Guides
Hands-on knowledge for algo & EA traders: from the basics (what is an Expert Advisor?) through backtesting and risk to VPS, news filters and prop-firm challenges. Every guide is written from an algo perspective.
AI Trading Bot for Forex 2026: What ChatGPT Bots Can Really Do
AI trading bots for forex, honestly tested: what an 'AI' label means, where ChatGPT & co. help with trading and where they don't, and how to tell real AI from marketing — from a live EA park's perspective.
Read guide →Backtest vs Live: Why EAs Fail
The real reasons an EA that is profitable in backtest loses in live trading: slippage, spread widening, requotes, broker execution, over-optimisation and poor tick data quality.
Read guide →Best Brokers for Snapback Pro EA: Hedging, Spread, Swap – and the Broker of Our Tests
Snapback Pro EA is a grid EA for MetaTrader 5 that trades up to 20 pairs from one chart. At the broker that puts the focus on a hedging account, low spreads on cross pairs such as GBPCAD and CADJPY, swap on open baskets, the volume step and symbol names. What to check and which broker our backtests ran on.
Read guide →Best Gold EA 2026: XAUUSD Expert Advisors Ranked by Live Results
Which gold EA actually holds up live? Our ranking of XAUUSD Expert Advisors for MT4/MT5 — The Gold Reaper, Gold Scalper Pro, Gold Trade Pro, Quantum Queen and more — scored on verified live accounts, drawdown and strategy risk, not vendor backtests.
Read guide →Brokers for a Telegram Signal Copier: What Matters on MT5
A Telegram signal copier executes other people's signals with your risk – and runs into your broker's conditions: symbol names, execution speed, minimum lot for several targets, gold spreads, hedging. What matters and which reviewed brokers we recommend.
Read guide →Brokers for Drawdown Minimizer: Swap, Hedging and Lot Step on MT5
Drawdown Minimizer exists to stop old losing positions from paying swap night after night. Which broker conditions matter for it – MT5, hedging or netting, swap, volume step, commission, spread – and which reviewed brokers we recommend.
Read guide →Brokers for the Trade Panel Sextant: What Matters on MT5
A risk-based trade panel calculates with your broker's data. Which conditions matter – MT5, hedging or netting, commission, stops level, volume step, server time, swap – and which reviewed brokers we recommend.
Read guide →Brokers with Free VPS for EA Trading 2026: 18 Forex Brokers Compared
Which forex brokers give you a free VPS for MT4/MT5 Expert Advisors — and under what conditions? Deposit and volume thresholds for IC Markets, Pepperstone, Axi, Vantage, XM, RoboForex, Fusion Markets, BlackBull, IG, Admirals and more, plus when a paid VPS is the better deal.
Read guide →Daily Loss Limit: A Free Equity Lock for MetaTrader 5 – Every Setting Explained
Daily Loss Limit enforces a daily loss limit on any MT5 account: when equity reaches your line, it closes everything and locks the account until the next daily reset. Optional daily profit target. Free. How it works, every setting, and where its limits are.
Read guide →Drawdown Minimizer for MetaTrader 5: Paying Off Old Losers with Saved Profit
Drawdown Minimizer is an MT5 utility that never opens a trade. It saves the net realized profit of the whole account and uses it to close the oldest losing positions of the EAs you choose, slice by slice. How it works, what it costs you and how far it has been tested.
Read guide →EA portfolio management: correlation & combined drawdown
How to combine multiple Expert Advisors safely: correlation analysis, combined drawdown, capital allocation, and the mistakes that turn individual EA profits into portfolio losses.
Read guide →EA strategies explained: breakout, trend, scalper, grid, martingale
Five strategy types sit behind almost every Expert Advisor – animated on a simulated EURUSD chart. How they trade, where their risk really sits, and how to tell what you are buying when you look at a real EA.
Read guide →Economic News Filter: A Free Economic Calendar Guard for MetaTrader 5 – Every Setting Explained
News Filter reads the economic calendar built into MetaTrader 5 and guards the whole account around high-impact news: alerts, deleting pending orders, closing positions and a pause flag your own EAs can read. Free. What it does, every setting, and what it cannot do.
Read guide →Equity Curve Explained: How to Read an EA's Real Performance
What an equity curve is, how it differs from the balance line, and how to read the shape of an Expert Advisor's live results — the single chart that exposes grid risk, drawdown and whether an EA is really profitable.
Read guide →Every EA I run live: 44 robots, 49 accounts, real numbers
My entire EA portfolio, disclosed: 44 Expert Advisors on 49 real accounts with $75,196 of my own capital. Result and maximum floating loss per EA — including the seven that lost money. Not a top-10 list, the whole inventory.
Read guide →Forex Robot Reviews 2026: Do EAs Really Work? Real Live Results
Honest forex robot experiences from a live EA park: what works, what fails, what returns are realistic, and how to tell a legit Expert Advisor from a scam — real live data, not vendor backtests.
Read guide →Free MT5 Tools: News Filter, Daily Loss Guard and EA Statistics Compared
Three free MetaTrader 5 tools side by side: the Economic News Filter, Daily Loss Limit and Magic Stats. What each one solves, who it is for, its honest limits – plus which broker and which VPS they need.
Read guide →Getting started with algo trading — step by step
How to start algo trading in seven steps: set expectations and risk first, pick a broker, test on demo, find and judge an EA, set up a VPS and track your portfolio. Realistic returns are single-digit percent per month with drawdowns — not a get-rich-quick scheme.
Read guide →Gold X9 vs. The Gold Reaper: a similar trading pattern, clear differences and our live comparison
Gold X9 by Mr CapFree costs 70 dollars, The Gold Reaper by Profalgo 949. Our trading data shows a similar pattern for both: gold only, several sub-strategies with the same comment scheme, short holding times, often the same trading days. The differences lie in the risk and in the evidence: on our current account Gold X9 hit a 59.5% drawdown in its first week. We show the figures from our own accounts side by side.
Read guide →Grid & Martingale EAs: Understanding the Risks
How grid and martingale EAs work, why their equity curve looks dreamy — until it blows the account, when they are ever viable, and the risk controls that are non-negotiable.
Read guide →How to Backtest & Forward-Test an EA Properly
A step-by-step methodology for testing Expert Advisors honestly: tick data quality, realistic cost modelling, out-of-sample windows, and the walk-forward test that separates real edges from curve fits.
Read guide →How to Buy a Forex EA in 2026: Licences, Prices, Red Flags and Where to Buy
Buying an Expert Advisor without getting burned: what a forex EA costs, how MQL5 activations and rental licences work, which vendor claims are red flags, and how to verify a live track record before you pay.
Read guide →Investor password: what it is & is it safe?
What the MT4/MT5 investor password is, why it is read-only, whether it is safe to share, and how to use it to get your EA account analyzed – without ever exposing trading or withdrawal rights.
Read guide →LongRunner: the Daily Index Long EA for MT5, Explained in Full
LongRunner buys a stock index once a day at a fixed server time and sells it before the broker's daily rollover, so it pays no swap. How it trades, every input group, the set files, the risk and all the developer's backtests – the weak results included.
Read guide →Magic Stats: Free EA Statistics by Magic Number for MetaTrader 5 – Every Metric Explained
Magic Stats is a free MT5 indicator that rebuilds your deal history into trades and shows, per EA and magic number, trades, win rate, net profit, profit factor, drawdown and recovery factor – for any period, with CSV export. How it counts and where its limits are.
Read guide →MT4 & MT5 Portable Mode: Step-by-Step Setup – and Why Every EA Trader Should Use It
In portable mode, everything your MetaTrader needs – EAs, set files, profiles, logs – lives in a single folder instead of hidden away in AppData. How to set it up for MT4 and MT5, run several terminals cleanly side by side, and move to a new VPS in 20 minutes.
Read guide →MT4 vs MT5 for Algo Trading: What EA Developers Need to Know
MQL4 vs MQL5, netting vs hedging accounts, tick data quality, multi-asset support — a direct comparison for EA developers and algo traders.
Read guide →News filters for EAs: surviving high-impact events
Why market-moving news can destroy EA strategies, how to implement news filters in MT4/MT5, and which calendar sources are actually reliable.
Read guide →Passing a Prop-Firm Challenge with an EA: Rules, Risk and Setup
How to configure an Expert Advisor compliantly for FTMO and other prop firms: drawdown limits, lot sizing, news filters, and the most common disqualification traps.
Read guide →Position sizing & per-trade risk for EAs
Fixed lot, percentage risk, or Kelly criterion: how to calculate the correct lot size for Expert Advisors and which method makes sense when.
Read guide →Prop Firm Guard Plimsoll: Prop Firm Rules Monitored in MetaTrader 5 – Every Function Explained
Plimsoll knows the loss rules of FTMO, FundedNext, The5ers, FundingPips and E8 Markets – reset time, reference, trailing max loss – and closes and locks the account at a safety buffer before the firm's line. What it does, where its limits are and how far it has been tested.
Read guide →Prop Firms for Plimsoll: Which Firms the Prop Firm Guard Knows – and What to Watch per Firm
Plimsoll has built-in rule profiles for 16 programs of FTMO, FundedNext, The5ers, FundingPips and E8 Markets, plus CUSTOM for every other firm. Which values each profile uses, and what you should check at each firm before you use a guard there.
Read guide →Recovery EA RecoveryPilot for MetaTrader 5: Partial Recovery, Grid and Zone
RecoveryPilot is a recovery Expert Advisor for MetaTrader 5. Its main mode locks a losing trade, splits it into parts and pays them off with small trend-following recovery orders. Version 1.2 sets step, lot and order count per symbol. How it works, what the tests showed, and where the risk lies.
Read guide →Running LongRunner on a VPS: Times, Restart Safety and Setup
LongRunner trades at two fixed moments: it buys at 01:05 and sells at 23:50 server time. The terminal has to be online at both, and the close matters most. How to set it up on a VPS, what happens after a restart, why one chart per index, and why the VPS clock does not matter.
Read guide →Signal Copier Semaphore: Execute Telegram Signals in MetaTrader 5 – Every Function Explained
Semaphore executes signals from Telegram channels in MetaTrader 5 – with your risk instead of the channel's, with every follow-up such as break-even or partial close, and with a log that shows for each message what was read and what was done.
Read guide →Snapback Pro EA for MetaTrader 5: Stretch, Pullback, Linear Grid – Fully Explained
Snapback Pro EA waits until price runs far beyond the previous day's range, enters against that stretch on the first real pullback and works the trade as a linear grid until the whole basket can be closed in profit with a trailing stop. How it trades, every input, the set files by account size, the backtests and the risk – without the gloss.
Read guide →The 10 Best MQL5 Expert Advisors 2026
Our honest ranking of the 10 most-discussed MQL5 EAs of 2026 — real live data over vendor backtests, drawdown never hidden, and clear buy/avoid verdicts with zero hype.
Read guide →Trade Panel Sextant for MetaTrader 5: Every Function Explained
Sextant is a trade panel for MetaTrader 5: it sizes the position from your risk, places stop and target from chart lines, manages the trade and locks the account at a daily loss limit. Every function at a glance.
Read guide →Trading metrics explained: drawdown, profit factor, Sharpe & Sortino
What drawdown, profit factor, the Sharpe ratio and the Sortino ratio really mean, how to read them, and which values are realistic for EA accounts – with a real worked example.
Read guide →Trading Robot Comparison 2026: Which Robot Is the Best?
Trading robots compared: the types (trend, scalper, grid, martingale), how to measure quality, and which Expert Advisors lead our live tests — rated on verified accounts, not marketing.
Read guide →VPS for a Prop Firm Guard: Why Plimsoll Has to Run All Week – and Where a VPS Is Not Allowed
A prop firm guard only protects the account while the terminal runs. Losses, resets, news windows and the weekend close do not wait until you are at the computer. Which VPS fits Plimsoll, why the MQL5 VPS works – and why FundingPips forbids a VPS.
Read guide →VPS for a Telegram Signal Copier: Why Semaphore Needs a Windows Server
A signal arrives when the channel writes it – at night, at the weekend, while you are away. A Telegram signal copier therefore has to run around the clock. Why the MQL5 VPS is not enough, which Windows VPS fits and how to set it up.
Read guide →VPS for a Trade Panel: When Sextant Needs a Server
Hidden stops, break-even, partial close, trailing and the daily loss limit of a trade panel run in the terminal, not at the broker. What happens when it goes down, what the safety stop covers and which VPS is enough for a panel.
Read guide →VPS for Drawdown Minimizer: Running It 24/7 Next to Your EAs
Drawdown Minimizer works on the same account as your EAs and has to run around the clock next to them. Why it belongs on the same terminal, what happens when the terminal is offline, which VPS is enough and how to set it up.
Read guide →VPS for Expert Advisors: Why Every EA Trader Needs One
A VPS keeps your Expert Advisors running 24/5 with low latency and no dependency on your local machine. What matters and how to choose the right one.
Read guide →VPS for Snapback Pro EA: Managing Baskets Around the Clock
Snapback Pro EA manages open grid baskets on up to 20 pairs from one chart: it adds grid orders, trails the basket stop and closes poor entries with its drawdown methods. That only works while the terminal is running. Why a VPS belongs with it, what an outage means, which VPS is enough and how to set it up.
Read guide →What Is a Prop Firm? How Funded Trading Works — Explained for Algo Traders
A prop firm gives you a funded trading account after you pass a paid challenge and keeps a share of the profits. How the model works, what the rules mean, what it costs, whether EAs are allowed, and when a prop firm beats trading your own capital.
Read guide →What is an Expert Advisor? A beginner's guide
What Expert Advisors are, how they work on MT4/MT5, which types exist, and what to look for when buying or building one as a beginner.
Read guide →What Is Slippage? Causes, Impact, and How to Reduce It
Slippage determines the real-world performance of every EA and scalping strategy. What it is, why it happens, and how to reduce it systematically.
Read guide →What Makes a Good Forex EA? Evaluation Criteria & Red Flags
The metrics that separate a serious Expert Advisor from a marketing product: out-of-sample results, drawdown vs return, profit factor, trade frequency, robustness and the classic warning signs.
Read guide →Which Broker for LongRunner? What Matters and What We Tested
LongRunner's edge is small, so the broker decides more than usual: the index spread at the start and close time, a UTC+2/UTC+3 server, a hedging account and the symbol names. Which brokers we tested it on, and with what result – including the market that lost money at one of them.
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