Mechanical Forex Trading with NetPicks 
In fact their results suggest they are doing a lot of things right, so we decided to have a closer look.
A Black Box Trading System
In a nutshell, NetPicks offer two mechanical trading systems - the EMini Day Trader, and the Forex Trading system. The EMini service covers a number of futures contracts including the S&P, Nasdaq, and Dow, plus the the European Dax and EuroStoxx. Of more interest to us here at Forex Heaven is the Forex version of the system, which covers all of the major pairs.Once signed up as a member, NetPicks do the thinking for you – they tell you when to trade. Every day they send you what they call their Key Numbers for the session ahead. Those numbers tell you where you will be entering your trade, and are accompanied by an exit target, stop loss, and reversal points.
The Key Numbers are sent out at around 5pm EST, which means those in the US have the evening ahead of them to take signals. Those in Europe are more likely to find a trade in the morning. Either way, with their automated trading offer (see below), trading times can become a non-issue for all.
Two lots are traded, with a fixed target for the first, and a trailing stop for the second. This gives a good balance between trying to catch day to day average size moves, whilst still being in a position to profit from the longer trends when they happen – something that can be an issue in other mechanical systems.
Results
Mechanical trading systems by their very nature, are prone to periods of drawdown. What separates the good systems from those that come and go are the frequency and depth of those drawdowns.By that measure, NetPicks is impressive indeed. For example, the USD/CHF pair has not had a single losing month in almost a year of trading, and is averaging over 150 pips a month. Of course, a successful discretionary trader can make more than that each month, but that’s not the target market NetPicks is aiming at – their service is for those who are not currently successful!
The largest drawdown the system has suffered in one month is 2%, which is certainly acceptable for a system of this type.
Automated Forex Trading
The advantage of a mechanical trading system is that you don’t have to think about what to do – the system tells you. However, you still have to pull the trigger when the system says Buy or Sell – and that can be problem for some traders who hesitate at the vital moment. Now NetPicks have taken system trading to it’s logical conclusion and have introduced automatic trading for their forex product, thus eliminating this final hurdle.To take advantage of this, you need to open an account with one of their two partner brokers, and the broker then trades the signals for you. This costs an extra $100 a month over the standard service, for account sizes of up to $10k. Once your account balance grows to exceed that, there is a sliding scale for the management fee. If you want your trading signals taken care of by someone else, this really is the ultimate in “set and forget”!
There are two partner brokers – forex.com (part of the Gain Capital Group), and RobbinsFX (WorldCupAdvisor.com). Opening a new account with the former has the advantage of earning you a free month of the autotrading service.
The Forex Angels Say: NetPicks offer a tried and tested mechanical trading system that makes money. Like all mechanical systems, it will see some drawdown, but this is relatively small, and can easily be balanced out by trading multiple pairs. A two week free trial shows the confidence NetPicks have in their product, and it’s justified confidence. At under $200 a month for the system, this will for many be the easiest way to make money from trading.
Resources: NetPicks Forex System Website
