Frequently Asked Questions

RegimeTrader uses Smart Money Concepts (SMC) combined with trend-following and breakout strategies — the same framework institutional traders use to identify high-probability setups.

Specifically it looks for:

• →Order Blocks — the last opposing candle before a strong impulse move, where institutions placed large orders
• →Fair Value Gaps (FVGs) — 3-candle imbalances that price tends to revisit
• →Market Structure — Higher Highs/Higher Lows (bullish) or Lower Highs/Lower Lows (bearish) to confirm trend direction
• →Breakout entries on confirmed structure breaks with volume confirmation

This is not scalping, grid trading, martingale, or arbitrage. It is a structured, rules-based system with defined entry, stop, and target logic on every trade.

The bot detects the market regime automatically before placing any trade:

• →Trending markets: Best conditions — SMC and Trend Pullback strategies activate, trading with momentum from institutional Order Blocks
• →Breakout conditions: Breakout strategy activates when price compresses and breaks structure with conviction
• →Ranging/choppy markets: Bot skips trading entirely — no strategy is selected, no orders are placed

Ranging avoidance is one of the most important features — most bots lose money in choppy conditions because they keep firing signals. This one stops.

• ✓No emotion — no FOMO entries, no revenge trading, no moving stop losses
• ✓Consistent execution — the same rules apply to every trade, every session, every day
• ✓Speed — identifies setups and places orders in milliseconds
• ✓Multi-pair coverage — monitors all configured pairs simultaneously (a human can watch 2-3 comfortably)
• ✓24/5 discipline — trades London and New York sessions without fatigue or distraction
• ✓Automatic risk management — position sizes calculated precisely, stops placed automatically

This is a valid concern with any automated system. Here is what makes RegimeTrader less susceptible to overfitting:

• →The core logic (Order Blocks, FVGs, market structure) is based on price action principles used by professional traders for decades — not curve-fitted indicators
• →There are fewer than 10 configurable parameters in the signal logic, reducing the degrees of freedom available to overfit
• →The bot has a hard minimum R:R requirement (default 2.0) and a minimum signal score (default 65/100) — low-quality setups are rejected even if they would have been historically profitable
• →Regime detection means the bot adapts to current market conditions rather than assuming the market always behaves like the backtest period

That said, no strategy is completely immune to regime shifts. We recommend starting on a demo account and scaling up only after validating live performance.

Frequency depends on market conditions and your configuration, but as a rough guide:

• →Typical: 2–6 trades per day across all configured pairs
• →Quiet days (no clear trend): 0–2 trades — the bot waits for valid setups
• →Active sessions (London open, NY open): most trades occur in the first 2–3 hours of each session
• →Maximum: capped by your max_daily_trades setting (default 10)

The bot does not overtrade. A quiet day with 0 trades is correct behaviour, not a malfunction.

MetaTrader 5 (MT5) only. MT4, TradingView, cTrader, and NinjaTrader are not supported. MT5 was chosen because it offers a Python API (MetaTrader5 library), native multi-asset support, and is widely available across brokers.

No coding knowledge is required. Users download the Windows bot package, start it on the machine that runs MT5, enter the license key if prompted, and then use the dashboard Setup flow to save MT5 credentials.

The important distinction is this: users are not expected to edit code files, environment variables, orsettings.json just to get started. The dashboard handles the normal setup flow.

Yes — and for serious use, a VPS is strongly recommended so the bot runs continuously without depending on your personal computer being on. Any Windows VPS works. We recommend one with at least 2 GB RAM and a low-latency connection to your broker's servers.

Popular options: Contabo, Vultr, AWS EC2 (Windows), or your broker's own VPS offering.

Yes — any broker that supports MT5 works. The bot connects through the MT5 terminal, not directly to the broker. You choose the broker, open an account, install MT5, log in, and the bot trades through it.

We recommend choosing an ECN/STP broker with tight spreads (under 1.5 pips on EURUSD) and fast execution for best results.

Yes. From the dashboard Settings page, you set Risk % per trade (default 1%). The bot calculates lot size automatically based on your account balance and stop loss distance — you never manually set lot sizes.

Example: with a $1,000 account and 1% risk, each trade risks $10. With a 20 pip stop on EURUSD, the bot calculates the correct lot size automatically.

Yes. You can enable or disable any combination of pairs from the Settings page. Default pairs are EURUSD, GBPUSD, XAUUSD, and AUDUSD. Any MT5-supported symbol can be added.

Users can choose strategy mode from the Bot page. The current UI supports Auto plus forced single-strategy modes such as SMC only, Trend Pullback only, or Breakout only, depending on plan limits.

Auto is recommended for most users because the bot can switch behavior based on market regime. Forced modes are more useful when you want to test a specific style.

The bot trades London and New York sessions by default (approximately 07:00–17:00 UTC). The session filter is built-in and cannot be disabled — trading outside these sessions has historically lower institutional participation and worse SMC setups. Future versions may allow custom session windows.

Yes, always. Every order placed by the bot includes a hard stop loss. There are no trades without stops. The stop is placed below the Order Block or swing low (for buys), or above the Order Block or swing high (for sells).

The bot uses a two-phase news filter that checks a live ForexFactory economic calendar every hour. Only High-impact events trigger it — Medium and Low events are ignored.

• →Pre-event (15 min before): Trading is blocked. This protects against entering just before the spike when spreads are already widening.
• →Post-event (adaptive): Trading resumes automatically once the ATR (volatility) returns to normal levels. This means the bot can catch the post-news continuation move — the clean directional trend that often follows NFP, CPI, or FOMC — without risking entry during the initial chaos.

Any trades already open during a news event remain open — only new entries are blocked.

No automated system can guarantee this never happens, but RegimeTrader has multiple layers of protection:

• ✓Stop loss on every trade — maximum loss per trade is your defined risk %
• ✓Daily loss limit — bot stops for the day if total daily loss exceeds your threshold (default 3%)
• ✓Maximum drawdown cap — bot stops entirely if equity drops more than X% from peak (default 10%)
• ✓Max open trades limit — prevents over-exposure (default 3 concurrent positions)
• ✓Consecutive loss pause — bot pauses after N losses in a row (default 3) to prevent runaway losses
• ✓Spread filter — skips trades when broker spread is abnormally wide (e.g. during gaps)
• ✓Friday close — all open positions closed before the weekend

Yes. Reach us via the email on the dashboard or the contact form. Pro subscribers get priority response (typically within 24 hours). Starter subscribers are supported within 48 hours.

Updates are released as needed when setup flow, risk controls, MT5 compatibility, or trading logic changes. They are typically distributed as an updated Windows package or installer from the dashboard.

In practice, users stop the old runner, replace it with the new build, and start it again. On the same machine, the saved license and local setup usually carry over.

If the bot process exits unexpectedly, all open positions remain in MT5 with their stop losses and take profits intact — no orders are left unprotected. The bot does not close positions on exit; MT5 manages them independently. You can restart the bot at any time and it will resume monitoring from the current state.

For maximum uptime, run the bot on a VPS with Windows Task Scheduler set to auto-restart on crash.