Magic numbers: naming strategies on one account so buyers can tell your EAs apart

The problem with one account and three robots

Magic numbers are how a MetaTrader terminal tells one Expert Advisor's orders from another's, and on a public track record they are the only thing that stops three robots on one account from blurring into a single curve. If you sell each of those robots separately, the blur is a commercial problem: a buyer of your gold scalper does not care that your EURUSD trend bot carried the account last quarter, and they are right not to.

ConfirmedTrades reads the magic number on every trade and builds a By magic number section from it: per-strategy trade count, net profit, win rate and the rest. On its own that section is a list of integers. The fix is to name them.

Naming a magic number

Open the account's settings — the gear on the account page, or the Manage page directly — and go to the General tab. Under EA names (magic numbers) every magic the account has traded is listed, and you type a name next to it: up to 40 characters, for up to 100 numbers. Magic number 0 is labelled Manual automatically, which is worth knowing if you ever close a trade by hand.

The section only appears once the account has actually traded a non-zero magic. If every trade so far was manual, or your EA leaves the magic at 0, there is nothing to name yet and the block is not shown — it appears by itself after the first EA trade syncs.

If one EA numbers its trades sequentially — 720001, 720002, 720003 and on — do not type them one at a time. Under Magic number range, give a from, a to and one name, and every magic in that block is named at once, including new ones that appear later. You get up to 20 ranges, and an exact name always overrides a range, so a single member of a block can still be renamed without breaking the rest.

Use the product name, exactly as it appears on your MQL5 market listing or your website. A buyer who sees "Aurum Scalper v3" on the public breakdown and the same name on the listing has just connected the record to the product without any help from you. "Strategy 2" or "gold test" does the opposite.

Where the names show up

The names are not on the page by default, which catches people out. They live in the Breakdown statistics card, and that card opens on By symbol. Click By magic, on the right of the card, and the table switches to one row per strategy with an EA / strategy column carrying your names beside the raw Magic column. The By magic control is only there when the account has a non-zero magic to show.

• Breakdown statistics → By magic → Table — the per-strategy table: trades, win rate, pips and profit, with your name in the EA / strategy column.
• Breakdown statistics → By magic → Chart — the same split as a donut, where each slice is labelled with the name instead of a bare number.
• Custom Analysis — the strategy filter chips read as the name next to the number, so a visitor filters by product rather than by integer.
• The AI review — refers to your strategies by name in its written analysis.

What the per-EA breakdown does and does not give a buyer

The breakdown gives a buyer the closed-trade statistics per strategy. With Custom Analysis switched on for visitors (the default), they can go further: filter the whole page to one named EA and see its own gain, profit factor, average win and loss, symbol table and trade history, all recomputed. That is nearly as good as a dedicated page.

Nearly. Three things stay at account level no matter how you filter. The Score is for the account, not the EA. Drawdown in the Glance hub, and the permanent worst-drawdown record, are for the whole account's balance and equity, because margin is shared. And the Execution panel's spread samples are per symbol, not per EA, so two EAs on the same symbol share one spread profile.

The drawdown point matters most. If your conservative trend EA and your aggressive grid EA share an account, the grid's 35% equity drawdown is printed on the page the trend EA is sold from. There is no naming trick that fixes that.

When to split accounts instead

A rough rule: share an account when the EAs are sold together, split when they are sold separately. More specifically, split when any of these is true.

• You sell the EAs as separate products and buyers will judge drawdown. Account-level drawdown is the number they read.
• The trading bots have very different risk profiles. One grid system poisons the page for every other strategy on it.
• You want each EA to carry its own broker-verified badge and trading-privileges check. Those are per account.
• You want a portfolio page later. Portfolios roll separate accounts into one combined view with per-member sparklines, which is the clean way to show "the whole family" while keeping each record standalone.
• One EA is still in testing. Its early losses will sit in the calendar of the account forever.

When sharing is fine

Sharing works when the forex robots are a set. A vendor who sells a three-pair bundle with one licence and one risk setting should run them on one account, name the three magic numbers, and let the account-level numbers be the product's numbers. The per-EA breakdown then becomes a feature: a buyer can see that all three legs contribute, or that one leg does all the work, and decide accordingly.

It also works for a signal seller whose subscribers receive every trade anyway. The subscriber's result is the account result; the breakdown is just transparency about what is inside it.

The Free plan allows two connected accounts, which is enough to split a flagship EA from everything else. Beyond that, pricing lists the account caps per plan.

Keeping the breakdown clean

A few habits keep the per-EA numbers meaningful over a long record.

• One magic number per EA per account, and never reuse a number for a different strategy later. The breakdown cannot know the number changed meaning.
• If you release a new major version with materially different logic, give it a new magic number and a new name. Buyers can then see v2's record on its own through Custom Analysis rather than a blend.
• Avoid manual trades on a selling account. Every one lands in the Manual row and invites the question "how much of this was the robot".
• Decide whether the Magic column is public in the trade table. Showing it lets a buyer verify the breakdown trade by trade; hiding it keeps your numbering private. The named breakdown shows either way.

What a buyer will do with it

A careful buyer will open the By magic number section, find the EA they are considering, filter the page to it, and then check whether that EA alone would have been worth buying: its own profit factor, its own worst month, its own share of the symbol table. If your names are product names, their work takes a minute and lands on your listing. If your names are missing, they are guessing which integer is the one you are selling, and a guessing buyer is a leaving buyer. How to vet an EA is the checklist they are likely working from.