AVAFX Autotrader Review

rate: 5.00

By: Jennifer Shotts

Avafx has a forex autotrading service called Avafx Auto Trader, a platform that allows its forex brokerage clients to choose from various trading signals providers and have those signals traded automatically in their live trading account.  With a free 30-day demo, decent web-based platform and comprehensive signals performance, the Avafx Auto Trader is a very good broker-based service to look at when comparing autotrading providers.  This service does come highly recommended for traders looking to add autotrading to their forex portfolio.

Firstly, the Avafx Auto Trader platform is fairly easy to navigate and start up its 30-day demo.  The demo allots an account of $100,000 to trade with.  Avafx allows trading on 23 different currency pairs. The performance page is very comprehensive to compare and choose from the hundreds of expert trading signal providers: you can filter the trade signal providers by profit($), max draw down, profit factor, date started, average pip profit, winning percentage, and currency pair.  You can also set your maximum number of trades that you wish to be open for your trading account, your lot sizes per signal provider, or maximum stop losses per trade provider.  Right away you can pick up to 10 different signal providers, choose pairs and lot sizes, and have the platform take over from there, automatically trading your account with your selected trading signals.  Your computer does not need to be on for the signals to be traded in your account, as this service uses a remote server.

Now, to go live with a live autotraded account there are a few rules.  Your trading account minimum investment is $1000.  Also, Avafx charges you 1 pip commission on each round trip trade on top of their normal spread to use their autotrade system.  Seem unfair?  Not really.  Comparing ZuluTrade to Avafx Auto Trader, Avafx actually comes out on top.  Yes, ZuluTrade does not charge a commission, however comparing the best signal providers, Avafx appears to have the best performing signals.  Avafx’s performance comparison is actually much more user-friendly than ZuluTrade’s performance page:  you can quickly compare important trading system factors like risk adjustment rate (RAR) and profit factor which cannot even be determined on ZuluTrade.  Both do provide maximum drawdown for each signal provider, which is one of the most important.  But when looking at the RAR, total pips accumulated divided by max draw down, the Avafx providers have a much better RAR than the ZuluTrade signals providers.  Is that worth the 1 pip commission per trade?  Absolutely.  Now, if your trading account is $50,000 or more, you are then a VIP level account which means you will not be charged the 1 pip commission and you will get a better deal on the spreads as well.   Another thing to note:  Avafx is an approved broker for ZuluTrade.  So, if you try out Avafx Auto Trader signals and are not impressed, then it will be very easy to set up a ZuluTrade account using Avafx as your broker.

On the negative side, the Help section and Support Center are not very helpful regarding the Auto Trader.  However, the Live chat help was very responsive and they answered most of my questions quickly.  There was one question that remains with Auto Trader:  there is a very large disclaimer at the bottom of the trading platform about “Hypothetical trading results and performance data”.  It is unclear if Avafx Auto Trader signals providers are using live trading accounts or DEMO accounts for their trading performance data.  I would think that DEMO trading is likely to be less accurate than live trading performance data.  Avafx support did not answer this question directly.  Also the Avafx Auto Trader does not have the Margin-call-ometer that ZuluTrade does, which is a very nice feature that explains and guards against account margin calls.  However, Avafx’s platform does have some decent features to help clients remain positive and not margin call their accounts.

In writing this review, only a demo account was used to try out the system and platform.  Avafx insists that the platform and service are identical whether trading demo or live with them. 

Overall the Avafx Auto Trader receives 4 stars and comes highly recommended.