The First 30 Days With a New EA: What to Measure and What to Ignore

The first month is where most EA purchases go wrong, and almost none of it is about the strategy. It is about not having decided, in advance, what you are looking at. Here is what to do in the first thirty days so that whatever happens, you learn something from it.

Attach it on demo at the exact settings you intend to use later. You are checking four things and none of them is profit: does it survive a terminal restart, does it reconnect after the weekend, does the symbol name match your broker's suffix, and does the log show it evaluating rather than sitting silent. An EA that cannot get through a weekend on demo will not get through one on real money.

From the product page, note the expected trade frequency, the typical holding time, and the stated worst drawdown. Put them somewhere you will see them. In three weeks you will be tempted to explain away whatever you observe; a number you wrote down before you had an opinion is the only defence against that.

Count the trades. Check the holding times. Look at whether it trades in the session it claims. This is the whole test. Your account will be up or down by an amount that means nothing at this sample size, and the temptation is to judge the EA on that number. Ignore it. Judge it on whether it behaves like the thing you were sold.

You will end the month in one of three states. Behaves as described and is profitable: fine, but you still know very little, and the sample is too short to conclude anything. Behaves as described and is down: this is normal and expected, and it is the case people wrongly abandon. Does not behave as described: this is the only real finding, and it does not matter whether you are up or down. A mismatch in trade count or session is a reason to stop and ask the seller. A loss inside the described range is not.

Every adjustment resets your sample to zero and destroys the comparison you were building. If you widen the stop after a losing week, you no longer know what the EA does — you know what your reaction to a losing week does. Keep a change log if you must change something later, but the first month should be untouched.

When you move to a funded account, change one thing only: the lot. Same symbol, same session, same parameters, smaller size. If real results then diverge from demo, you have isolated the cause to execution — spread, slippage, fills — which is exactly what a demo month cannot tell you and precisely what you needed to find out.

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