add more money to your account
September 15th, 2008 at 8:14 am
Oh yeah, NOW I’ll have a nice, relaxing walk! Sheesh!
I had to let you know what just happened. The Funnel made me pretty nervous all weekend because when the exchanges closed on Friday it had 6 open positions totalling a loss of just over $1000. I don’t know if you’ve looked at USDJPY yet today, but it opened over 200 pips lower than it closed Friday. I just made almost $5000! I know it was lucky, the market could have continued the same direction and I could have been in trouble. Also because of the huge jump, I had to manually reset the T/Ps because they got missed! But … I just made almost $5000! So stick that in your review and snap it! (just kidding … I’m a bit giddy right now so you’ll have to excuse me).
Paul
September 15th, 2008 at 8:50 am
And what would of happened if the yen had gapped in the opposite direction?
September 15th, 2008 at 9:51 am
That actually happened last weekend. I had to manually reset the TPs then too, but I lost $300. The rest of the day was still profitable though, so I ended up ahead for the day.
September 18th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
If you have a system miraculous you sell for litle price?
September 19th, 2008 at 3:51 am
This is interesting.
Not to give official advice, but if I were in Paul’s (fortunate!) shoes, I’d take at least $3000 from the Funnel account. You could open another account (for a different FX system), move it to savings, retirement plan, take a vacation, whatever. But you could consider the remaining account pure “house money” and not worry if you blow it. If it continued to make money, you could take out profits here and there or shoot for a goal where you’d withdraw everything ($25,000, $100,000, ???).
I’m pretty sure it will eventually blow up, though, unless you adjust the leverage or manage the risk manually (i.e., close out the Martingale series after X amount of loss).
October 2nd, 2008 at 3:57 am
Paul here again … a more educated, wiser Paul
I’ve learned a lot about Forex Funnel and about EAs in general since I last posted. There is definitely a lot of risk with using Funnel, and I lost quite a bit of money when the rate climbed after the Feds announced the bailout plan. I still have about $4000 in my account, and that is *after* withdrawing $3000 to pay off my credit card. I’m still ahead, but that Martingale part makes it too scary to let run unattended.
Paul
October 3rd, 2008 at 2:02 am
Hi Paul,
I would like to know how you lost a lot of money on the day the bailout failed. I am trading the funnel too and whilst I lost $7 on one trade with a $2600 account, at the end of the day I was up around $30. I have never experienced the swings and drawdowns on the days you state, neither have I ever had to adjust T/P and I am trading the same system. I have also not made 100% in 3 weeks more like 20% but I am happy with that. I am really confused by how your results differ so greatly to mine when we are running the identical system.
Lisa
October 3rd, 2008 at 6:37 am
Hi Lisa,
I saw your review at forex peace army and I think the reason we’ve seen such different results is I’m using a lot size of .10, not .01 like I should be with the size of my account. Just curious, how long ago did you purchase Funnel? I don’t remember seeing the .01 per $2500 guideline in my documentation, but I could have missed it. When I started running it, I left the default settings, which was a .10 lot size. If yours had been set to .10, you would have seen $300 instead of $30 for that day.
However (and this is a huge however), I lost money because the lot size grew to the point that it used up my margin. I doubt it would have happened if I had been using a .01 lot size. It grew until my last open trade had a size of 6.40. It tried opening the next trade at 12.80 but couldn’t. I had 7 open short trades, so when the rate kept climbing, so did the losses and the 7 trades eventually consumed my remaining margin. When that happened, the broker closed all 7 and poof, $5800 gone.
The higher your balance gets, or the lower you set the lot size, the less likely that will happen. But, it will always be a possibility, and that’s the scary part. One thing I don’t understand is why the developer chose to leave the short trades open when the rate is climbing. I think they should have been closed when the next trade is opened. Funnel resets the TP to the latest trade anyway, so they will never make money. If they were closed, they wouldn’t be chewing up the available margin. Maybe I’m missing something … definitely a possibility!
Paul
October 3rd, 2008 at 7:39 am
Hi Paul,
I am really upset for you bcs you have not seen or read the instructions and that is why your account has been blown. When you received the Forex Funnel file, inside it is a document with instructions. It very clearly states use lot size 0.01 for every $2500. It says the default setting of 0.10 is for an account of $25k and if you are trading less than this change it accordingly and ensure you use a broker that supports 0.01. I think you are not the only one that has made this error and is probably a little confusing for newbie forex traders and people that are not used to MT4. I feel this product may be getting bad publicity bcs of this when it actually works extremely well if these instructions are followed.
I honestly believe that 2 days ago when the rescue package was rejected was a real testing day for this system bcs the market was swinging from side to side. JPY moved 300 points yet this system just rode through it and still made a small profit. I believe if it came through that it could probably survive anything but the lot settings have to be adhered to.
The reason why the short trades are left open and T/P readjusted is bcs when the market retraces and reaches T/P on the last trade in the batch this will close with a profit. Even though the other previous trades are losses the last trade which is a win will be bigger than the loss. That’s how the system makes money.
Tomorrow is non-farm payroll and the vote on the second bailout. It is likely to be a very wild day. I will let you know how the system performs.
Lisa
October 5th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
hi Lisa,
i value your input. please post more comments/ results/ advice.
thanks
October 6th, 2008 at 1:36 am
Hi there,
I am happy to keep posting and letting you all know how it’s going. Last week Forex Funnel made profit of $192 for me. I am on minimum lot size of 0.01. The system sailed through non-farm payroll and the bailout decision. My total drawdown was about $40 at worst but ended the day with profit of $36. The system seems to make more money when the market is short but still does make profit when it’s going long or sideways.
It is early days but I don’t see anything terrible with this system like others report. It is very conservative, trades only 1 pair and money management is very good.
Regards
Lisa
October 7th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Hi Lisa,
Thanks for your reply to my post on Forex Peace Army. I checked through the documentation and you are absolutely right, I was using a lot size tens times that of what I was supposed to. Being a Newb to the whole forex scene I glossed over that paragraph but after you pointed it out its all become crystal clear.
The problem I’m having now is that I have tried to change my lot size to 0.01 but after I do so, the funnel doesn’t open any more trades. My account was down to $1600 at the time and I am thinking that I might not be allowed to make such small trades.
I am wondering if anyone could let me know how to reset my demo account so that I can start my testing again with a larger starting capital more in line with what I would intend to go live with and using correct lot sizing. Or is it a matter of completely uninstalling MetaTrader and downloading it again from scratch.
Thanks in advance
Brodie
October 7th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
This is just comical. I write a review about how poor the support for forex funnel is and now my website has become the defacto support site.
ok Brodie: Go to file -> New Account in Metatrader and it will allow you to create a new account. Fill in the form and create a new account. Then go to the email the nice unsupportive Forex Funnel guy sent you and log into the account registration page. Put your new demo account number in here to activate funnel for this account.
October 8th, 2008 at 12:18 am
Hi Brodie,
I agree with macrotactician that email replies are not exactly overflowing with information. The couple of times I emailed I also got few word responses but my questions were answered. Obviously it would help newbies if they rcvd more detailed info.
I trust you now have the info above to open a new account. You need to make sure your broker supports 0.01 as not all of them do. If no trades are being generated then the broker you are using does not. Some start at 0.10 and you would therefore need a $25k account. Try Alpari, http://www.alpari.co.uk they support 0.01. I have been using them and have had no problems. Hope that helps.
I am $450 in profit in 8 days starting with a $2500 account so I’m not complaining right now.
Lisa
October 8th, 2008 at 9:40 am
lot size: 0.01
deposit:1000USD
date commencing: 2-Oct-2008
date ended: 8-Oct-2008
ending balance: 1264.02
Gross profit: 264.02
floating: -30.51
Actual net profit: 233.51
*Demo account
happy with the result.
if this ea works well until the end of this month, i might consider going live in november.
joshua
October 8th, 2008 at 9:53 am
Another demo account ive been testing on
lot size:0.01
deposit: USD2000
date commencing: 23-Sept-08
date ended: 8-Oct-08
ending balance: 2678.59
Gross Profit: 678.59
Floating: -16.54
Actual net profit: USD662.05
thanks
October 8th, 2008 at 11:40 am
ok – I know a number of you are willing to trade any system based on a few weeks of forward testing, but for me I never like putting cash on on the line for something I don’t understand.
Can someone tell me:
1) How does Forex Funnel decide to enter? I know it brackets the price action with two orders, but when does it decide to put on a bracketed pair of orders? what is the entry rule?
2) How does Forex Funnel decide to exit? I know it is based on profit tight targets and wide stops, but why it moves stops around baffles me?
3) Under what conditions does Forex Funnel increase position sizes from the initial value you put in? I noticed that over long periods of time you can be left holding some very large positions. How does this occur?
4) What is the average and maximum time you can expect to hold positions?
5) What kind of market conditions suit Forex Funnel? Yes I know they say trade the USD/JPY, but why this pair in particular? What is special about this pair that makes the funnel work well on it?
6) What kind of markets are dangerous to trade Forex Funnel in?
If anyone can enlighten me on these I would be happy to update my review.
October 8th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Try perform a backtesting from 5/5/08 – 8/10/08 on Forex Funnel.
Turn off Friday tradings. this is just a personal choice due to high volatility on those days. my choice.
Back Testing requirement:
Deposit USD1000
Lot Size: 0.01
have a look at the result.
thanks,
joshua
October 8th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
I am sorry, but my license for the funnel is no longer valid, as I asked for my money back
you will need to let me know what the outcome is.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:05 am
liza,
does you Forex Funnel has an expire on it?
i am not aware of this at all.
please clarify
macrotactician, please send me your EA which has the expire on it. thank you.
Regards,
Joshua
October 9th, 2008 at 6:09 am
Hi Joshua,
There is no expiry on the funnel. We paid a one off fee to use it indefinitely. We registered our account no. and that’s all that has to be done for it to keep going. If you request a refund then they obviously disconnect your account.
I note that you are demo trading with $2000 and $1000. YOU NEED TO USE 0.01 for every $2500. That is what the instructions says and I keep saying it so people use the correct funds to support the correct lot size and don’t blow their account and say afterwards that the funnel is crap.
Lisa
October 9th, 2008 at 6:19 am
Mr Macro,
You have so many unanswered questions yet you decided that the funnel was no good and requested a refund. Did you leave your demo running for the 60 day trial and suffer a loss? I really find it hard to believe bcs if you left it running you probably would have more than doubled your account and you would have been able to see for yourself how it works and why it works.
I am not quick to give praise to a product and I know there is a huge amount of forex crap around but people need to understand the product first, try the bloody thing out and then make an informed decision whether its rubbish or not.
Lisa
October 9th, 2008 at 6:41 am
Lisa started to say what I was thinking … you wrote a negative review of the funnel, yet you don’t understand how it works?? I’m afraid that’s not very ethical, Mr Macro. Yes it uses Martingale, and I agree back testing is essential, but you obviously didn’t forward test at all and watch how it works. It’s not that complicated. Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I’ll answer your questions … feel free to add anything, Lisa.
1) How does Forex Funnel decide to enter? I know it brackets the price action with two orders, but when does it decide to put on a bracketed pair of orders? what is the entry rule?
Paul – Funnel enters as soon as you start it up. It opens a Buy trade, a Sell trade, and a Sell Limit trade. I still have no idea why it opens the Buy trade … Lisa, do you know? The Sell LImit is used in a rising market, it the price reaches it, Funnel changes the existing Sell trade’s TP to match the new Sell that was just opened and it immediately opens a new Sell LImit with a lot size twice as big.
2) How does Forex Funnel decide to exit? I know it is based on profit tight targets and wide stops, but why it moves stops around baffles me?
Paul – Funnel exits a trade when the TP of the open Sell trade is reached. If there are other Sell trades open, they are all closed at the same time (not the Buy trade, however) and a new Sell is opened with a lot size of whatever you have it set to (I had mine set to .10, it’s now at .01 thanks to Lisa). It also opens a new Sell Limit, again at twice the lot size of the current open Sell.
3) Under what conditions does Forex Funnel increase position sizes from the initial value you put in? I noticed that over long periods of time you can be left holding some very large positions. How does this occur?
Paul – It increases the position sizes in a rising market. If the Sell Limit price is reached, it opens another Sell limit at 20 pips higher than the current Ask with a lot size twice as big. This is where it can run into trouble, but with a size of .01 it would take a long, extended rise in price.
4) What is the average and maximum time you can expect to hold positions?
Paul – It depends on how the price moves. If it’s moving down, positions won’t stay open for long. If it’s moving up, they’ll stay open until you get an approximately 20-pip drop, then all open Sell positions will close.
5) What kind of market conditions suit Forex Funnel? Yes I know they say trade the USD/JPY, but why this pair in particular? What is special about this pair that makes the funnel work well on it?
Paul – definitely a decreasing market. Up and down is fine too, as long as the down ’spikes’ reach 20 pips, or enough to close the current Sell position. I don’t know why USDJPY is specified but that’s what it said to use so that’s what I’m using.
6) What kind of markets are dangerous to trade Forex Funnel in?
Paul – A long extended upward swing with little or no drops.
- Paul
October 9th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Hi Liza, Paul and Macro,
i value your inputs and information.
thank you so much.
i am now much more confident with funnel.
thanks.
October 9th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Hi Paul and Lisa
Thanks for your feedback. I value it and getting feedback like this is one of the reasons why I started this blog because it helps me.
Regarding the funnel review you are probably right. I probably didn’t let the forward test go long enough to jump to the conclusions I did in the review.
I jumped the gun on the review when I found that the system blows up accounts under certain back test conditions (for example, running a back test a few days longer than the forward test results they used to market their system on their website). I probably also jumped the gun a bit when I realised the link between funnel and tracer and read the mountain of negative reviews on tracer. Lastly, like most of the reviewers out there who contribute reviews to sites out there like forexpeacearmy, I am no less susceptible to jumping to conclusions.
I will look at enhancing the review based on the excellent input I
have gotten from the comments on this site. However, I still doubt I
am going to heap praise on a system provider which aggressively
markets a system on the basis of a back test result, does not disclose to you what kinds of market conditions the system is not suited to and refuses to answer emails when you request a refund.
Please keep in touch and let me know how it goes, so I can update the review from time to time. I particularly keen to know if the big
draw down I saw on the backtester actually happens in forward testing
or not.
regards, Marcotactician
October 13th, 2008 at 9:00 am
Very good! I am even in phase of test but I have two doubts. First, they did not say to me if it is 0,01 lot in a standard or mini account. You know? Secondly I am not certainly I must do Sunday when the system begins with a great difference of pips and the EA remains without answer. Please, if you have the answers.
October 14th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Hi Julian,
If you look at the PDF doc that is inside the Funnel folder it states 0.01 for every $2500.
When I asked about Sunday trading the reply was that the system should run whenever the market is open.
Lisa
October 14th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
hi everyone,
can anyone explain to me what happenned to the trades today?
huge loses incurred today. the amount is insignigicant.
i just need an explanation for this incident.
appreciate it guys.
thanks.
regards,
Joshua
October 14th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
additional info: today as in 14 October (Malaysian time)
October 14th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
lisa,
can you please kindly answer my questions.
thanks.
regards,
joshua
October 15th, 2008 at 5:26 am
Hi Joshua,
As explained previously, the funnel works best when the market is trending down. Yesterday USDJPY was trending up to the tune of about 200 pips. So, in other words when the marketing is trending up you will get a much larger drawdown then when it trades down. I was watching my own account whilst it happened but with the right money management you will ride the storm. When the trades finally closed they closed for a small profit. So bear in mind, downward trend equals less drawdown more profit, upward trend equals more drawdown less profit but still profitable.
Hope that explains it.
Lisa
October 15th, 2008 at 5:50 am
Why does the Funnel have a bias for shorting? Usually, these kind of Martingale systems do best in range-bound markets. They’re more dangerous when a strong, one-way move develops in either direction. But this one seems to favor the downside. Does anyone know why?
Since the USDJPY had a huge run-up in the backtesting period (2005-2006), I’m surprised it did so well.
October 15th, 2008 at 8:26 am
Lisa:
Thanks for answering Joshua’s questions. You are a champ and should be paid by forexfunnel guys for doing their support for them.
jsp:
I don’t know why there are three orders in forexfunnel and why the system has a shorting bias. I suspect that when the system designer built the system they started off with a more pure concept of a system with just a buy and a sell order and the additional short limit order was added later when the system did not perform so well on the short side. However, I am just guessing. I really don’t know. Paul seems to understand the system much better than me. Perhaps he can help.
October 15th, 2008 at 8:29 am
btw. I just got the following from the funnel guys:
“We recently became aware that alpari have changed their quotes system from a 5 digit one to a six digit one, which unless you realised would have messed up the trades on the Forex Funnel system.We have since revised the EA so it detects whether the broker is using 5 or 6 digit quotes automatically and adjusts accordingly, please swap the .ex4 file attached with the one in your experts folder to prevent this happening again with other brokers, we apologise for the inconvenience if you have been affected.”
October 15th, 2008 at 10:41 am
Hi Guys,
A few things I want to clear up for you folks so everybody doesn’t go bonkers!
1. You can get 200:1 leverage with Alpari – they don’t give it to you automatically but if you ask for it you will get it.
2. Your biggest problem should be when your account reaches $100k and you may not be able to get 200:1 anymore. Problem solved by withdrawing a shed load of money and starting again. We should all have these headaches to look forward to.
3. I don’t know why this system does better in downward market I just know it does. The great thing is even when it doesn’t do its best in an upward market it still makes profit and doesn’t kill your account.
4. The reason why there is a buy trade is bcs it acts as a hedge for the sell trade. The third trade is only generated when it needs to start doubling up.
5. You should have all rcvd a revised EA from Support. Pls note Alpari have changed to 6 figure pricing on their demo only right now not on live accounts. However, if you replace this file with the old one in your experts folder then it will automatically detect whether your broker has 5 or 6 digit pricing.
Chat with you all soon.
Lisa
October 15th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Hi Lisa and Jsp,
Hi guys.
I appreciate both of you for answering my questions.
You explained previously, downward trend equals less drawdown more profit, upward trend equals more drawdown less profit but still profitable. Can you please share with us the setting required in order to achieve that result?
regards,
Joshua
October 15th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
As per the instructions 0.01 lot size for every $2500.
Lisa
October 15th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
Lisa,
What do you think of the new version of the review? is there anything you would change?
thanks, Macrotactican
October 16th, 2008 at 12:36 am
hi lisa,
thanks for answering my question.
i will keep that in mind when going live. =)
another question, is there any indicator or forecast website to tell whether UJ is trending upwards or downwards?
thanks
joshua
October 16th, 2008 at 5:22 am
Hey all,
First, I’m REAL new to forex, and have been reading 3 different dummies books (currency trading, candlesticks, and tech, analysis), to try and get a grip on what I’m doing. While I do want to learn more about how this works, I am interested in a program such as this. One question: MUST i start out with $2500 in order to get going with this software? I had hoped to just start a mini account with only $500ish dollars in it (after I demo some more), but I would love to give this software a go. Any thoughts?
Thanks for your time! Bill
October 16th, 2008 at 6:05 am
I wanted to thank Lisa and the others for the insightful comments as well. I may try this as well–but probably on a demo account first. I’d like to see how it handles a strong, sustained uptrend in the USDJPY…something we haven’t seen lately.
October 16th, 2008 at 6:14 am
Hi Macro,
I think your review is pretty fair and balanced. This isn’t for everyone but if you become familiar with the system there is potential to do well.
Regards
Lisa
October 16th, 2008 at 6:21 am
Hi Josh,
Put candlesticks or bars into your USDJPY chart so you can see how it is trending.
Regards
Lisa
October 16th, 2008 at 6:28 am
Hi Bill,
I believe that the minimum amount is $2500 to start. Try emailing support to confirm. You may not get an elaborate answer but you will be told either ‘yes you can’ or ‘no you can’t so you will know.
Happy to help all you guys whenever I can with your questions.
Regards
Lisa
October 16th, 2008 at 8:03 am
Lisa:
Thanks for your reply. I tried to make it a bit more balanced. I am glad it reads better now.
Bill R:
You could trade it with less than $2500, but because of the martingale nature of the system your risk of blowing up your account and having wild swings in your equity curve will be significantly higher. This is why the recommended minimum is $2500.
In terms of learning to trade, funnel probably wont be that helpful because the system is a pretty much a black box. If your objective is to understand the ins and outs of trading, my recommendation is that you try 6 to 12 months of discretionary trading using a number of different methods/system on small accounts (<= $1000) using Oanda. Oanda is great for this as they allow much smaller position sizes than any of the Metatrader brokers do. Now this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t evaluate funnel in the back ground on a demo account or on a $2500 account,
The other thing you can do is start a blog and write about your experiences. The act of writing helps clarify your thinking and some people will come along and give you pointers along the way thru comments like the ones here.
October 16th, 2008 at 8:13 am
Got the answers I expected. Thanks all for quick responses. This is truly a wonderful site!
October 16th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Josh:
Have a read of http://www.macrotactics.com/2008/03/06/characterizing-trends/
October 16th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
btw. If anyone is interested, duyduy on his blog has translated an Indonesian review of funnel.
you can read it here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/AutomatedForexReview/~3/421576803/forex-funnel-ea.html
He forward tested here and got a margin call when the market spiked against him on the 13th. However, I noted that Lisa did not have the same problem – so I am not sure what is going on.
Duyduy also noted that the system is effectively the reverse system of FxProMaker and seems very similar to a free EA called Bliss. Now I have no idea about who is reverse engineering who here, but it they all seem a bit to similar to me
October 16th, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Was this account set to 200:1 leverage?
October 17th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Hi, Lisa and others. I am currently testing Forex Funnel on a demo account as well (IBFX mini). Only been running a few days, but so far, so good. It has had up to four sell orders opened at once but never any more.
For you mathematicians: Using .01 lot for $2500 and leverage of 200:1, how many losing positions could you have open before getting a margin call? How about with 400:1 leverage? Just curious.
October 17th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Hi Scott,
I have seen it go up to 7 sell orders and it has come out of it with a few dollars profit. The average is between 2-4 orders.
If you can get 400:1 leverage that’s great if your broker will give it to you. 200:1 is the minimum but not all brokers will give you even that.
If people want to be really conservative with this they should perhaps start with a slightly higher amount than $2500 and just keep it on 0.01 forever that way the more profit you build up the less chance of blowing the account if you don’t increase the lot size.
Lisa
October 17th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Lisa,
Are you still on demo with FF, or have you gone live? Would love to correspond with you privately about this robot, if possible. Send me an email [thehenryfam AT gmail DOT com] if you don’t mind.
Cheers,
Scott
October 17th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
hi Lisa,
i appreciate your feedbacks and answers to all our questions.
good on you mate.
regards,
joshua
October 17th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
lisa mate,
may i know what are the magic numbers used in your FF EA?
thanks
October 17th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Josh, you should just leave the magic number at what it was originally set to. Really the only things to change are the lot sizes and whether or not you want the robot to exclude certain days from trading.
Cheers,
Scott
October 17th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
I agree with Scott. The magic number should not be touched. Support has said there is not even any need to exclude certain days from trading just leave it running from Sunday to Friday.
Lisa
October 17th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Scott asked the crucial question. Sooner or later, all systems–Martingale, trend-following, etc., are going to have a long run of losing trades. Plan to have 10 or more at some point. This even happens to systems with a good win/loss percentage. I know of a breakout system with a very good long-term track record that had 19 losses at one point.
That’s the main thing that scares me about the Funnel. Some other Martingale (and similar systems) will end a losing series at some point to save the account. It doesn’t sound like the Funnel does. Lisa’s idea sounds reasonable, though. The odds are very good that you’ll be profitable for a while before a big string of losses hits. It’s probably best to hold your trade size (or increase it even less than the FF support recommends).
October 17th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Scott
the answer depends on the size of the lots you are using and the leverage your broker offers.
For example with Alpari the lot size is 100K per lot with a 100:1 leverage (but you can ask for upto to 200:1). With IBFX it is 10K per lot for a mini account and 100K per lot for a standard account and they offer any where between 100:1 to 400:1.
so for a 100:1 alpari account. the absolute most you can trade is 2500 * 100 or $250000. Which of course is 2.5 standard 100K lots
For a 200:1 alpari account, this is around 5 lots
For a 400:1 IBFX mini account, this is 2500 * 400 or $1,000,960 or 100 mini 10K lots
However, here comes the BIG differences. If you trade Forex Funnel using a 0.01 lot starting position and a martingale strategy which doubles every time, how long will it take for you have a margin call?
On an Alpari account with 100:1 leverage and 100K lots, the answer is about 7 bad trades in a row (i.e. 0.01 + 0.02 + 0.04 + 0.08 + 0.16 + 0.32 0.64 + 1.28 = 2.55)
On an Alpari account with 200:1 leverage and 100K lots, the answer is about 8 bad trades in a row (i.e. 0.01 + 0.02 + 0.04 + 0.08 + 0.16 + 0.32 0.64 + 1.28 + 2.56 = 5.01)
For an IBFX account with 400:1 and 10K lots, the answer is about 13 trades (i.e. 0.01 + 0.02 + 0.04 + 0.08 + 0.16 + 0.32 + 0.64 + 1.28 + 2.56 + 5.12 + 10.24 + 20.48 + 50.96)
As you can see the IBFX account will last longer, but because the lot sizes are only 10K and not 100K you will make far less money.
October 17th, 2008 at 11:53 pm
the other thing I was going to add, was that because this is a martingale system, doubling your leverage only increases your breathing space by 1 bad trade.
As you can see above moving from 100:1 to 200:1 only gives you 8 bad trades in a row and not 7.
The other things I was going to add is the funnel documentation does not tell you if the lots are mini 10K lots or standard 100K lots.
October 17th, 2008 at 11:53 pm
I think maybe there are two things that would help. 1) Use smaller lot sizes than even FF recommends. I’m not necessarily sure you would have to keep it at .01 lot forever, but perhaps make .01 per $5,000 instead of $2,500. 2) Take some profit out of the account at regular intervals. This would eventually produce a “free trade” where you are only risking house money.
I found out that IBFX allows for 400:1 leverage, but frankly that scares me to death. With such high leverage, there is always the chance that price could move so quickly that not only could you lose all your balance, but you could end up owing the broker additional funds, which would not be good.
Cheers,
Scott
October 17th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
scott, using a smaller lot size only delays the inevitable by one bad trade.
The real question you need to ask is what is the probability of a long run of bad trades.
Since I don’t have a funnel licence any more I cannot answer that one. Some one will have to do a frequency count of runs of loosing trades to help us on that one
October 18th, 2008 at 12:10 am
Macro, thanks for taking the time to do that math. I will be glad to sum up the frequency of wins/losses for everyone after I get more time in with the demo. This is only my 3rd day running. Maybe Lisa or someone else has more data.
I would think having the robot exclude NFP Fridays from its schedule would help the odds as well.
Scott
October 18th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
hi Lisa,
did you survive the trades on 13th oct? if you did, how did you manage to do that?
is it recommended to use E/U as a hedge against any uptrend or vice versa.
thanks.
regards,
Joshua
October 19th, 2008 at 4:35 am
Hi guys, First time posting here.
I have been testing a similar EA (check http://www.fxpromaker.com) for the last 1 year. I got some news for the who trade the funnel with 0.01/$2500. Sooner or later you will get a margin call. I got a margin call on .02/$10K acccount in February. Luckily it was a demo account.
martingale strategies are extremely risky. Martingales designed to use for betting. Somehow forex traders who look for the easy path adopted the martinglae strategy into forex.
However I’m still using this EA, but on my manual trading. After I confirm the trend fom 4h charts I manually activate the EA.
If you use this EA as “set & forget” becareful.
I have sent 3 emails to the funnel develper, asking him to show a real money statement, but still waiting for a reply. The chances are , they them self do not use this EA to trade their real money.
October 19th, 2008 at 8:50 am
Hi Angelo,
Are you able to pls post the link to the statement showing your margin call? I am very surprised that happened with 0.02/$10k. Was the leverage at 200:1?
I thought the funnel only became available to the public in June yet you say you got your margin call in February.
Lisa
October 19th, 2008 at 11:39 am
Lisa,
Angelo said he uses a similar EA (http://www.fxpromaker.com), not the Funnel. It’s also based on Martingale. I don’t know what the difference is, but Martingale strategies all carry the same type of risk…unless they close positions at a max loss point or do something else to end the progression before an account blowout.
The FXProMaker is considerably more expensive than the Funnel, for whatever that’s worth. Interestingly, the peformance on its website doesn’t indicate a margin call, but it does say “BEST RESULTS of previous months.” Best results? Since when do systems get to test many variations and only post the “best” results?
October 19th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Regarding Angelo’s margin call, this is an apples to oranges comparison. How is fxpromaker similar to FF other than that it uses a martingale type strategy? For starters, fxpromaker trades lots of different pairs, while FF only trades USD/JPY. Second, you mention trading fxpromaker manually only after you have discerned the 4-hour trend. FF actually does best in a non-trending type market, though it seems to do OK as long as there are occasional pullbacks, which there always are. So, other than to sound a general warning about martingaling, which has already been done here, not anything you’ve said is really a strike against FF.
I received an email from the FF authors yesterday. I don’t know if they can be trusted, but they claim that they have never had a margin call using the recommended money management settings. Does it mean it’s impossible? Certainly not. But I have been searching long and hard, and I have yet to find anyone who has experienced a margin call with FF when set up this way. I think the bottom line is… is a margin call probable? No. Is it possible? Yes (maybe less than a 1% chance, but certainly possible in a “perfect storm” situation). I figure the price would have to rise between 150 and 200 pips without any 20 pip or greater pullbacks in order to get a margin call. That is highly unlikely. Again, I figure one could mitigate some of the risk by opting out of NFP Fridays or days when there might be other really tumultuous news. I will continue forward testing and talking to others who are live, such as Lisa.
Cheers,
Scott
October 19th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
Forexfunnel review without getting into detail:
Negatives:
- the risk is unusably high in that you can lose almost your entire account on a single bad trade. The type of market condition that produces this maximum loss losing trade is very rare ( years in between), but they have happened before, so it’s safe to assume that it will happen again, and it can be worse then the past.
Positives:
- Forexfunnel works hard and does make money consistently.
[Important Guideline]
- You must understand thoroughly about margin requirements and lot size. With brokers having different specifications about standard, mini and micro accounts, the number of lot size is not the same.
-You must understand the maximum lot size allowed. For example, IBFX and FXDD’s maximum is 50 lots. This puts intereting combination of lot sizes that can be used with Forexfunnel, so that you can choose how many trades you want it to open. For example, the vendor recommended 0.2 lot will open 8 trades – 0.2, 0.4, 0.8, 1.5, 3.2, 6.4, 12.8, and 25.6. Next double is 51.2 and since it is over 50, it won’t be opened if your broker’s maximum is 50 lots, which I believe most of them are. 0.1 lot will open one more trade as it starts from 0.1. Getting kind of detailed here, but opening more trades is not necessarily a good thing. FXOpen’s maximum lost size is 1000, so it will keep on opening more trades as needed. It means that you will have bigger losses on larger lot sizes on subsequent doubled up size trades if the forex pair continues to trend up, and will require higher margin than opening smaller number of trades. But, if it opened too small number of trades – using 5.0 lots, you will only open 4 trades, and it is not enough to turn all trades into a winner. Each series of trades of Forexfunnel must be a winner. It is black and white.
FXOpen’s 1000 lots maximum changes the margin requirement completely from having the 50 lot maximum. You will require a lot more margin. I believe this is why on another Forexfunnel forum site, the guy got stopped out on massive uptrending 10/14/08 timeframe, because he had an account at FXOpen. It turned out that opening 6 trades was enough to take out this uptrend drawdown. His FXOpen account opened 10 level trades, which would require a lot more margin to support. This is why others have not been stopped out. A close call, giving a glimpse of what a bad trade can do for all Forexfunnel users. All this is saying here is, Know your Risk.
- You must do the backtest, if you are going to put real money to work. You owe it to yourself. The potential loss of the rare but real risk is too high.
- Since Forexfunnel may trade for years without running into this risk, it will be profitable. I advice you to take money out regularly to keep the potential risk amount small. This way, all you can lose is what is in that account. By then, you may already be in profit, so you won’t be hurt too much if that losing trade comes along to wipe you out. Whatever you do, do not put your entire amount on Forexfunnel. It would be a sure way of wiping out your account including not only gains but also your original capital at some future point. It would be devastating.
- A little mitigation idea that I came up with. I yet have to see this work live. I was not able to test it completely, but I did partially tested it in demo during this 10/14/08 close call. As a trader, you would have to make a decision when, but definitely before your margin goes to zero, close your largest losing trade. This will free up some margin required for your account to stay alive and buy some time for the other losing trades to come back. In the mean time, Forexfunnel will realize that it has one more trade to open, and issue a limit order for this largest lot size trade at a higher price point than the one you closed. (I have to go back to the trade log to verify this) This will help winning this set of trades, as the market is expected to retrace down at some point, and if it does, you escape with less damage than what it could have been.
Good Luck.
October 20th, 2008 at 12:13 am
thanks lucky johny for your explanation
October 20th, 2008 at 9:01 am
LuckyJohny,
in regards to mitigation, would it help if E/U combined with U/J as a way to hedge against huge loses?
thanks.
October 20th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
I don’t see how putting forexfunnel on a different pair would work as a substantial hedge. Maybe a small one. The amount at risk is much greater than any potential gain on another pair, and also introduce the risk on that pair.
October 20th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Scott,
you are wrong about Fxpromaker. I own the system. While it is true that they have in the past used more than one currency pair, for many months now they only use and recommend the JPY/USD pair just like FF! There are a couple other strategies that one can test, but this is the one that is recommended to trade live.
Also please reread Angelo’s post. Fxpromaker is the same as FF in that it requires no manual intervention. The only reason Angelo uses manual intervention is b/c he doesn’t feel comfortable leaving it alone, so he uses it as a tool. Most of the customers don’t do this, they leave it alone just like FF which is what is recommended. It is autosystem.
Many Fxpromaker customers have reported margin call Oct. 6 when there was big down move in USD/JPY of about 400 pips without retracement! Wiped out many account even with recommended settings!
FF customers didn’t receive margin call Oct. 6 b/c as I understand is that it can handle down move.
However, Oct. 13th there was a big uptrend of about 300 pips without retracement. This was trouble for FF. Some customers got margin call as well!
The bottom line is this move will happen again, it is just a matter of time! What if the next time it moves up 500 pips without retracement?
It will wipe FF accounts too!
Be careful!!!
October 21st, 2008 at 12:48 am
I’ve been testing the funnel religously for a couple of months on my blog, http://www.forexfun.net and i even post my detailed weekly results. So far, Lisa is right, most people make the lot size mistake and give up, bad idea.
Yes, it is risky to trade funnel but ****newsflash****, it is risky to trade forex. There is no system that takes the risk out, its just not going to happen. The best thing you can do is know your limitations and risk tolerance then extrapolate your money management techniques from there.
Honestly though, i’ve just let the funnel run on my demo account. I’m trading very conservatively with a 25k account at .01 lots. So far its been great even though each pip is only worth .0912 cents, hehehe.
Matt
October 21st, 2008 at 1:30 am
Leo,
If FF and Fxpromaker is not recommended EAs to use, can you name one or a few EAs that is worthwhile to use regardless whether the market is trending or consolidating?
thank you.
regards,
Joshua
October 21st, 2008 at 6:05 am
Leo, the fxpromaker website (in the FAQ section) says that the robot works on any pair. That is a fundamental difference. The FF authors have only ever recommended UJ for their robot. Another thing is that FF only has ONE long position (but multiple shorts) open at one time. Does FxPro do that? The point is that this thread is about FF, and introducing comparisons to other robots, no matter how similar, just confuses the issue.
October 21st, 2008 at 6:10 am
You nailed it, Matt. Forex is risky, period. If my demo continues to go well, I plan to run FF live and just periodically pull the profits out of the account. Then once I’ve doubled the investment and am playing with house money, I will consider upping the balance and lot size used by the robot. In short, there are ways to deal with the high risk and still be successful.
October 21st, 2008 at 8:41 am
Joshua: You are expecting too much out of a system. It is hard enough for an experienced trader to spot when a market shifts regime between trending, consolidating, reversal, etc, let alone to get a computer to do it. Almost all indicators will tell you the market has changed long after the fact. Those that claim to spot a shift ahead of time are right much less than half the time.
You are far better off finding a couple of good systems for different market conditions and managing your risk, so that when the market does shift regimes you don’t get hurt too bad and you can then switch systems.
October 21st, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Matt, I’m curious, with a 25k account at .01 lots, what kind of percentage return are you averaging on a monthly basis?
October 23rd, 2008 at 10:44 am
I’ve used the funnel since July live. Been margined out once, once almost, my fault though. This does make money but you need to supervise it. Owner sent me a broker sheet of his live account(how to know for sure?) shows about $40k from 10k since July. Works, but be careful.
October 23rd, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Hi, TW. Thanks for the report. What strategies are you using to protect yourself when running FF? When you say you’re supervising, do you mean you’re manually closing everything if it opens up too many trades?
Scott
October 23rd, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Yes, that is what I do anyway. I suggested to a him put a risk percentage feature that will limit how many orders so It doesn’t get out of control. Maybe he will add that.
October 23rd, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Hi TW:
I am also live with the funnel for a month now, about $1500 in profit from a $2500 account. Worst drawdown was 40% on 13th Oct but otherwise I’ve let it run and it’s been fine.
You said you got a margin call once, when was this? How many positions did it build up? Why was the margin call you almost got your fault, what happened? Would be interested to know.
I noticed the system took out a buy position at a small loss that had been there for a month. Did anyone else have the same?
Regards
Lisa
October 23rd, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Lisa, I’ve only been running my robot for 8 days, and I’ve not had any buy positions closed in the negative. Presently my position is quite a bit underwater because of the multi-day downtrend we are in right now, but the robot seems to be working like it is supposed to. It’s making money!
TW, like Lisa, I would also like to hear more details about the margin call and what your mistake was. Was this a big news event or just a slow upward crawl?
Thanks,
Scott
October 23rd, 2008 at 10:52 pm
Scott,
Does your buy position read:
Price: 98.12
S/L: 88.12
T/P: 98.47
This is a new one since last night. However, my buy position is only down by about $8 whereas you say yours is down quite a bit. Strange.
Lisa
October 24th, 2008 at 5:13 am
Lisa, here is my current buy position (opened 10/20):
Price: 102.41
S/L: 92.41
T/P: 102.76
Currently price is at 96.50, so I am almost 600 pips in the hole with this position. I will let it ride, though.
After 7 market days, I am up 11% on my demo account. Not bad!
Scott
October 24th, 2008 at 8:06 am
Hi Scott,
What size account you using and what lot size?
Are you using the latest version that funnel support sent about a week ago?
My buy position is totally different to yours, it should be the same we are using the same system.
Took my first losing batch today in a month, $300 loss not the end of the world but when you get used to wins everyday you don’t like seeing a loss. Never mind – we fight to see another day.
Lisa
October 24th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Lisa, on my demo I had starting balance of $7,500, using .03 lots (actually .3 mini lots on IBFX).
I don’t know what version I am using. I assume it is the latest. I just bought it last Tuesday. And I have not received any emails from support since that time.
I got perilously close to a death trade earlier this evening. USD/JPY went up around 200 pips with no major retracements. The robot had the maximum 8 positions opened, and my drawdown was up around 50% at one time. The price action finally retreated and the robot was able to close all the trades out with a small profit. The account couldn’t have survived price going against me much more. It was a close call, for sure. It makes me a little nervous about going live with it.
Scott
October 24th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
I think the safest thing to do is have more funds then the recommended amount in your account and keep lot size at 0.01.
I’m pretty sure that during the 4 yrs of testing the market never went through such volatility. Take last night, JPY moved 200 points up in a few hrs, it rarely would do 200 points in an entire day, so very volatile times.
We could also switch the Expert Advisor off after it has generated say 5 positions so no more are added and then manage those ourselves.
Lisa
October 25th, 2008 at 12:15 am
Lisa, appreciate your input here, new to funnel and using it on demo account right now. Can you tell me what you experienced last night/today? My demo account is down 80% or so, but my son may have put my pc in sleep mode and I’m not sure if that affected things in any way. Did you take a big hit the past 24 hours?
October 25th, 2008 at 2:00 am
Hi Ron,
Welcome to the world of Forex Funnel.
I thought last night was wild but nothing like it has been today. JPY has so far moved 700 points and though it was mostly to the downside where the funnel performs best the retracements up were quite wild.
What I did was switch off my Expert Advisor after 5 sell positions and I managed the positions myself. Some I took out and some reached T/P. Yesterday I lost $300, today I have made profit of $350.
I would say to anyone who is live not to leave the system unattended during this volatility.
What is the account size of your demo and what lot size have you put?
Everyone else: Pls let me know your experiences over the past 24 hrs and if any of you got margin calls.
Lisa
October 25th, 2008 at 2:07 am
My bot survived last night. It had three instances where it had to open 6 positions and once when it opened 5, and it made it through fine. I am now at +22% on my demo since beginning the bot last Tuesday.
Scott
October 25th, 2008 at 3:38 am
Has anyone seen proof that the Funnel’s developers traded it live before they released it? I seriously doubt they traded it during the 4-year backtesting period.
I don’t have a chart in front of me, but if memory serves the USDJPY went from below 100 to 124 in 2005-2006. Maybe the Funnel survived due to curve-fitting for the backtest’s parameters/rules. In real-time, I seriously doubt it could handle a huge uptrend like that. The only way you may not get margin-called would be to use tiny leverage–the kind that would produce 1-3% monthly returns…and it could still happen. Of course, one could rely on discretion/manual intervention, but that’s easier said than done. Many people went broke trying to pick the USDJPY’s top in ‘06.
I agree with Matt that all trading is risky. However, with positive expectancy, reasonable risk control and anti-Martingale money management, you have a good chance at success. The Funnel seems more like Russian Roulette. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’d have to see a real-time or out-of-sample test before I’m convinced. If the odds of doubling your money before a margin call are extremely high, maybe I’ll be persuaded.
October 25th, 2008 at 5:01 am
Lisa, I set the demo account to 25k and lot size to .1, so I think it’s per their instructions. I’m just not sure if somehow the account was affected by not being online for a period. I hope so, as otherwise it’s down to $5k.
has anyone just let theirs run for the past 24 hours?
October 25th, 2008 at 5:28 am
Ron – is your leverage set at 200:1? If it’s only 100:1 you will get margin call. If the system is offline for a while it should not be affected so I’m told. It should just continue when you go back online.
Lisa
October 25th, 2008 at 5:46 am
when I set the account up I picked 200:1. So something is not right, ie if all worked as it should have, even with the volatility, I shouldn’t have gotten the beating I did?
October 25th, 2008 at 9:59 am
I have been thinking about the 4 year back test result. Forex Funnel’s performance in back test is very much a function of where you start the back test.
As the funnel makes money in a declining market and looses money in a rising market, if you start back testing from that period you will build up enough equity in your account to weather a larger build up of martingaled positions. However, if you start trading in a rising market, you run the risk of blowing your account before you build up a big enough account to weather the a bad run of martingaled positions.
October 25th, 2008 at 10:29 am
spoke to Forex Funnel support, turning off the computer is a no-no, that’s why I got hit badly. Lesson learned, that’s why the demo start I guess. I think this should be something they perhaps emphasize more.
October 25th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
Hi Lisa,
That instruction of 0.01 lot per 2500 is for mini or standard account? I am using 0.1 on mini account at IFBX for 2000 and I guess that’s correct?
Now a little history, I started the $2000 demo MINI account with 200:1 on 14th Oct. It did make money consistently, maybe about 30-50 bucks a day. On the 23th it was around $2400
Then on the 23th it suddenly had a $640 losses and then another $520 losses on the 24th. Now my mini demo account left with $1086.
I did a back test from Oct 22 till today and the back test result did not show such losses. I also emailed the developer, giving them the screenshots and they replied saying that they didn’t experience such losses during those times.
On the 23rd, there is a strong downtrend which FF should have made money instead. On the 24th there is a strong uptrend, but still how could it lose till $520 on a 0.1 lot size mini account?
Can anyone help to explain?
Thanks
Vincent
October 26th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
I’ve been doing a LOT of number crunching on FF.
First of all, Vincent:
The recommended setting is .01 lot / 2500 standard, .1 per 2500 on a mini.
Regardless of your settings, I strongly recommend “babysitting” this program as often as you can. If you catch it hedging more than 4-5 times, you may want to turn off EA, cancel the biggest hedge (in lot size), and try to ride it out rather than let your EA handle it, because you’re likely to lose, and lose big. You’re always better taking a 100-200 loss, than risking 80-90% of your account.
I’m working out a ‘babysitting’ system, where you can trade extremely large lot sizes as long as a) you CONSTANTLY take your profits out, and b) can watch and turn off your EA when needed. I’m running day long back tests on lot sizes of 1 to 2, and it’s working well. The key is you have to plan on losing (because you will, several times). The only setting where you almost can’t lose is a .01 lot size per 5k. The recommended .01 per 2.5k is still dumping a couple times on the backtest… and running a consistant .01 per 5k isn’t much income (compared to what is possible, of course).
I have a giant spreadsheet with all my backrecorded data from history tests over the past year, and finding the optimal lot size and bank size (around 10k) for the best risk vs. reward payout… but I’ve found one thing for certain, this program definitely works better when you’re working with larger numbers. I’m living by the philosophy that trying to play it 99% safe won’t pay well at all. For those of you making good money for the time being, please please take the time to run history tests vs. your settings to make sure you aren’t at heavy risk of dumping your account.
October 27th, 2008 at 4:51 am
Well, after watching the robot for a couple weeks in demo, I have decided to return it. In my opinion, it is just too risky. Several have suggested babysitting it, which I have done some of the time, but I do have to sleep 6-7 hours a night, and what happens if there is a meltdown during that period?
In any event, best wishes for any who decide to stick with it.
Scott
October 28th, 2008 at 1:08 am
Hi, I’ve been live with the Funnel going on week 6. I had some trouble to begin with by not understanding money management. After I corrected and began trading “within my means” the Funnel has consistently generated net profits. I will say that I’ve experienced significant drawdowns that frankly make me a bit queasy. I have since backed off the suggested mm in order to have more of a “cushion” in the account. Last night it had to make 8 consecutive sell trades before finally retracing enough to TP. If I had not had that “Cushion” I wonder if I would have been margin called?
I have been trading in a mini account with 200:1 leverage, but am intending to switch to a standard account with 100:1 leverage. I have asked Funnel support if it is safer with 200:1 leverage, and they say it makes no difference, but I wonder… I get only very short reply’s to sometimes complex questions and forget asking more than 1 question per email. I notice that if the market is trending down the profits are less. It takes a bit of a “wind-up” (uptrend) to notice larger profits. However some are more profitable than others which doesn’t make sense to me. I’m speculating that the Funnel folks have a counter program they run that captures my losses somehow. Thoughts?
October 28th, 2008 at 4:27 am
Hi Sandy,
I am also live, this is my 5th week, started with $2500 now at $4400 pretty pleased. Have also seen drawdown of around 40% and agree that it is safer to use 0.01 for every $5k not $2500 as suggested by funnel.
When I emailed funnel support about leverage they stressed it must be 200:1 minimum.
I have actually found the system performs much better in a downtrend but you think the opposite. I suppose we all see it slightly differently but the most important aspect is money management and making a profit.
How much profit have you made since going live?
Regards
Lisa
October 28th, 2008 at 6:08 am
Lisa, I’m so glad you mentioned the leverage issue. The way I worded my question to support was “is using the program safer in a standard acct or a mini acct” & their reply was it doesn’t matter, nothing about needing to have 200:1 leverage minimum. One would think that would be worth mentioning. IBFX only gives 200:1 leverage in their mini accounts, 100:1 is status quo in their standard accounts. I’ll have to ask them to increase my leverage to 200:1. On the uptrend the risk is much greater, but the reward seems equally as great, maybe it’s a wash in the end because if the market had just continued the downtrend, it would have clipped off the same profit without risking all my money in the process. The scary part is last week I made over 20% ROI. During the past 24 hrs I’ve made more than 10% ROI. Money like that seems waaaay too good to be true.
October 28th, 2008 at 8:59 am
Hi Sandy
In some senses forexfunnel support is right. If you trade a 100K standard lot account using 0.01 lots per 2500, it is the same as trading 0.1 lots in a 10K mini lot account.
If you want to reduce your risk with Forex Funnel there are a number of things you can do:
1) Ask your broker to increase your leverage (e.g. to 200:1, 400:1, 500:1, etc)
2) Trade with less lots for the size of your account (e.g. 0.01 standard 100K lots per $5000)
3) Withdraw a portion of your profits from your account regularly
With option1 you are fundamentally limited by the rules of your broker and you may need to shop around a number of brokers until you find one that meets your needs
With option 2 the trade off is you will proportionately less money.
With option 3, the trade off is you will risk blowing up your account sooner if you withdraw too much. (actually option 3 is the same as option 2 – if you keep your profits in your account and you dont increase your lot size you are effectively reducing your leverage).
Also with any of these options, don’t forget this is a martingale system. So by doubling your margin or halving your lot size, you are only putting off the inevitable by one more bad trade in a string of bad trades.
On the flip side you can always increase your leverage in a bearish USD/JPY market and withdraw your profits regularly. In this case you may make more money, but you have to be willing to take the major risk of loosing your risk capital. Although, there are many out there, myself included, who are not willing to take that risk
October 28th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Hi there,
I purchased FF last week and have backtested for all of 2008 and am now forward testing it on a demo account. So far it looks quite promising and it’s up $86.38 today alone (trading 0.01 lots).
I have a live mini acount with IBFX with 200:1 leverage, can anyone confirm whether the mini accounts still need $2,500 minimum for 0.01 lot – or is this just for the standard accounts? If so what would be the minimum to trade this system on a mini account. (Not too hot on the maths with this).
Thanks.
October 28th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
ForexFunnel is like a time bomb, ticking away for the right time to go off, to blow your account into pieces.
I have seen good traders blowing out their 6 figure accounts that took years to build, by trading high risk/return strategies. I think ForexFunnel is one of those high risk/return strategies.
It’s an accident waiting to happen. You never know when. It could be the next intersection, next left turn, but one thing is for sure. By the time you found out, it’s too late.
I think ForexFunnel will blow out a lot of accounts of unsuspecting and unresearched users, who have seen money coming in like clockwork in their demo, and live accounts.
I would advise to stay away, if you want to sleep well and avoid waking up one day to find out your account has been shattered. There must be other strategies that is less risky, and less painful.
October 28th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Hi LuckyJohny
It seems you are quite right too. I ran a back test last night starting from 1st August 2008 to date with an opening capital of $3,000. Using 0.01 lots with 200:1 leverage and the system was doing fine until 14th October at 01.55am (all UK times) when it blew the whole account.
I was also forward testing the EA on a demo account (again 0.01 lots, $3,000 starting equity and 200:1 leverage) which – as I said in my earlier post was going ok – that was until this morning. The 6am candle that went up 247 pips in an hour blew this account out of the water too.
I think I’m going to be asking Clickbank for a refund.
October 28th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
My forward test on a demo account blew up as well today.
Has anyone else had the same experience?
October 28th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
I was wondering if anyone had a problem with that candle. I left my account trading at less than half capacity and I noticed that my account balance dropped by 8 dollars & some change – It didn’t blow up the account. Clearly it’s not advisable to let it trade at their suggested mm, Lisa how did you fare?
October 29th, 2008 at 1:50 am
It was a disaster today morning…my $3000/0.01 lot with 200:1 got blew today and even in last week and left Balance $690 ..It seems to be working when market is at down trend…It’s not stable at all…
October 29th, 2008 at 2:00 am
Macro – thanks for the pointers. I am doing all the things you suggest, which is why (I suspect) my account didn’t go boom this morning. I think the system is a good one but since we’re seeing once in a lifetime market conditions, all bets are off. I noticed yesterday that the market seemed to be consolidating, the likely result being a breakout to the upside. I did not think the Funnel would pick up on such a reversal in it’s early stage so on the suspicion of a trend reversal I reduced my lot size just in case. Glad I did. I have it turned off today, going to let the dust settle a bit before resuming. In the future I will only trade .01 per 5k lots. Again thanks
October 29th, 2008 at 8:40 am
I’m wondering if the backtest that Funnel talks about on their website only survived because they started with a strong year, which gave them a huge cushion for the big drawdowns the next three years. Either that or we have hit just a bad period. I sent them an email about the accounts blowing up this am, and haven’t gotten a response. Curious if they acknowledge it.
October 29th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Hi Guys,
Yes, it has been turbulent. I switched the EAs off when I saw too many positions building up. I lost a couple hundred bucks but made it back yesterday. I do believe we are seeing once in a lifetime movements.
The system does work, you have to watch it though, take positions out when you feel you need to, the losses won’t be as bad as having your account blown up if you just let it run.
I also emailed funnel support to ask how the system can stand this volatile time by just letting it run. I got a few words reply saying if you follow the rules you will be ok. Really very poor quality response but at least we are all sharing our views and ideas about how to manage it which should help us all.
Lisa
October 30th, 2008 at 5:09 am
Lisa, just curious, how do you decide when to ‘intervene’ on the EA and when not to? I guess it seems like given the system is based on doubling down until you can get a move to make profit, if you intervene you are making it that much more difficult to get back to b/e or profit. Seems like a bit of a catch 22….of course you don’t want to blow up your account, but I would guess that very often the funnel gets to opening up a lot of positions and it bails you out. Just curious. Thanks for your input.
October 30th, 2008 at 5:43 am
I agree overall market conditions are crazy right now and this may be a once or twice in a lifetime event. However, I’ve been trading and watching FX markets about 4 years and have observed historical charts going back much further. The USDJPY has had MANY days of 200-300 pip gains before the recent period. Sometimes they occur with hardly any retracements. Sometimes the pair rises 1000-1500 pips with very little correction. Just look at daily charts from Jan. 05 to June 07.
If a 200-400 pip move with little or no retracement is a threat to the Funnel, be prepared for many more threats down the road..particularly if global stock markets start to rally, since the USDJPY is positively correlated with stocks.
October 31st, 2008 at 2:20 am
Hi Ron,
What I have been doing is implementing some very strict rules.
If the funnel opens 5 sell positions I switch off the EA and watch those positions to see if it either reaches T/P, b/even or is heading for a loss. I also do look at a JPY chart to see if I can see if a retracement is coming or not. If I don’t think so I will start to close positions. Sometimes the last position on will close for T/P as it will retrace a little but not enough to take the others out so I will close them. I judge it with the chart and my own assessment. So, some trades you will close for a small loss and its better that then blowing your account.
Also, if you see the market is really volatile especially as it has been right now or there is news data just keep the EAs switched off and switch on again when market is quieter.
Forex is a risk and so is this system it is not how the funnel person says just let it run and don’t worry. I think he is extremely irresponsible to say that. But if managed and watched it can generate profit.
Lisa
October 31st, 2008 at 4:04 am
Hey guys.
New reader here… been looking into this system for a bit now, and I think I want to try it out.
I really love this forum… no nonsense “everyone will be rich, rich rich I tell you, just leave it on and go to Hawaii for 3 weeks” lol…
Anyways, I am really new to forex and understand its really risky.
My question is… if I want to start off real light… say 500 bucks, is this system a bad idea?
As a newbie am I making a bad move?
October 31st, 2008 at 4:22 am
Help me think this through… My broker has a 50 lot instant execution limit. If I were trading with 0.1 lots that would give me 9 chances (240 pips or up to 25.6 lots) for the market to retrace enough to take profit before it stopped placing sell trades. But I guess it would still place buy trades? Once I saw the Funnel go as high as 38.4 lots when I was trading 0.3 lots, but I don’t think it could double down again, can anyone confirm? Also interesting to note, once one of my buy trades hit the SL (1000 pips) so it did have that loss, but it placed a sell trade just large enough to offset that loss. I think it is also worth mentioning that I argued the point with Funnel support about the instructions not saying anything about needing 200:1 leverage. Low & behold they sent me new & improved instructions that have this stipulation. My original instructions do NOT have this info. I am also using the goldminer 1 &2 on the pair to alert me to pay extra close attention when an uptrend has formed. Anybody using FX ProMaker / Bliss that was mentioned in the above review as being biased toward the long side?
October 31st, 2008 at 8:34 am
lsfeder: Forex Funnel requires at least 0.01 standard 100K lots (or 0.1 mini lots) per $2500 in your account. If you want to trade with a $500 then you need to trade with a mini account using a setting of 0.02 lots.
Sandy: With regard to your 50 lot question, a lot of it depends on the size of your account and the size of the lots traded and the size of the floating loss you have accumulated. On a small account with 100K standard lots and a large floating loss I dare say your account would be cactus before you hit the 50 lot limit. If on the other hand you had deeper pockets and less of a floating loss you could well have your broker refuse to take your order over 50 lots. Here is an experiment for you. Open a demo account and try a 51 lot order and see what happens. That will let you know for sure what happens.
regarding the 200:1 leverage, that was the instructions they gave me when I asked them why my back test results were different from theirs. It is not something they have documented any where. In hindsight looking at the martingale nature of the system, the bigger the leverage you can get on your account the better,
Regarding FXPromaker / Bliss I cannot help you. I haven’t looked at those system yet.
October 31st, 2008 at 11:05 am
Hey,
Please excuse the noobness of this question, but what do you mean when you say mini account?
Is this a special type of brokerage or something more specific?
October 31st, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Isfeder: that is a pretty basic question to be asking. A mini account means that each lot is worth $10,000. A number of brokers support mini accounts. When you sign up you usually select what size lots you want.
In terms of the “noobness” of the question, I suspect you are not yet ready to start trading. I suggest you do the full set of tutorials over at http://www.babypips.com and try some demo trading first first before you put any money in the market.
November 1st, 2008 at 1:23 am
Thank for the reply’s guys.
I am 100% not going to invest real money until I learn more and play with system on a demo account first.
I have a goal to be better informed by January 09, and to have run a few demo account by then as well.
The when I am ready to play with real funds (around Jan-Feb 09) it will be with low budgets first.
Thanks for all the input, and this forum rocks!
November 1st, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Hiya peeps ,
Thanks for all the info on funnel . Especially on the mitigation strategies . Funnel is not built to be a full autopilot / switch on and go play golf kinda EA . I doubt any EA will achieve this feat . I wonder if some of the mitigation strategies can be coded into a “new improved funnel” such as turning off the EA as it reach the 5th / 6th / 7th Level Sell Limit Order depending on the user risk appetite ? It should be a variable parameter to be set when turning on the EA .
Took me two well spent hours to fully go thru this thread and it is time well spent . Thanks again to all contributors . Keep up the feedback …
November 2nd, 2008 at 8:42 pm
Hi guys!
Appreciate all the information! =)
really helpful.
November 4th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
no news?
developments?
November 5th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Hi Everyone,
I must be the one and only total novice out here, but you have to start somewhere! I have read with interest all of your comments. Firstly, for someone with absolutely NO trading background.. is this system easy to follow and learn from scratch or should I pick up a few books first? I live in Australia so my currency is Australian dollars which need to be converted to trade US/JPY..? The exchange rate is already starting to get expensive for me even before I start… or am I missing something?
November 5th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Hi Jennifer
Forex Funnel is not a great place to start learning from. On the surface it seems deceptively simple, but unless you really understand martingales and have the wisdom to knowing when to hold em, knowing when to fold em and knowing when to run, trading this system may not be for you.
http://www.babypips.com is a much better place to start learning from. work your way through the tutorials there. Once you get some more education under your belt, I would recommend some demo trading for a little while before attempting to trade with real money.
November 5th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Jennifer,
Regarding trading the USD/JPY, the way trading currencies works is you deposit your money in to a brokers account, they then handle all the conversions for you. Your brokers spread is much much lower than what your bank can offer you (2 – 3 pips vs. 200 – 300 pips), so the cost of conversion is low.
The main danger you face is forex is highly leveraged and it is very very easy to loose it all. So unless you have a good grasp of money management, I would not recommend it.
There is another one in being an Australian trader. Most broker accounts are denominated in USD. This means you will convert your Aussie dollars into USD in order to fund your account. This in turn means that as the Aussie fluctuates against the US dollar you account will gain or loose value (unless you hedge against your home currency).
However, that said, the high leverage used in Forex is a far greater risk than the currency risk involved in holding a USD account.
November 6th, 2008 at 6:52 am
Hi Macrotactician,
Thank you so much for your advice, you are absolutely right, it is a risky game out there and more knoweledge is certainly needed before I even start the demos!! Will see if we have a similar version here in Australia. I noticed at the beginning of these posts you were sceptical about this whole system… have you changed your views on this now? Do you find it actually working for you? Many thanks for your words of wisdom!
November 6th, 2008 at 7:08 am
PS Congratulations on your 44th new President!!!!
November 6th, 2008 at 7:15 am
Hi Jennifer,
My initial gut reaction towards this system was negative because it was aggressively marketed as a 100% idiot proof tool which when backtested showed that there are cases where it can blow your account up My initial reaction was so strong that I jumped the gun and wrote a negative review and asked for a refund.
Some of the readers of this site felt that my review was too biased because they were testing the system themselves and had favourable results.
I listened to what they were saying and went back and edited to review to be less biased. Since then I have also purchased another copy of Forex Funnel and started forward testing it again on a demo account.
In my forward test I have already blown up one account and I am now on my second demo account. The second demo account is steady gaining at the moment.
I can now see why people are attracted to it as the periods of steady returns from the system are quite impressive as you rarely see systems which such a smooth rising equity curve, however I am still not comfortable with the aggressive over marketing and the high risks of blowing up your account with this system.
This is why I try and provide the information to the readers now and let them make up their own mind as to what to do with Forex Funnel.
November 6th, 2008 at 9:37 am
Do you know why you blew up the first account, was it something you did or too much fluctuation and it would of happened anyway? Also, how much time to you have to spend on this? Do you have to constantly monitor hour by hour? What do you do during the night-time and for me your daytime is our night, which can be a problem if we need to be following all of the time.
November 6th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
is there a “right” time to turn on this ea?
say for example, just before the NFP, there was alot of sideways movement…would this be one of those “right timing” turn on Forex Funnel?
regards/
November 7th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Forex Funnel server just went down an hour ago. EA cannot init. Error message is “Trial Period Expired”. anyone else experiencing this?
November 7th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
yeaa.. I am experiencing the same… “trial expired”…
EA not trading.
Account update webpage also gone…
???
November 7th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
FFunnel server came back up this AM. Whew!! what happened?
November 8th, 2008 at 11:57 am
still can’t get my funnel back up and running, anyone got any ideas?
November 8th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Lisa,
how did you trades go recently?
what broker do you recommend best to use?
what do you think of Alpari?
If using this EA, with the correct amount of deposit: USD2,500, leverage: 1:200, and Lot Size: 0.01, do you think it is safe to trade in the long run of 6-10 months and trading thru news hours?
There will be times when UJ trends upwards like on 13th October and sustained abit of loses but with the setting mentioned, would it able to weather almost of choppy conditions and make profits in the end?
thanks.
regards,
joshua
November 9th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
Jennifer: As described in the review, Forex Funnel is sensitive to sudden bullish moves on the USD/JPY as it can accumulate martingaled positions very quickly and put your account at risk. Also, in regards to your time question, you do not need to sit and watch FF all the time. It is an EA which can trade unsupervised. However, you need to keep an eye on it on a regular basis.
Joshua: There is always risks with this EA, so there is no perfect time when there are no risks. You may find that this EA is more suited to a bearish USD/JPY market, but the risk is still there. I am not convinced that not trading this system on certain days makes a difference, but you should do your own back testing on this.
Brodie: My EA is still working. You should try and contact support.
November 9th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Hi All,
My trading has been fine. I don’t just leave funnel to run, I agree that is too risky. I actually turn it on at quiet times not news times and it seems to work. It takes longer to make profit bcs I don’t leave it running 24/7 but it is a safer option. I have now doubled my account from $2500 to $5000. I won’t be increasing the lot size I will keep it at 0.01 and build up profit at a slower but safer pace.
Alpari seems to be fine, their platform is steady and reliable. You do need to ask for 200:1 bcs they will give you 100:1 but ask and you will get. Also, keep a USDJPY chart open and if you see the beginning of an uptrend just turn it off and wait for it to come down, it’s worth doing that.
I didn’t experience any ‘Trial Period Expired’ like some of you did. All has been working okay just don’t take your eye off the ball is my advice.
Regards
Lisa
Macrotactician: off topic comment removed (sorry Lisa)
November 10th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Thank you Macrotactician and Lisa for your invaluable input. You have all helped me a great deal with getting my head around this!
Regards, Jennifer
November 11th, 2008 at 8:46 am
hi Lisa,
how would you determine when is the most appropriate for “quiet time” to turn on the EA?
on the 13th, the huge draw down occurred during non-news hour.
please advice.
thanks
November 11th, 2008 at 8:58 am
Thought some of you might be interested, I emailed Forex Funnel about the option of being able to set the max number of positions it would open to avoid account blowups. They indicated that it was coming shortly in a new release. Not sure how reliable they are, but I think that would be a plus.
November 11th, 2008 at 11:12 am
Joshua: The more quiet time is after all news releases have come out. I know 13th October was a non-news time but this was one of the days when the market was going a little crazy with the bailout plans, it’s not typical market behaviour.
Ron: The fact that Forex Funnel are bringing out a new release must mean they can see the danger in letting the system continuously double up causing a potential blow up.
Lisa
November 11th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Lisa mate,
Thank you for your information. i value them very much.
moving forward, similarly to the bail-out plan, is there any issues/news/govt -plans that would repeat such a occurence on the 13th October during non-news time?
thanks mate.
regards,
Joshua
November 11th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Joshua: Have a look at forexfactory.com for their calendar. Any red flagged news item for the USD or JPY can push the pair around significantly.
November 11th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Macrotactician,
thank you for answering my question.
is there any possible news in the future that could leave high impact residual long after it has been announced such as what happened on the 13th? huge trending occured (more than 100+pips) during non-news hour.
thanks.
regards,
Joshua
November 11th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Joshua: Yes there are such events and they are sometimes referred to as “catalysts”. These events are difficult to predictable and they cause traders change their sentiment in a major way. A typical catalytic event is where the central banks adjust rates more or less the expected or an economic indicator is significantly different from the expected value. The biggest market movers are known as “black swans”. This includes things like sept 11. russian default crisis, kobe earth quake, sub prime, etc, etc.
The very nature of these events is they are unpredictable, that is why we see such a large spike in the price.
November 11th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
Joshua: in addition to the above, there are three other kinds of things that can push the USD/JPY around:
One of the things you should know about Japanese traders is they are notorious for collusion and hunting in packs (especially during th asian session or during US public holidays when the liquidity is lower and the can push the market around)
Second, the Japanese central bank is notorious for intervening directly in the market.
The final point to note is that all markets are dynamic, complex and unstable systems. Sometimes they move for no reason that can be pointed out at the time of the move.
November 12th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
Hi Macrotactician,
Good day to you and i am very appreciative of your explanation and learnt great deal from it! =)
mate, do you personally use Forex Funnel in live?
thanks mate.
November 13th, 2008 at 11:28 am
So, does anyone really understand the logic behind the program? I know it says it’s based upon years of development, etc. But from my time watching it, I almost feel like it just keeps opening sell orders looking for 20 pip profits, and if it moves in the other direction by the 20 pips, doubles down. As soon as you are out of one position, a new one opens. I just don’t seem to see any selectivity in the trades it opens. I hope I’m overly simplifying it, anyone have anything to add?
November 13th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
It is likely that this martingale system with what I call “backcatches” was developed originally on TradeStation. TradeStation allows users to develop a strategy based on natural-language rules.
They then wrote Forex Funnel using MTL4 which is like C.
As far as a winning strategy: This system MUST always lose but overall drawdowns of profit can easily beat out a single big loss from the live trading account. Pick a period, such as one month, and every period use a reverse martingale drawdown, i.e. 500, 1000, 2000, 4000, until you can’t drawdown and still maintain optimal account size. Then restart your period.
My results echo Lisa’s. I have been turning off and hand-trading on uptrends. FF seems to make between 2 and 10% per full 24hr market day.
November 14th, 2008 at 3:59 am
Hi – I know that this discussion is about Forex Funnel, but I was curious to know if anyone has tested out pipzu (pipzu.com). It’s supposedly one of the only EAs that has an algorithm based on market timing and trend adaptation. On top of this advanced feature of “learning” and “adapting” to the market, it makes very few trades a week (1-2 trades per week) and is considered to be low risk compared to the mainstream EAs out there which gravitate toward the Martingale strategy.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Joshua: I am not trading it with real money. I am only demo trading it at the moment.
Ron: The logic behind this program, as best we understand it, is described in the review above in the section marked “How Does Forex Funnel Work”. In terms of your observation, you are correct, there is no selective going on that we can see. Forex Funnel seems to be mainly about martingale money management rather than efficient entries.
Jared: These kinds of systems are not new. I have seen TASC articles on these kinds of strategies published since the early 90s. However, in those days you needed a really big wallet to trade a martingale system because the contract sizes for futures where higher. These days with microlots and high leverage in Forex, these kinds of systems are starting to be open to your average punter.
Sheldon: I have not tried pipzu. If you do decide to give it a go let us know how you went.
November 14th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Is it possible to trade Forex Funnel with other currency pairs or does it have to be USD/JPY? What about CHF/JPY? This pair would be less risk in my opinion….
November 14th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Leo: You can trade FF with any pair you like. My question to you is why do you think CHF/JPY is a better pair?
November 15th, 2008 at 1:10 am
USD/JPY is well known for its big moves, but at least historically speaking, CHF/JPY is much more suited for martingale EA’s as the chances of retracement are much bigger on this pair…..
November 15th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
I’ve blown out my $1000 account to only $78 last 2 weeks. I was greedy.
I traded USDJPY and EURUSD pairs at the same time with micro 0.01 lots unattended.
Luckily with some manual interventions I have managed to rebuild that $78 back to $322 when the market closed few hours ago.
I’m hoping to recover back my $1000
Lesson learnt…
November 16th, 2008 at 12:49 am
It’s been covered here before but I think worth repeating…..this EA has potential if used correctly. For me, that means a 5,000 mini account trading .1 lots on Interbank. With the extra cushion, combined with Interbanks 50 lot max, it would really take a lot to get you blown out. Some have said they stop after a certain number of open positions and manage them manually, but I think for me the 25.6 it will get to is something I can deal with with these account settings. although once they allow the option I’d probably stop it one trade earlier. A couple days ago it hit this max, and within a reasonable time was able to get the retrace needed. Of course, no guarantees in life!
November 17th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Do you guys have any suggestion about brokers? Which one is best? I checked online, most of the brokers have some problems in requote, slippage, etc. Thanks you for your reply.
November 18th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Yes… same as John… I’d like to know too. Which broker is best?
I am currently using ForexMeta but maybe there is something better.
Thanks
November 18th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
John/Ross: That question is not easy to answer as without buying multiple copies of forexfunnel and running it side by side on multiple brokers, you wont know which broker is best.
November 20th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Let’s face it the program is crap. Even Lisa (who is almost in love in this product) said that she had to watch ove the robot. Otherwise her money would be history. So what kind of robot is that?
If you have to watch even for a tiny bit is a crap. Dispossal. Waste of space. BIN IT!!!!!
I dont know much about forex trading I’m kinda novice in this field.
But this doubling system hit me… I mean com’on… You dont need rocket science whoever uses the doubling system is actually putting his bankroll to the highest risk. Sick people playing doubling strategy in the casino playing red numbers on rulette after 5 black numbers came. Assuming that red has a higher chance after all. Doubling it up till red finally comes. Its a winning strategy for a while then like every fairy tale it has to END. And a punters go home without a penny. Some of them try to blame the croupiers instead of facing reality.
Or just simply too stupid to understand the odds.
Forex is still very tempting but im gonna stick to the pokertable for a bit longer than I thought.
November 20th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
croupier thanks for your opinion. doubling in forex is a little different compared to a roulette table.
In roulette your odds of a red win is around 48%. In Forex Funnel your odds of a win is around 57%. Also in the casino my ability to access money is based on my credit limit. In forex I can get 500:1 leverage.
This means your average Forex Funnel player can win more often and when they do loose, they can double up for much longer than your average roulette player and therefore have a much better hope of recovering their position. Furthermore, like a card counter on the black jack table, a Forex Funnel trader can further tip the odds in their favor by trading the system when is suits market conditions.
Given the choice between trading Forex Funnel and roulette I would take funnel any day. However, having said ALL of that trading martingale systems in general is a mugs game. I would rather trade a non-martingale system any day.
November 20th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
Hi. New poster here. I’ve been reading all the comments about Funnel. I also have a demo version running. I would not leave it unattended, but I do think it has the potential to make some money. However, the Martingale aspect obviosuly concerns me.
Macrotactician, you just stated that you would rather trade a non-martingale system. So would I, but just about every product I look at seems to have an equal number of ‘great and profitable’ and ‘total rip-off, don’t touch it’ comments. As a newbie to Forex, are there any products that really do work automatically (I have a full time job), or is this ‘Holy Grail’ really just unobtainable? Would you recommend any packages that truly are worth trying?
November 20th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
Hi Stickerman
I have only looked at a handful of EAs (about 5 – see the articles links above). They all have their strengths and weaknesses, but none are a holy grail, and the systems that are reasonably profitable are usually not without a comparable degree of risk.
I am starting to get to the point that all of these EAs are to be treated as trading tools and not as a automated robot that you can set and forget. You need to learn their strengths and weaknesses, when to turn them on, when not to trade em, when to hold em, when to foldem, when to walk away and when to run. And unless you have some experience in discretionary trading and systems development, I think that while you may make money with some of these systems, you are going to struggle to keep your profits with any of these systems.
November 21st, 2008 at 6:30 am
Hi Macrotactician,
Just wondering, how is your demo account going with the Funnel. You mentioned earlier in this review that you were going to give it another go, have you had better success this time around?
November 21st, 2008 at 10:32 am
Hey guys, i bought the system last week and started a demo account on sunday and today my profit loss with an initial deposit of $3000 is $1730.88. I have set it to .01 and to be perfectly honest everyone, this is definitely the way to go. now if you do plan to go make millions with forex, perhaps you could increae the lot to .2 but just remember, like with any market, there is a huge risk to take, the .01 lot decreases that risk significantly the the Forex Funnel system is designed to make you come out ahead no matter what. and to be perfectly honest…if a system can profit me $300 in one day, i am more than thankful considering these times. way to go for this site by the way for practically being the Forex Funnel support community, and i just sent a link to them, perhaps they could buy this spot from you mac and use it as a community, what do you think?
November 21st, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Jennifer: Over a three week period my demo of Forex Funnel has added more than 50% to a demo account.
Teddy Ruxpin: I have been wondering about this point myself. The sheer number of comments have gotten on this blog entry probably means the discussion has out grown the blog entry and warrants a proper forum to allow people to more freely chat about Forex Funnel. If people are interested I can create a forum or if they want suggest a reputable forum to move the discussion to I am open to that as well. The danger of course if I move the discussion over to a new forum is it might die as well.
I am in 2 minds about having direct sponsorship from FF as it means the group changes its nature. For example, I find the FAP Winner which supports forex auto pilot to be handy because you can ask the creator questions, but I find the community to be really stilted because they dont want anyone to say anything bad about the product. Here I like the fact that someone will come in and vent their spleen about Funnel. As long as they do it constructively it is quite useful.
If the group have an opinion about any of the above let me know, because this thread of discussion is as much yours as it is mine.
November 21st, 2008 at 11:44 pm
Hello guys,
I’ve stop using my real account(b4 I blew out everything) and started to demo again.
I am testing $1000 with 1:500 leverage and 0.1(min. allowed in demo) lot size.
After half day already making ~$150.
Will continue testing few more days next week.
What do you guys think?
November 22nd, 2008 at 1:12 am
hey ross, you need to change the lot from .1 to .01, otherwise you will blow your account, scroll all the way up to lisa’s comment of why you should use lot .01 as it is a safer method for trading while still gaining a large amount in a week.
November 22nd, 2008 at 3:35 am
Thanks Teddy… I am aware of that but the MT4 platform I am using only allow 0.1 for demo purposes.
I want to test how long the $1000 can last with 1:500 leverage.
As of now I am already making $268 with few more hours to go.
Will continue till next week…
November 22nd, 2008 at 4:37 am
sounds good, wish you the best of luck!
November 22nd, 2008 at 11:59 pm
Hey Macro, I find this to be the most useful collection of info about the Funnel on the net. I generally check it once or twice a day for updates. I’ve never (ever) been a part of a blog or forum or whatever you call it, but I find it comforting to know others out there are doing the same thing as me. While I think it might be interesting to be able to ask the creator questions support doesn’t seem overly willing to disclose much info through direct email. Responses are overly simplified to downright cryptic. The latest example I have is I finally got a response to the 3rd email I sent regarding 2 moderate sized losses sustained nearly back to back on Nov 13. While the reply was as detailed as I’ve ever seen, the answer doesn’t make any sense to me, it just raises more questions, so unless that would change what’s the point? My vote is for an unbiased forum here on your site. For anyone interested I’ve managed to pull over 11k out of the market in under 2 months using the Funnel and I have no prior experience with this or any financial market. Beginners Luck? Maybe but everyday I devote time to learning & am also testing new strategies as I find them, so it won’t be luck for long. I have a mentor (that I pay) that gives me valuable insight into this insane market and he says eventually things will calm down and the pips (money) will come much easier. That is a relief. This is a once in a lifetime market condition, expect the unexpected & reduce your risk for now. Do that & you’ll weather this storm & have dry powder on the other side of it for when the gettin’ will be real good.
November 23rd, 2008 at 11:00 pm
How much deposit do you think is fairly safe to run the funnel on with broker that allow 0.01 lots which is worth $0.01. Leverage is 400:1.
Would $500 be enough? (that would be the same as running a $5000 account with 0.01 lots where one lot = $ 0.1)
Thanks
Leo
November 24th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Hey Leo,
I do not recommend that amount, simply because the safest run as I have come across is $3000 deposit. I k now that may be tough to get right now, but $500 might be too small to start considering the speed of how this market works and though funnel does work, not all of your trades will result in profit, the system was designed was to minimize losses while profiting three times the amount you lose, thus always making ahead on a daily basis…
in my demo account, my deposit was $3000 and I happy to say that my profit for the week was $2533 in 5 days. in the pdf they also recommend you start with at least 2500 to ensure that the times when you lose, you will not blow your account completely.
I know it is hard to wait, trust me I’m also in the process of gathering up that amount right now, but i know that if i wait, by the beginning of next year, I will be profiting almost six figures yearly with this system, and I’m also a newbie. so my advice leo is wait, or get a second job that won’t take up much of your time and energy, and use that money to build that deposit amount, which is what I am also waiting as well. purchasing the system was absolutely the best step you did, but i suggest you wait till you have enough to deposit a significant amount before you can make significant profits with it.
November 24th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
Thanks a lot for the advice Teddy.
However, I do believe that you are not talking about nano lots where 0.01 lots = $ 0.01 there is a big difference.
Otherwise there is no way you could have made $2533 in 5 days! Absolutely impossible. The only way this is possible if you used 0.01 lots where 0.01 lots = $ 0.1 This way you would need at least $3000 like you said, even that seems risky to me, I’d say better $5000.
But if 0.01 lots = $0.01 then I believe $500 would be enough….. it be the same as trading with $5000 where 0.01 lots = $0.1.
Do you know what I mean?
November 24th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
For example, Duyuy got margin call trading with $25,000 (demo) on October because of 300 pip strong uptrend. This happened either because of his broker (FXopen) which allows max lot size of 1000 (IBFX for example allows only 50) so Funnel EA just kept placing trades or (in my opinion more likely) min. balance was too small, because for his set-up on his broker, every pip was worth $1.
This actually means that trading with a $500 IBFX mini account 400:1 is less risky (less risk of a margin call) than trading with $25000 where one pip = $1.
In other words, a $250 IBFX mini account would be the same risk as trading with a 25000 account if trading with 0.1 lots where 0.1 lots = $1.
Does that make sense?
See Duyduy review of Forex Funnel as well as the comments on the bottom:
http://duyduyfx.blogspot.com/search/label/Forex%20Funnel%20EA
November 24th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
If you use the MM recommended by Funnel in a mini account 2500k = 0.1 lot size. 0.1 lot size = 1000. If you divide 2500 by 1000 = 2.5. 2.5 is the number you need to adhere to. That being said, if you have 1000k to use for this system 1000k / 2.5 = 400 or 0.04 lot size. You can’t increase this lot size until you have at least 1250k and can achieve the 2.5 ratio with 0.05 lot size. I don’t know how it is with other brokers but with IBFX you could not trade these lot sizes in a standard account, only in a mini.
November 25th, 2008 at 1:42 am
The key to this system is the right leverage…It’s performed quite well on a demo account…the modified martingale approach has it’s up and downs for sure …you could filter with other indicators however I have just let it run to see how it does also have tried it on other currency pairs and it seem to work there too….so I am sure what to think yet need more time to play it out on a live market secenairo….but managing leverage is key….
November 25th, 2008 at 6:50 am
just had a huge loss today, this morning 2800 profit…now i am at 113….huge loss…trying to figure out what went wrong…i think the sell’s that are left open are what killed me…
November 25th, 2008 at 6:52 am
if anyone can help me figure this out, it would be much appreciated…the wind just got taken away from my sales
November 25th, 2008 at 7:35 am
hi teddy, i also had a huge hit today, and i dunno what happened, right now my margin level is at 974.33% and i dunno what that means and i see a lot f trades in the negative mark and they are open even when there is no trading and its during the down time, can someone help us newbies out what this all means? i know nuttin about this
November 25th, 2008 at 8:02 am
hey just to add to what i wrote previously, what’s theproper leverage for a 3000 deposit account? and lot size?
November 25th, 2008 at 8:37 am
for some reason my lot size was .2 though i thought i put it at .01 which i guess explains my 2000 in 5 days, and losing almost 2000 in three hours, just changed it to lot .02, gonna test that out which is good cuz im back at the 3000 mark for the demo and we will see how things pan out for the week.
November 25th, 2008 at 8:40 am
also mark, try lot size .01 and let me know how that goes for the week..we can both find out which lotsize is better cuz i also have a similar deposit
November 25th, 2008 at 8:41 am
ed can you also explain more how to manage leverage so i’ll never have that loss again
November 25th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Teddy,
With every investment there is risk of loss. But with forex this is even more true if you know what I mean. It is riskier. But with good EA and good money management you lower risk.
Sandy, so you are saying that Funnel author says their EA can be traded with as little as $250 on IBFX mini with high leverage? But of course that didn’t survive Oct. 13. when this pair made a strong move of 300 pips without retrace.
Can somebody please help with the math? How many pips upward move could a $500 IBFX mini account survive without UDS/JPY pair retracing?
Thanks
November 25th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
gonna spend the week learning forex….i dropped the lot to .02 we will see what happens..especially with black friday coming up…
November 25th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Leo, No I am not saying that. Funnel recommends a minimum of 2500k to use the system. I blew my account down to 1100k within 3 days because I didn’t understand mm (I was being greedy & didn’t even know it) So I had to start over with 1100k trading 0.04 lot size in a mini until I grew my account back to 1250k, at which point I changed the lot size to 0.05 and so on & so forth until my account reached 2500k again. It was fairly miserable to have to work with such small profits, but I managed to build my account back up to the 2500k in just over 2 weeks. Theoretically you could trade $250 with 0.01 ($100) lot size in a mini and maintain the 2.5 ratio. It is almost impossible to tell you how strong an uptrend you could survive. as I have seen the Funnel react differently to different uptrending situations.
November 25th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
in my experience…Forex Funnel does not do well with uptrends at all..my first week with a smal 3000 deposit i had a 2800 profit in 5 days, then on monday with monday’s rally in the us economy because it is the week of thanksgiving thus black friday is upon us, and with citi’s bailout being issued, i lost 2700 in a matter of hours..
i love this system because it does very well but like anything it is a high risk…also read this person’s forum review abut Forex Funnel
http://forum.fxopen.com/showthread.php?t=38188
November 26th, 2008 at 1:56 am
quick update, changed the lot back to .2 and already made back 400 in one hour
November 26th, 2008 at 3:30 am
still making more of my money back….maybe the lot size should be changed or you should turn off the system when there is a huge uptrend or a rally in the market, this will avoid huge losses is what i am guessing..the system works but i think everyone should learn everything there is to forex trading and also stay up to speed with the economy on all fronts…
good site in learning forex (which is what im using now)
http://www.babypips.com/
November 26th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
update profit loss at 1020 after one day already…real fast to get money back…gotta watch the market closely now with the holidays around the corner
November 27th, 2008 at 2:55 am
In my ppinion this system has some potential..it certianly is biased to the short side…I have tested and demo this account on various equity positions becuase it uses a martingale approach I have been successful in using this with a $25,000 with 100:1 leverage and I trade 4 currency pairs at a time on the 1 hour chart…it has returned on this account $6,780 in 6 days. This is a risky system and you do need to monitor it…and I think it requires a large account to trade it successfully not setuup for small equity position by trading other pairs with it I was able to hedge the drawdowns….just an opinion…for this blog.
November 27th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
Does anyone have a broker that has been dependable for live trading with Forex Funnel? I sometimes hear about brokerages that have unreliable order execution or long delays when requesting funds. I’m thinking about going with IBFX.
Ed,
Do you use four currency pairs that form a round trip loop, such as USDJPY, EURJPY, EURAUD, AUDUSD?
If you run Forex Funnel unmonitored 24/5.5, it seems to do well until a large upward trend without a 20 pips retracement comes along, your lot size gets to 25.6 and you can’t double again. This seems to happen at least once every three or four weeks. Does using four currency pairs make the losses manageable when this event occurs or would you still be better off running only under constant supervision and manually trading when you get a lot size that is up to maybe 6.4?
Also, what lot size do you use and are you using a standard or a mini account?
November 28th, 2008 at 11:03 am
has anyone had the opportunity to check out Forex Autopilot Turbo? or also known as FAP Turbo? It is getting higher reviews than the funnel
December 1st, 2008 at 9:13 pm
A couple of things having purchased FF, using it on demo, backtesting, and using it on live.
1) When you sign up for FF, you may get a call from them wanting you to sign up for “prefered customer success” or mentoring. Not to in your face, but be aware.
2) The Martingale or “Double Down” approach does have the potential to wipe your account; I’ve had wipes on backtests generally one per month. This is with the default settings.
3) I’ve still decided to run live, and have been for just a few days, and of course in that time no losses.
The challenge with Martingale, that all traders should be aware of is basically this: if you start with .01 lots, or with .1 lots, it won’t make much difference when you approach a “wipe event”. Why? Because the nature of the double down system like FF is that when you which the danger zone, of Five or More open sell positions then you need a heck of a lot more Equity in order to survive the margin call. FF will NOT wipe your account through stop loss, it will wipe it through opening up too many shorts.
I run my account starting at .04, with 10000 Equity – this is therefore the standard .01 per 2,500.
After having 6 SELL orders openend (the 1.28 sell) I will have a total of 2.53 lots in play, and will be at around 236% Margin. At 7 SELLS (20 pips away), I will be at 101%, at 8 SELLS 44%, and if FF tries to enter me for the 9th SELL, it will be an instant margin call.
What is interesting about this is that if I double my Equity – to 20,000 – I basically get to survive just one more SELL order.
Where I think there is great potential is, as previously posted, to be able to STOP FF from entering the further SELL positions once it approaches around the 5 or 6 SELL orders. That way you might still have enough margin to ride through the long side, and eventually close out the sell.
Feel free to post questions.
December 3rd, 2008 at 2:14 am
I have been trading the forexfunnel with a 25K demo using 4 currency pairs GBD/USD, USD/EUR, USD/CAD, USD/JPY on the 1 hour charts since November 20th account equity is now $38,644.45 it seems to work but caution the system is biased to shorts…and uses a martingale approach….I think you need a large account to trade this way…
December 4th, 2008 at 6:39 am
Everyone TAKE NOTE: REDFOX is right!!!!!!!!! I just got a call from a company called stellarforexconsulting or http://www.stellarforexconsulting.com advertised as consulting for Forex Funnel wanting to sell mentoring this is a scam big time….if you have questions contact the Utah Attorney Generals office.801-530-6601 don’t let them take your money!!
December 9th, 2008 at 9:06 am
ok Ed ty for that bit of info …is it possible we can get back to the discussion on the funnel and the results ..I rather enjoy readin and learning about it .
December 19th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
I haven’t ever tried the Funnel, but after reading all these reviews, a suggestion is to study a chart and only turn the funnel on when your technical indicators indicate a downtrend is commencing. Then keep it running until your technical indicators show an uptrend is commencing at which time you shut it off and let the system close out any open positions (or close them yourself). Of course this would require more vigilance on your part.
Another idea that I had was to try the system on the EUR/CHF (Euro/Swiss Franc) pair. Since they are much more correlated than other pairs, there will be less extreme movement and thus less risk.
(I used to trade the Swiss/D-Mark futures currency spread and did very well with it).
Perhaps BOTH of the above ideas could be combined!
Thoughts?
January 15th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Would love to hear back from Lisa or whoever else has gone live with the funnel about their results to date
January 22nd, 2009 at 4:20 pm
EUR/CHF is a bad idea. Today, 01/21/09, it made 340 pip move upside without enough retracement for the funnel to win during the run. This would have killed the account running FF.I would say the maximum run to the upside that the Funnel can handle is about 170 pips, where FF will open 8 trades. If the retracement does not happen during this 170 pips, the account should have enough margin to withstand the drawdown upto however high it will go (if the trader stopped the FF EA, so that it does not open more than 8 trades), and hopefully it will come back down into profit (which does happen, but there is no assurance), or it will take a huge chunk of the account if it runs away to the upside and you would have to stop out. This is the risk of FF. Trader would have to have enough insight to avoid such a massive bull run, or play ultraconservative size with high margin, in which case the return is small.
January 23rd, 2009 at 3:12 am
Hi, TBO,
Thanks for your input. I also believe that FF is too risky sometime especially in current situation. There is another EA now is more popular than FF: FAPTurbo.
Is there anybody have any comments on FAPTurbo?
January 23rd, 2009 at 6:31 am
Brodie: I have doubled my account using half the recommended lot size for Forex Funnel. This only works because of the current deflationary environment and the bearish trend on the usd/jpy. Having said that, the martingale aspects of this system makes it risky as all hell to trade as one spike against you and you can loose everything in your account. This is why I would never trade this system with anything more than play money (e.g. microlots). I am tempted to turn it off, but I figure I have spare capacity on my VPS, so I am letting it run to see how far it will get.
TBO: EUR/CHF is not such a great pair to trade on this system. Pick something with a nice steady bearish trend with few retracements.
John: The review of FAPTurbo is over here: http://www.macrotactics.com/2008/12/29/fap-turbo-review/
Lisa: Where art thou? – we would love to hear how you have gotten on with Forex Funnel
February 2nd, 2009 at 9:20 am
I am planning to go live with $ 2500 account trading 0.01 of the standard lot.I will have leverage 400:1.Have any one traded LIVE account with settings like this and if yes did it blow up ?
Thanks
March 5th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
How about Forex Funnel in a 250$ account, leverage 100:1, and 0,001 lots (0,1 microlots in FxOpen micro account – one 1/10 of a minilot) ?
March 5th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
greg: if demo accounts are blowing up, then live accounts are just as likely, if not more likely to blowup. This is because stops are not always guaranteed in live accounts.
If you must trade FF with live money, then use a smaller account with microlots.
April 24th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Hiya.
Consider the new NFA rules, that goes against hedging, is still possible use forexfunnel?
May 10th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Im using FF for the last couple of months and I did go live 3 weeks ago with IBFX at 1 to 400 micro acount with only $250. I stepped up the start lot size from 0.01 to 0.06 and have done well. By doing this I have start jumped the trading sets by almost 3 moves. I have never had more than 3 trades active with one more pending. Draw down has never been greater than $12 total. Im up to $297 with only $1.67 in drawdown at this time. I also run the Steinzt Bot and it has been hit hard, ut last week started making a turnaround as the market settles down and begins to trend on occasion. Id like to move up my lot size to .12 and see how well it functions. The drawdown seems very light so far. Profits are growing fast.
Garry
May 17th, 2009 at 6:53 am
The new ruling by the NFA rules have more or less knocked out my funnel bot. Its only trading one at a time. and the curve for profits is now flat. They sent me an updated funnel this week and it locked up the metatrader and the account ( didnt work, it crashed the system). Im going to reset it with another broker out of the country that doesnt have to go with the NFA ruling. the funnel was kicking butt before it regulated my broker.
Garry
May 27th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
The new updated Forex Funnel just needed the most recent metatrader 4 update. Its all working well now, back into the profits….hurray.
June 24th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Hello Garry,
I did not receive any email regarding the updated ForexFunnel EA.
How did you get it?
Thanks
September 14th, 2009 at 7:19 am
Not one single stuff sold on ClickBank are
“unique” EAs written by experienced
traders. They are all variations of open
source codes once floated around for
free on MetaQuotes programming forum.
And that is a fact. Also, you all can and
have probably surmised, probably most, if
not all EAs on ClickBank are put together
en masse and sold by just 2-3 people.
For they are SPAM promoted by the same
people when they go “live”.
If you want a real EA, I suggest you wait
to get your hands on GoMega EA.
September 15th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
I won’t add any more than what’s already been hashed and rehashed here – 90+ posts worth… but FWIW I’ve kinda figured out FF – and here’s what works for *me*… YMMV
Enable “Sell only” – as it does tend to favor bear markets… which we’re in luckily –
YOU MUST TRADE *more than* 2500:1 at 400:1 or even 500:1 … I actually use double, 5000:1 with 500:1 and my worst DD was 23%
I demo’d this for 3 months – doubled every account (tripled one) and also blew up 2 of the 3 getting greedy -
A “runner” (spike) past 10-12 trades (20 pips x 12 = 240 pip swing with NO [-20] pip retrace) will toast a 2500:1 account.. so yes, it is risky – but if you watch it – and you use proper margin and leverages – it’s a cash machine –
Moving forward – Took FF live June 3rd, 2009 – with $6,000 cash account on a Cyprus broker – Turned OFF “long” (it is “short only”) – and in 110 days now, my current balance is $31,144 – with no DD’s beyond 18% (13% really as I had one bad manual trade that *I* did)
I have current live MT4 trader stats for anyone interested…
As someone else stated – it’s very “black box” and you cannot run it on a NFA account (well, in Sell only mode you can) – and you need a 6 digit update if you want to run it on FXPro or the likes…
Great bot (EA) makes me $300-$700 a day… just MANAGE YOUR MONEY AND LEVERAGE AND MARGINS…. or you WILL blow up…
September 28th, 2009 at 2:27 am
Sounds good Falcon , I would be interested in learning more or looking at stats as you mentioned and also what currency pair you were trading on ?
Thanx again heres my email addy pipmining@yahoo.com