Pipsgrowth EX02030 Breakout

A focused, no-indicator breakout hunter. EX02030 scans a configurable lookback window for the highest high and lowest low, then fires a market order when the live ask or bid breaks past those boundaries by a small pip buffer. The strategy inputs are intentionally few: lookback length, buffer size, fixed lot, fixed stop-loss, fixed take-profit. What the source adds on top of that skeleton is a complete risk-and-session gate, but the trading logic itself is just two comparisons per bar.

The signal path is short and runs once per bar. A static lastBar timestamp inside OnTick() ensures that the rest of the function only fires on a fresh candle — no tick-spam entries. After the new-bar check, IsSafeToTrade_EX02030() either approves or vetoes the tick. If it vetoes (because the market is closed, we're in a news blackout, a cooldown is active, the daily loss limit is hit, or the equity floor is breached), the EA does nothing. If a position with magic 22202030 already exists on the symbol, HasTrade() short-circuits the function as well — at most one open position at a time, no pyramiding, no scaling.

When the gate clears, the EA pulls InpLookback (default 20) highs and lows starting from bar 2 — bar 1 is excluded so the most recent unsettled bar can't be the resistance or support level — and stores them in two arrays. ArrayMaximum returns the highest high (resistance), ArrayMinimum returns the lowest low (support). The buffer is InpBuffer pips (default 5) added beyond those levels, a small zone that filters out wicks that close back inside the range.

A buy fires when the current ask is greater than resistance + buffer. A sell fires when the current bid is less than support - buffer. Both go through dedicated wrappers — TryBuy_EX02030 and TrySell_EX02030 — that clamp the requested lot to the broker's min/max/step, run OrderCalcMargin to confirm the account can fund the trade, then attempt the order. Up to three retries are allowed with a 200ms sleep on transient errors: REQUOTE, TIMEOUT, PRICE_OFF, and PRICE_CHANGED. The order is submitted as a market order with fixed-pips SL and TP; no pending order sits on the book.

SL is computed as ask - InpStopLoss * _Point * 10 (default 30 pips) for buys, the mirror for sells. TP is ask + InpTakeProfit * _Point * 10 (default 60 pips). Out of the box the TP/SL ratio is 1:2. The 30-pip stop is narrow relative to a typical 20-bar XAUUSD range, so a failed breakout will eat a small loss while a successful one will pay double.

What the strategy does not do is just as important as what it does. There is no trailing stop, no break-even ratchet, no partial close, no opposite-signal exit mid-trade. The position runs to either its fixed TP or its fixed SL. The only thing that closes a position before the TP/SL hits is HasTrade() checking the next bar — and since EX02030 caps itself at one position, the practical effect is: a new breakout signal while the current position is still alive gets ignored. The risk of holding a 60-pip TP trade through a 200-pip trend is real, but the strategy accepts that in exchange for not having to manage the trade.

The hardening layer is where most of the inputs live. IsSafeToTrade_EX02030 runs seven checks:

• Market hours: IsMarketOpen_EX02030 blocks Sunday, Saturday, Friday from 22:00 GMT onward, and Monday until 22:00 GMT. The asymmetry on Monday and Friday is intentional — it accounts for the typical Sunday-evening open and Friday-evening close of the FX market.
• Session filter: InActiveSession_EX02030 checks the GMT hour against two windows: London (default 7–16) and New York (default 12–21). With InpUseGMTSessions = false (the default), this check passes through and the EA trades around the clock during weekdays; flip it to true to confine entries to the overlap.
• News blackout: IsNewsTime_EX02030 queries CalendarValueHistory for high-importance events in a ±30-minute window (InpNewsBufferMinutes = 30 by default). When InpFilterNews = true, the EA refuses to enter during scheduled red-folder releases.
• Capital cap: when InpCapAmount > 0, the effective capital becomes MathMin(InpCapAmount, equity), and the EA blocks new entries if that figure falls below InpCapFloor (default 1000). At the default InpCapAmount = 0, this branch is disabled and the EA treats the full account balance as the sizing base.
• Equity floor: live equity must stay above InpMinEquityPct (default 70%) of the initial balance, or the EA halts. This is a hard kill switch for catastrophic drawdown.
• Trade caps: InpMaxTradesPerDay (default 10) caps the daily entry count. A consecutive-loss tracker in OnTradeTransaction increments on every loss, and after InpMaxConsecLosses losses (default 5) it sets g_cooldownUntil = TimeCurrent() + InpCooldownHours * 3600 (default 4 hours), during which no new entries are allowed.
• Daily loss limit: if the absolute value of g_realizedToday exceeds InpDailyLossLimitPct × initial balance (default 5%), the EA stops opening new trades until UpdateDailyCounters_EX02030 rolls the counter over at the next day boundary.

GMT translation is handled by DetectGMTOffset_EX02030, a heuristic that scores every offset in the -12 to +12 range and picks the one that places the current server time inside a weekday, business-hour band. The default returned value is 3, but the function will override that on brokers whose server time is closer to UTC.

The OnTester fitness function is profit × profitFactor / maxDD, gated to require at least 10 trades. profitFactor is clamped to [1, 1000] to prevent a single outlier trade from dominating the ranking. The formula rewards EAs that compound profit while penalising those that achieve it through tail-risk blowups — useful for comparing parameter sets in the MT5 Strategy Tester.

The strategy is range-averse. Sustained directional markets produce clean breakouts that run to TP. Range-bound markets produce repeated false breakouts that hit the 30-pip stop. The lookback window and the buffer are the two parameters that swing this most — 20 bars and 5 pips are tuned for XAUUSD M15, but a wider window (e.g., 40–50 bars) will filter more noise at the cost of late entries. On M5 the same settings will overtrade; InpMaxTradesPerDay = 10 caps the worst of it but the fixed-pips SL will still register as a loss.

Broker notes: the buffer is set in pips, not in points × spread, so a low-spread ECN account will see the cleanest signals. XAUUSD at typical retail spreads of 15–25 points is fine; an exotic pair at 50+ point spreads will eat into the buffer and may require raising InpBuffer. There is no InpDryRun flag in this build, so the EA trades from the moment it is attached to a chart. Demo it first if you want to observe behaviour before going live.