Reading time: ~11 minutes | Category: Algorithmic Trading, Risk Management, cTrader It usually follows the same script. A trader finds a bot — on a forum, a marketplace, a YouTube channel. The backtest looks convincing: smooth equity curve, controlled drawdown, years of simulated data. They deploy it. The first few weeks go well. Then something shifts. The drawdown starts creeping. The bot keeps taking losses on setups that should be filtered. Three months in, the account is