Pipsgrowth EX02024 Breakout

Pipsgrowth EX02024 Breakout is a daily-range breakout advisor that runs on the D1 candle and uses two pre-placed stop orders to capture whichever side breaks first. The source file, Pipsgrowth_com_EX02024.mq5, identifies the family as Breakout, magic number 22202024, version 2.00. The brief in the header reads verbatim: "Daily breakout EA that places BuyStop above the previous day's high and SellStop below the previous day's low, with trailing stop and automatic daily pending-order deletion."

The strategy has no indicator stack. There is no RSI, no ATR, no Bollinger band, no moving-average cross. The decision is purely structural: the EA reads the previous completed daily candle and acts on the high and low of that candle. This makes EX02024 different from the rest of the breakout family on PipsGrowth — the M5 GB10OOO and GaussianEMA breakouts need a body/range filter, an HTF trend gate, and a confidence score before they fire. EX02024 only needs yesterday's high and yesterday's low to fire.

The level calculation is exact. Each new day, after IsSafeToTrade_EX02024() returns true and there are no existing pending orders, the EA calls iHigh(m_symbol.Name(), PERIOD_D1, 1) and iLow(m_symbol.Name(), PERIOD_D1, 1). These return the high and low of bar #1 — the most recently closed daily candle. It then adds ExtMinDistance to the high for the BuyStop entry, and subtracts ExtMinDistance from the low for the SellStop entry. With the default InpMinDistance = 25 pips, the BuyStop sits 25 pips above yesterday's high and the SellStop sits 25 pips below yesterday's low. Those 25 pips are a noise buffer; the order will not be triggered by a wick that just barely pierces the level.

Once a stop order is triggered, the EA opens the position with the other stop order still pending. The OnTradeTransaction() handler watches for DEAL_ENTRY_IN deals. As soon as a deal of type DEAL_TYPE_BUY or DEAL_TYPE_SELL is registered for this symbol and magic, it calls DeleteAllPendingOrders() and removes the surviving stop on the opposite side. This is the standard "breakout cancel the other side" pattern — once a level breaks, the symmetric trade becomes a counter-trend bet and is killed.

The risk parameters are deliberately tight for a daily EA. InpStopLoss = 50 pips and InpTakeProfit = 50 pips are the defaults, giving a 1:1 reward-to-risk on a clean breakout. This is honest: the EA is betting on the structural follow-through of a daily range break, not on extending winners to 3R. The trailing stop is the mechanism that lets winners run. InpTrailingStop = 5 pips and InpTrailingStep = 5 pips are the defaults. The Trailing() function only modifies the position stop-loss once price has moved more than TrailingStop + TrailingStep = 10 pips beyond the open price, and only if the current stop-loss is still on the wrong side of that new trailing level. Each successful modification ratchets the stop closer to current price without ever pulling it backwards. Because the EA is on D1, this trailing only ticks once per day at most, but it does mean an open position can survive several days and trend while the stop marches up behind it.

Sizing uses MT5's CMoneyFixedMargin class with Risk = 5 percent of free margin. This is the MoneyFixedMargin money-management module from the standard library, not the more common CheckOpenLong percent-of-balance approach. Five percent of free margin per deal is aggressive — on a $1,000 account with 100:1 leverage on XAUUSD, that produces a position large enough to feel the full daily range. New users typically dial Risk down to 1–2 percent before going live, and the EA accepts any value from 0 to 100.

The hardening stack on EX02024 is unusually complete for a pending-order EA. IsSafeToTrade_EX02024() refuses to place new pendings when any of the following is true: the market is closed (Sunday before 22:00 GMT, Saturday after 22:00 GMT Friday, or a holiday), the active GMT session filter is enabled and current hour is outside London 7–16 or New York 12–21, a high-impact news event is within 30 minutes via the MQL5 economic calendar (CalendarValueHistory checking CALENDAR_IMPORTANCE_HIGH), the cap-equity floor is breached when InpCapAmount is enabled, equity has fallen below 70 percent of the initial balance, the daily trade count is at the limit, a cooldown is in effect, or realized losses today have crossed the 5 percent threshold. When the gate is closed, the EA still runs Trailing() and the pending-order deletion logic — it just refuses to place new stops.

The pending-order deletion logic is a separate, important behaviour. The OnTick() function tracks the last daily bar's open time in dt_last_delete. When a new daily candle begins, if pending orders from the previous day still exist, the EA sets bln_delete_all = true and clears them on the next tick. This is how EX02024 enforces its "one breakout per day" rule: yesterday's BuyStop and SellStop expire with yesterday's range, and today's orders use today's open.

The session filter defaults to disabled (InpUseGMTSessions = false), which means the EA places orders 24 hours a day when other gates permit. Most operators will turn the session filter on and restrict to London 7–16 GMT or New York 12–21 GMT, since the daily breakout level only resolves meaningfully during active sessions. The news filter defaults to enabled, so a non-farm-payroll or CPI release will automatically delay pending-order placement by 30 minutes before and after.

A few practical notes for first-time users. m_slippage = 10 is hard-coded in the source — it is not an input parameter. The news filter only checks high-impact events, not medium or low. The InpUseGMTSessions flag is a hard switch; if you want the EA to ignore session timing entirely, leave it false. The CMoneyFixedMargin money module calculates lot from free margin, not from balance, so during drawdown the lot size naturally shrinks and during a winning streak it grows.

Backtesting this EA in MT5's Strategy Tester on D1 XAUUSD with 1:1 SL/TP and 5 percent risk typically produces many small wins, occasional winners that ride the trend via trailing, and a stream of stopped-out losses when the breakout is a false break. The OnTester custom fitness function is profit * profitFactor / maxDD with a minimum 10-trade gate — the strategy tester will rank parameter sets that improve the ratio of net profit to maximum drawdown, not just the absolute profit. Optimizer runs should focus on InpMinDistance (which controls breakout entry aggressiveness) and the Risk parameter (which controls the equity curve's slope and depth together).