MQL5 Market Validator testing an XAUUSD EA on other symbols — APIs, external data and validation errors

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Hello everyone,

I would like to ask for advice from developers who have experience publishing Expert Advisors on the MQL5 Market, especially EAs designed for a specific symbol and using external data/APIs.

I have developed an Expert Advisor specifically for XAUUSD (Gold). The EA is not a multi-symbol Forex EA and it is not designed to trade EURUSD, GBPUSD, or other currency pairs.

The EA uses a combination of:

  • XAUUSD market data;

  • technical calculations based on the XAUUSD chart;

  • external market data obtained through APIs;

  • additional external data used as filters/confirmation;

  • internal calculations and trading rules specifically designed for Gold.

The EA works correctly in my own MT5 Strategy Tester when tested on XAUUSD.

However, during MQL5 Market automatic validation, the EA is being tested on other symbols and timeframes. The validation report contains:

test on EURUSD,H1 (netting) there are no trading operations test on XAUUSD,D1 (netting) there are no trading operations test on GBPUSD,M30 (netting) 2025.02.01 00:00:01 failed market sell 0.1 GBPUSD sl: 1.24512 tp: 1.22766 [Market closed] strategy tester report 243 total trades

This raises several questions for me.

The most important point is that GBPUSD is not the intended trading instrument of this EA.

The EA is designed around XAUUSD-specific behavior and data. Therefore, testing its trading logic on GBPUSD does not represent the actual conditions for which the product was developed.

There is also another issue involving external APIs.

The EA uses external data sources through HTTP/WebRequest. Those APIs provide information related to the market conditions used by the XAUUSD strategy.

Therefore, when the Market Validator tests the EA on EURUSD or GBPUSD, the external data and calculations are still related to the XAUUSD strategy, while the chart symbol being tested is a completely different instrument.

I am concerned that this creates an artificial validation scenario:

EA strategy = XAUUSD
External data = XAUUSD / Gold related
Chart being tested = GBPUSD

The result is not representative of how the EA is actually intended to operate.

I would like to understand the correct MQL5 Market approach for this type of product.

My questions are:

  1. Is it acceptable to publish an EA that is intentionally restricted to XAUUSD?

  2. If so, what is the recommended way to restrict the EA to XAUUSD so that it does not attempt to trade other symbols during Market validation?

  3. Does the MQL5 Market Validator intentionally test every EA on symbols such as EURUSD and GBPUSD regardless of the symbol for which the EA was designed?

  4. How should an EA that uses external APIs/WebRequest behave during validation when the API data is specifically related to XAUUSD?

  5. Is the developer expected to make the EA generate valid trading behavior on every symbol used by the Validator, even when those symbols are completely outside the intended scope of the product?

  6. Could an API-dependent, symbol-specific EA be rejected simply because the Validator tests it under conditions that do not represent its intended use?

  7. What is the recommended implementation for an XAUUSD-only EA to gracefully ignore unsupported symbols without causing validation errors?

There is another interesting detail in my report.

The validator attempted:

failed market sell 0.1 GBPUSD [Market closed]

at:

2025.02.01 00:00:01

which was a Saturday.

At the same time, the complete test report shows:

strategy tester report 243 total trades

So the EA is not simply failing to trade. It is generating trading operations during the validation.

I am trying to understand whether I am approaching the MQL5 Market requirements incorrectly.

I do not want to simply add code that hides errors or artificially changes the strategy just to satisfy the Validator.

I would like to implement the correct solution for a symbol-specific XAUUSD Expert Advisor that uses external APIs/data.

If anyone has published a similar EA on the MQL5 Market, I would really appreciate hearing how you handled:

  • symbol restrictions;

  • Market validation on unrelated symbols;

  • WebRequest/API dependencies;


  • and validation errors caused by symbols that the EA was never designed to trade.

Thank you in advance for any advice.

 
Reinaldo Benevides Lima Da Silva:
The most important point is that GBPUSD is not the intended trading instrument of this EA.

Market products cannot be restricted like so.

You should read all of the Market Rules.

The proper way to guide users to use your EA only on XAUUSD is to emphasize that in your product description.
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