Cloud Trade EA
A long-only swing trading Expert Advisor for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, working exclusively on the daily chart. It is the result of twelve years of building professional trading systems for the MetaTrader platform.
Sold and delivered through the MQL5 Market. Purchase, licensing and payment are handled by MetaQuotes.
01 What it does
A cloud of entries instead of a single guess.
Most Expert Advisors take one position at one price and then live with that decision. Cloud Trade EA scales into a move with a group of smaller trades — the cloud — so the average entry is built out of several prices rather than one lucky tick. Each trade in the cloud carries its own magic number and is managed individually, which means positions can be closed independently and you can always tell them apart in your account history.
Positions are held for several days, weekends included, because the strategy is designed to capture swing-sized moves in stock indices rather than intraday noise. Exclusively targeting the S&P 500 and Nasdaq is a deliberate limitation: the rules exploit behaviour specific to equity indices, and we would rather ship one thing that fits than a universal template that fits nothing.
02 Key features
Daily time frame precision
Works exclusively on the daily chart, which keeps the signal-to-noise ratio high and makes each decision auditable against a single closing price.
Long-only, index-tuned
Optimised for upward trends in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq. The rules are shaped around how indices behave, not adapted from a forex system.
Cloud of trades
A scaling approach that opens a cloud of smaller positions to improve the average entry and spread position sizing across prices. Every trade is managed on its own magic number.
Swing holding periods
Positions stay open for several days, weekends included, to capture moves that matter rather than intraday chop.
Optimised 2018–2023, tested wider
Backtested on historical tick data and cross-tested against feeds from several brokers. Performance on 2024 data was deliberately kept out of sample.
An honest engine
A long-tested trading approach combined with proven trade management. No AI, no ChatGPT, no quantum computing in the strategy — and no grid or martingale system.
03 Settings
Six inputs, no hidden switches.
Everything the EA does is controlled by the parameters below. There is no remote configuration and no server call — the logic runs entirely inside your terminal.
| Input | What it controls |
|---|---|
| Market Profile | Selects either S&P 500 or Nasdaq as the profile. The profile carries the parameter set tuned for that index. |
| Risk level | One of four levels — low, medium, high or very high. The number of trades in the cloud increases with the level you choose, so pick the one that matches your tolerance rather than the one with the best backtest. |
| Lot size calc mode | Manual lot size, or automatic calculation per 1k, 2k, 5k or 10k of account balance. |
| Lot size | The lot size itself. In automatic mode it scales with your balance: on a 10k account with lot size 0.1 and automatic calculation per 2k, the resulting size is 0.1 × (10k / 2k) = 0.5 lots. |
| Magic number base | The first magic number used. Every simultaneous trade takes its own number counting up from this base, so make sure no other EA is assigned a number close to it. |
| Trade Comment | An optional comment written to each order. |
04 Setup
Running it, or testing it first.
- Open a chart for the S&P 500 or Nasdaq in your MetaTrader 5 terminal. The symbol name varies between brokers — see the list opposite.
- Set the chart time frame to Daily (D1). This is not optional; the strategy is defined on daily bars.
- Drop the EA on the chart and select the market profile and risk level that match the instrument and your account.
Common symbol names
| Index | Symbols seen at brokers |
|---|---|
| S&P 500 | SP500, US500, US500.cash |
| Nasdaq | US100, USTEC, NAS100 |
If your broker uses a different name, the instrument is still the same index — check the contract specification and pick the daily chart of the cash or CFD index, not a sector variant.
05 Backtests
Where the numbers come from.
The reports below are strategy tester backtests on the S&P 500 from 2018 to 3 January 2025, run at two different risk levels. Parameters were optimised on 2018–2023 only; everything after that is out of sample.
06 Before you buy
Three things we would rather
you knew in advance.
Backtest it yourself first
We encourage every buyer to run Cloud Trade EA thoroughly in the strategy tester before purchasing, on their own broker’s data and with the risk level they actually intend to trade. A free demo is available on the MQL5 Market for exactly this purpose. If the behaviour surprises you in testing, it will surprise you in live trading too.
There will be quiet periods
There are stretches — sometimes several weeks, occasionally two or three months — where no trading signals occur because the market does not align with the strategy. These quiet periods are part of the design and are not a malfunction. An EA that always finds a reason to trade is usually one that has stopped being selective.
No guarantee of future success
The strategy has been tested extensively against past data, but past performance does not guarantee future results. Market behaviour changes, brokers change their conditions, and a rule set that worked for years can stop working. Size your positions on the assumption that this one might too. Please read the full risk disclaimer.
Cloud Trade EA on the MQL5 Market
Purchase, activation and updates run through MetaQuotes’ marketplace, which also hosts the free demo version for the strategy tester. Questions about the strategy itself are best sent to us directly.