I'm curious if anyone has ever found success with scalping EAs that
sell the ask and buy the bid. I came across an EA that does just
that. The author won't let me share the entire code as he's selling
it for quite a bit of money. This is actually a little snippet from
the MQ4 that sheds some light on how it gets its entries/exits:

if (up_trend > 0.0) i = OrderSend(Symbol
(),OP_BUY,Lots,old_ask,0,0,0,"",5326,0,Red);
if (down_trend > 0.0) i = OrderSend(Symbol
(),OP_SELL,Lots,old_bid,0,0,0,"",5326,0,Blue);

I've tested it on both a live account and a demo account with North
Finance and the results are completely different. On the demo, it
generates a lot more trades. It does not generate nearly as many
trades on a live account, and only about 50% of the trades on the live
account are profitable. It seems to be a break even system on a live
account. Would switching to a different broker that has tighter
spreads solve this problem? Maybe Crown Forex?

I just can't figure out why or how the demo and live accounts are different. When I look at a tick chart in North Finance's demo vs a tick chart of North Finance's live platform, they appear exactly the same.

Any help would be appreciated.

In retail forex, you cannot sell the ask and buy the bid. The dealer does that and makes his money. That is why, retail forex is "commission free".

There are numerous EAs, mostly written for MT3, that did that. It did great in demo trading, due to a bug in MT3 that let you do the same. However, in reality, or in MT4, you can't do it. Occassionally, the bid/ask will move very fast and you will get filled. That is what you are seeing. I discussed the same issue with the people who wrote Metatrader and got confirmation from them about this.

Anyway, who is selling this EA? That is completely wrong.

As for your code snippet:
if (up_trend > 0.0) i = OrderSend(Symbol(), OP_BUY, Lots, old_ask, 0,0,0,"",5326,0,Red);

If it sets old_ask at any other value other than current asking price, then it is just trying to cheat the user. Any order fill and subsequent profit/loss is entirely a random trade.

If you can, try to get a refund.

Good luck.

Maji,

Thanks for your reply. Fortunately, I did not buy the EA. I decompiled a trial version of an EX4 the author sent me. It wasn't copyrighted anyway. Someone with the username "Greed" was advertising this EA for sale on the Strategybuilder forum.