Pipsgrowth EX03019 Grid

Pipsgrowth EX03019 — GoldGridMartingale is a fixed-step, long-only grid EA for XAUUSD, written as a minimal and direct take on the classic "ladder buy + basket close" approach. The source header talks about a 12-layer architecture, but the actual code is honest about what it does: a market buy to start a basket, a pre-placed ladder of BuyLimit orders at fixed price intervals, a basket-level profit target, and a hardening block that controls when new baskets are allowed to begin. There are no indicators on the chart, no signal-confirmation logic, and no per-trade stop-loss. Every decision comes down to price, count, and the equity/drawdown safety gates.

The entry path lives entirely inside OnTick(). On the first tick where the EA has no open positions and the active flag is false, the EA captures the current ask, sets basketBase = ask, flips active = true, and runs TryBuy_EX03019(InpInitialLot, ask, 0, 0, ...) to fire the initial market buy with no SL and no TP. The function does an OrderCalcMargin pre-check, then loops up to 3 times on REQUOTE/TIMEOUT/PRICE_OFF/PRICE_CHANGED with a 200ms Sleep() between attempts. After the market order is accepted, the EA loops from i = 1 to InpMaxLevels - 1 and places a BuyLimit at ask - i * InpGridStep * _Point. With the defaults — InpGridStep = 40 (40 cents of distance on a 2-decimal gold quote, or 0.40 on a 5-digit broker that quotes XAUUSD to two decimals), InpMaxLevels = 6, InpInitialLot = 0.01, InpMultiplier = 2.0 — the full ladder is six positions of 0.01 lots, since InpEnableMartingale defaults to false. Toggle it on and the lots escalate to 0.01, 0.02, 0.04, 0.08, 0.16, 0.32 (or however the broker's volume step rounds them), so the exposure profile flips from "all-in cheap" to "front-loaded revenge" the moment price drops through the ladder.

The exit path is the basket. BasketProfit() walks PositionsTotal() in reverse, filters by magic == 22203019 and symbol == _Symbol, and sums the position profits. OpenCount() does the same scan and returns the integer count. On every tick the EA checks if (cnt > 0 && basket >= InpTakeProfit * _Point * cnt * 100) — at the defaults, that is 80 cents per open position in account currency, because XAUUSD is 100 oz per lot and _Point * 100 = $1 of P&L per lot per whole dollar of price move. So 1 position = $80 target, 3 positions = $240, capped at whatever count is currently open. The moment that threshold is hit, CloseAll() walks the position list and the order list, calling TryClose_EX03019 and TryOrderDelete_EX03019 to flatten everything and cancel any remaining pending BuyLimits in the same pass. The active flag is then reset to false, so a fresh basket can form on the next flat tick.

There is no per-trade stop-loss, no trailing stop, no break-even, and no partial close. The SL inputs in trade.Buy() and trade.BuyLimit() are hard-coded to 0. Risk control lives entirely in the hardening input group, and almost all of it is off by default:

• InpEquityFloor = 0 — set it to e.g. 200 and the EA stops opening new baskets once account equity drops below $200.
• InpDailyLossLimit = 0 — if set, g_realizedToday <= -limit blocks new baskets.
• InpWeeklyLossLimit = 0 — same idea on the weekly window.
• InpCapitalCap = 0 — set it to e.g. 500 and the EA will not open new baskets once balance reaches $500 (i.e. a "stop trading once the account hits the target" cap).
• InpMaxTradesPerDay = 50 — caps the number of fills per day.
• InpCooldownMinutes = 30 with the implicit 3-loss trigger — g_cooldownUntil is armed inside OnTradeTransaction once g_consecLossesHD reaches 3.
• InpMaxConsecLosses = 0 — this is the master switch; leaving it at 0 disables the cooldown entirely.

The four tightening defaults that matter for any live deployment: enable InpEquityFloor, enable InpDailyLossLimit, enable InpWeeklyLossLimit, and turn InpMaxConsecLosses on with a small value like 3 or 4. With all four at 0 and martingale off, a 6-level gold grid can still hand back weeks of profit in a single 240-cent move against the basket — the math is not on your side when the basket keeps averaging down into a runaway trend.

Session and time discipline is built into InActiveSession_EX03019(). The function pulls TimeCurrent(), converts to GMT via ServerToGMT_EX03019 (which subtracts the auto-detected g_gmtOffset found by DetectGMTOffset_EX03019 — a best-of -12..+12 heuristic that scores weekday and 07:00–21:00 hours), and checks two windows: London 07:00–16:00 and New York 12:00–21:00. If InpUseGMTSessions is on and the current hour falls in neither window, IsSafeToTrade_EX03019 returns false and the EA refuses to open a basket. Saturdays, Sundays, and the Asian session (00:00–07:00 GMT) are all flat by default. This is the right behaviour for a long-only gold grid — the heavy liquidity that closes baskets lives in London and the New York morning.

The OnTradeTransaction hook is the bookkeeping backbone. Every DEAL_ADD event filtered by magic 22203019 and the current symbol is unpacked: DEAL_ENTRY_IN increments g_dailyTrades; DEAL_ENTRY_OUT (or DEAL_ENTRY_INOUT) sums profit + swap + commission into g_realizedToday and g_realizedWeek, then either increments g_consecLossesHD (loss) or resets it to 0 (win). The cooldown trigger is hard-coded to 3 consecutive losses — once that fires, g_cooldownUntil = TimeCurrent() + 30*60 and the EA holds the line for 30 minutes before re-evaluating. UpdateDailyCounters_EX03019 rolls the daily window when the server-day changes and the weekly window when the server-day-of-week changes, so a basket that runs from Friday's close into Monday's open keeps its g_realizedWeek continuity while g_realizedToday resets at midnight.

The OnTester fitness function is a single line: (profit / maxDD) * (pf > 1 ? pf : 0), gated by maxDD > 0 and trades >= 10. That formulation rewards both recovery factor and profit factor, but zero PF returns zero fitness — so the optimizer prefers passes where the win rate is high enough that PF > 1 is meaningful. For grid EAs the trade count is rarely a problem, but the 10-trade gate does block optimization on very short backtests.

In terms of infrastructure, the EA calls trade.SetExpertMagicNumber(22203019) and trade.SetDeviationInPoints(30) in OnInit, then g_gmtOffset is auto-detected and g_dayStartTime / g_weekStartTime are seeded with TimeCurrent(). OnDeinit is empty — no cleanup, no chart-object teardown, no dashboard. There is no OnTrade, no timer, no chart event handler; the whole EA ticks off OnTick and the trade-transaction callback.

The honest read: this is a deliberately simple grid. No indicators, no fancy regime filter, no per-trade trail, no break-even, no partial close, no hedge leg, no news filter. It buys, it ladders, it waits for the basket to come back, and the safety stack is what keeps the account alive. The defaults are conservative on the martingale side (off) and unsafe on the loss-limit side (all zero) — turn on the loss limits before you flip the magic live.