MT5 tester reports zero profit

[milescristi]

Hello fellow fxDreemers!

I'm new to MT5 and it's driving me crazy.

I made a simple ea with fxDreema, I tested it with MT5.
the arrows are showing properly on the chart and I can see the number of trades in reports but the profit is always 0 and the balance a flat line.
at first I thought I must be doing something wrong in building my EA but then I tried with some free EAs from the market on traditional forex pairs and it's the same.

What on earth am I doing wrong??

[roar]

@milescristi check your journal tab, there might be some hints.
Show a screenshot of your tester settings and balance graph?

[milescristi]

@roar here are the relevant files

[milescristi]

@roar
there is nothing unusual in the journal tab neither

[roar]

@milescristi ok, this is super weird. I can only guess that your broker uses some weird profit currency denominations for these cryptos (like, if you get your profits in ethereum, the USD balance doesnt change in tester.)
But if this problem indeed happens with simple forex as well, even weirder...

Hit Ctrl+U and check your contract specifications, what are the margin and profit currencies ?

[milescristi]

@roar
the pair is ETH-USDT and here are the specs in Symbols
USDT (Tether) is a crypto coin that is peged 1:1 to USD, it's widely used on crypto exchanges.

I checked again and this happens with traditional forex pairs too.
maybe you can share a simple EA that works for you on any traditional pair just for testing purposes. I will try on a fresh install to see if anything changes.

thank you for your help

[roar]

@milescristi ok. How about your EURUSD pair, surely it doesnt have USDT anywhere in there... ?

Your mt5 already has some example EAs, hit Ctrl+N and navigate to Expert Advisors - Advisors - ExpertMACD, for example.

[milescristi]

@roar
I finally figured out what was the problem
The deposit currency needs to match the quote currency of the pair I want to backtest.
It seems obvious I know, but I missed that every time.
I had USD instead of USDT, I thought mt5 would automatically convert the deposit currency into my pair quote currency.

thank you so much for your help!