When choosing a trading robot, Forex traders pay special attention to algorithms that combine several strategies, because such approach helps avoid confusion with multiple windows open in the terminal and uses less computer resources. Forex Combo System EA is a very interesting representative of this class of robots, so this article will review its configuration, features and monitoring results.

The developers should be paid well-deserved tribute, as they did their work perfectly and compiled detailed instructions with all the caveats and warnings, so we’ll just briefly overview some basic nuances.

Settings and strategies the Forex Combo System EA uses

In total, the algorithm has four built-in strategies: scalping, breakthrough, trend, and flat. Let’s examine each of them in detail. The scalping system is built on a simple oscillator, OSC, the deals are made from the extreme values in a given range, and the settings include the following configuration parameters:

• StopLoss and TakeProfit: clear with no comments; it is also present in the remaining blocks, but with the appropriate figure to avoid confusion in the code;
• TREND_STR: value of the similarly-named indicator;
• OSC_open and OSC_close: OSC indicator levels for opening and closing positions respectively.

For the “Breakthrough” strategy you must competently choose:

• Break: the intensity of a breakthrough; 
• ATRTrailingFactor2: a trailing stop setting with volatility; in addition, there are several options to support positions. 

BegHourSys and EndHourSys range is an important setting for the third strategy, which identifies the hours of work. The remaining parameters are again mainly reduced to the trailing stop.

The flat module contains new variables that were not previously mentioned:

• MaxRangePips: the maximum allowable range width; 
• TargetPercent: profit from the deal will be equal to this percentage from the estimated range;
• ReverseTF: a reversal candle to exit the deal will be determined at a specified timeframe.

The Forex Combo System EA also has general settings to manage risk and solve various organizational issues, such as:

• Use_ECN_Execution: if an ECN account is used, the “true” value should be set;
• Hiden_StopAndTarget: use virtual take-profit and stop-loss orders that are useful to protect from non-market quotations, spikes and unfair dealing centers;
• MaxSpread: the maximum value of the spread at which the robot trades; is used on accounts with floating spread;
• UseAgresiveMM: a dangerous option, as it turns on Martingale after the first stop (the robot will increase the lot in the next deal), so we wouldn’t recommend to turn it on.

Monitoring analysis of the account running the Forex Combo System EA

When the monitoring search has just begun, the doubts arose concerning the ability to find a live account, given the “birth date” of the robot. However, the developers pleasantly surprised us this time, as there is a publicly available account opened in September 2010 that is still trading today. Dynamic of both balance and equity can be seen below:

It makes no sense to produce the table with the results, so we’ll instead briefly list the positive and negative outcomes of the work for nearly four years, i.e. proceed directly to the conclusions.

The advantages include the following: 

• profitable trades amount to 61% of the total number of operations on average, which indicates signals of good quality; 
• the biggest profit on the deal is 2.2 times more than the largest loss, so the trailing stop must be working properly.

Despite all the strengths, disadvantages always have greater weight in the evaluation of the EA, so we’ll list them as well:

• adding of $6,907 was made back in September 2013, which greatly distorted the result; 
• average profit on the deal is 27.65 pips against the average loss of 41.09 pips – this statistics is quite dangerous but still not crucial, and it doesn’t point directly to the abuse of Martingale;
• next parameter should be attributed to neutral ones, but in the context of these systems, the profit factor with a value of 1.05 looks very weak.

The conclusion is obvious: the Forex Combo System EA faced a difficult situation in 2012 and began to siphon. Since then, the assets never exceeded the record value, plus there was an adding. All of this suggests that the market has changed, and the developers didn’t manage to optimize their product to new conditions, otherwise they wouldn’t have spent money to create visibility of its efficiency.