In 8 of 9 EA Backtests the Busiest Full Year by Trade Count Ranks in the Top 3 for Return; GOLD KING's Is Its Best

We took the published MT5 backtests of 9 of our EAs and split the closed trades by calendar year. For each test we picked the full year with the most closed trades (the busiest year) and the full year with the fewest (the quietest year), then ranked each by that year's return within the same test. The question: does the year with the most trades tend to be a high-return year? This article uses backtests only. It contains no forward-account figures. Figures are as of 2026-10-28.

- In 8 of the 9 tests the busiest full year ranks 1st to 3rd by return among that test's full years. GOLD KING's busiest year is its best (1st of 7). The exception is BITCOIN COMET: its busiest year, 2024, ranks 5th of 8.

- The quietest year is not the worst year in most tests. It ranks last in 2 of the 9 (GOLD KING, 7th of 7; ATLAS PORTFOLIO, 7th of 7). In GOLD NEURON it ranks 18th of 22: 2004, with 39 trades, -24.4% and a profit factor of 0.2.

- A busy year is not automatically a quiet-risk year or a high-risk year. The busiest year's closed-balance drawdown is larger than the quietest year's in 4 of the 9 tests and smaller in the other 5.

- This is a count of coincidences in past tests. We did not test why the busiest years paid well, and the numbers do not show that more trades cause a higher return.

- Each closed trade is assigned to the calendar year in which it closed. Commission and swap are included. Open positions are not valued, so every figure here is on closed balance.

- The return of a year is its closed result divided by the closed balance at the start of that year. The balance starts at the opening deposit of each test, and years are compared by percent, not by amount.

- The busiest and quietest years are chosen among full calendar years only (January to December). Years the test covers only in part (2026 in 8 of the tests) are left out. The rank is the year's place among the test's full years by return, 1 being the highest; a test with 6 full years and a test with 22 are not on the same scale.

- The drawdown of a year is the largest peak-to-trough fall of the closed balance inside that calendar year, with the balance at the start of the year as the first peak. It is smaller than an equity drawdown, which includes open trades, and it is not the drawdown of the whole test.

- TRINITY and AIFW are not in this article: the original report files behind their published backtests are not in our breakdown, so we could not split them by year.

EA | Test period and data | Full years | Busiest year | Trades | Return | PF | Closed-balance DD in the year | Return rank | Quietest year | Trades | Return | PF | Closed-balance DD in the year | Return rank

GOLD NEURON | M30, 2004.01.01-2026.09.01, 100% real ticks | 22 | 2008 | 229 | +104.9% | 1.45 | 22.0% | 3/22 | 2004 | 39 | -24.4% | 0.2 | 24.4% | 18/22

GOLD KING | M1, 2019.01.01-2026.06.01, 5% real ticks | 7 | 2025 | 655 | +164.5% | 4.8 | 7.5% | 1/7 | 2021 | 215 | +36.2% | 13.56 | 1.0% | 7/7

DONCHIAN ENGINE (free) | H1, 2017.01.01-2026.06.01, 100% real ticks | 9 | 2022 | 76 | +34.8% | 2.32 | 4.4% | 2/9 | 2025 | 56 | +11.2% | 1.64 | 4.5% | 4/9

MEGAMAX DONCHIAN (USDJPY) | H1, 2017.01.01-2026.06.01, 100% | 9 | 2022 | 76 | +106.4% | 2.03 | 11.1% | 2/9 | 2025 | 56 | +17.0% | 1.61 | 9.2% | 6/9

ATLAS PORTFOLIO | H4, 2019.01.01-2026.06.28, 100% | 7 | 2024 | 185 | +116.8% | 1.79 | 14.7% | 2/7 | 2020 | 95 | +10.6% | 1.16 | 11.6% | 7/7

ETHEREUM TREND | H4, 2019.01.01-2026.06.28, 100% real ticks | 7 | 2025 | 28 | +71.9% | 4.31 | 3.8% | 2/7 | 2022 | 12 | +6.9% | 1.47 | 8.3% | 4/7

GOLD TRIPWIRE | M15, 2020.01.01-2026.10.14, 11% real ticks | 6 | 2022 | 109 | +45.9% | 2.68 | 4.3% | 2/6 | 2020 | 82 | +31.1% | 1.53 | 9.8% | 4/6

GOLD VIPER | M30, 2019.01.01-2026.09.01, 8% real ticks | 7 | 2021 | 1567 | +130.9% | 1.72 | 15.9% | 3/7 | 2019 | 1165 | +107.3% | 1.78 | 10.5% | 5/7

BITCOIN COMET | H4, 2018.01.01-2025.12.31, 98% | 8 | 2024 | 115 | +43.8% | 1.63 | 14.1% | 5/8 | 2018 | 51 | +111.3% | 2.65 | 16.6% | 4/8

Sorted by the busiest year's rank as a share of the full years, best first. MEGAMAX DONCHIAN and DONCHIAN ENGINE show the same busiest and quietest years with the same trade counts (76 in 2022, 56 in 2025); their returns differ. All columns come from the same yearly breakdown of the trade list. The tests cover different periods and data quality, so compare the ranks with the number of full years and do not rank the EAs against each other.

GOLD KING made 655 trades in 2025, its busiest year, and returned +164.5%, the highest of its 7 full years, with a closed-balance drawdown of 7.5% inside the year. Its quietest year, 2021, had 215 trades and +36.2%, the lowest of the 7, with a drawdown of 1.0%. ATLAS PORTFOLIO shows the same shape: 185 trades and +116.8% in 2024 (2nd of 7), 95 trades and +10.6% in 2020 (7th of 7).

In both EAs the busiest year also has the larger drawdown: 7.5% against 1.0% for GOLD KING, 14.7% against 11.6% for ATLAS PORTFOLIO. GOLD KING's figures are closed balance by calendar year. The largest relative equity drawdown in its MT5 report for the whole test, which includes open trades, is 91.3%.

BITCOIN COMET's busiest year, 2024, had 115 trades and returned +43.8% (5th of 8) with a drawdown of 14.1%. Its quietest year, 2018, had 51 trades and returned +111.3% (4th of 8) with a drawdown of 16.6%. This is the only test in which the quietest year out-earned the busiest one.

GOLD NEURON has the longest test (M30, 2004.01.01-2026.09.01) and the widest spread in trade counts: 229 trades in 2008 against 39 in 2004. 2008 returned +104.9% (3rd of 22) with a drawdown of 22.0%. 2004 lost 24.4% with a profit factor of 0.2 and a drawdown of 24.4%, so the drawdown equals the loss: the closed balance finished the year at its low. The two years are 18 calendar years apart, so we do not read the gap as an effect of the trade count alone.

- Do not read a low trade count in a year as a sign of a weak year, or a high count as a sign of a strong one. In these tests the link is frequent but not universal, and BITCOIN COMET goes the other way.

- When a backtest report gives yearly figures, read the trade count, the return and the drawdown of the same year together.

- A year with few trades gives a small sample: ETHEREUM TREND's quietest year had 12 trades. We do not draw conclusions about win rate or profit factor from a year like that.

- This article is about past tests. It does not promise any future result.

- All forward accounts we publish are demo accounts, and none is used in this article.

The two EAs discussed most in this article: GOLD KING https://www.mql5.com/en/market/product/180879 · GOLD NEURON https://www.mql5.com/en/market/product/187329