In short. An EA or a signal is checked on a live account with a long history, not on a backtest or screenshots. Ask for read-only access — a live link or the investor password — and look at four things: equity drawdown rather than balance drawdown; the length of the history and the number of trades; average win against average loss; and return that does not count deposits. A high share of winning trades with rare but huge losses is almost always a grid or martingale. Before real money, run the EA on a demo account and watch it yourself.
What to ask the seller for
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| A link to monitoring of a live account that updates by itself | the data comes from the terminal or the broker, not from the seller's hands |
| Or the account number, server and investor password | you see the account in your own terminal without the right to trade — more in «MT5 investor password» |
| At least half a year of history and a hundred trades | on 15 trades luck cannot be told from a system |
| The EA's magic number and whether the account had other trades | so the robot's result is not mixed with manual trading and other EAs |
| The settings, deposit and leverage behind the result | the same EA with a different lot is a different risk |
Why screenshots, backtests and HTML reports are not proof
- A screenshot or an HTML report is a file: it can be edited, or a lucky period can be picked.
- A Strategy Tester run shows how the EA would have traded on history with those settings. Settings are easy to fit to the past, and spread, slippage and execution on a live account are different. More in «MT5 tester vs live account».
- A demo account fills orders differently from a live one: slippage and rejections are rarer, so the same EA may show less on a live account.
That does not make a report useless: it shows how the trading works. You can quickly analyse an MT5 history HTML report with our MT5 report analyzer — the file is processed in your browser and sent nowhere. But decide on a live account.
Signs of a grid or martingale
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| 90% winning trades and a smooth balance curve | losing positions are not closed but averaged — the loss waits as a floating loss |
| The average loss is several times the average win | one bad streak wipes out months of small gains |
| Equity drawdown far deeper than balance drawdown | the account regularly lives through a large floating loss that the balance hides |
| Position size grows after a loss | martingale: risk grows faster than the deposit |
| Losing positions stay open for days and weeks | the EA waits for a reversal instead of a stop loss |
A grid is not a verdict, but its risk has to be seen in full: what equity drawdown the account has already lived through and what it takes to recover. The drawdown calculator shows the recovery, and the risk of ruin calculator the chance of blowing the account at your risk. How to calculate a grid's risk from its settings — in «Grid EAs and martingale».
How to read the numbers
- Return without deposits. If money was added to the account, «growth» in money means nothing — you need growth that does not count deposits as profit.
- Drawdown on equity. How it is calculated and why it matters more than balance drawdown — in «How to calculate account drawdown».
- Profit factor and expectancy — how much profit there is per dollar of loss and what the system makes per trade on average: «Profit factor», «Trading expectancy».
- Month-to-month stability. A year of profit made in a single month is one lucky month.
The full walk-through of the metrics is in «How to evaluate a trading strategy».
If the seller gave you a Davinchu link
A public account link shows what the owner opened: growth that does not count deposits, equity drawdown, history and statistics, and — with «Magic number analysis» enabled — trades, share of winners and the result of each EA. The data comes from the terminal; trades and the account balance cannot be edited in the dashboard — so such a link deserves more trust than a screenshot. If some fields are missing, ask why they are hidden.
Check it yourself before real money
- Run the EA on a demo account or a small live account with the same settings.
- Connect the account to Davinchu: drawdown is calculated from hourly equity snapshots including floating losses, every averaging arrives as a Telegram message, and if the terminal disconnects or the EA stays silent longer than your threshold, you get a warning. Setup is in «MT5 notifications in Telegram».
- After a month or two compare your numbers with what the seller showed. Much worse on the same settings is a reason not to go live.
The Free plan connects two accounts at no cost. What else Davinchu does for robots is on «Davinchu for algo traders».