Artificial Intelligence makes life easier in a lot of ways, but can it improve currency trading for investors? That’s the question that many people are asking, and why forex trading robots — also known as expert advisors — are gaining in popularity.
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What is a forex trading robot?
A forex trading robot is a piece of software that automates trades on the foreign exchange market, otherwise known as forex or FX. It primarily deals in “spot” trading or immediate currency trades, but other types of currency trading are possible, like options, futures, and derivatives. Forex lacks a centralized exchange, unlike stock markets, and is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
A forex trading robot makes it much easier for currency traders to do their thing without having to constantly monitor their trades or risk missing out on potentially massive deals. There are similar bots designed for other types of trading, including cryptocurrency and stock trading, but forex bots are only for use within the forex over-the-counter community.
How do forex trading bots work?
Forex trading robots are essentially automated scripts that a trader can program to buy and sell currency when they’ve identified specific technical signals or a currency has reached specific thresholds. They’re completely legal and require a great deal of trading and programming knowledge to put together, but they can help remove some uncertainty from trading currencies.
You might, for example, program a forex trading robot to buy Japanese yen when the exchange rate to the dollar reaches a specific low if you’re flush in dollars. You could then have the bot sell those yen when the dollar-to-yen exchange rate reaches a specific high point so that you gain dollars. This would work with any currency listed in forex and with any kind of technical pattern you wanted to identify, depending on the sophistication of your bot.
What are the advantages of forex trading robots?
Forex trading robots offer serious currency traders a lot of advantages over doing things the old-fashioned way. For example, they can execute trades much faster than a human ever could, although there are limits in place to prevent them from breaking the forex. But speed alone isn’t the only advantage; they can also be contemplating and executing multiple trades at the same time, which is almost impossible for a single trader to juggle.
In addition, a forex trading robot has no emotions. They don’t panic sell or jump the gun and buy too early; they simply follow your orders to the letter. As long as they’re programmed properly, they will only do what you’ve told them and don’t make the same kind of emotional errors human traders are prone to make.
What are the disadvantages of forex trading robots?
Forex trading robots aren’t for everyone, though. They can be complicated to set up, and you may have to try several before you find one that works well for you. This can cost a lot, depending on which systems you decide to put to the test. Many have demo modes available, but you’ll never be sure how a system works until you take it out into the real world.
If your programming skills aren’t sharp, you may end up creating code that costs you a lot of money due to errors that you’ve programmed into the forex trading robot. You can hire a forex programmer, but this adds additional cost to your forex trading bot’s cost of operation. And again, even with a professional programmer, the risk of coding errors exists that may cause less-than-ideal trades until you get the bugs worked out.
