Something that throws off almost everyone running their first Expert Advisor: you attach it, the smiley face is there, AutoTrading is green — and then nothing happens for a day, sometimes longer.
In my experience that’s usually fine. A higher-timeframe EA only fires when its conditions line up, which on an H1 strategy might be a couple of times a day, and on a daily strategy a couple of times a week. The trap is impatience: people tweak settings during a quiet stretch and break a system that was working.
How do you tell “healthy and waiting” from “actually broken”? My rule of thumb is to backtest the same recent period — if it trades there, the live silence is just market conditions. What’s your threshold before you start worrying?
Yes — for many strategies it’s completely normal, and it’s usually a good sign rather than a bad one. If your EA trades a specific setup (news filter off, session filter on, volatility threshold, etc.), there will simply be weeks where the setup never appears. Things worth checking before you worry: (1) run the Strategy Tester on the same recent dates and confirm it also shows no trades — if backtest trades but live doesn’t, compare spread/stops levels; (2) check the Experts/Journal tabs for rejected orders; (3) confirm AutoTrading is enabled and the symbol name matches your broker’s (XAUUSD vs XAUUSDm). If backtest and live both show nothing, the EA is just being selective — forcing more trades is how good EAs become bad ones.