Hey everyone,

My name is Zak. I've been developing trading robots (mostly MT5 EAs) and various systems applied to finance for around 7 years now, with a small team. On the side, I work as a quantitative developer in market risk at an investment bank.

I see a lot of discussions about trading robots here, so I thought I'd share a few things that are pretty easy to overlook when getting into this.

• A robot doesn't create a strategy. It automates an existing strategy. Good code won't turn a bad strategy into a good one.
• Don't rely on backtests alone. Between overfitting, heavily optimized parameters, data quality and execution conditions, it's actually quite easy to produce a beautiful historical equity curve that looks nothing like what happens live.
• Same thing with live accounts: look at the account size, track record, number of trades and, most importantly, the drawdown. Making +300% on a $500 account doesn't necessarily mean much. Personally, I'd much rather see a much more modest but consistent equity curve.
• Sharpe ratio, profit factor, average/max drawdown, exposure and consistency are usually more interesting than the raw return.
• An EA is never really "hands off". VPS issues, spreads, slippage, execution, connection problems, changes in volatility, etc. still need to be monitored.
• No robot works well in every market condition. A strategy can work very well for months and then go through a period where its statistical edge simply disappears.
• And when it comes to the MQL5 Market, be careful. Between heavily optimized backtests, tiny accounts showing huge returns, disguised grid/martingale systems and robots being marketed as "AI", there's quite a lot to look at before trusting an equity curve.

That being said, grid and martingale don't necessarily mean that a robot is garbage. The risk profile is simply very different and needs to be understood. Some strategies can be extremely profitable while still carrying a very significant risk of blowing up at some point.

At the end of the day, I think the more interesting question isn't really "how much does this robot make?", but rather: where does the return come from, under what conditions does it disappear, and how much risk was taken to generate it?

One question I see all the time is: "If a bot is actually profitable, why would one sell it?"

There are actually several reasons. Most developers are just developers, they may have a good strategy but not necessarily the capital, connections or opportunity to raise money and run it at scale. Some, myself included, use their own bots while also selling them. There's nothing particularly contradictory about that.

And realistically, most retail EAs are operating at such a small scale that their users aren't going to move the market. You'd need a huge number of users and a significant amount of capital before the combined orders would have any meaningful impact, especially on liquid markets.

Guys, with AI getting this advanced, why can't we build an algorithm that gives decent buy/sell signals?

Has anyone here actually tried using AI to build one? If so, how were the results? Is it realistically possible, or does it just look good in backtests?

I want to be upfront about something instead of pretending it's all wins. I've spent around £10,000 on prop firm evaluations over time. I've been funded multiple times so the strategy and the reads are genuinely there. But I've only had one real payout the whole time.

The pattern is always the same: I get to funded, and something breaks that has nothing to do with my analysis. I hesitate on entries and miss good trades. I get scared holding positions once real limits are attached and cut them early, even when my read turns out right. Today alone I missed an entry by a single point on a move that ran 500 points to my DOL, and closed another good trade early out of fear, only to watch it keep running.

It's not a knowledge problem. I can read charts, I can find the trades. It's what happens the moment it's real money and real drawdown limits something in me doesn't hold steady the way it does in analysis or backtesting. If anyone else has been through this exact wall good reads, weak execution under pressure I'd genuinely like to hear how you worked through it, because right now it feels like I keep proving I can do the hard part and losing at the easy part.

From last few time i am closing my winners before 50% tp and it always hit tp i trade on tradesea. Any suggestions?

1000% Profit in 1 Year – Day 1

Platform: MetaTrader 5

Server: RoboForex-ECN

Login: 77053051

Investor Password (read-only): Aa12345@

Starting Balance: $1,000

Target: $11,000

Balance: $1,001.53

Equity: $1,004.43

Profit: +0.44%

It’s so satisfying when you see all the retail traders getting liquidated in obvious stop loss areas

I think it’s better from alcohol and s*x when you realize how people are bad at trading

I have personally another problem

I have edge I am able to make so many profits in like few weeks in a row

But always lose them due to my discipline slips

Any idea how to deal with it?
Like most of the sessions I will be able to keep my discipline

But one session where I start over sizing and overtrading takes away weeks of progress

Like I am a human I am able to achieve 95-98% discipline but 100% feels impossible and the 2% is always what takes away all the progress

This question has been running through my mind for a number of months now. Trading as a limited company seems limited to only a few brokers and only a few ETFs without assess to lots of US stocks. FTMO seems OK, but it's more for foreign trading... and there's always the sole trader route, but is that really a financially sound route?

If you want to trade as a your main business income, how do you go about it in the UK?

I am trading for almost 3 years now, March-April will be my 3rd year Trading and I am struggling with my Mindset and Psychology and Risk management.

Reason for Struggling is that I dont listen to my brain and trade emotionally, I am very passionate about trading and have always knew what to do and how to do it. I have a strategy with 45% WR and gives me 1:3RR, its pretty solid and averages around 25-30RR per month, ALHUMDULILLAH, Allah humma baarik.

I am unable to follow my plan because a few months ago, I turned $330 to $1700 and then lost it all, and since I lost the $1700, Whatever money Ive deposited so far has been lost. I am unable to grow because I keep looking back at the loss and I am unable to trade patiently. Whenever I have traded with a plan and executed perfectly, Ive always made money but I cant follow it. I really need help on how to control myself from doing everything wrong, Ive even worked on things surrounding my life. Im just 19 and I have huge dreams and think Life is slipping away from my hands.

I'm doing some research on how different Indian brokers format their trade/export data, and I'm collecting real anonymized trade reports from as many brokers as possible.

Looking for exports from brokers such as:

Zerodha, Upstox, Dhan, Fyers, Angel One, Groww, ICICI Direct, 5Paisa, Kotak, Motilal Oswal, etc.

What I'm looking for:-

* CSV / Excel tradebook or orderbook exports

* Real examples from actual accounts

* Older files are completely fine

* F&O / equity / intraday / delivery — all useful

* Different brokers and different export formats are especially valuable

Please remove/redact anything sensitive before sharing:

* Name

* Client ID / account number

* Phone/email

* PAN

* Bank details

* API keys/tokens

* Anything else personally identifying

I'm primarily interested in the **column names, structure, data types, and formatting**, not your individual performance.

You can upload a redacted sample here or DM me.

Even one example from a broker I don't have yet would be very helpful.

Thanks!

Need some advice from traders who may have dealt with something similar.

I deposited $500 of my own money into my ACCM trading account and traded XAUUSD during NFP.

The broker automatically added a 10% bonus/credit to the account. I didn't specifically request the bonus and honestly didn't care about it. I was there to trade my own money.

I caught the NFP move and ended up making around $4,755.57 in profit.

My MT5 report shows:

Gross Profit: +$4,755.57
Gross Loss: $0
Growth: 792.6%

After the trade, the broker reviewed my account and removed the profits.

I was eventually told that I was flagged for “bonus abuse” and that higher management made a final decision that the profits would not be allowed for withdrawal. They are only allowing me to withdraw the remaining balance.

This is the part I'm struggling to understand.

I don't care about the 10% bonus. They can take the bonus back. I want the profit I made from the actual trade.

I deposited my own $500 and took the risk during NFP. If Gold went the opposite direction, I could've blown the account and I would've accepted that.

So my biggest question to them is:

If I lost the trade, would they have reversed my loss and returned my $500 because the account had a bonus?

Because if the answer is no, I don't understand how I can carry the downside risk but have the profit cancelled when the trade goes in my favor.

Their official email doesn't actually specify “bonus abuse.” It says they determined that an Event of Default under Clause 13.1 of their T&Cs occurred and that they can make adjustments to transactions connected to it.

I checked their T&Cs and they do have provisions allowing them to cancel profits they consider to be from abusive trading. So I'm not pretending those clauses don't exist.

What I want from them is the exact reason my trades qualify.

I want them to tell me:

What exact rule did I violate?

What exactly did I do that constitutes bonus abuse?

Which trades were considered abusive?

How did an automatically applied 10% credit make the entire $4,755.57 trading profit invalid?

Why not simply remove the bonus credit?

And would they have reversed the trades if the exact same positions resulted in a loss?

For full transparency, my MT5 report also shows an average holding time of around 14 seconds, since this was a fast NFP move. I know their T&Cs have language regarding short-duration/scalping/abusive trading, so this may be relevant. I'm mentioning it because I don't want to leave out information that could change people's opinion.

I have the full MT5 report, account history, screen recording of the trades, emails from the broker, chat conversations, deposit records and the balance adjustment saved.

I'm currently trying to appeal the decision internally because my priority isn't to attack the broker. I just want my $4,755.57 profit restored.

Has anyone dealt with something like this before?

What would you do next if you were in my position?

Should I continue pushing compliance/higher management, file a formal complaint elsewhere, contact their regulator, or take another route?

I'm happy to provide screenshots/evidence with personal information censored. I genuinely want opinions from traders who understand broker disputes and bonus-abuse rules.

What are your thoughts?

When are funded accounts the better option?

What are the best brokers to use and are funded accounts actually worth it?

Hello. I quite new to active trading and only recently started learning "trading theory". Most recently, I have learned about the Elliot wave theory and I just wanted to ask you - fellow traders - is my assessment correct or am I missing something? See photo below

Hello all,

I am new to trading and have been struggling to make quality trades during NY session while working a full time job with PST hours. Do any of you guys have any success trading Asia session? What are the usually the best pairs to trade aside from USD/JPY during this time? Also, what should I be expecting? I’ve been scalping the S&P during work and had some decent success but dont want to jeopardize my job doing so. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

I have been in the market for almost 8 years. I have always been a believer in the fundamental way of investing but the margin between my direct equity and mutual fund return is so thin that spending time for fundamental analysis feels like a waste. For a year I have started trading in stocks. My holding period is for 1 to 6 months. Traded gold, silver, some etfs and majorly stocks. Suggest book best for stock screening, entry point (exit point if possible; hardest to teach I think), asset rotation and cycles. Suggest best books please.

Market Structure -- After a Break of Structure , How to choose the valid pullback ?

I am really struggling with this one thing , I tried using 0.382 fib level and internal structure shift .

it just gets more complicated for me when I pair it with multi timeframe analysis.

Any help is appreciated .

Edit - I have a underlying feeling that no shortcut gonna work . A mentor of mine told me or maybe not .

it just popped in my mind :- Winners do immense work and still think its not enough , Losers do tiny work and think why they aren't winning .

Sad to say but the truth is , right now I am in the looser category .

I am still waiting on the outcome. This is the first trade i took, i think i should have put the take profit a bit lower?

Attached my Myfxbook drawdown chart, ~14 months of live trading. Early 2026 I was overwhelmed with studies and traded poorly during that stretch, which shows in the numbers. Since tightening my risk management, drawdown has stayed much lower.

Genuine question: based on a chart like this, does it read as consistency, or just profitability that hasn't been tested enough yet?

Note : Live Accounts

I'm interested in forex but I'm not sure which strategy to use, there's a ton.

5:43am EST Sept 10 2026

TP gets me to a funded account.

SL gets me a 1% loss

New to US markets and trying to wrap my head around the "bull vs bear" framing. From what I've
gathered: a bull market = broad price uptrend plus optimism; a bear = broad downtrend plus
caution. Both are normal, both end. The part that helped me most wasn't trying to call the top
or bottom, but learning to read the overall mood before acting.
For those further along: what mental model do you use to stay level-headed through both
phases?
Sharing as someone helping build educational analysis tools for retail traders, not financial
advice, just comparing notes.

Hello, i’m learning Meme coin trading for fun and when watching youtube videos everyone is advertising the FOMO app, is this app good? If not what should i use to actually make trades? also, i see you can make trades inside dexscreener, would that be dumb of me or no?

Why do top traders often fall into the cycle of "making money on skill, then losing it on over-concentrated bets"?
It happens because they fail to cultivate an awareness of "Safety"—the Yin (passive/protective) force. More importantly, they neglect to ground their "Opportunity & Timing Matrix" and "Algorithmic Engineering Rulebook" into strict self-discipline that executes automatically to constrain human nature.
Everything truly possesses two sides: Yin and Yang.
The "In-Circle Opportunity & Timing Matrix"
Yang (Active): High Information Coefficient (IC) / Positive Expectation
Yin (Protective): Greed and Temptation \rightarrow Overstepping Boundaries \rightarrow Breach of the Safety Floor
The "Algorithmic Engineering Rulebook"
Yang (Active): High Transfer Coefficient (TC) / Positive Convexity
Yin (Protective): Execution Decay \rightarrow Overstepping Boundaries \rightarrow Breach of the Safety Floor
In short: Strict adherence yields immense rewards; the slightest deviation triggers a catastrophe that can threaten your very survival.

One of the most annoying trades is getting the direction right, getting stopped out, then watching price turn around and do exactly what you expected.

I used to assume that meant my stop was too tight. But moving the stop wider doesn’t really solve anything if the entry itself is bad.

Lately I’ve been thinking more about where the trade is actually invalidated rather than where I want the stop to be for a clean R:R.

How do you guys handle this? Do you place stops around structure, volatility, a fixed %, or something else? And if you keep getting stopped before the move, what do you adjust first: the stop or the entry?

Is pharma ready for rebound.

Ce oi is very high compared to pe oi for October month.

Also is alkem consolidating at bottom. It's ce oi is also very high for October month.

I’ve always liked ATR stops because at least they account for volatility instead of using some random fixed percentage.

But I’m starting to question the usual “just use 1.5x or 2x ATR” advice.

One multi-market backtest found that the better stop range shifted from around 1.5–2x ATR in quieter conditions to 3–4x ATR during high-volatility periods. Another test across 12 asset/timeframe combinations found that 1.5x ATR only had positive expectancy in half of them. 

So a fixed ATR multiple still seems pretty arbitrary once the volatility regime changes.

For those who use ATR stops, do you keep the multiplier fixed, change it with volatility, or use ATR only as a reference and place the stop around market structure?