Why the Strategy Tester Shows Only One Fifth of a Multi-Market EA (and How to Test One Properly)

This is the single most common support question we get about our five-market portfolio EA, and it is not a bug in the EA. It is how the MetaTrader Strategy Tester works.

A tester pass is attached to one chart symbol. An EA that trades five markets from a single chart can only place trades in the tester for the leg whose symbol you selected. So a tester run shows one fifth of the system, not the system. If you attach it to BTCUSD you are verifying the Bitcoin leg; if you attach it to USDJPY you are verifying that leg. Neither run shows the diversification, which is the whole point of a portfolio.

Our portfolio EA reads USDJPY H1. On any other symbol or timeframe it will simply place no trades — deliberately, so it cannot act on a timeframe it was not validated for. If you are trialling the free demo and see an empty report, set the tester to USDJPY H1 first. An EA that opens nothing is far more often mis-attached than broken.

Verify each leg separately on its own symbol, then combine the results. That is arithmetic, not another fit, and it is exactly how we produce our published portfolio figures. The full five-market behaviour only appears on a live or demo account where all five symbols exist in Market Watch; the EA selects every listed symbol your broker offers, skips missing ones safely, and auto-detects broker symbol suffixes such as m, c or .xxx.

A vendor could show you a single-leg tester run and let you assume it is the whole system. The number would be real and the impression false. We would rather tell you which fifth you are looking at.

The EA, with the per-leg and combined measurements published side by side: https://www.mql5.com/en/market/product/182751

All products and free utilities: https://www.mql5.com/en/users/app.develop.sk/seller