Hey Jay-R,
Excellent questions here!
A. Yes, recently, I use fewer trades because with the time I noticed that if we keep the EA longer on the Demo, and we wait to see the profits there, basically, we are leaving the profits in the Demo account. As I explain in most of the courses, every strategy has profitable phases and losing phases. So if you catch the profitable phase in the Demo account, the longer you keep the EA there, the closer you are getting to the losing period.
So if you keep it too long in the Demo account, you increase the risk to hit some losses when you move it to the live account.
B. Not sure which course you are talking about here? When you export the Historical data with the script, it exports the commission by itself.
Now, some brokers, for some of the assets they have commission only in one direction (when you buy). I show that in the last course, the Stock market course + 10 Dow Jones EAs market.
If you look at lecture 4, you will see that with AAPL, I have commission when opening the trade and when closing, while with Dow Jones, I have just when opening the trade.
I hope that makes it all more transparent, but do not follow me like in 100%, try to experiment, see how it all works best for you. This way, you will find your style in trading.
Kind regards,
Petko A