Forex Robot Wars: BREAD vs ARTFAB

Two titans of the forex robot trading industry are squaring off in the search for higher profits.

In the green corner we have BREAD (Basic Robot Earning All Day) with consistent earnings of approximately 1.2% per day. In the other green corner we have the relatively new ARTFAB (A Rising Tide Floats All Boats) with very promising early results. Already today ARTFAB has locked in over 3.0% returns.

Wait, before you change the channel, neither of these robots is for sale and I do not want to manage your money. Relax, it's safe here.

In a macro sense BREAD and ARTFAB work using very different concepts. BREAD attempts to time the market and move money in and out during cyclical movements. This allows a small amount of risk to be taken, hopefully profited from, and then put back to work during another apparent down cycle.

ARTFAB, on the other hand, doesn't care about cycles when opening positions. It accumulates small positions and releases them when larger price moves have made them significantly profitable. However, cycles are examined with respect to determining when it may be a good time to close a position.

Both of these strategies appear to be working reasonably well. I'm hoping that ARTFAB will prove to consistently earn more than BREAD, such that I am enticed to move capital from one robot sub-account to the other. However, I have to keep in mind that BREAD functions best during a consolidation while ARTFAB's best earnings occur during a market move.

Of course, as I trade the AUDJPY currency pair almost exclusively both of these robots are trading it. As I have mentioned from time to time my trading account is with Oanda (which let's me scale trade sizes down to the unit level) and I'm using the FxSpyder platform to create and run robots. I prefer Oanda's platform for discretionary trading.

New Robot Rules Fermenting

It's late Friday night, the markets are closed, and all through the house not a creature is stirring. Well, nobody but the scheming trader hatching up another robotic system.

As someone who designs software systems for a living I can assure you that, in terms of making improvements, nothing is more helpful than watching a system in action. The key point here is the concept of "seeing" the results. While this arena is a bit of a different animal I've always been proud to claim that if I could see the problem I could fix it. You see, no matter how complex the problem there is usually something along the lines of a paradigm shift which greatly changes the nature of available solutions.

So, at the end of the week, when I'm not at work, I can review charts, apply various indicators, and see how various changes might affect trading and earnings. During the week I can see or hear positions open and close and watch the daily results tally up. Simple but powerful stuff.

Anyway, the thing that is keeping me awake at night, in a good way, is a relatively easy way to increase the profit per trade. I believe so anyway. Hopefully we'll find out next week... as I'll be developing this new ARTFAB robot pronto.

I do already have a robot trading at an average return of 1.2% per day over the last five weeks (BREAD - basic robot earning all day) but I've set an aggressive stretch goal of averaging 2.5% per day. BREAD just isn't going to get there. Assuming that other people have done much better than my paltry goal really gets the creativity flowing -- as you simply know it's possible if others have done it. There must be a way to get there while strictly controlling risk levels.

I'm sure there are many ways. I intend to find one of them.

Wednesday Status

Wednesday was a slow day.

The AUDJPY was very quiet, which left little opportunity for my robot to extract revenue. In fact, with the DOW drop at the end of the trading day today we may be looking at a bit of a downward correction over the next little while.

My robot is not very active during downward movements. So, I'll get bored, worry about long term profitability, and otherwise be motivated to "do something" or "fix something" when I shouldn't. I must resist!

Anyway, while today was very slow, my currency trading robot did pull in 1.1% with over 4.3% for the week.

On a different note, I need to name my trading system. It would be nice to call it something other than "robot" every day. I could name it ARTFAB (A Rising Tide Floats All Boats) or something? Hmm, maybe FARTBAD or BADSINE?

Hey, BREAD might work... Basic Robot Earning All Day. Okay, tentatively, BREAD v1.0 is on the job. Unfortunately, bread is pretty passive, getting sliced, diced and toasted regularly. Zzzzz. I'll sleep on it.