House ofChento
Every EA seller shows a green equity curve. The Strategy Tester report underneath it is where the truth lives. Here is how we read one — using the numbers from our own Chento Gridder V2 report as the worked example — and the specific manipulations to watch for.
1. Modelling quality and tick mode
Only “Every tick based on real ticks” with 100% history quality is meaningful for grids and scalpers. “Open prices only” tests are worthless for anything that trades inside a candle. If the report does not state the mode, assume the worst.
2. Balance drawdown vs equity drawdown
Balance drawdown is realised loss; equity drawdown includes floating loss. For a grid, equity drawdown is the number that kills accounts. Gridder V2: 10% balance, 37% equity — the honest gap you should expect from any basket system. A grid report that shows 3% equity drawdown over months was either run with a huge deposit or has a hidden stop that never triggered in the sample.
3. Profit factor
Gross profit ÷ gross loss. Under 1.3 is noise; 1.5–2.5 is realistic for a grid with money targets (ours: 2.07); above 4 over a long period usually means curve-fitting or a tiny sample.
4. Recovery factor
Net profit ÷ max drawdown. Above 2 means the system earned its worst loss back at least twice in the period (ours: 2.42). Below 1 means one bad stretch would have wiped the whole profit.
5. Expected payoff
Average result per trade. For high-frequency grids it is tiny by design (ours: +$0.05 across 1,948 trades on a cent account). What matters is that it is positive after spread and commission — always test with your broker’s real spread.
6. Trade count and period
Fewer than ~200 trades tells you nothing statistically. A one-month test must include at least one NFP and one central-bank day. Our report: 27 days, 1,948 trades, August 2026 with two USD high-impact releases inside it.
7. Consecutive losses and largest loss
These size your worst week. Largest single loss of −$1.04 on a $100 cent account is comfortable; a largest loss equal to 20% of the deposit is a warning regardless of the profit line.
8. Sharpe ratio
Return per unit of volatility. MT5’s Sharpe on high-frequency grids reads high (ours: 9.23) because of many tiny wins — use it to compare settings of the same EA, not different EAs.
Seller tricks
- Testing on a $100,000 deposit with 0.01 lot so drawdown looks like 0.4%.
- Cherry-picking a calm month; hiding the year that includes March 2020 or October 2023.
- Showing balance drawdown only, never equity.
- No .set file, so you cannot reproduce it.
Our answer to all four: the full report is public, the backtest build and .set file are free downloads, and the demo trial lets you forward-test for a week. Read more guides.
