Setting up your bot

1. Installing the bot

2. Opening the Inputs tab

When you drag the bot onto a chart, a dialog opens. Click the Inputs tab — that is where every setting on this page lives. You can reopen it at any time: right-click the chart → Expert Advisors → Properties, or just press F7.

Each setting has a plain-English label. You only ever change the Value column. After you press OK the bot restarts with your new settings.

3. Lot size — Auto or Fixed

The first thing most people want to change is trade size. There are two modes and one switch that chooses between them.

Why Auto is usually the better choice

With Auto Lot on, a trade with a tight stop gets a bigger lot and a trade with a wide stop gets a smaller one — so every trade risks the same amount of money, and the size grows and shrinks with your balance automatically. A flat lot does the opposite: your risk swings around with whatever the stop distance happens to be that day.

The panel tells you the real number

A lot means something completely different on each market — 0.10 lots of US30 and 0.10 lots of EURUSD are nowhere near the same risk. Because of that, the bot prints the actual figure for the chart you are on:

W5_YenKiller_MT5
USDJPY  PERIOD_H1
Lot sizing : AUTO - 2.00% of equity per trade
Equity     : 10000.00 USD
NEXT TRADE : 2.61 lots   (stop 355 points, risk 200.00 USD)

Watch that line before you switch anything on. If the lot looks too big for your comfort, lower Risk % — at 1% you get half the size, at 0.5% a quarter.

The fixed-lot starting values

If you turn Auto Lot off, the number already in the box is a sensible starting point for that bot's own market. Each one was measured by running the bot's own sizing formula over real price data on a $10,000 account:

4. Stop loss and take profit

Every trade is sent to your broker with a stop loss and a take profit already attached. No position is ever opened unprotected. There are two ways to size them.

Mode A — ATR (the default)

The stop and target are measured from ATR, which is simply how far the market has been moving lately. In a fast market the stop widens; in a quiet one it tightens. That is what the TradingView version does, so the two match.

Raising InpAtrSl gives the trade more room and fewer stop-outs, but each loss is bigger. With Auto Lot on, a wider stop automatically reduces the lot, so your money risk stays the same — only the shape of the trade changes.

Mode B — Fixed distances

If you'd rather set exact distances yourself:

1. Set InpUseFixedStops to true.
2. Set InpSlPoints — stop loss distance in points.
3. Set InpTpPoints — take profit distance in points.

The defaults are 300 and 600, which is a 1:2 reward-to-risk shape. ATR settings are ignored entirely in this mode.

5. Points vs pips — read this first

6. Guards that stop the bot loading

Two settings protect you from attaching a bot somewhere it cannot work. If either is triggered the bot refuses to start and says why in the Experts tab.

If your broker names a symbol unusually (say EURUSD.r or GOLD) the symbol check normally still recognises it, because it matches on part of the name. Only set these to false if you have checked and you know the chart is right.

7. Filters that make it trade less

8. Saving your settings

Once you have the inputs how you want them, press Save at the bottom of the Inputs tab and give the file a name. That writes a .set file you can Load onto any other chart — and it means a reinstall never costs you your setup.

Worth doing before you change anything, so you always have the original to go back to.

9. The TradingView version

The Pine version of each bot has the same three lot settings, in a group called Lot Size in the Inputs tab: Auto Lot Size, Position size % of equity and Fixed lot size. Stop and target use the same ATR multipliers as the MetaTrader build, so the chart you test on and the bot you run behave the same way.

One difference worth knowing: on TradingView, Auto Lot sizes the position as a percentage of equity, whereas in MetaTrader the Risk % is the most you can lose to the stop. Same number, different meaning — the labels in each version say which is which.

10. If it isn't trading

A quiet week is normal

These bots act on closed bars only — they never act mid-bar, because a signal that appears mid-bar can vanish before the bar closes, and a bot that traded those would behave nothing like its backtest. On a higher timeframe there simply aren't many bars. A strategy taking a couple of trades a month will have plenty of empty weeks, and that is the strategy working as designed, not a fault.

Before deciding something is broken, open the Experts tab in the Toolbox. If the bot is skipping entries it will tell you why, in words.