Comments for https://ctrader.com/products/3236

Hi,
The free trial is limited to backtesting and optimization, as this is the most reliable and efficient way to evaluate the strategy under your broker’s conditions.
It allows you to quickly check the strategy’s potential for your goals and find suitable settings.
Running and tuning the bot on a demo account is a longer and more involved process, while backtesting gives you faster and more consistent insights.

Hi,

Just to clarify - when you use a preset, those parameters are fixed and can’t be overridden. If you want to change them, you’ll need to switch to 'Custom' mode, copy the preset values, and then adjust from there.

If you’re running Gold Balanced, I’d stick with the more conservative volatility settings - something like 64 / 2 / blockneworders.

The idea is simple: Balanced is meant to be more controlled, so you don’t want to open new trades in unstable conditions.
The High Risk setup (120 / 1.5 / flattenall) is much looser and fits a more aggressive approach.
If you use those High Risk settings with Balanced, you’re basically turning it into a more aggressive profile anyway.

Hi,
Yes, XAUUSD.P should work without any issues.
The bot does not require an exact symbol name - it checks whether the symbol contains “XAUUSD” or “GOLD”

Hi,

No - the Volatility Kill Switch is not enabled in the GoldLowRisk preset by default. Presets use fixed, predefined configurations, so new features like this are not included there.

If you want to use the Kill Switch, you’ll need to switch to Custom mode and enable it manually.

Also keep in mind that presets are mainly designed as reference setups for backtesting on specific periods and conditions. They’re not intended to be plug-and-play for live trading.

If you want to use similar settings live, you can copy the preset parameters from the https://algoxp.com/inca-gold-grid-ai-pro/ in the tab section 'Presets', but it’s important to adjust volume based on your account balance (presets are roughly aligned to ~$1000 accounts).

Hi,

First, just to clarify - the trial version has not been updated, only the full (paid) version includes the changes from version 2.0.

Could you please confirm if you are using the trial or the full version?

In the full version, the new feature (Volatility Kill Switch) is added as an optional parameter and is disabled by default, so if you kept your previous settings, nothing in the core behavior should have changed.

Free version only for backtesting and optimization

Hi,
I added all info about presets parameters here https://algoxp.com/inca-gold-grid-ai-pro/
You can find it in tab section 'Presets'

Hi,
Not exactly. There isn’t a single “max stop loss” defined as a TP multiplier or fixed % per trade, since Maya is a grid strategy, not a single-entry system.
Instead, the closest equivalent is the basket-level control. You can think of it as a stop loss, but applied to the entire grid, not individual trades.
Risk is managed through:
SL per level (optional)
Basket loss cut (money)
Floating drawdown limit (%)
Daily loss limit (%)
Max equity drawdown (%)

So rather than stopping each trade separately, the bot manages risk based on the total combined exposure of all positions.

Hi,

There is no single universal “working setup” that will perform reliably on every broker and in every market condition.
Inca is a grid strategy on XAUUSD, so the results depend heavily on:
broker feed,
spread and commission,
leverage,
account size,
and current market volatility.

The presets included with the bot are examples of how the algorithm performed on specific historical conditions, but for real trading it is recommended to optimize the parameters for your own broker, balance, and risk profile.

The best approach is:
start from a preset as a base,
switch to Custom,
optimize the key parameters on recent tick data from your broker,
then validate the setup on a demo account before going live.

Hi,

You can only change parameters manually when Custom is selected.
With any preset mode, the values are hardcoded inside the preset, so manual changes will not take effect.

Use Custom if you want to tune the bot and find the best parameters for your own broker, balance, and trading style.

Demo version is only for backtesting and optimization.
It can't be launched.

Yeah, I had a very similar issue. Are you running it on your cTrader or in the cloud ? I enabled it in the cloud and then it was OK.

Hi, thanks for the feedback - what you’re describing is actually quite common during the first days of running a grid strategy.
First, keep in mind that Inca is a grid system, so orders are intentionally placed away from the current price. The idea is to capture pullbacks and volatility expansions. When the market trends strongly in one direction (which happens often on Gold), the grid may temporarily show floating drawdown until price retraces into the grid.

About the presets
The presets (LowRisk / Balanced / HighRisk) are mainly reference setups designed to demonstrate how the algorithm behaves. They are not universal settings that will work perfectly on every broker, leverage, and account size.

Parameters that control how close grid levels are to the price
If you want the grid levels to be closer to the market and to each other, the main parameters to adjust are:

1. ATR Multiplier (Grid Step)
   This is the primary parameter controlling the distance between grid levels.
   Lower values → tighter grid → orders placed closer to the price.
   Higher values → wider grid → orders placed further away.
2. ATR Period
   Defines how volatility is measured.
   Lower values react faster to short-term volatility and can produce smaller spacing, while higher values smooth the step and often result in wider levels.
3. Progressive Spacing (Growth Factor g)
   If you use progressive spacing, the growth factor (g) controls how quickly the distance increases between deeper levels.
   Lower values keep levels closer together, while higher values widen the grid more aggressively.
4. Volatility Regime (Auto ATR Regime)
   If the auto regime is enabled, the bot adjusts spacing depending on market volatility. In high volatility regimes the grid becomes wider, while in low volatility it becomes tighter.
5. Anchor Mode = EMA (EMA Anchor)
   If you are using the EMA anchor, the grid is built around the EMA mean, not the current price. If the market moves far from the EMA, the levels can appear far from the current price. To bring the grid closer to the market you can:
   reduce the EMA Period (EMA follows price more closely), or
   reduce the ATR Multiplier to tighten the spacing.

Just keep in mind that bringing levels closer increases trading frequency and exposure, so it’s best to adjust gradually and validate the settings with backtesting and demo forward testing before running them live.

Most “no trades” backtests come down to running the bot on the wrong symbol or timeframe.
Make sure you’re testing it on the intended market (e.g., Maya/Inca on XAUUSD and on M15).
Also check the startup log - it’ll usually print a clear warning if something is blocking trades (wrong symbol/timeframe, session window, spread/risk filters).

Inca is a grid bot, so you need enough balance as a buffer for multiple levels and floating drawdown, not just the first 0.01 entry.
As a practical start, plan $300–$1,000 per symbol, and for two symbols (Gold+Silver) roughly 2× that, depending mainly on Levels per Side, Volume Multiplier, Max Total Volume, and your free margin buffer settings.

Inca can hold positions overnight, so if swap is not acceptable for you, the safest solution is a swap-free (Islamic) account.
That said, Inca can also be configured to automatically close positions and cancel pending orders at a specific time - either at the end of your trading session or at end-of-day - to aim to exit before rollover: set Use Trading Window = ON, choose Session Exit Mode = Close + Cancel Pendings, enable Close EOD (flatten) = ON, and set the Close EOD Hour before your broker’s rollover time.
Just keep in mind no bot can guarantee a perfect “always closed before rollover” outcome under all conditions due to broker execution and technical factors (latency, rejected closes, connectivity/VPS).

If you want Inca to behave very close to Maya in terms of anchor calculation and grid building, use the settings below.
This will not be 1:1 identical, because Inca includes extra logic (Auto side, daily stop latch, trade-cap latch) that does not exist in Maya.

Maya-Compatible Settings (Inca)
Group Anchor
Anchor Mode = EntryPrice

Group Grid
Grid Spacing Control = Manual
Rebuild Missing Orders = same as in Maya
Rebuild Mode (Classic/Trailing) = ClassicRebuildFromAnchor
Skip Passed Levels (Anti-Instant Fill) = false
Grid Side Mode (Both/Buy/Sell/Auto) = Both / BuyOnly / SellOnly (match your Maya setting; do NOT use Auto)

Group Grid Manual Spacing
Grid Spacing Mode = AtrAdaptive
ATR Period = same as in Maya
ATR Multiplier -> Step = same as in Maya

Groups Session, Volume, Basket, Risk Management, Risk Management Pro, and Execution are mostly the same as in Maya (same parameter names and purpose).

Hi
Check symbol and timeframe: XAUUSD and m15. Also you can check more messages in the log

Hi
Please double-check your backtest date range - the preset was optimized for period 19/12/2025 - 19/01/2026

Hi.
Inca is a grid bot, and pending orders are the core of the strategy.
It places Buy Limits below and Sell Limits above the anchor/reference price (based on Grid Side settings).
Pending orders are not 'optional' here - they’re the main execution mechanism of the grid.

The first trade is a market entry at your configured volume. The multiplier is applied to grid levels, not the seed.
The initial (seed) trade is opened at market using the lot size from your settings (Base Volume).
The volume multiplier is not applied to that first entry — it is applied only to the next grid levels (L2, L3, L4…), meaning larger lots appear only when additional limit levels get filled.

So if you didn’t see bigger lots in live testing, the most common reason is simple: price never reached the deeper grid levels, and you mostly saw the seed (or just the first level) executing.

Backtest vs live: differences are normal because live execution includes things a tester can’t replicate perfectly.
Backtesting is still a simulation. Live trading adds real-world variables that are hard to model precisely, especially for limit-order grids: floating spread, execution delay, slippage/requotes, liquidity, partial fills, and broker-specific routing. Here you can find more about backtesting https://algoxp.com/trading-bots-why-a-killer-backtest-does-not-guarantee-live-profits/

Because of that, some difference between backtest and live performance is always expected, particularly on fast markets like XAUUSD.

I’ll contact cTrader support and try to fix the test-version access issue.

This new cBot is based on Maya, but it’s significantly more intelligent and has many more settings for tuning and optimization - multiple anchor types and multiple grid types.
With specific parameter sets it can repeat Maya’s logic, but it also lets you build more complex trading strategies when you want more control.