Recently, the newcomers have increasingly been facing the advertisements for various trading products without free demo versions offered by the developers. As a result, instead of testing the potential purchase, a beginner trader is forced to buy a “pig in a poke”. This article will review Forex Teplex EA, which is one of those little-known algorithms.

First of all, we should note that the very idea of the robot is quite interesting and is meant to identify the latest market trend. No Moving Averages or candlestick patterns are applied in the analysis, only the extreme prices and the distance between them are recorded over a specified period. It would have been ok if the Forex Teplex traded in the continuation of this trend, but in this case it uses a countertrend strategy and Martingale as a consequence.

Logic and parameters built into the Forex Teplex EA

This technique is called “catching knives” among experienced traders and is not used by them due to the high risk along with a low probability of catching the rollback in the first approach. Apparently, that's why inexperienced beginners were chosen as the target audience for the sales.

Now let’s pay attention to the basic parameters, the most important of which is called «TrendPoints», which is the value in points between the extremes mentioned earlier, recognized by the system as a trend. In this case, there are several options when setting up – for example, a user can calculate the statistics by any familiar method and put them into the system, or they can use the default values.

The next group of parameters is directly related to the orders:

• MarketExecution: if the value is «false», the algorithm places stop-loss and take-profit simultaneously with the order, otherwise it first opens the order and then modifies it;
• CanOpenNew: if the value is «true», the robot will open new orders;
• OrdersCount: maximum number of open orders. This is one of the most dangerous settings, which is closely related to the next one;
• Level: the value of a take-profit and a step between orders, which, combined with the previous setting, is designed to balance between risk and return, as it determines the main characteristics of the Martingale. The value of each order is also regulated by the user, i.e. the robot doesn’t thoughtlessly multiply the value of the lot in a new series of orders.

Forex Teplex EA, aside from the aforementioned, has the “TimeFrame” setting in its algorithm, and its choice is very important, because the EA determines extreme prices excluding the current candle. As a result, the higher the timeframe, the more accurately a trend prior to rollback is calculated. On the other hand, the signal starts to lag when increasing.

Summary: pros and cons of Forex Teplex EA

The independent tests conducted by traders show good results. For example, a trend period was chosen for GBP/JPY pair on purpose (an increased risk for Martingale): the first quarter of 2012. Among other things, the work was carried out on the 5-minute frames with aggressive settings (multiplication of each order twice), and the result is as follows:

Summarizing, we can highlight the following advantages of the EA:

• defines the latest trend in the market not just by the number of pips passed in one direction, but rather by using the maximum and minimum prices for the period;
• flexible configuration, allowing using both a Martingale and a conservative averaging;
• doesn’t sit out drawdown on one series of orders, while ignoring other signals – instead, it monitors other entry points as well.

There are also some significant drawbacks:

• no demo version, only paid access;
• stop-loss is not actually used, despite being set in orders;
• Martingale principle brings profit to a certain point, but ultimately all algorithms of such a kind siphon deposit. When this happens, the tester won’t respond, because the market is changing, and when working with history, we just customize settings. The periods of drawdown are seen even on a test example above;
• we can’t ignore the fact that even the EA’s creator, Vlad Gilka, admits it being quite aggressive in operation.