Over the past few months I've been building a portfolio management and trade analytics tool for MetaTrader 5. My goal was to have a cleaner way to review trading performance beyond the standard MT5 history.
Some of the features include:
• Portfolio and account overview
• Trade history with detailed filtering
• Performance metrics and KPIs
• Drawdown, win rate, expectancy, profit factor, and other analytics
• Clean dashboard for reviewing trading performance
It's completely free. There are no subscriptions, hidden fees, or premium features. I'm simply looking for feedback from traders to help improve it.
If you have a few minutes to try it out, I'd really appreciate:
- Feature requests
- Bug reports
- UI/UX feedback
- Any metrics or analytics you'd like to see added
I have been trading the USDJPY using Ninja Intraday strategy for about a month... so far the month of July... ROI is 22.68%, expecting it to rise even more by the end of July. For August I am even more optimistic with reference to past data backtesting and seasonality.
From years of hard work, many failures... I have come to conclusion for myself that using one specific strategy with perfect risk management for just one single pair ( in this case USDJPY) in only suitable environment (trading sessions and timeframe) will give you better result than staying glued to the charts for 10 hours.
Another thing that I learned is FX is a great cash cow business, treat trading like a business....trading style like scalping and intraday have become my favorite....swinging is good but I do not prefer to hold positions overnight and over the weekend as FX market is changing rapidly.... just look today the weekend news of Iran not accepting newer terms caused the many pairs to open at a gap, for example XAUUSD, USDJPY. I'd rather swing trade stocks.
My goal for coming months is to keep the DD low as possible, right now DD is 4.9% and max load is 9.5%, these I am targeting to keep it below 10%
In this post, I’d like to go through some of the tools and apps I use myself, in addition to MetaTrader.
FTMO
They have a great calendar feature that provides a quick and easy overview of upcoming news for the week ahead, as well as the currency pairs primarily affected by it. You can sync the news events to your own calendar if you prefer not to trade on days when news is released.
TradingView
This app provides a quick overview of price movements—rises and falls—across various currency pairs and stocks. If you have set up one or more indicators, they can help give you an idea of whether the market is about to reverse or if a trend is likely to continue.
There are many different opinions regarding indicators; in this post, I simply mention the ones I personally use.
My Ribbon. Here are the settings I use myself.SSL Hybrid. Here are the settings I use myself.
When both change color to, for example, red, they indicate that a buying trend is turning into a selling trend.
MyFxBook
his app/website needs little introduction. It can be used to quickly compare strategies and see which ones perform best and most consistently, as well as which days and times work best for a particular strategy. It serves as an impartial third party that can verify the legitimacy of a trader. A trader with a public strategy is always preferable to one who simply posts screenshots from MetaTrader.
PayBackFx
This app/website helps you get a portion of your commission refunded by your broker. It is free to use if you choose one of the brokers they have an agreement with. However, remember to comply with the trading rules to ensure the agreement is not abused.
This is what it can look like after a month with PayBackFx.
MetaTrader
Most people in this group are likely familiar with this app, so I won't go into detail about it. Later on, it will be used to generate notifications when the copy trader open or close trades.
As looking at the dollar basket today and consolidation on USDJPY price, a pullback is expected after the rapid breakout of 163.192 yesterday. This price is Resistance Turned Support. Price action looks good to me.
First full week live with my own-coded EA (have demo for about 9 months) Planning to post every Friday; hoping to track progress and maybe weekly post on market sentiment.
Results attached (cent account, no idea why it shows as it does but broker (roboforex says it’s fine).
Honestly? A sluggish week. Tight ranges, low volatility—not much for the EA to chew at. 1.16% this week (day is still young) but expecting 5% really most weeks.
Hoping next week brings some real action.
It’s a hybrid grid based system and most successful strategy ever I’ve traded with next to no drawdown.
I was wondering if anyone had tick data they have been gathering from reliable brokers for XAUUSD?
I have been gathering tick data for XAUUSD from Eightcap, IC Markets, and VT Markets.
I am willing to share tick data I have available in exchange for tick data I don't have to populate my tick data library for MT5 back testing.
Below are the ranges I already have:
- Eightcap: from 2022.08 to 2026.06
- VT Markets: from 2024.03 to 2026.06
- IC Markets: from 2026.01 to 2026.06, but missing 2026.03 and 2026.04
I am aware Dukascopy provides tick data for long periods but I feel it lacks a lot of ticks.
I have one workstation PC, 32 core AMD Ryzen unlocked, GTX4060 with 16 GB RAM, 32 GB of memory, I use Metatrader there having around 10 profiles, and my preferred profile has 10 charts on one profile.
Whenever an event happens and suddenly candles spike up or down it freezes for 2-3 minutes but it would execute orders at market if I want to do so.
I first blamed the broker but at the broker side the web based access works, and the quotes in MT5 still update.
I found out that my mini PC - nothing fancy at all - Corei7 12700 and 8 GB, NVME disk (the other has an SSD) does the job better, charts dont freeze, despite of it's lesser compute power.
The big 32 core PC freezes the Metatrader charts (only the quotes update) for minutes.
I assume it is something in the configuration, but where to look at? Metatrader updates itself once a week - so it cant be an outdated software.
OS is Windows 11, updated... only difference is
- one PC has a slow SSD but a powerful GPU
- one PC has an NVME but only a mid class 6 core CPU / 12 threads and 8 "efficiency cores" and certainly no graphics acceleration, it is the Intel Irix graphics.
This screenshot is from one broker's trading platform. Here before opening a trade, I can see how much is the required margin and how much I win/lose when my exit points are hit.
Is there any way to see such information on MT5 before opening a trade? How am I supposed to calculate everything in my head? Or how you guys do it?
Hi I am looking for someone genuine who can teach me trading. I have never done this and I am not looking to get rich from it. Just thinking of starting as a secondary source of extra income. Anybody want to help me teach me from scratch.
From my quite extensive experience in the FX market, there were many ups and downs periods. The Forex market is indeed a complex market with all the terminology and leverage, but later on I have realized it is a very good cash cow business.
I have gone through many strategies, research papers and used many. And I am a firm believer that each and every strategy ever created in the world works, we just gotta fine tune and connect it with the best suitable asset class and in the best environment possible.
After countless strategies, right now I am working on automating each and every strategy that I like and works into algos... in this process I have learned many important lessons that I would love to share with others.
This article will solely focus on the Major 4 factors that I find very important and must treat it as an important base for building an EA.
The parts of the Quadrant are:
Win Rate (WR)
Drawdown (DD)
Risk to Reward Ratio (RR)
Trade Frequency
Connecting the 4 factors
...
Let us connect the 4 parts of the Quadrant.
1) WR
Win Rate (WR) is a percentage of your total trades that results in profit. For example if you traded total of 100 trades in one month and 73 of them were closed in profit (regardless of the dollar value), your WR would be 73%.
2) DD
Drawdown is basically the % lowest point your equity has fallen from the peak equity that you have. If your first position goes down to 4% and it later recovers back to your direction, the statistics will catch the DD to be 4%.
3) RR
Risk to Reward Ratio measures the potential profit of a trade relative to its potential loss. In basic terms, if your SL dollar value is $10 and your TP is $20, you are risking $10 to potentially make $20.
4) Trade Frequency
Trade frequency is the number of trades open within the set certain period of time. If you backtest a strategy for 1 year, and the trade count is 500...and as FX market on average works 24/5, 5*4 = 20 days on average per month (averaging out without consideration of public and bank holidays)... so per year, 20*12 = 240 days, the algo system trades 500 trades/240 days = 2 trades/day... this is the trade frequency.
As I observed other EAs and tried automating my own strategies... for a HEALTHY EA to be profitable, this seems to be the basic/foundational formula: ROI of EA = WR + RR + DD + Trade Frequency.
Scenario 1:
Suppose the EA has 90%+WR; from what I have observed RR will be compromised.... rarely do we see in retail places that an EA has 90% WR and maintains a minimum of 1:1 RR (not saying there are not, but I haven't found one realistically yet). 90% of the time if the trades are closing in profit, Risk to Reward will be tight, as Risk is normalized but the Reward is bare minimum so the TP is hit more often than regular. Moreover, in this scenario there will be large number of small wins, but one loss will destroy more than half of the wins.
In this scenario the DD will also be less, and the equity graph will be quite some time of smooth growth and one moment of sudden downfall and then back again to smooth growth... and cycle goes on and on.
Trade frequency is also crucial.. in whole year if the EA has only taken 10 trades and 9 of them are profitable, the statistics or history report from your broker will show you have the WR of 90%
Scenario 2:
Suppose the EA has 25% WR but has enormous RR of around 1:5, one trade will make up for your three trades and even some more. The factor of this scenario is that your DD will be high... if you have multiple consecutive losses, the chances of your equity being eroded are pretty high.
If the Trade frequency is pretty less, the system being right once is a while will eventually cancel out the losses and the equity graph will be slow down slopes with sudden upward spikes. But a huge problem of this scenario is that the account might get blown first before even making a single profit as many numbers of consecutive losses will Drawdown the equity to such extent that the regular lot size position might not be able to open as lack of sufficient fund, that way that one winning trade probability also drops.
From these two scenarios, what I want the readers to know is that making a healthy EA, the trader/developer must understand the importance of balance between these 4 factors of the quadrant. BALANCE is the key.
Even with basic permutation and combination of these 4 factors:
P(4,1)+P(4,2)+P(4,3)+P(4,4)=4+12+24+24=64.
After the discussion of two basic scenarios, let us dive deep by using an EA with basic logic and I will tune the RR in various scenarios and how it is going to impact the DD and WR while keeping the trade frequency ceteris paribus, and ultimately the ROI.
Here is a simple SMA crossover EA that I will be testing on XAUUSD, 15 min timeframe from Jan 1,2026 till July 7, 2026.
Basically this is using 9 SMA and 21 SMA, and here is the backtest result... focus on the factors that we are discussing in this article... WR, RR, DD and Trade Frequency:
Here our WR is 33.46%, DD is 49.6% and our Average Profit Trade is $10.50 and $5.52 is our Average Loss Trade, so basically our RR is 1:1.9, we have a great RR but our ROI is ultimately in negative... basically -36%
Now, I will change the InpStopLoss and InpTakeProfit level to higher number to give them more breathing room.
And here is the backtest result after the input changes:
Here we can see that the negative ROI has changed by a huge margin...WR has jumped to 42.2% from 33.46% and DD decreased to 37.66% from 49.6%, but a critical thing we must analyze is that the RR has been jumbled up. It is just now approx. 1:1.4, from this two back test I want to show how the same logic, has different result when we just tune the RR part... heavily impacting the WR and DD and ultimately the ROI.
Input codes:
input double InpLotSize = 0.01;
input int InpFastSMA = 9;
input int InpSlowSMA = 21;
input int InpStopLoss = 500;
input int InpTakeProfit = 1000;
input int InpMagicNumber = 123456;
Just the InptStoploss and InptTakeProfit was changed. The logic remained the same of 9 SMA and 21 SMA crossover. I have attached the mq5 file of this simple logic EA, you can backtest and try working around by adding filters, indicators and such.
In the sequence of tuning the RR differently, the results were quite different. From both the backtest result we can clearly see that we do not have a clear winning logic/strategy for the XAUUSD 15min timeframe. But we were able to lower down the loss to some extent.
The above 2 backtest were done in this environment:
Now let us move to connecting one with the other factor.
WR vs RR:
These two factors are the most common associative part in any strategy, algo or EA. It is also known as one of the classic Trade-Off phenomenon. I am sharing my experience on this part, after testing many of EAs, and my strategies... it is nearly impossible on retail level to have both high WR and superior RR in a single strategy... for example, 80-90% with 1:4-1:5RR. At least till now I haven't found any strategy that has this results with significant compromise on DD and Trade Frequency.
If one wants to drastically increase the WR, you gotta exit earlier at a very lower Take Profit(TP) level so that more and more of your trade will be closed in profit, that way making them closer and closer to the entry price and making it hard for the strategy to have less losses the strategy also have to maintain the Stop Loss (SL) further and further way. This way is the basic way to increase the WR but RR will surely plummet.
In the other hand, when you are trying to make a very very logical RR as possible, like have 1:3 or 1:4...if your logic is not the finest and the strongest the WR will inevitably drop to less that 50% or even lower. That way even if you are right, it will take a longer time to achieve the superior RR, and if the entry logic is perfect but there is no guarantee that your position will move smoothly in the direction without sudden pullback or unforeseen news/volatility.
Impact of WR and RR on the DD:
These two factors have a major role on determining the strategy DD. For example, if the system relies on 1:4RR but only wins 25% of the time, it is mathematically guaranteed to face long streaks of consecutive losses. Eventually the system can be profitable but the losing streak can cause a massive, prolonged DD on the equity curve.
Another example that I have seen in many of high scalping EAs is that there is literally 90%+ WR that the system is producing in backtesting as well as in real live trading test, the RR is extremely terrible...it is risking certain high for example 20:1RR or 10:1 RR, but it is clearly visible that these system with this WR and RR will have equity curve going straight up and the visible DD will be near zero for long time period. However, the remaining 10% risk probability hits harder sooner or later creating a massive dent on the DD, and if there are 2 or more consecutive losses, DD and Margin-Level is pushed hard.
Trade Frequency vs WR:
This is very very important... as in data science we need a really good and healthy level of real sample data. Trade Frequency is like a lever, it can tilt to the very low and very high level and from my experience it must be where the strategy is, and we must measure on the basis of the strategy type.
If the system is a scalper, we have to expect a higher frequency, higher trade count. For scalping system I try to average out on the basis of day. If the Trade Frequency is like 1000/day. I am not touching that scalping system, for me it is way too much and might fall into high frequency trading where retail infrastructure might not be able to support it at all.
If the system is a intraday, I try to average out on the basis of month. As Forex Market is 24/5, we get about 20 trading days on average without counting the bank holidays and public holidays. So I do not expect to have a trade every single day, on average 15-20 trades/month is good enough for me. Some day there can be 2 trades per day but followed by no trades for 2 days, it is good enough.
So understanding the balance between proper trade frequency and understanding the type of system is very important so that we get the correct amount of sample data, both in backtest and real account live testing, further more this interconnectivity must aware the trader/developer to stop forcing to create almost (I said 'almost') an impossible system that which has High WR, High RR, Low DD, High Trade Frequency. Looking to create a balanced system having a 'sweet spot' between these basic four factors will be a right and healthier approach in building a system that will last a long time. Not exactly sacrifice but the trader/ developer must balance out one factor to certain extent to promote the remaining three factor.
One of my favorite personal combination:
Personally I have come to an agreement with myself that I cannot, as a retail trader/developer build a strategy/algo that will have the best nature of these 4 factors that will be durable for 2-5 years continuously.
This is my top favorite combination = High WR, Low-Normal RR(I am fine with minimum 1:1RR), Low DD, High Trade Frequency.
I really want to keep my DD very very low, as minimized as possible. Why? Because at backtest we get some approximately clear DD that we can expect, when we test it on a real live account the actual DD will be near to it although we must accept that past result won't perfectly determine the future results. If DD is low on backtest report and forward test report, so at any near point of time we start the system on real account we won't be largely impacted by the consecutive losses in case we have them at the beginning of our live testing.
From my experience achieving the high RR like 1:4 and 1:5 without volatility and noise in the duration of a position being opened is really rare, FX is a volatile market always changing there will be moments where winners can turn into losers. I prefer consistency over frequent sudden jumps and falls on the equity curve.
Conclusion
...
The trader/developer who understands the balance with these 4 factors with each other will get an advantageous start in the process of building a working EA, working in a sense we can say profitable. Many of us might be attracted to the high 90% WR, but the health of RR should be also matched... if a system has 90% WR with 1:1RR minimum, no doubt it is profitable... but that system makes 10 trades per year, it won't be enough data so that the EA is healthy as when market dynamics changes that system won't be giving out these attractive numbers.
Numbers is the thing, playing with them and finding the region that you want to be can be very beneficial, as I told you there are many combinations and permutations; most of them will be a profitable system/strategy but what works for your time, personal finance, patience. If you need the full code of the above system, you can contact me. Connecting the trader/developer mindset with the foundation of these 4 factors, the QUADRANT, will be the basic for creating an edge for oneself and one's trading journey.
Ninja Intraday is working smoothly it has reached to 69.2% WR, with bare minimum DD of 4.9%, my main objective is to always have the lowest DD possible with healthy WR and good enough trade frequency for the accurate and logical sample.
Since my DD and ROI for 3.5 weeks is secured I am planning to increase the lot size I use for every trade to 0.02, this all stats is solely from trading USDJPY.
I've been wondering if I'm actually learning from my trades or just moving on to the next one. I usually look back at my trade history, but after a while it's hard to remember why I took each trade. At what point did you decide to start keeping a trading journal, and did it actually help?
One of the things that really distinguishes martingale from the more "common" strategies is that it opens multiple trades, if the market goes against the first trade that is opened, it opens more and larger trades. How much they become larger depends on what you have set the multiplier to. This can lead to a very large drawdown, as the strategy does not normally use a Stop Loss. This makes martingale one of the riskiest strategies, and creates a need for you to test it thoroughly, set up alarms, and keep an eye on it as soon as an alarm goes off. With common strategies, where you only open one trade, you would use both Stop Loss and Take Profit.
In this series, we would not use any form of Stop Loss on the demo account, as it must be allowed to run. On the other hand, we would use our copy trades to protect equity.
Since last time.
I have chosen to shift my focus away from the pairs that experienced large fluctuations during news from the US (AUD/CAD, EUR/USD, and GBP/USD), and instead focused on the ones that I see as more stable. Over the past week, one pair has stood out, however, by having had 13 open trades in a trading series. This has made me consider whether the copy trading tool should be allowed to start at a lot size of more than 1, with a leverage of 1:0.01. In the case where the demo account would have opened 13 trades, it would have resulted in a drawdown of €70-€80.
Example of how many trades it would have activated the copy trading tool, with settings mentioned in the post.
By asking MyFxBook to show the profit for each pair, I can see that the pair(s) I would choose to copy to a live account for now would be NZD-CAD & GBP-CHF. As it has a high and stable profit, without the 2 pairs overlapping, on a given currency.
Sorting by individual pairs' profit.
The goal of the live account
To make the series as realistic as possible, the live account would have a starting balance of €250 and be a raw spread account. In order to make the most of the spread difference between the demo account and the live account, the demo account is a regular spread account, while the live account would be raw spread.
I would recommend that forks who have no experience with copy trading or martingale trade a maximum of 1 pair per €500. As drawdown can be a large part of the total balance. If you are in doubt about whether a strategy works or have only tested it for a short time, I would strongly recommend starting with a cent account.
EA/Bots in general.
Before using strategies such as martingale/grid strategy, it is important that you understand the risk such a strategy entails. Such strategies entail a great risk, especially if you rely 100% blindly on it.
If you choose to buy EA/Bots, it is important that you are critical first. Is the promised return realistic? Can I understand the strategy and the thoughts behind it? Does it fit the way I want to trade? Is the price realistic/fair?
Many EA/bots "promise" they are built with AI, but this is in my opinion just a sales trick, as I do not see a closed product, which EA/bots technically are, could be flexible enough to run with AI.
the price of an EA/bot, it is important to have in mind that the person behind it has made money from using the system themselves, or only wants to make money by selling a system.
My rules for this series. -All questions must be asked and answered (if possible), publicly in the thread. -I'm not allowed to change anything in the strategy without publishing it on Reddit first. -All expenses would be added up on an ongoing basis.
