EA's that ony work on demo accounts

I read again and again in here about EA's that will only work on a demo account but not a live account.

If this is the case then why not just take the same EA place it on a demo that it DOES work on, open a live account with the same broker and use an MT4 copy tool?

Of course this will only work if the demo feed and the live feed from the broker you are using are similar as is the case with many brokers out there.

Some demo feeds and live are not even remotely close.

You then have the small problem of a disconnect but there are brokers whose demo feeds rarely disconnect

There are also many demo and live from same broker that are not even close so do your homework.

If you are using the same broker with a bare install of both and using them only as transfers platforms it works extremely well with little slippage. The added advantage here is that the broker never see's the original trade from the demo because they do not track or keep tabs on the hundreds of thousands of demo accounts out there.

Trust me it works so before you yap about the disadvantages or slam the idea test it first. ;)

Re: EA's that ony work on demo accounts

Which copy tool do you use for this?

Re: EA's that ony work on demo accounts

Or you could just decompile the EA, replace all IsDemo() calls with TRUE and run it on a real account.

Re: EA's that ony work on demo accounts

^:)^ every time i have tried via modify EA I can not get it to save it says permission denied how do u get over that-- many thanks in advance "birt" =D>

Re: EA's that ony work on demo accounts

Or you could just decompile the EA, replace all IsDemo() calls with TRUE and run it on a real account.

you completely missed the point :-/

it has nothing to do with the EA being ONLY for demo or the coding to stop it from working on live

many EA's are made for live accounts but dont work live but do work on demo

Re: EA's that ony work on demo accounts

^:)^ every time i have tried via modify EA I can not get it to save it says permission denied how do u get over that-- many thanks in advance "birt" =D>

saendee,

Mate, if there are no warnings (hard "red" errors) during compiling, then you need first to clear "read-only" file attribute of your mq4 file (in Windows make right click on your file, select properties of your file and untick "read-only" attribute), then modify it as you wish and push "save" or "compile" button.

It could also be that you opened mq4 for edition from archive directly or whatever. Make its copy on your hard drive, make sure it has no "read only" attribute and do with it whatever you need.

Phoenix,

Your point is not crystal clear.

Would you mind to explain what you meant saying EA works on demo and doesn't work on live account?

There are hundreds of reasons why it could be that performance on demo and live is different so please give more details in your post so people can understand you correctly.

I don't understand the whole idea of this thread.

Please explain in simple words your point.

Which exactly difference you meant and how your proposal can help to overcome this difference. That would be much appreciated here. Thanks.

Re: EA's that ony work on demo accounts

^:)^ every time i have tried via modify EA I can not get it to save it says permission denied how do u get over that-- many thanks in advance "birt" =D>

It might be that you're using Vista or Windows 7 and have UAC enabled and your MT folder somewhere in Program Files. If that's the case, either move your MT folder somewhere else, where you have write permissions or just disable UAC. An alternative is to start MetaEditor by right clicking it and selecting "Run as administrator".

Re: EA's that ony work on demo accounts

:-bd Vista I don't like but stuck with it will try what has been posted many thanks :shand:

Re: EA's that ony work on demo accounts

Phoenix,

Your point is not crystal clear.

Would you mind to explain what you meant saying EA works on demo and doesn't work on live account?

There are hundreds of reasons why it could be that performance on demo and live is different so please give more details in your post so people can understand you correctly.

I don't understand the whole idea of this thread.

Please explain in simple words your point.

Which exactly difference you meant and how your proposal can help to overcome this difference. That would be much appreciated here. Thanks.

Not sure how to be much simplier than whats posted :-/

I read all the time how people say they demo an EA and it makes money in a demo account yet when they put the same EA on a live account it does not make money.

There are many brokers whose demo and live platforms are very similiar and if the above is the case then just leave the EA on a DEMO account and use a MT4 copy tool to copy the trades to a live account. If the platform is a bare install then slippage is minimal and you will see on a 5 digit broker half a pip to 1 pip is all.

So if you have an EA that is making money on demo, leave it there and copy the trades. I have done this so I know it works with my own EA...it will work on a live account but why let the brokers even see it and have a shot at it when demo to live works just fine

Re: EA's that ony work on demo accounts

Not sure how to be much simplier than whats posted :-/

 

I read all the time how people say they demo an EA and it makes money in a demo account yet when they put the same EA on a live account it does not make money.

 

There are many brokers whose demo and live platforms are very similiar and if the above is the case then just leave the EA on a DEMO account and use a MT4 copy tool to copy the trades to a live account. If the platform is a bare install then slippage is minimal and you will see on a 5 digit broker half a pip to 1 pip is all.

 

So if you have an EA that is making money on demo, leave it there and copy the trades. I have done this so I know it works with my own EA...it will work on a live account but why let the brokers even see it and have a shot at it when demo to live works just fine

Ok, but what behind that?

Do you know why EA is well trading on demo and not doing the same live?

My quess would be:

- different (filtered) datafeed on live rather than on demo (could be on different brokers, but very suspicious about it to be on same broker);

- EA needs fast execution so on demo it gets it and live it gets delays thus no profits;

- trading huge volumes (lots) on deo with instant filling while on live it's hard to get, thus requotes, different price for partially fulfilled positions etc.

So my point would rather be to find out WHAT exactly the reason of different performance on live and demo and select that live environment which I need to run my EA (if needs fast execution then STP or ECN broker, if relies upon unfiltered datafeed, then broker with best datafeed).

Otherwise you advice becomes too general and provides a possible interim workaround, but not a solid solution.

Excessive complicateness is never good. The more cells in a chain, the higher the odds one cell would break the whole chain.

So in case of problems with EA running live I would personally concentrate on more fit-for-purpose and elegant solution, like changing broker or EA code, rather than creating excessive complicateness.

Re: EA's that ony work on demo accounts

It might be that you're using Vista or Windows 7 and have UAC enabled and your MT folder somewhere in Program Files. If that's the case, either move your MT folder somewhere else, where you have write permissions or just disable UAC. An alternative is to start MetaEditor by right clicking it and selecting "Run as administrator".

Please give me an example where I could install MT4 rather than under Program Files, so that I could save templates, profiles properly.

Re: EA's that ony work on demo accounts

Please give me an example where I could install MT4 rather than under Program Files, so that I could save templates, profiles properly.

Uhm, anywhere you have write rights to. You don't even have to install it, you can just copy it. Personally, I keep all my MT4 copies on a secondary harddisk, even though I have UAC disabled. You can just drag it to your desktop or your my documents folder if you don't have another partition.

Re: EA's that ony work on demo accounts

on my trading computer i run windows XP specifically cause the later versions of windows have that annoying access prevention.

i was constantly getting mt4 problems on windows7+vista -- especially the 64 bit versions. runs fine on xp32 although that means i use only just more then half the memory installed into the computer.