Busiest Quarter of Months vs the Rest in 7 EA Backtests: More Losing Months in 4, Fewer in 3; GOLD VIPER 39.1% vs 21.7%

Some months are busy and some are quiet. Does a busy month lose more often? We took the published MT5 backtests of 9 of our EAs, split the closed trades by calendar month, ranked the months with trades by their trade count, and compared the busiest quarter of those months with all the other months. The question is only which group has the higher share of losing months. This article uses backtests only. It contains no forward-account figures. Figures are as of 2026-11-02.

- There is no common direction. Of the 7 tests that can be compared, the busiest quarter of months lost more often than the other months in 4 (GOLD VIPER, DONCHIAN ENGINE, MEGAMAX DONCHIAN, GOLD TRIPWIRE) and less often in 3 (BITCOIN COMET, ATLAS PORTFOLIO, GOLD NEURON).

- The two widest gaps point in opposite directions. GOLD VIPER lost in 39.1% of its busiest months against 21.7% of the others (17.4 points more). GOLD NEURON lost in 33.8% against 50.0% (16.2 points fewer).

- The busiest quarter of months carries 34.0% to 42.3% of all trades in those 7 tests. By the count of trades alone, a busy month is neither the safer nor the riskier one.

- GOLD KING closed none of its 89 months with trades in loss. Its busiest quarter (23 months with at least 40 trades, 51.4% of its 2,827 trades) has 0 losing months, and so do the other 66. It cannot be compared and is not in the table.

- ETHEREUM TREND is not in the table either: across its 78 months with trades the median is 2 trades a month, so the busiest quarter cannot be cleanly separated from the rest by trade count.

- Each closed trade is assigned to the calendar month in which it closed. Commission and swap are included. A month is a loss when its closed result is below zero. Open positions are not valued.

- Only months with at least one trade are counted. The busiest quarter is the busiest 25% of those months, rounded up, ranked by number of trades. When several months have the same trade count at the cut, the earlier month is taken first. The figure after the sign in the brackets is the trade count of the last month included.

- A month's trade count is a result of how the market behaved in that month, not a setting you choose. This is a count of past months, not a rule to trade on.

- The drawdown column is the Maximal equity drawdown in the MT5 report of the whole test: the largest fall in money from a peak, shown as a percent of that peak. It is not the maximal relative drawdown; for MEGAMAX DONCHIAN the maximal relative equity drawdown is 58.6% and for GOLD KING 91.3% (site settings). The column is shown for scale and is not a monthly figure.

- 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 month.

EA | Test period and data | Months with trades | Busiest quarter: months (minimum trades in a month) | Its share of all trades | Losing months in the busiest quarter | Losing months in the other months | Gap, busiest minus others (points) | Maximal equity drawdown (MT5 report, money-based)

GOLD VIPER | M30, 2019.01.01-2026.09.01, 8% real ticks | 92 | 23 (≥137) | 34.7% | 9/23 = 39.1% | 15/69 = 21.7% | +17.4 | 24.09%

DONCHIAN ENGINE (free) | H1, 2017.01.01-2026.06.01, 100% real ticks | 113 | 29 (≥7) | 34.1% | 15/29 = 51.7% | 37/84 = 44.0% | +7.7 | 10.34%

MEGAMAX DONCHIAN (USDJPY) | H1, 2017.01.01-2026.06.01, 100% | 113 | 29 (≥7) | 34.0% | 14/29 = 48.3% | 37/84 = 44.0% | +4.2 | 16.27%

GOLD TRIPWIRE | M15, 2020.01.01-2026.10.14, 11% real ticks | 82 | 21 (≥9) | 37.2% | 4/21 = 19.0% | 10/61 = 16.4% | +2.7 | 7.08%

BITCOIN COMET | H4, 2018.01.01-2025.12.31, 98% | 94 | 24 (≥11) | 37.8% | 10/24 = 41.7% | 31/70 = 44.3% | −2.6 | 26.76%

ATLAS PORTFOLIO | H4, 2019.01.01-2026.06.28, 100% | 90 | 23 (≥16) | 36.2% | 8/23 = 34.8% | 28/67 = 41.8% | −7.0 | 19.74%

GOLD NEURON | M30, 2004.01.01-2026.09.01, 100% real ticks | 270 | 68 (≥14) | 42.3% | 23/68 = 33.8% | 101/202 = 50.0% | −16.2 | 28.5%

Sorted by the gap, largest first. The tests cover different periods, symbols and data quality, so read each row on its own and do not rank the EAs against each other.

GOLD VIPER: its 23 busiest months all had at least 137 trades, and 9 of them lost. In the other 69 months, 15 lost. This is the one EA where busy and losing go together by a wide margin. The test uses 8% real ticks and its Maximal equity drawdown is 24.09%.

GOLD NEURON: its 68 busiest months had at least 14 trades and 23 of them lost, against 101 of 202 other months. Over 270 months from 2004, the busy months were the better ones.

DONCHIAN ENGINE and MEGAMAX DONCHIAN run on the same H1 USDJPY idea over the same months. Both have a busiest quarter of 29 months with at least 7 trades. Their losing-month counts there are 15 and 14, and both lose in 37 of the other 84 months.

How much to trust a gap: the busiest group is 21 to 68 months, so one month moves its rate by 1.5 to 4.8 points. The three gaps under 5 points (MEGAMAX DONCHIAN, GOLD TRIPWIRE, BITCOIN COMET) are about one month or less in the busiest group.

- Do not treat a busy month as a warning or as a good sign by itself. In these tests it went both ways.

- A losing-month count says how often, not how deep. Read it next to the drawdown and the worst month in percent.

- 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 VIPER https://www.mql5.com/en/market/product/182297 · GOLD NEURON https://www.mql5.com/en/market/product/187329