Should a trading bot run 24/7?

These are two separate questions that get merged. Uptime means the terminal is running so nothing is missed and open positions stay supervised — that should be continuous, and it is the case for a VPS. Trading hours means when the strategy is permitted to enter, which is a strategy decision.

On gold the difference between sessions is large. The Asian session is typically quiet with wider spreads, London brings the first genuine expansion, and the US session produces the largest moves and the most news. A strategy tested across all hours is being measured on several different markets averaged together, which flatters the ones it is bad at.

Our engine restricts entries to a defined session window rather than running around the clock. That window exists for liquidity reasons, and it also removes the daily rollover, where spreads widen sharply and signals generated then were among the worst in testing.

The weekend gap

Gold closes Friday evening and reopens Sunday evening in server time, and it does not always reopen where it closed. A position held over the weekend is exposed to a gap that no stop loss can protect against — the stop is filled at the first available price, which may be far beyond it.

Intraday systems that close before the weekend avoid this entirely, which is a structural advantage rather than a detail. It is also why comparing an intraday bot with a swing system on gross return alone misses a real difference in risk.