Why did my EA stop working?
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Five causes are common: live costs wider than the test, a result that was luck, a market that changed, a different data feed, and slippage. Check your costs first.
Check these first#
Five quick causes have nothing to do with the strategy. Rule them out before you blame it.
- Is MetaTrader still running, on your PC or your VPS, and is the robot still attached to its chart?
- Is automated trading still switched on in the terminal?
- Did your broker change the symbol, its name or its trading conditions?
- Is there enough free margin for the robot to open its positions?
- Is one of the robot's own filters, such as its trading hours or its spread limit, keeping it out of the market?
The causes that cost money#
- An overfitted test. The result was luck. The settings fitted the past and nothing more.
- Costs higher than tested. The live spread, commission, swap and slippage are wider than the test allowed for.
- A market that changed. The conditions the strategy needs are no longer there.
A different price feed and slippage make a live result differ from its test as well. They are costs by another name, so check your costs first.
How Oathra shows which one#
Oathra sets a linked robot's live numbers beside the backtest's, each with its range, and shows what changed and what to check first. It does not tell you the cause.
If the test scored badly on its own luck check, Oathra says the likeliest reading is that the test was optimistic, not that the market changed.
Oathra raises one alarm, Below breakeven: the robot has been losing money for longer than chance explains. A robot that earns less than its backtest and still makes money gets no alarm.
The limit that applies#
Live tracking against the backtest works on MetaTrader 5 today. More platforms are coming.
Live tracking