Drawdown Minimizer – complete guide: savings book, slices, every setting (with video)

Drawdown Minimizer is a utility for MetaTrader 5. It saves the net realized profit of your account and uses it to close the oldest losing positions of the EAs you select – slice by slice, oldest first. It never opens a trade. Product page: Drawdown Minimizer MT5

Watch the 3-minute explainer first (video above) – it shows the setup in MT5, the panel and how slices are closed.

Why this tool exists

A grid EA that got stuck in drawdown keeps its old positions open for months. They do not come back, and every night they pay swap. At the same time, your other EAs (and the grid EA itself, whenever a basket hits its target) keep booking profits that simply sit on the balance. Drawdown Minimizer connects the two: profits pay off old losers.

1. The savings book

• Saved = Save % × net result of all trades closed in the account since the start (profit minus loss, including swap, commission and fees). Every EA counts, manual trades too, and also the target EA itself.
• Spent = the realized loss of all closes made by Drawdown Minimizer.
• Available = Saved − Spent, optionally capped by Max spend per day.
• Deposits, withdrawals, bonus and credit do not count. A losing trade lowers the book.
• The book is always rebuilt from the deal history. A restart, a VPS move or a crash changes nothing. Only the start time is stored.
• Counting starts when you start it. To include older profits, set Start counting from (for example 2026.06.01) and limit Max spend per day.

2. How it reduces

1. Candidates: open positions with a magic number from Magic numbers to reduce that are in loss (including swap and commission). Winners are never touched, and neither are positions of other magic numbers.
2. Order: the oldest first. It is reduced completely before the next one is touched.
3. Slices: as soon as Available pays for at least one lot step (for example 0.01), exactly that much is closed. If less than Close fully if rest below would remain, the whole rest is closed once it is paid for. Close mode = Whole closes complete positions only.
4. Pace: at most one close per Min seconds between closes. A position is skipped only if its symbol is not tradable, the spread is above your limit, or closing failed three times.

3. What it does – and what it does not

Closing a loser with saved profit does not change your equity: a floating loss becomes a realized one, and the balance grows more slowly. What changes is the risk – less open volume, less margin, less swap, and a smaller chance that an old basket drags the account deeper. The price: if the market would have come back, that way back is gone for the closed slices.

4. Setup

1. Buy or rent Drawdown Minimizer in the terminal (tab Market). It appears in the Navigator under Expert Advisors › Market.
2. Find the magic number of your grid EA: tab Trade, right-click the column header, enable the Magic column.
3. Open a quiet chart (for example EURUSD H1) – not the chart of your grid EA – and drag Drawdown Minimizer onto it. One instance per account. Two instances with the same tool magic would spend the same book twice.
4. Enter the magic number(s) under Magic numbers to reduce. Leave Dry run = true. Tab Common: allow Algo Trading. OK.

5. Every setting

• Save % of net account profit (100) – share of the net profit that goes into the book
• Start counting from (empty) – empty = now; a date makes older profits count
• Max spend per day (0) – 0 = no limit; slows the reduction, useful with a backdated start
• Magic numbers to reduce (empty) – required, for example 123456,123457
• Symbols to reduce (empty) – empty = all symbols
• Min position age (days) (0) – younger positions are never touched
• Start when oldest position ≥ days (0) – trigger, 0 = off
• Start when account DD ≥ % (0) – trigger, 0 = off
• Keep running once started (true) – keeps reducing after a trigger until no target loss is left
• Close mode (Slices) – Slices or Whole
• Close fully if rest below (lots) (0.02) – small rests are closed with the last slice
• Min seconds between closes (30) – protects against request floods
• Max spread (points) (0) – no closes during spread spikes, 0 = off
• Dry run (true) – log only, no closing
• Push notification (true) – message on full close, start/pause and daily summary

Start the reduction with a trigger or with the START button. PAUSE always wins.

6. The panel

Status · Saved / Spent / Available / Today · Target load (open loss of the target positions) · Reduced so far · Account DD · Next slice · chart with load (red, should fall), saved (green), spent (teal) and account DD. One data point per hour is written to MQL5\Files\DDMin_<account>_<magic>.csv.

7. Dry run first

In dry run the journal shows what it would close, for example DRY RUN: would close 0.04 of #48213 EURCHF (-164.92). Watch it for one or two weeks. Check how your grid EA reacts when part of its oldest position is missing (lot sizing of the next level, basket take profit). Then set Dry run = false and check the first real slice: the closing deal must appear under Spent, not as a loss under Saved.

The two attached set files: DDMin_DryRun_Start_v1.0.set (dry run, start with the button) and DDMin_Live_30days_v1.0.set (live, starts when the oldest target position is 30 days old). Enter your magic numbers before you press OK.

All values in the video are examples for illustration. Questions: post them in the product comments or send me a message.