The Fantasy (AKA The Quiet Moments Between Account Statements)
You know those peaceful moments when you’re not checking your portfolio? Those rare instances when you forget you’re down on your algo bots and crypto? That’s when the fantasy hits hardest.
“Maybe,” you think, “there’s another ‘great bot’ out there. One I can trust. One I can rely on. One that won’t break my heart or my bank account.”
It’s a tempting prospect—like believing your next relationship will be different because this time you’ve learned from your mistakes. But before I can even have the awkward conversation with my spouse about allocating more capital to my robot friends, I have to overcome a few obstacles. Namely: reality.
Obstacle 1: Recent emails from NURP
Obstacle 2: The actual results from my EFX Octane bot
Obstacle 3: My remaining shred of common sense
The Three Strikes: A Baseball Analogy for Financial Disappointment
⚾ Strike One: “It’s Not You, It’s My Licensing Problem”
Summer 2024. A season of barbecues, beach trips, and bot failures.
One of my bots had “issues.” But not my issues—NURP’s issues. Specifically, a licensing problem. On their end. Did this cause me greater losses than I otherwise would have had? Maybe. (Read: probably. Definitely.)
Here’s the thing: When I “hire” your bot to manage my money, I don’t want to hear excuses about problems on your end. If I hired a financial advisor and they said, “Sorry about losing 20% of your portfolio, but my calculator batteries died,” I’d fire them immediately.
Why should algorithms get a pass? They’re supposed to be better than humans, not equipped with the same excuse-making abilities.
The Takeaway: Bots can break. And when they do, nobody’s sending you a sympathy card.
⚾ Strike Two: “The Master-Slave Complex” (Or: What Could Go Wrong with Robot Hierarchy?)
Remember the good old days? When I started, my bot was like a hermit living in its own sandbox, minding its own business, making its own terrible (it has made some good ones) decisions without consulting anyone.
Those days are gone.
Now we live in a world of “master accounts” and “slave accounts.” There’s a boss bot that yells instructions to the worker bots:
“Buy 0.51 lots of GBPUSD now!” (The lot size is determined by your account size, because even robots understand proportionality better than most humans.)
When everything works: The slave bots hear the instructions, execute the trade, and everyone goes home happy (or at least, not crying).
When things go sideways: Your bot doesn’t hear the instructions. It’s stuck in a trade that’s no longer managed. It’s like leaving a toddler at the grocery store—except the toddler is managing your retirement fund.
NURP sent me an email about this happening. To someone else’s bot, thankfully. But you know what they say: “Today them, tomorrow you.”
The Takeaway: Adding more technology to fix technology problems is like using gasoline to put out a fire. Sometimes it works! But mostly, you just end up with a bigger fire.
⚾ Strike Three: “We’re Trading Silver Now! (Hope That’s Cool)”
The latest gem from NURP: One of their bots (Argos, for those keeping score at home) is removing Gold and now trading Silver.
The Old Me: “Great! Silver! It would be awesome to roll in some silver cash! Shiny!”
The New Me: “Yawn. Silver, you say? If it hasn’t been tested with real-world data in real time, I am not interested. Also, when exactly did I sign up to be a beta tester?”
This is the bot equivalent of your spouse coming home and announcing they’ve taken up a new hobby—without telling you it involves storing 400 pounds of equipment in your garage.
The Takeaway: If you’re changing what the bot trades, you’re not optimizing—you’re experimenting. And I didn’t invest my money to be part of someone else’s science fair project.
The Bottom Line (Because Every Financial Disaster Needs One)
All crypto/bot/futures passive (or semi-passive) bot investing schemes are great until they aren’t.
This is the financial equivalent of “all relationships are great until they end.” Technically true, but not particularly helpful.
The Timing Regret
If I had gotten in a few years ago, maybe I would have had enough wins—and wisdom—to overcome my present frustration. Maybe I’d be one of those insufferable people writing blog posts titled “How My Trading Bot Bought Me a Lambo.”
Instead, I’m writing this.
The Reality
Trading bots can:
- ✅ Make money
- ✅ Drain an account
- ✅ Make you regret every life choice that led to googling “trading bots” at 2 AM
If they don’t drain your account, they can still accomplish something remarkable: making you wish you’d just put your money in index funds and taken up golf like a normal person.
Words of Wisdom (From Someone Who Learned the Hard Way)
Proceed with extreme caution.
And please, don’t shoot for the moon if you were alive during the first moon landing. We know how that story ends: with a bunch of people watching from Earth, wishing they’d brought better snacks.
The Spousal Conversation Guide (Use at Your Own Risk)
If you’re still considering putting more money into trading bots after reading this, here’s a draft conversation starter:
You: “Honey, I’ve been thinking about our financial future…”
Spouse: “What did you do?”
You: “Nothing yet! But I wanted to discuss allocating some capital to—”
Spouse: “Not the robot trading thing again.”
You: “But this time it’s different! They’re trading silver now!”
Spouse: [Silence]
You: “…I’ll go make dinner.”
Final Thoughts
Look, I’m not saying all trading bots are scams. I’m just saying that if someone had told me a few years ago that I’d be this emotionally invested in whether a piece of software correctly heard its boss’s instructions about forex lots, I would have… well, I probably would have done it anyway.
We humans are optimists. It’s both our greatest strength and our most expensive weakness.
Stay skeptical, my friends. And maybe keep that calculator handy—the one that helps you figure out your “extinction budget.” Because if you’re going to lose money to robots, at least do it with a plan.
Part of the “I Should Have Just Bought Index Funds” Educational Series
This is not financial advice. This is therapy disguised as documentation.
