Get the most from a 30-day EA trial: 8 things to check before you pay
- 30 days is too short to judge a system on profit or loss. It is roughly one month of trades, and short-term results swing widely both ways.
- What 30 days can genuinely tell you is whether the system behaves as described: a stop loss on every trade, how often it trades, and what your account really costs.
- This is an 8-point checklist you can use on any EA, including MindCore.
Why not judge on 30 days of profit
A system that wins about 43% of trades can have long losing streaks as a normal event (worked out in How deep a losing streak should an EA survive). If your 30 days happen to fall on one, the system looks bad. If they fall on a good run, it can look better than it is.
Use the 30 days to check behaviour, and use the long-term test to judge returns.
1. Install it correctly on day one
The most common problem is an EA that never trades all month because Allow WebRequest was not enabled, and the user concludes the system does not work. Check the Experts tab in MT4/MT5 after every install. If you see err=4060, fix it as shown on the download and install page.
2. Does every trade have a stop loss at the broker?
Open the Trade tab and look at the S/L column of every open trade. It must show a number, not be empty. A stop loss held by the broker still works if your computer goes off. If any EA opens trades without a broker-side stop loss, treat it as a fail. The reasons are in lessons from 11,439 real trades.
3. Does the frequency match what the seller said?
Count trades per week and compare with the seller's claim. MindCore averages about 30 trades a month across its 10-year test, but some weeks have far fewer when the market does not meet its conditions. If an EA described as trend-following opens dozens of trades a day, ask the seller why.
4. Watch equity, not just balance
Check both every day in the Trade tab. If balance keeps rising while equity drifts further below it, the EA is holding losing trades open instead of closing them — the signature of a grid or averaging-down system.
5. Measure the cost in your own account
Note your gold spread at different times of day. If it is mostly above $1, live results will be clearly below the test results. How to check is in Account type matters more than the broker's name.
6. Compare with the seller's published signals
If the seller publishes signals, compare the trades in your account with them. MindCore records every signal, wins and losses, in its Telegram channel, free to compare.
7. Test how your setup handles a restart
Restart the computer once during the trial and see whether MT4/MT5 comes back by itself with the EA running. If not, you have found the problem before it happens with a live trade open. If your computer is not on all day, read VPS and latency.
8. Plan before the trial ends
For MindCore, after the 30-day trial the EA continues on an account under one of our partner brokers, and account verification can take up to 72 hours. Submit your account number on the IB page in week 3 so there is no gap, and you also get the broker's rental discount.
Summary table
| Item | Pass | Fail |
|---|---|---|
| Installation | No errors in the Experts tab | No trades because of a setup error |
| Stop loss | Every trade has a broker S/L | Any trade with an empty S/L |
| Frequency | Close to what the seller said | Far more frequent than claimed |
| Equity vs balance | Move together | Equity keeps falling behind |
| Cost | Gold spread around $0.30–1.00 or less | Regularly above $1.00 |
| Matches published signals | Yes | No, or nothing to compare with |
| Restart resilience | Comes back by itself | Must be restarted by hand |
If almost everything passes, the decision to pay should rest on the long-term test and a drawdown you can accept, not on the last 30 days of profit.
Notes
- This checklist applies to any EA. Passing every item does not guarantee profit.
- During a trial, use money you can afford to lose or a smaller account first.
This article is for education only and is not investment advice. Trading gold and CFDs carries a high risk and you may lose all your capital. Past results do not guarantee future results.
