[How-to] [How-to] Choosing a gold (XAUUSD) EA: an 8-point checklist

Search "best gold EA" and you'll drown in equity curves showing hundreds of percent. Very few of them are still alive a year later. Gold moves a lot and reacts hard to news, which makes it the market where bad EAs fail fastest. Before you put real money in, go through these eight checks in order.

1. At least 6 months of real-account history

• Only backtests or demo results? Then it's not verified yet.
• Six months shows whether it survived several FOMC decisions and jobs reports (NFP).
• The record should be visible live on a third-party site. Screenshots can be cherry-picked.

2. A stop loss on every entry

• Most gold EA disasters come from positions without a stop.
• If many trades in the history have an empty S/L column, that's a red flag.
• Live-linked strategies on EADesk show the share of entries without a stop automatically.

3. A max drawdown you can live with

• For a gold EA, start with max drawdown of 20–25% or less as a baseline.
• −30% needs +43% to recover; −50% needs +100%.
• Judge drawdown on equity, not balance. Balance hides losing positions that are still open.

4. A curve that's too smooth

• A full year with no losing month should make you more suspicious, not less.
• Martingale and grid EAs hold losers instead of closing them, so the balance curve looks unnaturally smooth.
• Where the balance and equity curves drift far apart, the EA was sitting on losses.

5. Trade count and holding time

• Too few trades (say 20 a year) and you can't tell skill from luck.
• Too many trades making a few dollars each means it's very sensitive to spread and slippage — a different broker can flip the result.

6. Size of wins vs losses

• 90% win rate with an average loss 10× the average win means one loss wipes out months of gains.
• Look at average win ÷ average loss (reward:risk) together with win rate. A high win rate alone is often a trap.

7. When it trades

• EAs that scalp around rollover (the broker's midnight) are exposed to spread spikes.
• Entries clustered at news times carry high slippage risk.

8. What the seller hides

• Be careful if the account number, broker or leverage isn't disclosed, or if they only hand out an "investor password" and avoid live public tracking.
• Any "10% a month guaranteed" claim is an instant fail.

In short: 6+ months live + a stop on every trade + equity drawdown ≤25% + check reward:risk. These four alone avoid most gold EA disasters. On EADesk Verified you can see these numbers from real MT5 accounts, updated every minute.