Expert advisors and VPS hosting
A robot that stops when your electricity does is not a strategy. Run your EA on a hosted server that stays online while Iraq's power and internet do not.
Why a VPS matters more here than elsewhere
Automated strategies must be connected at the moment their conditions are met. In a country where power and connectivity are unreliable, a laptop at home will miss trades — and, worse, will miss the exits.
A VPS keeps the platform running in a data centre with stable power and a fast link to our trading servers.
Getting your EA running
Zero suits most EAs because of the raw spread; Standard is fine for slower systems.
Ask in the Traders Room — the desk sets it up and sends your connection details.
Connect with your normal login.
Test on a demo first — always.
Before you trust any robot
- Run it on a free demo for weeks, not days
- Check its behaviour around news, when spreads widen
- Know its maximum drawdown, not just its profit
- Be suspicious of any EA sold with a guaranteed return
What a VPS fixes — and what it does not
A VPS solves exactly one class of problem: your platform not being connected at the moment it needed to be. Power cuts, a dropped mobile connection, a laptop that slept, a Windows update at three in the morning. In Iraq that class of problem is not rare, and for a strategy that must manage an open position it is the difference between a planned exit and whatever the market gives you.
What a VPS does not do is make a strategy work. A robot that loses money on a home PC loses money faster on a server with better uptime. Hosting is insurance against disconnection, not against a bad idea.
Backtests, and the three ways they lie
Almost every EA sold in a group chat comes with a backtest curve going smoothly up and to the right. Here is why that curve is close to meaningless on its own:
- Over-fitting. Parameters tuned until they fit the last two years perfectly. The market's next two years were not in the sample.
- Optimistic costs. Backtests often assume a fixed, tight spread and no slippage. Real spreads widen exactly when an EA is most active — around news.
- Modelling quality. A test run on one-minute bars instead of real tick data cannot know whether your stop or your target was hit first inside the same minute.
The robot pattern that keeps catching people
Martingale and grid robots — the ones that add to a losing position and double the size until it turns — produce the most attractive equity curve you will ever see. Months of small, steady wins with almost no losing days.
They are not making money from an edge. They are collecting small gains in exchange for one enormous loss that has not arrived yet. When it arrives it takes the account, and it usually arrives on a gap or a news spike where the doubling has nowhere to go.
You can spot the pattern without reading a line of code: no stop loss, position size increasing after a loss, and a curve with no meaningful drawdown in it. If all three are true, the risk is in the part of the history you have not seen yet.
No stop loss, size increasing after a loss, no drawdown in the curve. The risk is in the part of the history you have not seen yet.
Common questions
Are expert advisors allowed at TNFX?
Yes, on all account types, on both MT4 and MT5.
How do I get a VPS?
Request it from the Traders Room; our desk provisions it and sends your login details.
Which account is best for an EA?
Zero for high-frequency systems because of the raw spread; Standard for slower strategies.
Can I test an EA for free?
Yes — open a free demo account and run it there first.
Can I test an EA before putting money behind it?
Yes, and you should. Run it on a demo account over the hours you actually intend to trade, for long enough to include a bad week.
Will a VPS make my EA profitable?
No. A VPS keeps the platform connected. It protects a working strategy from power cuts and dropped connections; it cannot rescue a losing one.
What happens to my open trades if my internet drops?
Positions stay open on the server — they are not closed by a disconnection. What stops is your EA's ability to manage them, which is the reason to host it rather than run it at home.