Lust: Closing My EA's Trades Because I Couldn't Leave Them Alone
14 October 2026, 20:48
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This is the second post in my series on the seven trading sins behind my blown accounts. The first was Wrath, the revenge trade. This one only exists once you have an EA you trust. Or think you trust.
What it looked like
I finally had a rule-based EA that tested well. Then it hit a losing run, the kind it had been through many times in the backtest, and I couldn't sit still. I closed a trade early. Then another. Sometimes to cut a loss short, sometimes to grab a profit before it turned.
Every time, it felt like good judgement. Looking back, I was overriding a system I had tested carefully, based on a feeling I had for a few minutes.
Why it costs so much
A backtest assumes every trade runs to its stop or its target. The moment you close trades by hand, you are no longer running the system you tested.
A simple example: a strategy that risks 1 to make 2 and wins 40% of the time makes about +0.2R per trade. Now say you close half of the winners early at +1R because you got nervous. The average win drops to 1.5R, and the same strategy now makes 0.4 × 1.5 − 0.6 = zero. Same entries, same stops, no edge left.
Losing runs are also longer than they feel. A strategy that wins about half its trades will, more often than not, see six losses in a row somewhere in a hundred trades. That run is normal. Stepping in during it is how a normal run turns into a broken system.
What helps
1. Know your EA's normal losing run before it goes live. Check the longest run of losses in its backtest and expect to see it again.
2. Decide in advance what would make you stop the EA, for example a drawdown well beyond what it showed in testing. Then it is a rule, not a mood.
3. Watch less. Checking every tick is how you end up touching the button.
4. If you really want out, switch the EA off completely. Picking off individual trades is the worst of both worlds: neither the system nor your own plan.
How Seven Sins handles it
Lust is the sin I built Seven Sins for. When you close a trade by hand that one of your EAs opened, from your PC, phone or web terminal, a card appears on your charts. It names the EA, shows what the trade closed at, and adds a one-liner such as "It was behaving exactly as tested." Your clean-day streak goes back to zero.
It doesn't stop you closing the trade. It just makes sure the decision is a conscious one, and leaves a record of how often you make it.
Your turn
Do you leave your EAs alone during a losing run, or do you step in? Be honest. I stepped in for years.
Seven Sins is free on the MQL5 Market:
Two-minute setup guide: https://www.mql5.com/en/blogs/post/777187
Part one of the series, Wrath: https://www.mql5.com/en/blogs/post/777337
Trading involves risk. Seven Sins does not trade and does not promise any change in results; it reminds you of the rules you set yourself.
