Automated forex signals services provide online forecasts of the forex market through subscription websites or emails. The owners of these forex services claim to have developed a sophisticated algorithm that calculates signals for entry or exit based on analysis of chart data. The promise to you, is a fast, guaranteed way for anyone to make money in the forex market - but only if you subscribe to their service! I will show you why almost all of these services are scams, and how the scam works.
Before I go further, I want to point out that there are legitimate algorithms to find forex trading signals. But successful forex trading systems usually generate a small margin of profit. For example, a real, successful automated forex system may provide the correct prediction only 55% of the time. This is enough to make a profit over the long run, although small-time investors face the risk of Gambler's Ruin, which I will discuss in a future article.
There is a very simple scam, though, to create the illusion of a forex signals service with an incredible success rate, and many online forex forecast services employ this method. The scam works as follows. Say that a company advertises an automated forex trading signal service with a high success rate. 1000 people sign up to try it. The forex services send signals to 500 subscribers to go long on EUR/JPY and 500 subscribers to go short on EUR/JPY. Let's assume that the forex market in fact goes long for EUR/JPY. Now 500 people are happy, and 500 people are mad. The 500 mad people may quit the service (or they may give it a try for longer).
Next month, the automated forex service takes the 500 happy people, and signals 250 to go long on EUR/USD and 250 to go short on EUR/USD. Again, let's assume that the forex market goes long. Now, 250 are happy, and 250 are mad. Of course, the 250 mad people may still stick around, but the end result is, that the forex service has made 2 months worth of subscriptions from 500 people just by using the "flip-the-coin" algorithm. I would say that is a scam, wouldn't you?
New traders sign up for the forex signals service each month, and not everyone quits after a poor signal, so the scam can continue indefinitely, profiting the forex trading service, and not you.
To summarize, be very wary of forex services promising to send you automatic trading signals. You are really no better off than gambling your money away. Some people will profit from these forex scams, purely through luck, while others will lose money. Be sure to research any forex product before you make a purchase.