Did every trade go in with a stop? Check the history before you copy or buy
Almost every robot and signal says it uses a stop-loss on every trade. That sentence is about intent. The account history is about what actually happened, and the two do not always agree.
Why the order of events matters
A stop that goes out with the entry gives the trade a worst case from its first second. A stop added a few minutes later leaves a window with no worst case at all. So does a manual trade on a busy morning, or a robot that sends its stop after the fill instead of with the order. On a quiet day nobody notices. On a day the price jumps, that window is where the damage is done.
Your check, before you copy a signal or buy a robot
1. Look at the positions open right now. Does every one of them carry a stop? This part you can see on your own screen.
2. Then look back. Did every past trade go in with a stop attached at entry, not added later? A screen of open positions cannot answer that. Only the history can.
3. Check it per robot, not per account. If several systems share one account, one careless robot hides inside a tidy average.
4. If you already copy a signal, run the same check on the copied trades. A provider's description is a promise. The copied history is the record.
How we do it
We built a free tool for step 2, Trade Auditor. It reads the account's own history and counts what it calls naked stops: trades opened with no stop-loss attached at entry. Set a magic number to check one robot, or point it at a subscription's copied trades. Each check gets Green, Amber or Red, and it writes a CSV of the exact flagged trades to your Common Files folder.
Two honest limits. It is exact for closed trades, measured at entry. For positions still open it reads the current stop as a best-effort proxy. And it is reactive: it reports what already happened and blocks nothing. It is a reading, not a guard.
A stop that went in with the trade is a worst case. A stop that came later is a hope that nothing happened in between.
Trade Auditor on MQL5, free: https://www.mql5.com/en/market/product/187845
