Expert Advisors – Interview with Petko Alekandrov by Mubarak Shah
Expert advisors trading is the key point on the financial markets nowadays. Mubarak takes an interview from Petko to reveal the sicrets.
Mubarak: Hey Petko, welcome to the InvestHQ podcast. Thanks for joining us today.
Petko: Hello, nice meeting and how are you?
Mubarak: Good, good I’m doing great. What time is it over there where you’re.
Petko: Right here it is 5:00 p.m. local Bulgarian time.
Mubarak: God it, god it Bulgaria well. It’s 11 a.m. here in New York. So, definitely appreciate you taking the time to join us right before the weekend hits for you.
Petko: It’s a pleasure.
Mubarak: Awesome, awesome yeah. So, I love kind of what I’ve seen from your website and your background and just for our listeners that don’t know about you why don’t you take this opportunity to just introduce yourself and give us some background and kind of how you got into the industry.
Petko: Well, I`ve started many years ago going into Forex and started trading. I’ve worked for a couple of brokers, some banks and institutions. I always wanted to trade even when I was small, but I didn’t have a great opportunity to study in Bulgaria, so I went to London. I graduated there and I was actually invited there to stay in the Academy as a mentor. But I wanted to do it by myself in Bulgaria. Because during this time there was no any place in Bulgaria, in my own country to study Forex trading anything about it. And I actually started the first academy in Bulgaria. And now I’m having students from all over the worlds which makes me very happy.
Mubarak: Well that’s awesome, that’s awesome! So, this Trading Academy that you attended in London is it still around?
Petko: Yeah, it is still around, I had a very good basic skills there. What I was missing there was the algorithmic trading and this was my passion actually. So, I developed myself a lot I can say in algorithmic trading and now I’m teaching algorithmic trading. I do believe this is one of the ways nowadays people can make stable profits.
Mubarak: Wow OK, interesting! So, could you explain to us what exactly algorithmic trading is? And how it’s different from you know normal stock trading or Forex trading?
Petko: Sure, algorithmic actually is nothing really hard. People in the beginning think they need to have some background before that on trading, but in trading, but actually everybody can do it from the beginning.
Long story short algorithmic trading is when we trade certain strategy without any interfere from us.
We place the so called expert advisors or as the people know-robots and they trade for them. There are many different expert advisors nowadays. People buy expert advisors and they lose, they win, it’s really a huge world with expert advisors.
The thing is, the most important thing actually is the people to get use making their own expert advisors. And first there is no need to have any programming skills, because nowadays there are many strategy builders.
So, people can just put entry and exit conditions, stop-loss, take profit, the basic rules they have on their strategy and they can automate this strategy int an expert advisor using this strategy builders, this robot builders an they don’t need to hire programmers developers and so on they can do it by themselves.
Mubarak: Wow OK, so it’s for people who say they don’t have any experience to the algorithmic trading. But they know a little bit about trading stocks. How would you recommend they get started and what do you feel? So, you brought up the advantages of, you know, kind of that expert robot or expert advisor, what do you think gives them those strengths over normal people?
Petko: Well, the advantages is that we can trade with exper advisors first of all all day long 24 hours, 5 days a week, for example if we talk about the Forex. Something we cannot do manually and if we have a success rate with manual trading, let’s say any, any success rate, doesn’t matter. If we trade it 7 hours per day 8 hours and with algorithmic trading we can trade 24 hours. Because we don’t need to stay in front of the computer normally the human gets tired you know, needs to sleep. But the expert advisors doesn`t need to do that. So it is very useful when you have a strategy that it can run all the time on your computer.
How the people should start it? There are many courses. I have nearly 11 courses for algorithmic trading already launched. So, I show it there from the very basics the most advanced things. We use for example, in EA Forex Academy two strategy builders, EA studio and FSB Pro, these are very professional softwares:
We are actually always looking for the best expert advisors, studios or strategy builders, because we want to use the best softwares.
So, with these softwares people can just automate their strategies. And as well they have this, let’s called it smart intellect inside, and they can generate strategies for the people as well.
Mubarak: Wow, OK! So, if I use one of these softwares there’s no way I can lose money. Or is it still built into normal like I put in my strategy somehow and they’ll trade on the half of me pretty much of what I would have done if I was there. How does it work if you could give some more insight to that?
Petko: Yeah, actually if you have a strategy that you’re using on manual trading you can automate your strategy with these expert advisors. And you can automate it as an expert advisor and it will trade for you on your behalf when you’re not in front the computer. The great thing is that you can see actually if your strategies losing or winning. Because common problem is that people find let’s say in YouTube or anywhere any strategy, they start trading for month or two, they have losses, they have profits. But they’re not sure if the strategy is making profit, because they don’t see it in the past.
What was the result from this strategy? And when we do algorithmic trading when we built the expert advisors we see a very precise statistic. For example, for the last five years, how this strategy performed, what profits it did, what are the risk involved. And this is something much more than what we have in manual trading.
Mubarak: Definitely yeah, that sounds like a great advantage to have. So, would you recommend everybody who wants to start investing in the stock market? Or in Forex to go into algorithmic trading, or is there only a certain sub sector of people that should do that?
Petko: Well, I can say in the last ten to… probably last five years the algorithmic trading changed a lot the market itself. Because huge institutions and banks are already using robots and expert advisors. That’s why the markets are much more volatile every day. We saw what happened with the cryptocurrencies for example these moves were well this was just something unbelievable that happened especially with the Bitcoin. But I’m not going into there.
Even from the very beginning when I started it I did algorithmic trading with the Bitcoin. And I do believe that I did much better than the people that just bought on exchanges. Because you know some people bought it already late when it was very expensive and lost a lot of money. So, algorithmic brings you the the chance to trade any assets no matter is it expensive or is it cheap. Because it is it’s taking profits quickly. It trades much more often and it brings you more stable results.
Mubarak: Got it, got it, that makes sense. And so, you trade exclusively Forex now, or what do you find out the advantages of Forex over other types of investments that people can do?
Petko: Forex is one of the easiest way actually to trade. And there are many brokers that provide you on your phone application. Of course I don’t recommend trading from the phone even a lot of people are doing it. But even many people are doing it, and Forex is easy because there is a huge variety of currency pairs to trade. The spreads are very small, very tight most of the brokers already don’t have commissions. So, it’s very easy for people to fund their account and start the trading.
One point here many scam brokers recently around the world, many people get scammed every day. And actually we placed a nice topic in our forum in
EA Forest Academy where we describe exactly how the scam brokers are working. No matter are they for Forex, Stocks or anything.
And we have protected actually many students and many students as well shared with us their bad experience with the brokers so one note to everybody: Be very careful when you choose your broker to be a regulated one.
Mubarak: Got it,got it, yeah, that definitely makes sense. And I know you know I’m gonna link to the podcast notes and in the show notes to your Academy so people can check out he courses. Before our listeners, right? Who might not have gotten into Forex yet or have ran into that same problem with the brokers. Do you have any recommended brokers that people should use? Is there any global ones that are used or is it based upon the country you’re in? How should people start their search for the right broker?
Petko: Yeah, well we are not connected to any broker. We receive daily e-mails from our students how to choose the broker. And we always respond to one and the same thing that is a personal choice which broker they want to use. We explained them how to avoid the scam brokers, and of course we recommend the some names that are regulated well. And we have tried these brokers I mean there are many brokers. If I have to mention some names these are the JFD, Pepperstone, FXCM.Ava trade. Basically all brokers that have the FCA regulation.
For example, in Europe is one of the biggest regulations. And if they see it into their website then this means this is a regulated broker. And I mean there are hundreds of brokers depends where you are. If you’re in the States it’s one regulation, in Europe, Asia, Australia is different. So, just spend a little bit more time on looking for the broker because this is essentially important. It does not matter you are trading manually or algorithmically after that.
Mubarak: Got it, I see. From all the students that you’ve taught in the past and currently, you know? What is the number one reason people fail or people lose money or people get burned by the forex market, besides the scam brokers what else do you think it is that would lead people to fail or you know what can they do to make sure they succeed?
Petko: Unfortunately the statistics here are very bad. When I worked for a few brokers as I mentioned in the beginning we had bad statistic that more than 90-95 % of the people are losing when they start initially. I mean most of the people in the beginning, in the first month they lose all their money into the account. One, only reason there is they lack of education. People start trading without any idea what they are doing, they don’t realize they need education until the moment they lose money actually.
And once again education, as with everything else, education is very important. We started actually the Academy by providing online sessions in the morning, in the lunch, evening time, talking with the traders but that was not enough. So, what we did recently is we launched our courses online. And people can actually enroll and they can watch the course at any moment anywhere they are. Even they’re going to the work by the train or anything, they can watch the course.
And we update the course so we stay with the latest updates around the expert advisors, around the strategy builders or if we find something more profitable we update the course. And we give full supports as well to the students if they have any questions about the market, about the broker. So, unfortunately once again I say, people start learning once they lose money.
Mubarak: I see, I see that makes sense, yeah! I’ve seen that too in the stock market and penny stocks that people always just think that they can just do it with luck. And then they lose a little bit of money. But they’re still interested and then they’ll try sort of focus on getting smarter. So that definitely makes sense.
Petko: Yeah,absolutely!
Mubarak: How much money do people need to get started with Forex? Is there a minimum or what would you recommend?
Petko: That’s another question I always avoid to answer because I don’t want anybody to take it as a recommendation. It’s totally personal choice I mean 100 dollars for some people or nothing. For some people are their monthly leaving. The most important thing here I can say is not how much they need to start with but what percentage of the account they should trade. Let’s give an example of $1,000 and again nobody to take it as a recommendation but in $1,000 people should not risk more than 5% normally I say to my traders no more than 2%.
So, in a single trade they open on a thousand dollars in account they should not lose more than twenty to fifty dollars. OK. So, the money management is the key point here it’s not about the account some people are trading with millions huge investors. And they can afford to trade big money, and to open huge positions but the common mistake here and this probably answers one of your previous questions about why the people lose, is because they open small accounts and they want with these small accounts to make big profits. Which unfortunately is not possible or yeah maybe few people did it with a Bitcoin. But I don’t really believe these stories.
Mubarak: Yeah, yeah. definitely, yeah these are, usually those are just out of the blue luck but those are never the rule they’re always the exception. So, that makes sense. So can people say, I’m working full-time, right? And I want to start investing, can I start learning Forex? Is it something I can do while working a full-time job? Because the markets are open 24/7, right?
Petko: Yeah especially.. actually the Forex market is from Monday till Friday evening. And there is a little bit trading on Sunday evening but it’s with some of the paid platforms and few brokers provide it, and so what you, everybody actually can study it. And if someone is working full-time I’ll then strongly recommend looking into algorithmic trading. Because the expert advisors can trade on your behalf while you’re working. This is the huge advantage because anyway if you’re taking manual trades and you’re on work you can miss many things on the market, if you’re not watching over the market.
Actually what we put the pressure on and what we focus on, is that we don’t treat the only one robot only one expert advisor in one account.
We put many expert advisors. So for example, in a few of my courses I show how I place 99 robots trading in one of the same account. This way we diversify the risk, if any of the strategies are losing the others will be profiting at this moment. And this is how we have stable results and of course I provide my students with these expert advisors. And it’s very important as well to trade with expert advisors that are according to the latest market conditions and are fit to the market.
So, I update the courses every month with new 99 expert advisors and the traders just place them, for example in virtual account. And they choose every month their best expert advisor, their best strategy, and place it on a separate live account. So, this way we always trade strategies that are currently making profits and they don’t get old this way.
Mubarak: Wow, okay yeah, I see how that works.
Petko: Because it’s a common mistake and I hear it most of the time. People buy expert advisor, they buy robots, and they say I bought this robot it did some profit after that it stopped working. Actually the robot didn’t stop working because it’s a pure code. What happened is the market changed, and just people need always to have fresh expert advisor, fresh strategies that are working on the current market conditions.
Mubarak: Got it, got it,that makes sense! And so are these algorithmic trading software as they run on is it all pretty much just technical indicators? So it’s a strategy based on different technical analysis that you put in?
Petko: Yeah these are indicators, there could be some price action involved in strategy, it could be anything. I mean the traders predefine their rules, how they wants to trade, what they want to use. They see the backtest, they see how this strategy performed during the last months or years. And they decide if you want to use it or not. Of course it’s never guaranteed that if a strategy makes profit the last five years it will continue making profit as well. But obviously if a strategy made profits for five years and if another strategy made profit for one month the one from the five years will be more reliable on.
Mubarak: Yeah, yeah. Where would I go if I wanted to buy one of these get start with the algorithmic software, where would I go?
Petko: Well, there is a huge market for software’s and expert advisors. The question is that a lot of people are just selling the expert advisors. And they purely, they do it’s actually just as sales men. They just sell it, and after that they leave you with the expert advisor. Again I say probably it will make some profit for some time after that it will loose. So, that’s what we do…. this is what we don’t do it Academy.
We don’t sell expert advisors. What we sell is actually education and this is our main activity here. Just now in some of our courses we include expert advisors. But after that we maintain these expert advisors, we send to the students new expert advisors. Let’s say refreshed the expert advisors according to the latest market conditions. So, they can continue trading. Anyway if you just buy one expert advisor from the market first of all you will give a lot of money for that. And second there is no any guarantee that someone will take care for this expert advisor in the future.
Mubarak: I see, I see. Awesome, well I appreciate you know everything you’ve talked about so far it’s been super informative. One of the things I’d like to ask as we reach the end of the show is, if you could send a message to yourself ten years ago what would it say?
Petko: Wow, that’s very interesting well, well, I would probably say that if I look from my pure trading side. I would say that I will send to myself that the Bitcoin in 2017 end will reach nearly twenty thousand dollars. And I would have warned the world, you know? Now if I’m serious I I’ll just, I’ll just say that… actually I’m very happy what I’m doing recently. Because for the last six months I have more than 10,000 students which makes me very happy!
Mubarak: Yeah that’s awesome!
Petko: It gives me the energy to continue so probably I would just say keep doing what you were doing, and the people will like it, and you will be happy…yeah.
Mubarak: That’s awesome! I love, I love to hear that. So yeah, where can our listeners find you, where can people find you? If they want to learn more?
Petko: Well our website is EAForexAcademy.com. EA comes from expert advisor EAForexacademy.com. Our email is info@eaforexacademy.com. They can write any questions, we have phone number as well there,or they can just call and ask to talk with me. I will always find time to talk with everybody, it’s a pleasure speaking. And I like when people are connecting us. I really like when people are connecting us to study because this is the huge difference from us and most brokers and institutions that are just selling their platforms. And they push the traders to open real accounts and to invest some money.
What we do is pure education here we want our traders to get ready for the trading. And of course if some of the students perform well we are always pleased to invite them to stay with us in the Academy, to trade with us, to be part of our Academy.
Mubarak: Awesome, awesome that sounds fantastic!. And I’ll include all those links in the show notes. But Petko thank you again so much for your time definitely would love to do this again in the future sometime.
Petko: Thank you Mubarak, it was pleasure speaking
to you.
Mubarak: Absolutely take care.
Petko: Cheers