EA Craftsman’s EA Course【023】How should you set operating policies and goals with FX? Goals settings that beginners tend to do and are not good

If I could do that, I wouldn't have any trouble

Month-by-month gains, year-by-year gains, recovery factor, recovery period… which should be prioritized?


As I always say, it depends on what kind of earning method you are pursuing? Or what kind you are not pursuing?

Depending on the so-called operating policy, what you emphasize changes, but among these the most attractive is the monthly gain, right?

If you could always achieve a positive result every month, that would be ideal. If every month is a positive, then a yearly positive is naturally achieved as well.

However, that is quite difficult… I think everyone can feel that realization.

With that reality in mind, what should we do? What kind of operating policy should we establish?

Elementary School Level Goals

This is like discretionary trading; if your focus is only on making money, it will never be solved.


I often tell you to avoid setting goals you cannot control in daily life, and the same goes for automated trading.

What are goals you cannot control…

Earn 1 million yen every month!

Monthly return of 50%!

Earn 30 pips every day!

Do you see what these have in common?

Yes, they are all about earning, and also they are all things you cannot control.

The World Revolves Around Me

The same question applies to how far to let the profits ride after you enter a trade.


For example, if you long USD/JPY and say “Target 100 pips!” “Target is the most recent high!” whether that target will be reached depends on luck, right?

If the target isn’t reached, would you think “my effort wasn’t enough… I’ll try harder next time” (laughs)?

In exams, you can influence whether you reach a goal by your own effort, i.e., you can control it; but “earn 1 million yen per month in FX” has no control if the market doesn’t move as you wish. It is uncontrollable.

Nevertheless, how many traders set such uncontrollable goals?

Just to be clear, this isn’t about placing a limit order at 100 pips ahead or at the nearest high when you go long. This isn’t a Japanese language lesson, so I won’t explain further here.

And that monthly gain is also a goal that only considers your own convenience.

Items That Can Be Controlled by Automated Trading

So how should goal setting be for automated trading?


Automated trading trades automatically, so the parts you can control are limited.

If the controllable parts seem limited, it sounds like a downside; if you say you don’t need to control and let it run automatically, it sounds like an advantage. I’ve talked about the pros and cons of automated trading in previous lectures, so I’ll skip it here.

The controllable parts in automated trading are EA parameters, such as position size and various indicator parameters.

With my EA, I can control the repeat range as well.



Other controllable parts include pausing or restarting the program, perhaps.

We must set goals within this controllable range.

Goal Setting for Automated Trading

In semi-automatic trading shown in past EA courses, if profits exceed backtests for three consecutive months, pause temporarily and observe.


During the pause, run on a demo account, and if drawdown lasts for a month, restart.

If losses exceed 100,000 yen, stop for that month.

Additionally, you can decide conditions to swap out portfolio contents; that is also within the control range.

And periodically analyze each EA’s status, consider combinations, and check whether your desired capital curve deviates significantly from reality...

Yes, you can see it now. What should you aim for in automated trading?

Your desired capital curve. Of course, a realistic capital curve.

Anyway, an exclusively right-leaning, aggressively growing capital curve is not what I want!

That’s not good.

A Realistic Capital Curve

So what kind of capital curve is realistic?


This is the same as discretionary trading; you have to gain experience.

Gain experience with EA operation, understand the reality of “this is about right,” and based on that imagine goals like “it would be nice to earn this way.”

In self-help seminars, you might be told life goals must be more concrete; otherwise you cannot measure whether you achieved them. They might say this, but this isn’t a life goal setting, so abstract is fine.



What you need to be concrete about is the operational rules mentioned earlier.

If those rules don’t yield the desired capital curve, you may adjust them.

So this time I’m speaking to traders who have fallen into frustration or confusion because they set wrong or impossible goals.

When setting goals in FX trading, be mindful of whether you can control them with your own effort.

■ My Developed EA Concept and Operating Policy

EA Craftsman’s EA (Three Arrows) is here