A strategy that passed on one account can breach on the next before it ever takes a real signal — not because the logic broke, but because the risk assumptions moved. This is the pre-flight checklist to run before you let an EA trade live money on a new account.
Confirm the contract spec matches your assumptions
The first thing to verify is that the new account's instruments behave the way your strategy expects. A symbol name is not a guarantee. For every symbol the EA will trade, read the broker's specification and confirm the contract size, tick size, tick value, number of digits, and minimum lot step. If any of these differ from the account you validated on, your position sizing is off before the first trade.
Re-derive the position size from money, not lots
Don't carry over the lot size — carry over the money risk. Decide what fraction of the account a single trade may lose, and back out the lot size from it. The relationship is:
lots = (balance × risk%) ÷ (stop pips × pip value/lot)
Because pip value per lot is broker- and currency-specific, the correct lot size on the new account is almost never the number that was correct on the old one. Re-run this for every symbol, in the new account's currency, before going live.
A worked pre-flight
Suppose the strategy risked 1% per trade on a 10,000 USD account with a 20-pip stop, and the old broker's pip value was 10 per lot: (10,000 × 0.01) ÷ (20 × 10) = 0.50 lots. The new broker prices the same symbol at 8 per lot in your account currency. The correct size is now (10,000 × 0.01) ÷ (20 × 8) = 0.625 lots. Ship the old 0.50 lots unchanged and you'd be risking only 0.80% — under-sized here, but on a richer-paying broker the same mistake over-sizes and eats into a daily drawdown limit.
Same 1% intent, same stop — 0.50 lots on one broker, 0.625 on another.
Check the account rules, not just the math
Live and funded accounts carry constraints a demo often doesn't. Confirm them before the EA can trip one:
- Daily and overall drawdown limits — know the money amount, and confirm your worst-case day of stacked trades stays under it.
- Leverage and margin — lower leverage on the new account can reject a position the EA tries to open.
- Lot step and min/max size — your derived size must round to an allowed increment; check the residual risk after rounding.
- Symbol availability and naming — the EA's symbol string must match exactly, suffixes included.
- Weekend, news, and session restrictions — rules that close or block positions the strategy assumes it can hold.
Common ways EAs fail on day one
- Hard-coded lot size that ignores the new pip value and account balance.
- Percent-risk logic reading a pip value that doesn't match the live symbol.
- Stop distances in points misread on a 5-digit feed after a 4-digit backtest.
- A non-USD account converting every USD-priced instrument's risk without the EA accounting for it.
- Position rejected on margin, leaving the strategy unhedged or one-legged.
The go-live checklist
- Contract spec confirmed for every symbol on the new account.
- Pip value per lot known in the account currency.
- Lot size re-derived from a money-risk target, per symbol.
- Size rounded to the broker's lot step, residual risk checked.
- Drawdown, leverage, and symbol-naming rules verified.
- A single small live trade placed and reconciled against the expected risk before scaling up.
Size it correctly first
The Position Size Calculator below is the fastest way to do the core step: enter the new account's balance and currency, your risk percentage, the stop in pips, and the pip value per lot for the symbol. It returns the exact lot size that risks your chosen fraction, plus the money at risk, the per-pip value, and the margin required — so the number you deploy on the live account is derived, not inherited.
Takeaway
Going live safely is a checklist, not a hunch. Confirm the contract spec, re-derive every position size from a money target in the account's own currency, and verify the account rules before the EA can hit one. The strategy earned its edge; don't hand it back on day one to a sizing assumption that quietly changed under it.
