I am testing a scalping EA which seems to be working fine, but it has a couple of small problems.
Some times when it gets within a few pips of the Buy or Sell order lines (rather than waiting until it hits) it will open the order. This is costly if the price then turns and hits my stop loss.
It will also on occasions (usually when price spikes) hit the TP/SL lines and fail to close, again costly when price turns.
Does anyone know what causes this and is there a solution to it ?
I think 2) is the reason for that since most brokers have limits when you place pending orders like “Open price you set must differ from market price by at least 3 pips.” or something similar. So if your EA places the order a few seconds before the price reaches your desired point it might be at/closer to the market price. You might check on this.
I would avoid such scalpers: also if they work in demo, they will behave completely different in real accounts. Avoid scalper with an average of the profitable trades less than 6 pips and all scalpers which open and close positions in seconds or few minutes
Also corre71 is right about that; spread/slippage are different on demo and real. You would need a very good (honest?) broker to let you run your EA and scalp (with low spread and minimal slippage), or if the EA has an option to manually control slippage and spread it will save you a lot of losses.