No smiley face on the MT5 chart

Causes, most likely first

1. The face is sad because algorithmic trading is off

A sad face means the EA is loaded and initialised but not permitted to trade. Enable the Algo Trading button in the toolbar and, if needed, tick Allow Algo Trading in the EA properties. The face turns from sad to smiling immediately — no restart required. Full checklist at AutoTrading disabled.

2. There is no face at all, so no EA is attached

The EA was never attached to this chart, or it was removed. Open the Navigator panel, find the EA under Expert Advisors, and drag it onto the chart. If it is not listed there, see EA not in Navigator.

3. The face shows an X because initialisation failed

The EA loaded but its OnInit routine returned an error, so it stopped before doing anything. The reason is always written to the Experts tab — read that message rather than guessing. Common causes are an unavailable symbol, a missing licence, or an invalid input parameter.

4. You are looking for an MT4 smiley on an MT5 chart

The smiling and sad faces belong to MetaTrader 4. MetaTrader 5 shows a small icon in the same top-right corner instead, and you read its colour rather than its expression: coloured means the EA is attached and permitted to trade, greyed out means attached but not permitted. There is no face to find, so hunting for one and failing is not evidence that anything went wrong. Check the corner for an icon of any kind first, then its state.

5. You are looking at the wrong chart

An EA runs on one chart only, and only one EA can be attached to a given chart at a time. With several charts open it is easy to check the wrong one. The chart tab at the bottom of the window shows the EA name alongside the symbol when one is attached.

Why this happens

The face icon is MetaTrader's only visible indicator of EA state, and it carries more information than most users realise: presence means attached, smiling means permitted to trade, sad means loaded but blocked, and an X means initialisation failed.

The most useful habit is to treat the icon as a claim to verify rather than a guarantee. A blue icon (a smiling face on MT4) means the EA is allowed to trade, not that it will — the strategy may have found no valid setup, the session filter may be blocking, or the spread may be too wide.

If the face is smiling and the account is still quiet after a reasonable period, the next step is the Experts and Journal tabs. A working EA writes there, and silence in both is itself diagnostic.