Forex Killer - does it kill?

If you look for anything on Forex these days, it's hard not to see an ad for Forex Killer. Anything under $100 is an easy buy for me, so I purchased it, but soon after I started looking deeper into the website.


There are a few things that bug me. First, the man you see, and the video that comes up - it's not Andreas Kirchberger. It's an actor. Does this guy look familiar? Mr. Kirchberger is German, not American.


Now, I looked at the proof of his system on his site:




It's impressive, but when I started looking into the trades, a few things jumped out at me. First, he's using a trailing stop, which is "suggested" in the documentation, but never specified as to how or what to set it to. I'm a big believer in systems, and if you're going to post results, then you need to post the entire, actual system. You CAN'T get the results he posts by just following the signals of the software - there needs to be a trailing stop. Look at the second trade. The stop loss is 1.3490, but the exit price is 1.3510. I sent an email to Mr. Kirchberger:

Mr. Kirchberger,

I have contacted support, but they gave me the general guidelines
that are outlined in the software. Can you offer me more
information? Please see my questions here and at the bottom of this
email.

What trailing stop was used to generate the statement ( http://www.forex-killer.com/statement.gif ) on the front page?

The general guidelines you give below for stop loss do not seem
to match what I see in the statement either.

[We recommend to use Stop Loss = 70-100 pips for daily trading (50-90 for hourly) and Take Profit = 120-150 for daily trading (80-100 forhourly) and 10-20 pips for small timeframe. You can also experiment with S/L and T/P.]

Thanks,
Bill
------------------------------------
Bill
I use trailing stop 10-40
depending of the timeframe.
Andy

Again, being a believer in systems, I would like more precise answers (for 30min timeframe, I use a 10pip trailing stop, 1 hour I use a 20pip TS, etc..). However, I must say, I was impressed that I heard from Mr. Kirchberger himself. He is selling something I think he believes in, and you're not out on your ass once you've bought the software.

Second, the risk he takes on is large - quite large. Look at the GBPUSD trade on 4/18/07 - a loss of 11,000 - and it didn't even hit the stop loss! He exited before that - otherwise the loss would have been twice as large. Now, he could have exited using the software, as it tells you that you can exit a position if the software gives you a no position or opposite position. But I can't be sure just looking at the statement.

Since I have a day job, I prefer a daily timeframe, at least until I can make enough money to not have to work. I traded for a week using a demo account and had 1 small winning trade and 5 losing trades. This was 3 months ago. I have decided to go back and try to figure out a better way to trade the software and see if it actually works, and what settings work.

So, for me, the jury is still out on the software. I have found a few other reviews. Apparently the newer version of the software is using neural network for it's programming, and you can run the same numbers twice and get different results. Mr. Kirchberger says they are aware of the problem and are working on it. As a programmer, I can tell you that Neural Nets will have this issue, so I'm not sure it's good for doing things like backtesting, because you won't always get the same results for the same inputs.

And on that subject, his website says "I'm talking about a proven money making method where you generate all of the cash yourself by trading your own money." How can it be proven if he has just changed his algorithm?

Now, all of that said, I still have hope for this software. I like the fact that this is mathematical, and that takes the emotion and interpretation out of it.

Here is a review that expands on some options for using it for trading:
http://www.smarttradingforprofits.com/a-review-of-the-forex-killer-forex-trading-system/