How do I audit an EA's track record in ten minutes?
Updated August 27, 2026
Short answer
Work in order and quit at the first failure, because most records die in the first ninety seconds and there's no point reading the rest. Reset the date range, check real versus demo, check the broker is a real one, check the record is long enough to mean anything, then look at open positions and the balance-to-equity gap before you look at a single performance number. The headline gain is the last thing you read, not the first.
Open the record in your own browser, on your own device, from the URL rather than from an image. Then go down this list. Each step has a stop rule. When you hit one, stop, and don’t talk yourself past it.
The reasoning behind every check is on the Myfxbook verification page. This page is just the running order.
Minute 0. Reset the date range
Before you read anything. Trackers let the owner set a custom analysis period and the range often travels in the URL, so the link you were sent can start the day after the worst month. Set it to the full history yourself.
Stop if: there’s no public link at all and you were given screenshots. An MT4 statement is an HTML file and any number in it edits in ten seconds.
Minute 1. Real or demo, and what currency
Account type is a field on the page. Read it before anything else, because it decides what the rest is worth.
Then check the denomination. Cent accounts show a $50,000 balance that’s $500 of real exposure, with identical percentages.
Stop if: it’s a demo. Demo servers fill instantly and never requote, so the result describes the platform rather than the market.
Minute 2. The badges, read narrowly
Track record verified means the numbers match what the broker reports. Trading privileges verified means whoever posted it holds the master password. Two different claims, and neither one says the account holds real money.
Stop if: neither badge is present. One badge is worth a raised eyebrow and a note to ask about the other.
Minute 3. The broker name
You want a firm you can type into a search bar and find a regulator for.
Stop if: the broker field is generic, unlisted, or reads like “Other (MT4)”. That’s a server nobody vouches for, and it’s the route the outright fabrications take.
Minute 4. Start date and trade count
Not the age of the profile. The date the first trade landed, and how many trades there have been since.
Under a year and the record hasn’t seen much change in conditions. Under a couple of hundred trades and you’re reading noise however long the calendar looks. A record showing 40 trades across eighteen months is a short record wearing a long coat.
Stop if: it’s too short to distinguish from luck. You can always come back in six months.
Minute 5. Is anything hidden
Look for the trade history tab and the open positions list. Both should be there and both should be populated.
Stop if: the trade list or the open positions are switched off. There’s no innocent reason to publish an equity curve while hiding the trades that made it, and hidden open positions are precisely how a large floating loss stays invisible.
Minute 6. Balance against equity, right now
The most useful thirty seconds on this page. Balance is closed trades. Equity is balance plus whatever’s open. The gap between them is unrealised loss sitting on the account today.
Stop if: equity is well below balance and the page is being sold on its closed-trade record. You’re being shown the half that’s finished.
Minute 7. Drawdown chart and the deposits column
Read them together, not separately. Deposits landing while a position is underwater make that floating loss a smaller share of a bigger account, which softens the percentage drawdown without anything improving.
Stop if: every deposit lands right before the drawdown line flattens out.
Minute 8. Scan the trade list for the grid signature
Sort by open time and look at maybe fifty rows. Four things to spot:
- Multiple open positions in the same direction on the same pair
- Lot sizes stepping up (0.01, 0.02, 0.04) rather than staying flat
- Batches of trades closing at the exact same second
- A win rate over about 90% with average loss much bigger than average win
Stop if: you find them and the product description never used the word martingale or grid. That’s not a performance question any more, it’s a disclosure one.
Minute 9. Now, finally, the numbers
And only in pairs. Gain next to maximum drawdown. Win rate next to average win versus average loss. Profit factor next to trade count.
Stop if: any headline number is quoted without its pair. That was a choice.
Minute 10. Send one message
“Can I have the investor password?” It’s read-only, it costs them nothing, and it shows you the account live, including open positions and floating loss, plus the server name in your own terminal.
You don’t need an answer to finish the audit. You need to notice what the answer is.
What ten minutes can’t do
It can’t tell you whether the settings you’d receive are the settings that produced this record, whether there were four other accounts that got closed, or whether any of it keeps working. Nothing can. Those get handled by trading small and comparing your own weeks against theirs, not by staring harder at a page.
And if a record does pass all of this, that’s not a green light. It just means it’s finally worth some real time. The full version of that is on the scam checking page.