The $500 Miracle: A Student’s Robot Turns Pocket Money into a Semester of Tuition

Valencia, Spain – June 17, 2024 — When 21-year-old economics student Álvaro Jiménez installed a trading robot on his MetaTrader 5 account, he never imagined it would help him pay for an entire semester of university.

“I didn’t have a lot of capital,” Álvaro told SniperEA Blog. “Just €470 I had saved from a summer job. I wasn’t trying to get rich — I just wanted to learn how algorithmic trading works.”

He purchased a low-risk Expert Advisor from a small but fast-growing trading community and set it up with default settings. The robot specialized in breakout strategies during the London and New York sessions and was known for its high win rate, even on small accounts.

Álvaro used a VPS service to keep the EA running 24/5, then focused on his studies.

“I basically forgot about it for the first few weeks,” he said. “I would check once or twice a week, just to make sure there weren’t any errors.”

Four months later, his $500 account had grown to $2,230 — more than enough to cover one semester’s tuition, rent, and books.

“I wasn’t expecting anything close to that. I thought I’d lose it all,” he said. “But the bot stuck to the plan. It avoided bad trades and scaled up gradually.”

His friends were skeptical at first, but after seeing the account statements, two of them started trading EAs themselves.

“I still don’t consider myself a trader,” Álvaro admitted. “But now I understand the power of automation and what it can do when you're not ruled by emotions.”

His next goal? Reinvest part of the profit and set up a second EA account with a more aggressive strategy — one focused on higher returns but still fully automated.