Forex Combo System v6.1 Review

3rd Party Verified Live Trading Performance

The most pleasing impression that I had on visiting this website is that it doesn't rely on ordinary marketing page design of so long pages straining the hands of scrolling down the mouse till the end of the page through fake testimonials marketing crap.

Metaquotes History Center Data Backtests

The spread was set to 1.5 for EURUSD and 2.0 for GBPUSD and the GMT offset was 2 with DST enabled for all the history center data testing. As most of you know, some data during 2011 - about 3 months - is missing from the Metaquotes history center, so this will be missed from the backtests too.

Euro vs US Dollar (EURUSD) history center data backtests

The maximum drawdown is better kept below 20%, it's here a little higher but the risk of 2 fits enough. While the previous backtest results look great, running a fixed lot backtest could lead to a more comprehensible representation of the balance curve progression through the 12 year backtest.

This seems more pronounced than the previous balance chart and this is enough encouragement to upgrade the EURUSD EA to 3.0 which has a lower drawdown and better returns than the first version 1.42 given the backtests of both versions.

Here is separate tests, one for each strategy to compare them in detail:

In fact, it can perform the work when it is alone. Certainly is not a miracle strategy, but it is profitable and integrates with others excellently.

Great Britain Pound vs US Dollar (GBPUSD) history center data backtests

In fact, in spite of this backtest looking a bit better than that with the previous version of the EA, it's really not. The drawdown is more worse, is 32% and the end profit also decreased.

Here is a fixed lot backtest for GBPUSD too:

The highest drawdown looks to be found in the beginning of the test, so you needn't concern about the figure mentioned above - the market had great changes since 1999 - 2000 - but a drawdown over 30% can't be simply ignored especially with the cautious risk settings were applied.

Here is also separate tests, one for each strategy for GBPUSD history center data:

Dukascopy tick data backtests

For the tick data backtests, the real (variable) spread and a commission of 0 were used.

Euro vs US Dollar (EURUSD) Dukascopy tick data backtests

Here is a backtest for the whole four strategies:

Despite the relative drawdown of the whole four strategies being a little worse, the profits are much higher due to compounding. It seems that the EuroRange is not just a welcome addition to the EURUSD EA.

Although it's expected that this one would look just like the history center data backtest, it doesn't. If you'd check the trades most of them would match but - for some reason - there would be missing trades in both.

Great Britain Pound vs US Dollar (GBPUSD) Dukascopy tick data backtests

As noted Forex Combo System performed better by running all its 4 strategies on GBPUSD, the same as on EURUSD, but not as high as it, it was just slightly better.

Like EuroRange strategy EURUSD backtests, this doesn't really look much like coordinate in the history center data. Here you'd also find missing trades in both backtests when compared those with history center data backtests. The overall outcome of this test using tick data isn't preferred, so the more prominent review factor will be the forward testing.

The previous backtests tick data was created with GMT +2 and DST was set to be automatically calculated by Tick Data Suite, the backtests below are using GMT 0 and no DST calculation.

The outcome appears to be less profitable than running the same with GMT +2. Peculiarly, as shown below, the 2 backtests not depending on the GMT offset were not really worse, but most likely a synergy effect was applied to the ones depending on the GMT offset above and boosted the profitability.

As it turns out, the notice regarding the different GMT offset no longer stands. This is not considered much worse than the one with GMT +2 and DST calculation.

As EuroRange is another strategy relying on the GMT offset, here is a backtested for it with GMT 0 and DST calculation to distinguish the effect.

EuroRange didn't show a better or worse performance than in the backtest with GMT +2 and DST calculation. Its GBPUSD implementation wasn't a good idea, to begin with, and it remains at the same level.

Trading Strategy

Forex Combo System integrates four entirely separated strategies:

• A scalper strategy that seeks to snatch small market movements. It sets to take profit at 21 pips, but it decidedly early closes the positions if the market doesn't go with it, and this may result in less than 21 pips profit or even a small loss. Its stop loss is at 300 pips which may appear huge, but it rarely gets hit – the EA usually closes the positions a long distance before getting there.
• A breakout strategy based on the "average true range" or ATR indicator. In short, if a price surpasses some given limits a breakout takes place; in many situations, these breakouts continue to move in the same direction as the price. The ATR indicator measures the average range that a currency has during a given period, which is then coupled with the current market data, giving a dynamic upper and lower limit. So, the breakout strategy is dynamically adapted to the market conditions and monitors the starting trends, using a trailing stop for its positions and a take profit target of 500 pips, which is reached occasionally, although the trailing SL tends to close most trades. In contrast to the scalper strategy, the initial stop loss of the breakout strategy is very strict that is 30 pips, typically leading to a big win following several losses in a row, that win more than recoups the losses.
• A reversal strategy in which a market channel is determined and the price is expected to reverse and start a new trend once it reaches the channel limits. The stop loss of this strategy is 70 pips and the take profit target is 160 pips, but all the positions going into profit are sporting a trailing stop. This may generate some losses as could be expected, but it also generates some wins, gaining a well positive result after all is completed. You should note that this strategy only operates between 22 and 01 GMT (aka only opens trades).
• EuroRange Strategy which is a very simple system, during the European session it tries to capture the - rather large - price movements by identifying an existing trend and opening a position - long or short - at 7 AM GMT, with a relatively tight stop loss of about 50 pips for EURUSD and 60 pips for GBPUSD which gets a trailing stop once it starts profiting.

Every strategy parameter could be modified, but this is not recommended as they perfectly perform well as they are set.

Parameters

The EA settings are extremely versatile and may confuse a new user. However, it's perfectly good to leave the defaults as they are, modification of the money management parameters is the only required setting modification.

The manual manages to be brief and on target. The installation instructions are explained in a few pages, then the EA parameters are discussed, with a range of suggestions for every numeric parameter. The effects of parameter changing on the operation of the EA are not clarified and if you insist on changing any of them, I suggest backtesting thoroughly.

You should note that the EA supports fixed lots in addition to dynamic money management, using a percent of the account available margin, so you should take into consideration that if you'd run another EA on the same account beside Forex Combo System, the lots traded by the later would have been lower if the other EA has open trades.

If you are a very conservative risk supporter, then you should limit the dynamic money management to 2 for each system.

The money management is clarified quite thoroughly in the manual recommending not to trade it with less than $1000 accounts and to choose your trading volume taking into consideration that 5-6 consecutive losses of 60-70 pips are possible to encounter. This is just how the EA behaves in a way that you should be prepared to receive some losses before gaining the big wins, while in most cases losses caused by one strategy will be compensated by wins of the other strategies.

Practically, you can trade it with less than $1000 accounts by using cent accounts, like those available at LiteForex or FXOpen (micro).