I have some EAs that came with a US30 course. Many of them successfully find great areas to enter trades, however, they rarely close in profit. They can go several hundred pips in profit and then turn around and close at a loss. Can someone help me figure out what settings in the EA correlate with exiting the trades so I can try to adjust those? I appreciate any suggestions!

Hey Jarena,

Welcome to the Forum!

What you described with the EAs happens quite often. The question is the EAs to perform profitably in the long term. There will be times when the profits will be wiped, and there will be times when the position goes on a loss but finally it closes on a profit.

That is why we have the backtest with the EAs so we can see an average performance. Did you perform backtest with your broker?

I understand every trade won’t be profitable, however even after the backtest, I need to know what settings to change in order to get better results. Is there a video or written explanation of what each setting does? I’ve been trading for a while, but I am not familiar with some of these settings as I mainly used “naked” charts. I could just play around with each number but that might take a long time to figure out the best settings, so if an explanation was given, that would be great.

As of now, the only way I have been able to exit profitably on a consistent basis so far is by entering a number in the take profit section, but I know this may limit the potential of the full move. So if the information above could be provided that would be great. Thank you.

Hey Jarena,

You cannot really modify the EAs “by hand”, but what you can do is to optimize the EAs.

You can do it in MetaTrader or in EA Studio:

Go to EA Studio – Help – Strategy – Optimizer.

There is a video and there is a detailed explanation on how to do it.

Now, be careful, not over-optimizing your strategy (making it too perfect).

Yes, when you use TP you are limiting the potential of the trade but at the same time, you are securing some profits. Both have PROs and CONs.

Regards,