Good to see EAs improving and able to trade profitably. As mentioned, it is not the profitability in the current market that's important, it is its adaptability to the ever changing market. Neural technologies have made subtle changes detection fairly effective although still far from completely perfect. My favorite EA is PrecisionTypeA by RapidForex Private Funds. It uses 4 strategies in one EA, controlled by a main program to determine the best strategy to employ in the current market. Although not as 'glossy' as other EAs, I believe it can adapt effectively to sustain the profitability, hopefully forever...below is the backtest from 2000 till now
Yesterday the Staff send me an update with setting for March, I have appreciated this.
backtest from 01/01/2009:
ForexRobotGain 1.01 March setting
This is my current favourite
http://www.selectfx.net/zr_eurcad.htm
As Onyx says, most EA's go in and out of sync with underlying market patterns over time, but this system has been good for much longer than usual
It's self-optimizing for SL & TP, so needs very little maintenance
SL levels are realistic and can be capped to eliminate the higher risk/reward ratio trades
The EA has an unusually good method of detecting when a trade is going south and closing for smaller losses than hitting the stop loss
All data refernced is from live accounts, including a list of actual trades done by the EA for the last 6 months - no theory, just practise :)
You can watch its progress here http://barrowboy.mt4stats.com/ look for the EURCAD orders
FWIW
-BB-