It’s an interesting question. If you look through my daily results you’ll see an amazing amount of variation in the trades across my various live forex broker accounts. There is variation in both the number of trades and the profit of each trade. Below are the reasons for these variations:

EUR/USD spread jumping above 2 pips

Remember, Megadroid will not trade if the spread on EUR/USD exceeds 2.0 pips. Occasionally the spread might exceed this value at a broker, causing a trade to be missed. If you look through the MT4 terminal experts log, you’ll see messages like these:

07:45:53 MegaDroid EURUSD,H1: Strategy1: Safe spread limit exceeded: spread = 4.7
07:45:53 MegaDroid EURUSD,H1: Strategy2: Safe spread limit exceeded: spread = 4.7
07:45:53 MegaDroid EURUSD,H1: Strategy1: Safe spread limit exceeded: spread = 4.1
07:45:53 MegaDroid EURUSD,H1: Strategy2: Safe spread limit exceeded: spread = 4.1

That’s basically telling you Megadroid wasn’t able to place a trade because the spread is greater than 2 pips.

Different Price Data = Different Technical Indicator Values

Megadroid uses technical indicators to decide whether to place a trade. These indicators are based on the recent price history on a particular broker. Because there are some differences in EUR/USD prices between brokers, it follows that the technical indicator values will also vary. For this reason Megadroid running on one broker might detect a trade signal, whereas it won’t detect a trade signal at another broker.

Disconnections from the MT4 trade server

If the MT4 trading terminal loses connection with the broker’s trade server, Megadroid could miss a trade. There are many reasons for a temporary disconnection. Occasionally it’s due to a problem at your own ISP, but more commonly the problem is at the broker’s end. You’ll see messages like these in the MT4 journal log:

05:28:03 ‘*****’: ping failed
05:28:05 ‘*****’: login
05:28:12 ‘*****’: login
06:02:19 ‘*****’: login
06:03:00 ‘*****’: DataCenter connecting failed [6]
06:03:22 ‘*****’: login
06:03:29 ‘*****’: login
07:13:44 ‘*****’: login
07:14:39 ‘*****’: DataCenter connecting failed [6]

A disconnection may also prevent a trade from being closed if it occurs when a profit target is reached. The frequency, and duration of disconnects varies from broker to broker. You’ll find some are more reliable than others.

Trade rejected

If the EUR/USD price is moving fast when the Megadroid robot submits a new trade request, there is a chance the broker’s trade server with reject the trade causing a trade to be missed. There are several types of “reject messages”. The classic is a requote message. That’s the server saying it can’t fill at the price Megadroid requested. But you’ll also see some other “unofficial” types of reject messages, such as “Trade Context Busy”, or even “No Connection”. Basically the effect is the same – i.e. a missed trade. Trade reject messages can also happen when Megadroid attempts to close a trade, preventing an order from closing.

Trade slippage

When Megadroid places a trade, sometimes the price the order gets filled at is worse than what was quoted at the time of the trade request. For example Megadroid might issue a buy EUR/USD at 1.2263, but the order may open at 1.2265. In this case there’s 2 pips of slippage. Slippage that occurs when an order is opened can be nasty, because it means the trade has to overcome the slippage in order to reach it’s profit target. Such a trade has a greater chance of failing to reach it’s profit target and then reversing to hit it’s stop-loss. Slippage can occur on closing as well, resulting in a smaller profit.

So what does this all mean?

Basically it means that you need to monitor the performance of Megadroid on each broker account closely, like I am doing on this website. That’s the only way to gauge the impact these factors will have. Ultimately the monthly bottom-line is all that counts. If you find one broker that is generating 60 pips profit from 10 trades in a month, and another is making 12 pips from 8 trades in the same month, it makes sense to trade larger orders at the better performing broker. I’ve also found that broker performance using Megadroid changes over time. One broker might be awesome for 3-4 months, and then become hopeless. Meanwhile a poorly performing broker starts performing better. I suspect these changes are due to changes in the number of traders and the server configuration at a particular broker.