MQL5 productsBefore you buy any gold EA
5 checks before you buy any gold EA
Many gold EAs show a smooth curve right up to the day they empty the account. These five checks take a few minutes and filter out most of them. I hold my own EAs to the same list.
Does every trade have a stop loss?
Grid, martingale and averaging robots look smooth because they never take a loss until they take a huge one.
Sentinels: every order is sent with its stop. Gold Breakout Sentinel uses a fixed 1.9% stop and target; Gold Trend Sentinel a 3 x ATR stop that trails the best price. One position at a time.
Are the bad years shown?
Any strategy has periods it does not suit. If a seller shows only the good years, you will meet the bad ones live.
Sentinels: Gold Breakout Sentinel made a profit factor of 1.44 on RoboForex history from 2021 to 2026, but the same settings lost money over 2009 to 2020 (profit factor 0.94), and its page says so. Gold Trend Sentinel made most of its profit from buys in a rising gold market while its sells lost slightly; its page says that too.
Are signals taken from closed bars only?
An EA or indicator that decides on the unfinished bar can show signals in a backtest that never existed live.
Sentinels: signals come only from closed bars. Before each release the same period is tested tick by tick and with 1-minute bars, and the signals must match bar for bar (Gold Breakout Sentinel 1.16: 400 signals, identical).
Can you reproduce the results yourself?
If a seller says you need a special set file, the backtest you saw may not be what you get.
Sentinels: no set file needed. The default inputs are the optimised settings used for every backtest shown, and the Strategy Tester accepts any symbol so you can check them on your broker's data.
Does it show the real risk of each trade?
Lot size alone means little on gold; what matters is the money at risk if the stop is hit, against your balance.
Sentinels: the panel shows the risk of the next trade in percent of your balance before it is placed, and each page gives the balance needed for about 1% per trade.
Try it
Both EAs are free on the MQL5 Market at 0.01 lot, with the same strategy and defaults as their Pro editions. Start on a demo account; the panel shows the real risk of each trade before it is placed.
Trading gold with leverage carries a high risk of losing money. The figures here are backtests on RoboForex history and describe the past; they do not predict the future. This is software, not financial advice.