Leprechaun is a Forex expert advisor offered by Aleksei Zaitsev on the MQL5 market. This expert advisor was released on September 1, 2020. Since that time, it has been updated several times with the latest version updated on September 23 (V.3.6). In this Leprechaun EA review, we are going to analyze the effectiveness and productivity of this trading tool to decide whether it is a good choice for traders.
Leprechaun: Characteristics
Let’s talk about its features and how the robot works:
- The robot uses a Grid strategy for trading
- The robot can be adjusted to trade constantly or in certain time intervals, e.g. in trading sessions during the highest volatility in the market
- The developer advises not to trade during flat market times (holidays, night and evening flat)
- It is compatible with any brokerage
- The robot trades successfully on the news or the American trading session
- The EA does not use any indicators for trading
- It focuses on where the price moves and opens positions in that direction
- Leprechaun EA is suitable for both experienced traders and newbies
- Supports any currency pair, but the basic settings are optimized for trading on XAUUSD gold
- It works on the H1 timeframe
- The minimum deposit is 1000 cents (10 USD) for a 0.01 Lot Size
- Recommended balance is 10,000 cents USD ($100)
Currency Pairs, Strategy & Timeframe
Leprechaun EA opens Grid orders in the trend directions. In case the trend changes the robot ‘reverses the balance of trading positions in the trend direction and closes the whole grid of orders’. As was earlier mentioned it can trade all the time or in certain hours with certain time intervals. It does not use any indicators, only price action:
Leprechaun Trading Performance
The developer has provided backtest results:
The EA had traded Gold vs US dollar for 3 months, from June 5, 2020, till September 1, 2020, on the M5 (why not H1?) timeframe. The spread was high and equaled 50 pips. The initial deposit was $10K. The profit factor was low – 1,05. The peak drawdown was 49, 65%. It traded 388 trades. The win rate for short positions was 38, 55%, for longs – 81, 34%. The total net profit was $5787,36.
Unfortunately, the dev failed to provide live trading account results on the MQL5 community. Therefore, we have decided to conduct additional research to see how the system performs.
It is a Real USD trading account that works on the MetaTrader 4 platform and trades with a WELTRADE broker with a 1:500 leverage. Its track record is verified.
The account was created 1 month ago on October 12, 2020. It was deposited at $15000. For one month of trading, the absolute gain has become +102,66% with a monthly gain of 62, 65%. Its maximum drawdown is 71,24% that is too high and dangerous for trading as can easily lead to the risk of ruin of the trading account.
The robot has traded 663 trades (won 51 out of 663 trades, which represents 68%) and 17561, pips. The average win ($108/929, 76 pips) is lower than the average loss (-$159.01/-1895.09 pips). The Longs win-rate equals the short win rate: 69% and 66%. The average trade length is 19 hours and 43 minutes. Its profit factor is not high and equals 1, 46.
The robot trades XAUUSD symbols, as it should be. However, we cannot say that the robot trades smoothly and predictably taking into account the fact that the profit for Longs trading positions equals -$6279, 19:
The robot trades all day, but it has the highest trading activity during four hours of American session opening:
It trades from Monday to Friday with the highest trading activity on Monday (128 trades), Tuesday (211 trades), and Wednesday (129 trades):
The robot trades with a high-risk level and with a 26, 43% chance of losing 10% of the account:
Leprechaun EA uses the Martingale approach, increasing the lot size from 0,01 to 0,18:
How much does it cost?
The robot copy costs $49. In addition to this, the EA is available for rent and costs $20/month. The dev provides a free Demo account for those traders who want to test the software before purchase. Unfortunately, we haven’t found a word mentioning money-back guarantee.
Reviews from customers
There are 7 customer reviews on the MQL5 market.
Six out of 7 reviews are positive ones.
Should You Use Leprechaun EA?
Pros | Cons |
Backtests provided | No real account trading results provided |
Affordable price | Extremely high drawdown |
The robot is available for rent | Grid and Martingale behind the system |
No money-back guarantee provided |
Conclusion
The robot uses the Grid strategy on Gold, and it looks dangerous and risky. It trades with an extremely high drawdown and the system does not perform as well as it should be. The lot size is oddly calculated. Moreover, there is no money-back guarantee provided by the developer. The robot performs high-risk trading, where 14 consecutive losing trades can decrease the account balance at 10%.