While there are some Expert Advisors that are designed to run 24/7 and always remain in the market, others are not so pervasive and aggressive. For example, there are a number of Expert Advisors that were developed specifically to work around news releases such as central bank monetary policy releases, GDP and CPI releases, or unemployment data releases. These Expert Advisors might only run for 10 days out of the entire year. Other Expert Advisors have a broader perspective on the markets and these do run 24/7 for as long as they remain relevant in their given market.
There are many different Expert Advisors available and each is designed to do something different. There are also free and paid Expert Advisors available. So, the best Expert Advisor will depend on your own needs and expectations. We could probably look at free and paid tools separately too because let’s face it, we all expect more from a tool that we pay for versus one that’s free. And yet there are some very valuable free Expert Advisors available from the MetaTrader 4 community.
Many traders do report that Expert Advisors work for them, although with the caveat that you must choose the proper Expert Advisor. There are many Expert Advisors available and some are inferior, while others do exactly what they are supposed to do. One of the great benefits of using these programmed tools is they will take all the emotion out of your trading. One of the downsides is that changing market conditions can break an Expert Advisor, changing it from a profitable tool to a money draining liability.
It depends on your expectations. If you think you can simply pop in an algorithmic trading EA and MetaTrader 5 will make you truckloads of profits then it’s certainly a bad thing in your case. However, if you approach algorithmic trading realistically and with a sense of responsibility you really should be able to make some profits without taking on undue risks. Algorithmic trading is also good for removing some of the emotional and psychological aspects of trading. Some traders have issues with pulling the trigger or entering trades. An algorithmic trading EA will get past that issue.
On a strictly technical basis the answer has to be yes. The Expert Advisors and robots created in MetaTrader 5 are nothing more than tools. That said, like any tool they are only as good as they’ve been created. And they are only good for the purpose they been created for. You wouldn’t try to use a hammer to turn screws and by the same token you can’t expect an Expert Advisor to do anything it wasn’t programmed to do. So long as it was programmed well, and is being used properly, algorithmic trading can be very successful. If it wasn’t there wouldn’t be so many algorithms being created.