It seems like the marketing buzz words in the past year for money making systems were filled with such  things as “autopilot” and “robots”.  Be it such areas as online marketing, stocks or the foreign exchange. The latest one to be unleashed is the FapTurbo system released in early November of 2008. If you haven’t seen the marketing video, check it out below and to follow is our review of this product.

Does this “robot” work is the question? Well, we tried to answer that question for the past couple of months and our answer is… Yes. But before you go out and spend your money on this product, we would like to set the stage and make sure you understand what this “robot” is all about.

Among the many investments that we are involved in with this blog, including stocks and yes, Forex as well. Four accounts at four different brokers to be exact. As the editor of this blog, I trade the Forex both manually and with Expert Advisors or EAs as they are known in the Forex lingo. Expert Advisors are nothing more than scripts that are written to automate the trading using the MetaTrader platform used by most Forex Brokers. If a broker doesn’t use MetaTrader, you can not use the Expert Advisors.

Most Expert Advisors are programmed to trade using algorithms based on trading systems that are done manually. For example, if you have a manually traded system that is successful by trading the market trend, you can write an Expert Advisor to check the indicators that you use and do the trading for you automatically if the setup meets your conditions. If you do not know how to program, you can hire a professional to do this for you for a fee.

FapTurbo the robot, is one such expert advisor. While we do not completely know the trading method involved in creating this expert advisor since it is proprietary and the source code locked, we do know that it does work, however, there are some cautions to be aware of.

In the world of automated investing, everyone is searching for the “Holy Grail” system. One that will work in any type of market be it volatile or flat; at any time and making a profit without any losses. Stop searching for this Holy Grail because one does not exist. The idea of any successful trading system or Expert Advisor is to make more winning trades than you make in losses therefore having a net profit.

The proof that no one has ever found or created the “Holy Grail” system of investing in the Forex market is the fact that over 90% of retail Forex traders lose their money. If there was such a system, then everyone would be making money.

FapTurbo is not a “Holy Grail”, but it does make a net profit after losses. Yes, FapTurbo does make losing trades.  There are some things that we do know about this EA after we have purchased two licenses to run on our accounts and visiting their forums. Do not expect to become rich overnight by making huge profits as represented in their live trading performances.   Here’s the live $5000 trading account since October ‘08.

While it is possible to achieve this performance like they have done, it is not without taking on bigger risks. Most professional traders will tell you that you should never risk more than 3% of your balance in a trade. The folks at FapTurbo admits that the results they have achieved has been done with constant tweaking of their risk settings. One can set the risks at 30% or more and if you are lucky, you will achieve the same performance. If you are unlucky, your account will be wiped out in 3 to 5 losing trades. FapTurbo is shipped with a default risk of 5%, and even that is a bit too high for our taste.

Other things you should know about the FapTurbo EA. It is shipped with two strategies, a short term and a long term. The short term only trades with the EURGBP, GBPCHF, EURCHF and USDCAD four days a week from around 9pm GMT to 2am GMT. The long term trades the EURUSD 24/5. At this time, the long term EURUSD trade has been disabled because of performance issues. The USDCAD trades has also been recommended not to be traded because of market volatility and poor performance.

This is a testament that FapTurbo is not a perfect system, but one that is affected by market conditions and that the developers and traders at FapTurbo will have to constantly make changes and tweaks to the system. This is one of the reasons there has been new releases of the Expert Advisors since it’s initial launch of version 16 to the current version 36. Market conditions and broker terms will always have an effect on any system. FapTurbo is no exception.

One thing that you should be aware of is that this is a software script that runs on a computer connected to your broker. This means, for it to work properly your computer and the trading platform must be on and connected to your broker during trading times. Twenty four seven if you are trading the long term strategy. It is a risky proposition if your computer is prone to problems, have an unreliable internet connection or have power issues in your neighborhood. It is possible that you can lose a lot of money if an open trade goes against you and any of the situations mentioned happens where you lose connection and the position can not be closed out.

We recommend using a VPS (Virtual Private Server) if you are going to be serious about trading the Forex with FapTurbo or any other expert advisor. The trading platform is hosted remotely on a virtual server that is monitored for uptime and all the necessary redundancy like fast internet connections, backups and UPS for power outage. Disaster can still happen, but at least you are a bit more secure than running at home. FapTurbo does provide recommendations for Forex specific VPS on their site. If you look for your own VPS provider, make sure it is one that specializes in online trading, otherwise, you will get a provider that does not understand that they can not just reboot your system at any time to install patches or perform maintenance while you have trades open.

Another valid concern that we have is the massive number of customers that are using FapTurbo and its effect on Forex brokers.  Forex brokers and dealer desks are in the business of making money. It is true that the Forex market is huge, to the tune of 3 Trillion dollars a day. However, most of these trades are interbank, meaning trades between the big banks and investment firms. It is estimated that only around 20 to 30 Billion is being traded by small retail investors like you and I.  A broker acts as the middleman and takes all the trades of the retail traders and combines them to make a single aggregate trade with the bigger players. The bottom line is that there are a number of Forex brokers that are now banning and dis-allowing the use of FapTurbo. This may be case of a product being a victim of its own success.

This growth in FapTurbo is causing major support issues. Imagine being swamped with thousands of new users, ones with no experience with investing on the Forex and add in technical issues with software setup, licensing and activations. The complaints from customers have risen lately because of lack of support. It leaves us wondersing if FapTurbo is more concerned with increasing sales or helping their customers make money.

We do not know how long this Expert Advisor will work or if it will eventually be banned by all Forex brokers.  (A solution to this problem would be if FapTurbo itself becomes a Forex broker. )

If you still want to try it out, we suggest you start trading using a demo account and get a feel for it, then decide the risk amount you are comfortable with when you go live.  If nothing else, start small and learn about Expert Advisors and branch out to the hundreds of other available EAs out there. Some are free, some are scams and then some costs in the thousands. FapTurbo is priced reasonable for its performance to get your feet wet in the world of Forex trading. Visit FapTurbo.com for more details.

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