The Check That Matters More Than Any Profit Number
Markets Are Closed Over The Weekend. It's A Good Time To Compare The Worst Stretch In A Backtest With What A Live Account Is Doing Right Now.
Gold is closed until Sunday evening, which makes the weekend the right time for homework instead of watching charts. Here is the single most useful check you can run on any EA, and it takes about half an hour.
Step One: Find The Worst Stretch In The Test
Download the free demo and run it in the MetaTrader 5 Strategy Tester on your broker's gold symbol, M1 timeframe, over a long date range that includes volatile periods and not just calm ones. When it finishes, ignore the profit number and write down three things: the maximum drawdown, the largest losing trade, and the longest run of consecutive losses. Those three numbers describe the worst the test produced.
Step Two: Look At The Live Account
Now open a live signal, Nova 007 or Nova 008, and look at its current drawdown and how many losing trades it has had in a row. Both accounts are in a losing stretch right now, so this is a fair moment to look.
Step Three: Compare Them
If the live drawdown sits inside the range the test showed, the account is going through the kind of stretch the logic is known to produce, which is ordinary variance. If it's well outside that range, that's a real warning, and anyone considering the EA should take it seriously. Either result teaches you more than any headline number could.
One Honest Caveat
A backtest is a simulation. Live trading brings real spreads, slippage, and fills that don't match history exactly, so live drawdowns can run deeper than tested ones. That's another reason to size small and only trade money you can afford to lose, whichever way the comparison comes out.
See The Funded Account (Nova 007)
