Scalper EAs are popular nowadays, especially among the younger traders where fast trading and in line with their lifestyle and strategic approach. Samurai Expert Advisor is another night scalper with specialized market scope. It is developed by Maksim Shmyrev from Russia for the MetaTrader 4 platform. The initial version was published on the MQL5 market on the 10th of March 2015. It has never been updated and stayed on version 1.0.
Even though the EA has some attention from the market community, there are no new features. This is probably because the EA comes from the developer’s previous products no longer available. Maksim Shmyrev mostly develops scalper EA with the same price range and similar strategies, just different market scopes. However, no new products are published by him, the last one is from 2015, still, based on the latest positive review, he is available in 2020.
Overview
The Overview page describing the Samurai EA is very short, describing the EA in two words and then move on to the settings and the performance screens. Therefore, you will not know if the scalper works for you until you test it, the only information you can rely on is the screenshots and the ceased signal on the myfxbook.com. This signal has been stopped on the 26th of August 2015, a few months after the release of this EA. Samurai EA is specialized for the Yen related currency pairs, AUD/JPY, EUR/JPY, GBP/JPY, SGD/JPY, CAD/JPY, and USD/JPY. Interestingly, the Overview page does not have even the key information like what timeframe the EA is used on, but according to the comments left by the dev and traders, M15 is the optimal one to use.
The exact method or strategy is left out from all of his products that seem to be the same strategy, just optimized for other currencies such as the USD, CAD, AUD, and the EUR/USD. According to the developer, the JPY behavior is specific and the EA is optimized for long term trading. Scalping is defined as a high-frequency trading strategy, but it is not clear how frequent Samurai EA is trading as there is no statistical data on the MQL5. According to the myfxbook.com data, the average holding time is 1h 22min, although we are not sure this is the matching EA.
In the settings panel, you will not have a lot to change. There are no clauses that reveal the inner workings of the EA, such as the indicators. There are no parameters that change the way EA is conducting the trades except a couple of filters, such as Max Spread and Slippage. The EA will work on the 5 or 4 digit brokers and it is FIFO compliant. The Risk Management module is integrated and it is not overly complex. Its parameter is just a percentage number relative to the account balance.
Based on this amount the EA will calculate the trade size. It will be for each currency pair, traders will need to attach the EA onto each chart they want EA to trade on. This parameter is called Auto MM, if you wish to used fixed trade sizing, it is defined by the Lot Size parameter. Aside from the GMT adjustments and the EA order comments plotting, there are no other settings. It is unknown if the EA has any Stop Loss or other protective measures so we will have to rely on the drawdown and other related figures form the backtesting screens.
Based on the report generated using the USD/JPY, CAD/JPY, EUR/JPY, GBP/JPY, SGD/JPY, and AUD/JPY (all pairs recommended by the developer) from 2011 to 2015 by the MQLsoft’s ReportManager 1.3.0. The success rate is 75.8%. meaning the EA has a good figure for a trend following strategy but not great for a scalper. Scalpers tend to have a higher number of small profit trades and have a few larger losing ones. In the case of Samurai EA, the average losing trade is -292 vs the average profit trade of 181. The average consecutive winning trades is 7 to 2.
Even the Maximal Drawdown is a very steady 7% although the Relative Drawdown is 43.86%, meaning the EA will leave profitable trades to fall back probably because of no exit signals generated. The result is 231k total net profit for this testing period and currency pairs. As for the signal from the myfxbook.com, the drawdown is 39.39%, the average monthly gain is 13.66% before the closing of the account after a significant gain drop of -21.14% in August 2015.
Service Cost
Samurai EA’s price is $100 as the rest of the developer’s products. There is an option to rent if for one month for $40. You will receive 10 activations. The demo is offered and has been downloaded 1051 times since the initial release.
Conclusion
Traders have left a great score of 4.3 stars based on 7 reviews. The most useful is from the user registered as jimrob:
“Nice EA, steady returns with each position open to profit potential but also downside risks are controlled. Recommended.”
The negative opinion left is not covered with a reason. If you find good results from the backtesting the demo version, you should consider forward testing on a broker demo account and see if the EA shows consistency at least for 3 months.
This Forex service can be found at the following web address: https://www.mql5.com/en/market/product/8355
