GetGo Trading App review – Is this the future of Forex signal trading?

Home > Trading > GetGo Trading App review – Is this the future of Forex signal trading?

For this GetGo trading app review, let’s get something straight from the get go. Most forex signal providers are hopeless, some are even outright scams referring inexperienced traders to off shore binary options brokers. I was even flicking through Instagram the other day and noticed that Johnny from Love Island even has his own forex signalling service.  I shall make no comment on that as I’m sure that if you have even the slightest resemblance of trading savvy you can make your own decision.

But, every now and again, something comes along that makes you take a second look at signals as a trading tool.

The GetGo Trading App

Trading signals are not new.  The concept is simple, trading signals generally use technical analysis to look for charting patterns within the price movements of an FX pair, stock, index or commodity.  The theory being that if a pattern has emerged before, there is a certain probability that it will happen again.

The benefit of trading signals and technical analysis is that they highlight trends in the financial markets so that if specific pattern is detected, a trend may either reverse or continue.  There are many, many, many different types of technical analysis and signals all with varying degrees of success.

But the use for traders is the same, they highlight potential trading opportunities automatically without the need to eyeball lots of individual charts.  The application however, is a different story. After a potential trend reversion or continuation has been identified, a trader must manually asses the market as a whole, the specific sector, the time scale, upcoming economic announcements, overall exposure and so on to decide if they should trade based on the signal or ignore it.

And that’s just the start, putting a trade on is the easy part. Knowing when to take profits or cut a loss is the difficult part. Joshua Raymond, wrote an article a while ago on LinkedIn about how 60% of trades put on by City Index clients were winners, but what it didn’t say was by how much. The point here is that bad traders and the ones that always lose money, run losses too long and take profits too soon.

So what’s the point I’m making here?

Well, if there was a way to combine back-tested trading signals with a trading strategy where you run your winning trades and cut your losing trades, would it help make you a better trader?

Enter the new GetGo App.

GetGo claims that you don’t need to be a trader to trade and uses artificial intelligence to generate trading signals to reduce the complexity of trading.

Now, normally when you read that sort of thing on a website alarm bells start ringing. Yes, actually you do need to be a trader to trade. Trading the financial markets on leverage is very risky and you’re only allowed an account if you have experience, by default making you a trader. In fact, GetGo’s own application form does a very good job of making sure that those applying for a live account understand the risks and have the relevant experience. GetGo does this by asking about trading history, risk appetite and even testing the user as to what the app actually does. For example, you have to answer questions on understanding trade size, track record performance and max loss.

Which is because GetGo is authorised and regulated by the FCA.  Which means they have to do things properly. i.e. you can’t have an account until you have demonstrated that you understand the risks of using leveraged trading.

This means in theory that inexperienced novice traders can’t have an account after watching a video advert on Facebook showing some flash git covering the cost of a trip to Marbella on a private jet with a single FX position. So, no getting suckered into trading FX signals through binary options trying to emulate a completely false traders lifestyle on social media here…

What powers GetGo?

GetGo is a trading name of Gain Capital who own City Index, FinSpreads, and Forex.com. Gain Capital is listed on the NYSE and has a market cap of $365m, which is who your trades will be executed through. It’s also where your funds will be held and as such are protected under the FSCS.

GetGo is also a trading name of Trade Facts who will be where the trading signals come from. Trade Facts is also regulated by the FCA, but not for holding client funds which is why Gain Capital handle that side of things.

Trade Facts Ltd used to be called Galvan Research and Trading which was an advisory CFD broker before being acquired by Gain Capital. Now they also have a trading name Faraday Research which provides trading signals and technical analysis as a stand alone product.

So one would assume that will all this experience, resources and regulation their artificial intelligence trading signal app would be pretty decent.

We tried out the GetGo App for a days trading, here’s what happened.

We’ve already covered opening an account in this GetGo trading app review so we won’t bore you with too much of that again. You have to jump through the fairly standard regulatory hoops, but overall, it’s pretty slick and takes at max 10 minutes. 80% of applications are approved automatically, but if you’ve moved a lot or are not a UK resident  have to upload your ID docs, which is a bit of a pain, but financial service providers are required to have this information (to avoid money laundering) before they can process withdrawals. So it’s best to just get on with it and upload a photo from your smart phone.

The interface is pretty slick too, it’s got the classic traders black background so you can pretend your looking at a professional Bloomberg terminal when you’re on the bus.

The signals are generated mainly (but not exclusively) from major pairs in the forex market as they provide decent liquidity and are open 24 hours during the week.

Signals appear on the app when an emerging pattern has been identified. The Track Record (the % number) shows you how often, historically, that pattern has gone up, or down, after the emerging pattern has formed. You have to place an order on the signal before the pattern completes. Beyond that, Hot Signals (which have a higher win rate), identify signals which have worked well in the recent past – your default notification preferences will only alert you about new Hot signals, but you can adjust your preferences if you want to be notified about more

Once you’ve flicked through signals and click on one, you get a nice dial and counter that shows how close the market is to the signal being triggered.  You see the live price, where you can set your trades size (£ per point) which calculates your potential profit and loss, which you can adjust based on the volatility or size of the currency pair. You don’t trade immediately, you put your order in to trade if the signal is triggered.

GetGo uses guaranteed stops so even if the market gaps down (cough cough CHF) then your max loss is what you see on screen. The take profit level is twice that of the stop level. So you are running your profitable trades for longer than you run losing ones.

You can also turn on the profit target to take profits. What would be nice would be a trailing stop option where you can really take advantage of a good signals and extend the run of profits, but gradually reduce the potential loss.

A great little feature we came across during our GetGo trading app review is that if you are absently mindedly going with every “Hot” trading signal that pops up it will alert you if you’re putting a big trade on by accident.  At one point a EUR/SEK trade came on which is a bigger number at £1 per point. Which would have meant the risk being 2-3 times more than say EURUSD, giving you a change to reduce the trade size.

So what happened in our test when we reviewed GetGo?

We put a few trades on, checked a few times and woke up in the morning with a win/loss rate of 3/5 giving us a profit of £40.40 from a deposit of £500. We put £500 in because that was the max quick option on the deposit page, but traders can put in as much or as little as they want.

So there you go, it does work. But we only tried it for one day and it was a pretty random selection of trades without much input on our part. We were down at one point so you have to be prepared to take losses and lose all you money if you get a bad run.

A quick note on withdrawals, as getting your money back is often a point of contention with some trading apps. We requested a withdrawal with ease and funds were back in our account within a couple of business days.

However, to conclude this GetGo trading app review it feels a little bit too discounted from actually trading.  There are no charts on the app showing how the market is doing relative to your position or an approaching signal. As we know trading isn’t investing, it’s high risk speculation meaning most people lose, so one of the major joys of trading is being right. You know you’re right when you see your P&L along side a chart.  Willing the tick chart along, almost like a horse at the races.

Also, trades are put on as CFDs, so should you have a good run, profits are taxable, so it would be nice to have a spread betting option.

Overall a great bit of fintech and certainly a move in the right direction for signal trading.

Always note though, that past performance is not an indication of future performance and leveraged trading is very risky where you can lose more than your deposit.

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