Algorithmic Trading Without Rose-Colored Glasses: How to Avoid Falling for Fake Gurus

Many people believe that algorithmic trading is simple: just press a couple of buttons, and the money will flow like a river. Unscrupulous “gurus” encourage this thinking, having only superficial knowledge of MQL5 or PineScript, but skilled at deceiving others. Especially notorious are certain YouTube bloggers who offer “golden” indicators and strategies aimed not at your prosperity, but at their own gains through subscriptions, paid content, and other forms of “infogypsy” hustle. In reality, they themselves do not achieve any trading success over the medium term.

Indicators and strategies from 90% of these bloggers only work on historical data or, at best, right now. There is no system that can produce money like an ATM. The principle remains unchanged: you “sweat” for a certain period, and only then the market “pays” you. Most infogypsies promise “daily payouts,” but their strategies only show results today. You watch their content on your phone, test their strategies on demo accounts, pay them on Patreon, and as soon as the money leaves your wallet, the strategy stops making profits. Sound familiar? I went through this myself a couple of years ago. That’s when I decided to take matters into my own hands and learn how to write scripts. But not everyone is destined to become an IT specialist. People come to trading to “make money,” not to learn coding.

The most important principle of medium-term algorithmic trading is realizing that the market is chaotic. No strategy can deliver steady profits. Here, TradingView adds its own complication: you can’t test a 5-minute or 1-minute strategy over a long enough historical period to identify cycles and see if there’s even a chance for long-term profit with today’s chosen parameters. You only get about a month, and a month is just a fleeting instant for proper evaluation.

What Can You Do?

There are no universal “exits.” You can identify a strategy that currently yields profit and rely on averaged parameters rather than those perfectly tuned to a short period. Watch it, knowing that sooner or later drawdowns will occur. Don’t chase instant perfection—find a balance between profit and stability.

Additionally, you can use a simple mechanism to turn off your strategy during prolonged losing streaks. Define a window (for example, the last 10 trades), and if the total result of these trades falls below a certain threshold, stop trading that strategy. Let it “rest,” and turn it back on when market conditions change. This way, you’re not trying to catch mythical cycles with insufficient historical data from TradingView; you’re acting on facts. If there’s a long series of losing trades, you stop. When the situation improves, you resume and check if the market is ready to “pay” you again.

Realistic Algorithmic Trading

This approach won’t produce a fairy-tale scenario where you press a button and instantly “make money,” but it will help you avoid burning through your deposit. It allows you to remain afloat and use averaged parameters that aren’t confined to the narrow limits of a recent short-term period. It’s a more realistic approach to algorithmic trading, taking into account TradingView’s limitations and the chaotic nature of real markets.