Choose the right broker
Your choice of broker can make or break your trading journey. Darwinex is unique: it connects traders to investors, aligns its success with yours, and takes care of regulatory requirements so you can focus on trading. With a strong reputation and innovative model, Darwinex is our go‑to broker for serious algorithmic traders ▼
Not all brokers are equal. Your choice of broker can make or break your trading. B-Book brokers who take the opposite side of their client's trades rather than executing them in the open market, don't want their traders to be successful. If they were, a B-Book broker would lose money.
Instead, choose a broker with goals aligned to yours. The broker we use for our own algo trading execution, and would wholeheartedly recommend is Darwinex.
However, Darwinex is so much more than just a broker. They connect traders with investors, and manage the regulatory requirements that surround this, so that you don't have to. If you're a successful trader you have the chance to increase your earnings far beyond what you could ever achieve by trading your own capital alone.
We've been a customer of Darwinex since 2014, but do your homework and find a broker that you are comfortable with.
Earn money from trading without risking your own
Darwinex Zero lets you trade on a virtual account, compete with other traders monthly, and earn real allocations. It’s a way to demonstrate your edge, build a track record, and share in profits — all without putting your own money at risk. For ambitious traders, it’s a gateway to professional funding ▼
If you're already a consistently profitable trader then a brokerage option like the one in the top section above is probably best for you. But all traders have to go through a steep learning curve before they get to that position of consistently beating the market-and unfortunately, that often means losing a lot of trading capital in the meantime.
Fortunately, there's a far better alternative. Darwinex Zero facilitates a way for traders to earn money without risking their own capital. D-Zero allows traders to compete every month to receive allocations of capital that they can then trade, taking a percentage of the profits. Forget all the rules and conditions that prop accounts impose-Darwinex Zero is completely different. You can trade exactly how 'you want to' and if you perform well enough in any given month, you receive an allocation, no questions asked, no get-out clauses.
All of this on a virtual account (so zero risk to your trading capital), for a simple subscription. This is an excellent way to learn your trade of beating the markets, with the added excitement of competing against your peers.
Optimize your strategies like the professionals
Most traders stumble when their backtests look great but results collapse in live trading. Opt My Strategy solves this by automating best‑practice optimization. Built on scientific principles, and years of pro trader experience, OMS delivers statistically significant results, helping you create trading systems that are resilient, not over‑optimized ▼
One of the biggest gotchas for algo traders is not using best-practice techniques to perform optimizations. This leads to trading strategies that look great in backtest but don't deliver results in live trading.
Tools like the MT4 and MT5 Strategy Testers do a really great job of executing the 'mechanical' process of optimizations. However, what they're not designed to do is enable the best-practice analysis and evaluation processes that needs to take place 'after' the optimization has finished. These processes are critical to facilitate the selection of truly robust settings that will perform in out-of-sample testing (on previously unseen price data), and live trading.
That's where 'Opt My Strategy' (or OMS for short) really excels. Trade Like A Machine initially developed this tool for our own internal use alongside the MetaTrader platform, allowing us to automate the best-practice processes that we've developed over the last 15 years. We decided to commercialize the product, helping other algo traders who use MetaTrader succeed.
Using good quality price data for optimizations
Accurate tick and M1 data is the foundation of trustworthy backtesting. Tick Data Suite provides long‑duration, granular data that ensures your optimizations reflect reality — not flawed simulations. If you’re serious about testing strategies, this is the price data provider you need. ▼
The majority of brokers don't provide price data that's good enough for reliable backtesting and optimizations. They might for example retain M1 data for the most recent 3 months, then it will drop to M5 for another 6 months, then M15 and so on. Even if you request either '1 minute OHLC' or 'Every Tick' in the MetaTrader Strategy Tester, it can't use the data if it's not there. So the Strategy Tester does its best to simulate missing price data, but unfortunately this does not produce accurate results.
Tick Data Suite (TDS) is a great solution to the problem, and provides access to long-duration, high-quality, granular data. We've used TDS now for many years (we use their Dukascopy data source), for all of our backtesting and optimizations.
Note that TDS integrates seamlessly with the 'MT4' Strategy Tester. However, if like us, you use the 'MT5' Strategy Tester because of its enhanced capabilities, you'll need to export from TDS and import into MT5 Custom Symbols to use the data. Not as slick, and it takes more time and effort, but it's effort that's essential in our opinion.
Professional Consultancy
Sometimes you need targeted guidance to move forward. Our consultancy and training services help traders resolve specific challenges, refine ideas, and accelerate progress. When your needs align with our expertise, we provide practical, actionable advice to help you succeed faster ▼
Here at Trade Like A Machine, we've always enjoyed helping other algo traders reach their full potential. We offer short-term consultancy to answer trader's questions and help them resolve issues they have. This can often cut years off what is sometimes a long and arduous learning curve that traders have to overcome as part of their journey.
Note that we don't always have availability, and we only offer consultancy if the client's requirements are directly aligned to our skillsets and knowledge-meaning we can add real value*.
These recommendations are based on tools and services we use ourselves. They’re not generic endorsements — they’re carefully chosen solutions that can make a real difference to your trading journey.
*Note that Trade Like A Machine does not provide any financial or investment advice/recommendations. Our consultancy is purely aimed at the education of algo-trading related processes and analysis techniques.
About Us
Specialists in algorithmic trading for over a decade, we trade our own accounts using a blend of traditional algos and machine learning models.
We are on a mission to help other algo traders succeed, by promoting best-practice trading system development and optimization.
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