Are retail traders doomed?

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After having been at Forex for awhile now, both coding and trading, I'm beginning to suspect that retail traders have almost no chance of being profitable consistently. Even when you find an EA that has perfect backtest results you find something like it utilizes no stoploss. Even a pure martingale EA will be 100% profitable if you are able to endure any/all drawdowns. Sooner or later the market always comes back, right? Combine that with small TPs and you have a perfect backtest with 100% winning trades. But who is willing to dedicate a huge equity position with a broker to cover all the deep drawdowns waiting for the small TPs?
 

Slowly, gradually with low risk. I am no "expert", there are enough of those already, but you need about 100k starting equity to earn a living. Otherwise just leave the thing switched on and go to work. Be content with a small profit and be patient. I reckon this thread will get pulled up for being off topic.

 

find a good system,test it,retest it, again retest it and if you are somewhat satisfied,try on demo for a long period of time..and if you are satisfied about its performance,invest with the smallest amount using the system for a considerable period of time and if you are not satisfied go back to square one and find another good system and go to the same process..you may find it after so many tries.

 

Hi Dabbon,

As a trader, I can tell you my formula. I trade daily and weekly charts where sudden noise is almost non-existant and spread+commissions are reduced to a minimum. I even take monthly charts trades! This also gives me a nice return on my time. I mix my trading style with fundamental speculation using soft leverage. Hope this helps.

 

DAbbon, algo traders have a lot more chance of success than their discretionary counter-parts IMO.

For me, a suite of bots trading on different strategies on different instruments is the goal. Their testing needs to be accurate, their robustness checked and rechecked, curve-fitting avoided and all bots need to be iteratively developed and monitored closely in live (incl. ensuring live reflects back-testing). Then requisite funds need to be put down and left to run using a defined, risk-controlled stake on a broker that is as reliable and cost-efficient as possible. Ideally the strategies would be offered out as a subscription service as well.

I doubt any one person has the ability to do all of these things in full and come out of the other side with a large amount of money. This is why I work as part of a team.

This forum is for MQL coding chat however and as such, the best advice is to keep coding your strategy ideas using the help you can get here and then test them properly to see if any hold water, then get them out as a signal.

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