Common questions

If yours is not here, email info@pipsky.com and we will answer it.

Questions we are asked most

• How much does a custom trading bot cost? It depends on the strategy. A single-rule bot for one instrument is far simpler than a multi-timeframe system with a dashboard. Send us your rules and we will quote a fixed price, in your currency, before any work starts.
• How long does it take to build? Most bots are delivered in one to three weeks, depending on complexity and how quickly the backtesting stage settles the strategy.
• Which platforms do you build for? Deriv (synthetic indices, forex and multipliers) through the official Deriv API, and MetaTrader 4 and 5 as Expert Advisors. If you trade somewhere else, ask and we will tell you honestly whether we can support it.
• Does Deriv allow trading bots? Yes. Deriv publishes an official API for exactly this, and bots built on it are running against a documented, supported interface rather than screen-scraping or automating clicks in a browser. You authorise access yourself and can withdraw it from your Deriv security settings at any time.
• Can a trading bot guarantee profit? No, and be careful of anyone who says otherwise. A bot executes your rules without hesitation, fatigue or emotion, and it enforces your risk limits exactly. It cannot make a losing strategy profitable. That is why we backtest first and show you the results, good or bad.
• How do I know a backtest result is real and not curve-fitted? Ask what the result would have been on data the strategy was never tuned against. We fit on the earlier part of the history and score on the later part that was never touched, require enough trades in that untouched window for the number to mean anything, check that the settings one step either side of the winner also work, and compare the result against the same strategy entered on coin flips. A real edge survives all four. A curve-fit one usually fails the first.
• What is curve fitting, and why does it matter? Curve fitting is tuning a strategy until it fits the exact history you tested it on, including the noise. The backtest looks superb and the live account does not, because the pattern it learned was never in the market, only in that stretch of it. The more settings you try, the better the best one looks by luck alone, which is why the number of things tested has to be accounted for before any of them is believed.
• What is a profit factor, and what counts as a good one? Profit factor is gross profit divided by gross loss. Above 1.0 the strategy made money over that period; below 1.0 it lost. Treat anything under about 1.2 on a small sample as indistinguishable from luck, and be sceptical of very high figures over few trades: a profit factor over fifteen trades is arithmetic, not evidence.
• How much money do I need to start? Enough that your position size at your chosen risk per trade is above your broker's minimum stake, with room for a normal losing run on top. Start on a demo account, which costs nothing and behaves the same, and only fund a live account once you have watched the bot run.
• Can I run the bot on a demo account first? Yes, and you should. Every bot is demonstrated on a demo account before it goes live, and you can keep it there as long as you like. Nothing is at stake and the behaviour is the same, so it is the cheapest way to find out whether you can live with how it trades.
• How do I connect my Deriv account to the bot? You log in through Deriv itself and authorise the connection there. We never see your Deriv password. The access you grant lets the bot read your account and place trades, and nothing more — it cannot withdraw funds — and you can revoke it at Deriv whenever you want.
• Is my Deriv API token safe? Broker tokens are encrypted at rest, never shown back to you in full, and never leave our server. They also cannot move money: the permission that allows withdrawals is not one the bot asks for. If you ever want the connection gone, revoking it at Deriv ends it immediately and without our involvement.
• Do I need to keep my computer on? No. We deploy your bot to a server so it runs continuously, and you monitor it from a private dashboard on your phone or laptop.
• What happens if my internet drops, or the server restarts? Your open positions carry their stop loss and take profit at the broker, so they are protected whether or not the bot is connected. The bot reconnects by itself and picks up the positions it already had rather than opening duplicates.
• Why has my bot stopped trading? Usually one of four things, and all of them are deliberate: the market is closed, it has hit your daily loss cap, it has hit your maximum trades for the day, or it has had a losing streak and stood itself down. Forex and metals do not trade at weekends. The dashboard says which one it was.
• What happens after several losses in a row? It stops. A losing-streak limit and a daily loss cap both end the session rather than letting the bot try to win it back, which is the behaviour that turns a bad day into a bad month. It resumes on your terms, not on its own judgement of whether the run is over.
• Does the bot use a stop loss and take profit on every trade? Yes. Each position carries both from the moment it opens, sized from the market's own volatility rather than a fixed number of pips. The bot never sits in a losing position hoping it comes back, and it never widens a stop.
• How is a custom bot different from a free bot or a drag-and-drop builder? A free bot implements somebody else's rules, usually undisclosed, on settings chosen to make its published results look good. A custom bot implements the rules you already trade, and you see the backtest on real data with spread and commission applied before any money is involved. The difference that matters is not the code, it is knowing what it does and why.
• Can you automate a strategy from a PDF, a course or a video? Usually, yes. Written strategies are often ambiguous or quietly contradict themselves between one page and another, so the first thing we do is turn them into rules precise enough to test, and show you where we had to choose a reading. You confirm the interpretation before anything is built on it.
• Does the backtest account for spread, commission and slippage? Spread and commission are applied to every simulated trade, because a backtest without them flatters short-term strategies badly. Slippage cannot be reproduced exactly from historical candles, so treat a backtested figure as the optimistic end of a range rather than a forecast.
• Which markets can the bot trade? Whatever your broker offers and your strategy needs: synthetic indices, major and minor forex pairs, gold and other metals, indices and commodities. We check that the instrument, the timeframe and the contract type actually fit together before building anything on them.
• Can a bot trade when the forex market is closed? Not forex or metals — those follow the market's own week and are shut from Friday evening to Sunday evening. Deriv's synthetic indices run every day of the year, so a bot on those keeps working over a weekend. A bot that appears to be idle on a Saturday is usually behaving correctly.
• Do you work with traders in other countries? Yes. We work with clients worldwide and everything is handled remotely by call, email and screen share, so your time zone is not a problem. Your bot runs on a server, not on your desk, which means it trades the session you care about whether or not you are awake for it.
• What do you need from me to get started? The entry and exit rules in your own words, the market and timeframe you trade them on, your position sizing, and the loss at which you would stop for the day. That is enough for a fixed quote. Screenshots of trades you would and would not have taken help more than people expect.
• Do I keep control of my trading account? Always. The bot connects to your own broker account with credentials you control and can revoke at any moment. We never hold your funds, and deposits and withdrawals stay entirely between you and your broker.

Contact: info@pipsky.com