Guides
Practical, no-nonsense guides on automating your trading — from wiring a TradingView webhook into MetaTrader to copying trades across brokers. Written for real traders, no fluff.
These guides are not FX-only. The symbol resolver ships with 34 canonical instruments mapped across 106 broker spellings — currency pairs, metals (XAUUSD, XAGUSD), energy (WTI, USOIL), index CFDs (NAS100, US30, SP500), crypto (BTCUSD) and agricultural contracts (wheat, corn, soybean) — because the same instrument is named differently at almost every broker. How that resolution works →
Every guide here is free to read and none of them need an account. They describe how this system actually behaves rather than automation in the abstract — the error strings, HTTP status codes and rejection reasons quoted in them are the ones you see yourself when a signal fails, and the timings and limits are taken from the running system, not from a vendor datasheet. When the behaviour changes, the guide that documents it changes with it.
Getting started
If you have never wired an alert into a broker before, start here. The first explains what a webhook actually is in plain terms; the second walks the whole pipeline end to end; the third covers what the Expert Advisor is doing on your own machine once it is running. Between them they cover the vocabulary the rest of these guides assume — payload, secret, license key, magic comment.
What is a trading webhook?
A plain-language explainer of webhooks, how they differ from an API, and why they're the key to automated execution.
Read guide →Send TradingView alerts to MetaTrader
The full pipeline from a TradingView alert to a live order on MT4/MT5, set up step by step.
Read guide →What the EA actually does on your terminal
What it polls and how often, the permission MetaTrader must grant it, and how it keeps away from the trades you opened by hand.
Read guide →Webhooks
Almost every support email we get about "the signal did not arrive" turns out to be one of a handful of causes: a field name that does not match, a volume below the broker's minimum step, or algo trading switched off in the terminal. These guides cover the exact payload TradeAon accepts, the checklist we work through ourselves when a signal goes missing, the full catalogue of rejection messages the endpoint can return, and the two instructions that need more than an action and a volume — pending orders and partial closes.
TradingView webhook JSON syntax
Every field in the alert message, the action values, and how to build a dynamic message from Pine Script.
Read guide →Common webhook errors & fixes
A checklist for when a signal doesn't reach MetaTrader — from malformed JSON to disabled algo trading.
Read guide →Every webhook error, and what it means
The exact rejection messages the endpoint returns, the HTTP status on each, and the condition that triggers it.
Read guide →Pending orders: limit, stop and the four types
Which of the four types your price actually needs, the shorthand that picks a side for you, and which layer rejects what.
Read guide →Closing part of a position
Taking half off from an alert that does not know your lot size — and why your broker's lot step has the last word.
Read guide →Copy trading
Copying between two accounts at the same broker is easy. Copying across brokers is where it gets interesting, because the two sides disagree about what an instrument is called and about how much a "lot" is worth. These guides deal with that: the architecture, the volume maths, and the symbol naming — including how a name is resolved against a broker's list step by step.
Copy trades between two brokers
Mirror a master account onto slave accounts on different brokers and platforms, safely.
Read guide →Lot sizing & volume mapping
Fixed, proportional, multiplier and balance-based sizing — and why 1:1 copying can be dangerous.
Read guide →Symbol mapping explained
Why GOLD, XAUUSD and XAU/USD are the same instrument, and how mapping resolves broker naming.
Read guide →How symbol resolution actually works
The nine-step ladder that matches a symbol to your broker's list — and the rung where matching stops being safe.
Read guide →When a copy signal is lost
Signals are sent once. What repairs the gap afterwards, why closing is safe, and why re-opening needs five separate guards.
Read guide →Platforms
MT4, MT5 and cTrader automate in genuinely different ways — MetaTrader runs your code inside a terminal you have to keep online, while cTrader is authorised over OAuth and executed server-side. That difference changes what infrastructure you need, so it is worth understanding before you commit to a platform.
MT4 vs MT5 for automation
The differences that actually matter when you're automating, and how to choose.
Read guide →cTrader automation with webhooks
How cTrader differs from MetaTrader, and why connecting it over OAuth means there is no terminal to keep running.
Read guide →What 0.15 lots actually sends to cTrader
cTrader orders carry an integer volume, not lots — and the conversion differs per symbol. Where sizes get raised, floored and capped.
Read guide →Infrastructure & risk
Automation is only as reliable as the machine it runs on and the risk rules you gave it. A fast bridge will execute a bad strategy just as reliably as a good one, so these cover keeping the terminal alive, sizing positions sanely, reviewing the results honestly afterwards — and what the delay between a signal and a fill is actually made of.
Keep MetaTrader online 24/7
Why your terminal must stay running, and how to choose and set up a low-latency VPS.
Read guide →Risk management with SL/TP
Why automation removes emotion but not risk — stop-loss, sizing and exposure across accounts.
Read guide →Why a trading journal matters
The metrics that tell you whether an edge is real, and how automated logging makes it effortless.
Read guide →Where the second goes: a latency breakdown
A copied trade takes 0.7–1.0 s. Split into four measured segments, it is obvious which part is worth optimising — and which nobody can fix.
Read guide →