I
bought the stock trading platform product Nordnet Autotrader (that I intended
to use for both robot trading and my own “manual” trading), which Autostock has
developed. With the platform came a free trading robot for one year, “Coda OMX”
(trading OMXS30-index). I decided to invest in one more trading robot, “Adagio”
(stock futures and ETN trading), to get a better evaluation of Autostock. The
results were stunning from both robots when I started with them (about nine month
ago), but since then the results has gotten worse. See pictures below. Good to
know is that some of the historical data had been back-tested by Autostock.
Picture above: Coda OMX-results
(http://autostock.se/produkter/coda)
Because
of bad results from Coda OMX I was allowed to change to Coda DAX (robot trading
on the German stock market) for a few month ago, as Coda DAX had performed
better than Coda OMX. Also, after last summer I changed the product Adagio to
ACDC because of not satisfying results.
Picture above: Coda DAX-results
(http://autostock.se/produkter/coda-dax)
Picture above: ACDC-results
(http://autostock.se/produkter/acdc)
How the trading robots are
set up…
So
how it worked was that the trading platform needs to be installed on your
computer (or on a server). Then Autostock sends you an access code for the
robot which you use to install the robot on the trading platform. Some
configuration is also needed on the trading platform. There are instructions
for this, but you can also get support from Autostock. Once this is done, the
robot needs to be connected to an account where you have your money. After this
the robot can start trading on the stock market with your money from your
account.
What was my verdict for
this robot trading investment..?
I
have summarized my impressions as below:
Positive
·
Very
good support · Autostock holds courses regularly how to use their products
· Good knowledge about stock trading, technical analysis etc.
· Flexible. I was allowed to change robot during the license period (in the same price range)
Negative
·
Difficult
to implement the trading robots on the trading platform, I was depending on Autostock’s
help a lot (And updates came quite regularly so I had to contact them often for
help. A more techie guy would probably not have the same problem as me J )· The trading results were not to my satisfaction L (Probably the most important factor of all above, I would most likely be happier in total having for instance bad support if I ended up with a lot of money in my pocket from the robots J )
As I mentioned the results were not that great. After this period using their trading robot strategies I have a loss of almost 900 USD, with an invested amount of about 15 000 USD.
|
Description
|
SEK
|
USD
|
|
|
100 000
|
15 385
|
|
Current account status, after robots
have been trading (about nine month)
|
94 355
|
14 516
|
|
Result
|
- 5 645
|
- 868
|
But
it is important to have in mind that there are also a lot of “running costs”
related to this kind of investment. You need to pay a license fee to be able to
use the robots, license fee for the trading platform etc. These costs are often
neglected “hidden” costs that people don’t think about! This is what it looks
like to me this far:
|
Description
|
SEK
|
USD
|
Comment
|
|
Nordnet Autotrader- trading platform
cost
|
3 980
|
612
|
The yearly fee was 612 USD it but
could also have been paid quarterly. Buying a one-year license gave me a
"package" with the trading robot Coda. And the platform is needed
to use the trading robots
|
|
Server cost
|
3 321
|
511
|
Since the robot only trades when I have
my computer on at home, I chose to buy the service from Autostock to have the
trading platform (and the robots) installed on a server that is online 24/7.
Thereby I wouldn't miss out any trades. Cost: 31 USD/month
|
|
Robot "Coda"
|
0
|
0
|
Free of charge when I bought the
trading platform
|
|
Robot "ACDC"
|
2 485
|
382
|
Paid quarterly. Yearly cost: 612 USD.
I received a 40 USD discount when I bought the trading platform for one year
|
|
Total / Break-even figure
|
9 786
|
1 506
|
|
As you can see, the robots would have to generate a profit of 1 500 USD before I would actually have made any profit from the robot trading (which with my initial investment amount equals to about a 10% profit generation), when considering all trading related costs. And considering my results above from using the robots (-900 USD), I don’t need to say that this does not add up to break-even on this investment. So actually I didn’t lose 900 USD, I lost 2 400 USD in total!
So
due to the high trading related costs, a fairly high amount of invested money for
trading would be needed to generate a break-even figure (since if you would
only invest 1 500 USD the robot would have to generate a 100% profit to
break even) - and the trading robots would also need to perform well over time.
Another reason to have the robots trading with a significant amount of money is
that the “transaction cost” (stock market commission) when trading could
actually eat up the profit, if too small amounts are traded!
The
stock markets the past year has performed quite well, so in hindsight I would
have been better off investing in an index fund rather than these trading robots.
An index fund would also have much lower “running costs”, in some cases zero.
Next postings…
I
have found a stock market signal provider for buying/selling stock futures that shows really good results (I know, basically same
story as the robots above – but this time hopefully the results will be
consistent over time. I am a trading optimist and I do believe in auto-trading.
Sooner or later I WILL find a great auto-trading product. Please email me if
you have any suggestions! J ). I intend to test this signal
provider for a few months and will tell you if it actually works or not in a
posting later on.
I
have stopped using the Autostock products for the moment. Some of the money I
have released from Autostock I have invested in a very interesting alternative
product that I will write about soon. I will also write about some successful
alternative investments of mine very soon. More of these teasers in my upcoming
posters… So stay tuned and subscribe to my blog (at the top right on my blog) - don’t miss out
on more interesting stories!
Hi Jafor, thanks for sharing your thoughts about the blog and I am happy that you enjoy the reading! Next posting will prolly be about a carbon credit investment I have made, so stay tuned!
ReplyDeleteI been into automated forex trading with metatrader 4 for a while... seems easy money but its not:
ReplyDelete* back testing of a robot does generally not correlate well to future performance. At least use price feed history from your own broker (rarely available).
* performance on demo account does correlate very well to real account.
* don't use grid or martingale robots
* having a server with metatrader is not as easy as it seems. And messing around with various robots.
* In retro respect I would choose social investment services suchas signalstart.com and darwinex.
Hi Otto, thanks for your comments. Good reflections, agree! I am launching the social investment network Investor Compass which could be of interest to join for you. Please read my next post, will be posted today! Br, Christian
ReplyDeleteHi, thanks for your comment. If you have robot systems that have worked for you, please register and rate them on www.investor-compass.com to share your experiences with others. Best Regards, Christian
ReplyDelete