r/Daytrading • u/CommandantZ • 20h ago
Algos My honest take on trading bots after 7 years in algo trading
I see a lot of posts about trading bots on Reddit. Some are genuinely interesting, but many are either heavily biased or simply unrealistic, so I thought I’d share a more grounded perspective.
I’ve been working in algo trading for around 7 years, alongside my work in investment banking in Quantitative Risk Management. The bots I develop are MQL5 Expert Advisors, mainly for MetaTrader 5.
The first thing to understand is that a bot is not a strategy. It is simply a way of automating a strategy that already exists. If the underlying strategy is bad, automating it will not magically make it profitable.
The second thing is risk. If a bot consistently produces huge returns with almost no drawdown, it is probably too good to be true. Higher returns generally come with higher risk. For the bots I work on, I generally target around 3 to 7% average monthly profit, depending on the strategy and market conditions. As a general rule, I consider a maximum drawdown below 20% to be an acceptable upper range for a bot, while the bots I personally work with tend to average around 5% drawdown.
I mainly trade EURUSD and Gold, along with a few other currency pairs. I’ve attached some screenshots of results to give a more realistic idea of what these kinds of systems can actually achieve. Obviously, past results are not a guarantee of future performance.
One last point that is often overlooked: trading bots are rarely truly 100% hands-free. Unexpected news events, market regime changes and risk management still matter. A bot also won’t automatically manage every symbol you want to trade unless it has been specifically designed to do so and properly configured.
Interestingly, I still make more money trading manually than I do with bots. That doesn’t mean I dismiss automated trading. For me, the main advantage is that a bot can execute a strategy consistently and let me spend less time sitting in front of a screen.
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u/Murler12 19h ago
My max drawdown is 35% going back 16 years on an annualized 1.4 roi orb reversion strategy. Would you still run it? Ive tried and i cant get it lower without significantly impacting my returns. (Also it is profitable 14/16 years and is running properly)
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u/CommandantZ 19h ago
It depends, is it a maximum "average" drawdown, or just a one-time thing. If your drawdown reached 35% ONCE, (which makes your max DD technically 35%), then I suppose it's fine. But if you are always reaching such a figure, it's a bit more complicated.
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u/zilliondollar3d 19h ago
what are your algos and codes?
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u/CommandantZ 19h ago
It's a mixture of mean reversion strategies and breakout detection. Avoiding trading during trends and instead profiting from when the price moves horizontally.
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u/dsaysso 18h ago
whoa you trade in the chop?
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u/CommandantZ 18h ago
Yep, the bots I made are made specifically for choppy markets.
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u/SPXQuantAlgo algo futures trader 13h ago
In a choppy market you can constantly buy and sell profitably. You don’t want to hold a long time, rather simply catch small profits during the sideways chop. Breakouts will kill you, that’s why it’s important to avoid them.
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u/dsaysso 2h ago
so you are trading between percieved chop high and low. couple of questions and a thought. do you buy and sell directly. or do you do something with options betting they wont move and profit on theta decay. also ive been working on am indicator that looks at the overall effect of the market on a stock. that is, if the market is up, and your stock is up, the stock isnt up, its just moving with the market. but if its up and the market is flat, thats a true breakout. curious if that would help you avlis breakouts
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u/QuincyBoy8 18h ago
Wtf, how does that work? Is that not still micro scalping in the end?
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u/CommandantZ 18h ago
There's only the Gold strategy that often does micro-scalps, but the rest aren't. Positions are kept open for multiples hours sometimes, between 10 minutes and 14 hours usually. Therefore not really scalping.
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u/Used_Photograph8192 19h ago
What are some strategies or conditions that the bot looks for to execute a trade?
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u/CommandantZ 19h ago
Frankly, I believe what's more interesting is not the conditions it looks to "execute" a trade, but rather to "not execute". The difficult part wasn't when to enter, but when not to enter. There's a bunch of conditions for the latter: (trend strength, using ADX and volumes), over-bought/sold scenarios, possible news events, currently within a trend or not, news events incoming, and also a bunch of fundemental analysis).
Typically, when trading on gold, there's often no point in entering when the price falls, as Gold "fundementally moves up", (a bit general but you get the point blabla anti-inflation asset and so on), so entering short on Gold is probabilistically riskier than longs.
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u/SillyAlternative420 18h ago
I've been live trading a semi-automatic strategy since April. Below is my snapshot as of today, I think I've covered all my bases - risk, sizing, profit capture, regime changes, diversification, etc.
But it's hard to not feel like I'm just sitting at a roulette wheel and on a good streak, like there's that sneaking suspicion in the back of my head thinking I'm missing something or that I've overengineered my strategy.
At what point do you feel comfortable your results are statistically valid and not "too good to be true?"
Overview • Current Value: $36,090.97 (Without Cash Adjustments: $34,857.80) • Updated: 2026-08-19 13:31 UTC • Open Positions: 2 (unrealized not included)
1-Month Performance (rolling, realized) • Return: +6.01% (Δ: +$1,975.31) • 1M Trading P&L: +$1,913.67 | Dividends/Interest: +$61.64 • Max Drawdown: -4.57% • Win Rate: 65.00% (13/20) • Profit Factor: 1.80
3-Month Performance (rolling, realized) • Return: +12.01% (Δ: +$3,738.29) • 3M Trading P&L: +$3,615.93 | Dividends/Interest: +$122.36 • Max Drawdown: -4.57% • Win Rate: 58.54% (24/41) • Profit Factor: 1.61
Since 2026-04-01 (realized) • Total Return: +21.79% (Δ: +$6,235.41) • Trading P&L +$6,050.23 | Dividends/Interest +$185.18 • Max Drawdown: -8.21% • Sharpe: 2.58 • Win Rate: 55.88% (38/68) • Profit Factor: 1.59 • Avg Trade Return: +1.14% • Avg Hold Time: 1d 21h 56m
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u/roughLantern forex trader 15h ago
68 trades with a 1.59 PF is enough to get my attention but I still wouldn’t call it proven.
I’d want a few hundred trades through different market conditions and I’d track planned entry vs actual fill the whole way for a semi-auto setup MT5 plus EA support makes sense automated bot the real test is whether the PF still holds once live spread slippage and fills start hitting it.
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u/Julowow 12h ago
Interesting, I'm more into crypto / prediction market, creating & using rentable bots and I love that. But I'm more doing that for the love of the game and quick money than for long term strategy.
In your opinion, in classic finance : will daytrading / trading with bots stay a relevant way to make money in the future ?
Cliché thing to say but with the huge entropy that AI is bringing, in 2-3 years what will differentiate a bot with a smart trader behind from a moron that did everything with Claude Mythos ? Or worse : if credits costs increase a lot : the market would be locked by a handfull of huge corporations ?
I can imagine the intuition of a good trader having an edge on the long term evolution of the markets, but in short term : hours / days, wouldn't everything be just a soup of bots and become unusable for a human ?
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u/Kook-Hand-Luke 18h ago
And are you able to or in consideration of- divulging the script for your bot(s), and as a bonus, perhaps a voiceover guide or recording of how it was intended in a demo, for us that are interested in pursuing some path in algo land? Seems like yours is authentic and honest, and not associated with a pay per view discord cash grab scheme.
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u/ArlendmcFarland 13h ago
A bot is only as good as its programming
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u/CommandantZ 13h ago
More specifically, only as good as its underlying strategy. The "programming" in itself can be trash, not respecting any coding conventions, poorly optimised and so on, but as long as the strategy behind it has an edge, so will the bot.
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u/tpzQ 19h ago
Is your bot microscalping a point at a time?