Thousands of percent in one year. A green curve going straight up. Before you subscribe to any signal - including mine, one day - here is the checklist I run. It takes about a minute. I am not accusing anyone. This is
only arithmetic.
- Initial deposit. Growth in percent is calculated from the starting balance. An account that starts with 10 USD and earns 300 USD shows a growth number with four digits. Look at the profit in money, not in percent.
- Age. Less than one year tells you about the weather. It does not tell you about the climate.
- Sharpe ratio. Below 0.5, the curve is mostly luck and leverage. Many signals at the top of the list sit near 0.1.
- Equity drawdown against balance drawdown. Balance counts closed trades only. Equity also counts open ones. If the equity number is much worse than the balance number, losing positions stayed open for a long time. That is the fingerprint of adding to losers.
- Average holding time. If a gold signal holds trades for minutes or for one hour, the profit lives inside the spread. When you copy it, you will pay slippage that the provider never paid.
- The warning boxes on the page. MQL5 shows them for a reason. Read them.
- How many other signals the same author publishes. If you buy ten lottery tickets, one of them will look brilliant. The bad ones get deleted quietly.
- Deposits and withdrawals. If the operator takes the profit out and keeps the account small, that tells you how much he trusts tomorrow.
None of these points proves that a signal is a fraud. Real money can stand behind strange numbers. These checks answer a different question: will this picture still work when it is copied at your size, with your broker, next year? Most spectacular curves will not. A slow curve with boring statistics and readable risk is not exciting. That is exactly why I like it.
