Sooner or later, a trader gets tired of trying to achieve an acceptable result with free expert advisors. In this situation, some people do not complicate their life with agony of choice and simply choose the most expensive expert advisor from those that are on sale. But whether such an approach is justified?

Some people are convinced that the price is the main measure of the quality of the goods, that is, if the cost of the EA is estimated in thousands of dollars, the income is guaranteed. In fact, any goods are worth as much as a person is willing to pay for it. There are cases when the widely advertised expensive expert advisors either traded so-so, or siphoned a deposit.

Therefore, a high price and calls to immediately buy an EA and get rich, as well as other publicity stunts should deter rather than attract a reasonable trader. You should evaluate advisors by their merits in real trading on the first place.

An example of expensive expert advisor: Double Trader

This product in maximum configuration without the discount is priced at about $1,100-1,200. For this money, the trader will get an EA and set of settings to trade on several currency pairs. In the meantime, the basic version is much cheaper – about $300, and you will have to pay extra for the opportunity to trade on a larger number of currency pairs.

In the description, the authors somewhat exaggerate, saying that about 90% of successful accounts in all DC owe their profitability to automated trading. The high price of their creation is due to stable and efficient trading.

At that, the developer does not provide the results of monitoring of the real account, only limited testing for 2013. The quality of the simulation raises some concerns (instead of 90%, standard for MT4 tester, it’s just 33.72%). The initial deposit grew from $1,000 to $5,272.17 in 2 months.

EA TFOT: two faces of trend

The price of this advisor can’t be called democratic. An author priced their creation at $1,121. Among the features of the trading algorithm, it is noted that the analysis is carried out simultaneously by two different methods. Hence the name: TFOT stands for “two faces of trend”. Also bundled is an indicator designed specifically for this bot. Such expensive expert advisors like this should provide an excellent result.

Another distinctive feature of the robot is a working timeframe. It is suitable for any time interval within m1 – h1 range, but it still uses data from all timeframes. That is, if trading is conducted on m15, the expert advisor is attached to this chart, while it will process data from m1, m5, m30 and h1.

Monitoring was conducted in the period from the fall of 2010, and the last activity was recorded March 28, 2013. Over this period, the initial deposit has increased by almost 4 times. The growth chart is quite stable, but profitability could have been much higher for the price. After the EA stopped consistently making profit, it appeared in the public domain, but failed to revive.

EA Easy Walker: a night scalper

Compared with the previous robot, this can hardly be an EA from the expensive expert advisors group. But at a cost of almost three times less ($349), its efficiency is approximately at the same level or even higher.

As for trading algorithm, the author provides minimum of information. What is known is that trading is conducted exclusively at night (i.e. during the Asian session). Optimum results can be achieved only on EUR/USD, EUR/GBP and GBP/USD currency pairs.

A small drawdown can be an advantage, as well as the fact that the EA is trying to maximize profits in all ways. That is, as a rule, closing of the position is triggered not by TP, but rather by SL dragged into the profitable area. Trading statistics are also quite good, almost every month is closed with a profit.

As for monitoring, it is not so smooth as we would like. The main part of the profit was obtained during the period from February to July 2014, and trading is conducted with zero efficiency ever since.

10 Points expert advisor: an exception to the rule

It can be considered an exception to the rule due to the fact that it combines low price and stable profits. In the meantime, you can’t refer it to expensive expert advisors (its cost is only $55). The idea is pretty simple as well – trading is conducted on a breakthrough of the extreme of the previous day, and the Martingale is added to the algorithm in order to maximize profits.

The EA evaluates the behavior of prices over the previous day, marking up the High and Low levels. The trading is based on the assumption that the price at the breakthrough of one of these levels will continue to move in the direction of the breakthrough by inertia for some time. Therefore, the TP is set at a distance of 10 points from the breakthrough. Martingale is used for insurance when the price moves in an unprofitable direction.

Test results look good, at least not worse than those of TFOT EA. The deposit growth curve is stable, and profitability is 2.64. Except that you can only complain about the high demands on the size of the deposit.

Summing-up

The expert advisors discussed in the article only confirm the saying “all is not gold that glitters”. Based on the test results, the EA priced at about $1,000 is comparable in efficiency to the bot priced at $ 55.

Of course, we can’t say that all expensive expert advisors are crap, on the contrary – it’s much more difficult to find a worthy trading robot among the free and cheap offers. The main thing is to understand that the price does not mean quality and even a thousand-dollar bot can siphon-off the deposit.

That is why when choosing an expert advisor, you should search not for the assurances of the seller and the promises, but rather for results of monitoring or at least testing of the EA in MT4. If the whole advertising campaign is based solely on unsubstantiated words, and the main criterion of the EA efficiency is its price, it is most likely a fake.