Today was setup 1 on the BlueGuardian Starter challenge, i got from them for free/not-free following this.
first real session on their MT5 infrastructure, side-by-side with a Spotware/cTrader so I had something to compare against.
No fireworks, but a few things worth writing down for anyone considering the same path.
Execution
Small size only today, 0.04 to 0.2 lots on EURJPY and EURUSD well it’s a 5k account, what did you expect? 🙂
fills came through pretty much instantly on both platforms. EURJPY isn’t a major pair, so take this with a grain of salt,
but nothing about the execution gave me a reason to worry.
sure the charts are visually different because the window size was not exactly the same and well one is MT5 ..
but besides this the execution was quite spot en (okay size-wise this was like nothing ranging between 0.04 and 0.2lots, but from the general feel it was pretty much instant, and well EURJPY is not exactly a major.
Cost comparison: BlueGuardian (MT5) vs. Spotware (cTrader)
I ran a quick test: 0.01 lots, 2-pip take-profit, on both accounts, to get a feel for real round-trip cost (spread + commission).
– EURJPY — BlueGuardian: 0.16 (incl. ~0.05 commission) vs. Spotware: 0.18 (normalized ~0.1 commission)
– EURUSD — BlueGuardian: 0.14 vs. Spotware: 0.17
So BlueGuardian came out roughly 15% more expensive per round trip on this tiny sample.
But one setup on one day on a minor pair tells you almost nothing, so take this with a grain of salt.
I’ll keep tracking this across sessions before drawing any real conclusion.
The rule that actually matters: 0.5% daily target
BlueGuardian defines “profitable day” as +0.5%, with a 3% intraday drawdown limit.
Do the math and that’s roughly six “attempts” per day before you’re done.
On paper that sounds okay’ish, in practice it’s the kind of rule that quietly reshapes how you trade.
The risk: once 0.5% is in sight, the temptation is to stop thinking about the trade and start thinking about the target.
That’s expectation bias, and it’s exactly the kind of thing that turns a good setup into a bad exit.
Guardian Shield — the hedging trap
Worth flagging clearly: the “Guardian Shield” rule punishes hedging hard.
0.5% loss on one side plus 0.5% on the other = 1% combined, which is enough
to trigger a permanent penalty. If hedging is part of your normal toolkit,
this account format actively punishes it, unless you trade significantly smaller and plan to meet the 0.5% target over multiple setups.
The Dashboard
under trader.blueguardian.com is clean enough to use day-to-day, though it took a bit of digging to find the actual max values I need for my own risk-tracking
sheet (true drawdown limits, daily loss limits, etc.). Once you know where to look, it’s fine, just budget 10 minutes on setup day to map it out before
you start trading on autopilot.
Plan going forward
The Starter account caps payouts at 5%. Given that, the plan is simple:
- aim for the 0.5% daily target consistently rather than stretching for the full
allowed gain on any single day. - Slow, repeatable, boring.
I’ll keep logging these sessions as the true RR / true drawdown numbers build up, this account does not copy i manually just execute using the Position Sizer EA for MT5, that’s the only way to know if the 15% cost edge (and the account rules overall) actually translate into something tradeable, or just noise from a single day.
