Here is the result of a test of my first Expert Advisor, which runs on the EUR/USD hourly chart. This EA takes only one trade at a time, and for this test, the trade size was fixed at 3 mini lots per trade. This backtest spans less than two years, from January 3, 2005 to November 14, 2006. A total of 60 trades were made. Are these the sort of results that would qualify this as a good EA?

http://home.earthlink.net/~filesource/reportHG003.gif

http://home.earthlink.net/~filesource/graphHG003.gif

I don't think 60 trades is a large enough sample size to come to any conclusions about a system's profitability. Especially when the equity curve was fairly flat for the first 30 trades or so before it took off. Try backtesting on another 2 years worth of data.

I've been backtesting the EA on FXDD's version of MT4, in a demo mini account, and I just discovered that it takes 3 lots as 3 standard lots (300k), not 3 mini lots (30k). That explains the high profit. That's 60:1 leverage on a $5000 account, not the sort of risk I am accustomed to taking.

I realized this after I tested the EA on IBFX's version of MT4, in a demo mini account, and it takes 3 lots as 3 mini lots (30k), which is correct. Naturally, the results were less impressive, but still positive.