In any professional field, an individual is moving from simple to complex, and automated trading is no exception to the rule. Of course, Forex EA for beginners differs significantly from algorithms that generate a steady income without human intervention, so we will pay attention to the basic nuances you should consider when choosing a simple and intuitive robot for training purposes.

First of all, let us note that today almost any resource or forum can offer you an advertising suggesting to buy an extremely profitable Forex EA. For beginners, such information is detrimental for several reasons:

• first, much of what is sold is publicly available under other names;
• second, history repeats itself, and almost all popular robots are built on similar algorithms;
• third, often similar products are initially unprofitable.

Given the above, the basic requirements can be formulated, which the Forex EA for beginners must meet. The most important of them is the availability of the code, i.e. the ability to download open source, and it is not about the unwillingness to pay – it’s just that the known algorithm is constantly discussed in specialized communities, so you can ask the professionals there, which is very important for a beginner. You shouldn’t discard the possibility provided by the team, because there are not many professionals open to dialogue.

Nevertheless, despite the willingness of other traders to help with advice, the robot for a beginner must be elementary in nature, so that the operating principle became clear from the settings window. And the last thing that should be taken into account is the availability of using the program on any timeframes and currency pairs, because “over-optimization” confuses the beginner, since as soon as the market changes its average volatility, all understanding of the situation is gone and you have to retrain.

Forex EA for beginners called “Pyramid”

The above criteria match a really good robot known as the “Pyramid”, in its very first version, without any additions (e.g., variant with Fibo levels is widely known). Of course, it has nothing to do with financial fraud, as it has received such name thanks to its build-in technique of supporting positions, when previously open orders are topped up with new ones.

Overall, it is one of Ilan kinds, so it is not recommended to use this robot in trading seriously and on large accounts: its main function is training, i.e. providing the trader with the opportunity to get familiar with installation process, strategy tester and watch how disconnections of the terminal may affect the result. In addition, “Pyramid”, as noted above, satisfies the condition of the simplicity of the algorithm, which includes only a few settings:

• PipStep – step between the orders in the grid;
• DoublePipStep – step between the orders after the fifth series of orders;
• Double lo – initial lot in the series;
• double koef – multiplication factor of order volume after the fourth series of orders when averaged against the trend.

Forex EA for beginners opens the first order on its own and then supports the aggregate position. If the price moves against your position, then the sequence of averages begins; if the direction was chosen right, the robot will top up the volume and pull the stop loss to breakeven as the price moves. By the way, while the first option is a gamble, the second teaches beginners the construction of the very pyramid and “trailing” of orders. The figure below shows the results of testing on a EUR/USD pair for the first half of 2014:

The results are not so stunning, but in this case it was not the goal, because, first of all, the main goal of the beginner was achieved – the account remained “alive”; in addition, there was an opportunity to close the profit manually several times in the process, which stimulates the decision-making and development of position management skills.

Secondly, the algorithm is old – you can say that it is one of the founders of the following similar robots with various built-in indicators and analysis of volatility and ranges, so the development of clean base without any add-ons allows to evaluate the effectiveness of various modifications in comparison with the basic version.

Third, this expert advisor can become a good assistant for manual strategy, when the trend is caught, and you have the opportunity to top up a position without risk. But this requires the use of knowledge in the field of statistics in order to properly adjust the step size, taking into account the volatility of the pair.