Pipsgrowth EX08002 MACD

EX08002 is a MACD-based trend-following scalper designed primarily for XAUUSD on the M15 timeframe, with H1 as a viable secondary setting. It belongs to the EX08 MACD family (magic 22208002, v2.00) and ships with a complete 12-layer safety stack rather than a stripped-down crossover. The strategy is mechanical: on every new M15 bar, the EA reads the MACD main line and signal line on closed-bar[1] and bar[2] (no repaint from the forming bar), detects a fresh cross between them, optionally confirms it with a histogram expansion, and fires a market order in the direction of the cross. That is the entire signal logic — there is no ADX filter, no higher-timeframe bias, no regime classifier, and no multi-factor score. The 12 layers live downstream of the signal, in trade management, position sizing, and no-trade gating.

The MACD defaults are 12/26/9 on close — the standard Gerald Appel configuration — and the histogram filter is on by default. With the filter on, a bullish cross is only valid when the histogram (MACD − Signal) is positive and expanding, meaning the gap between the two lines is widening in the direction of the trade. This eliminates the weak, doji-like crosses that occur when both lines hover near zero. The histogram filter is the EA's only confirmation step; there is no candle-pattern check, no volume requirement, no RSI divergence, and no second indicator. Turn the filter off and you get raw cross signals, which fires more often but with a higher failure rate near flat MACD regimes.

Position sizing is dynamic by default. With UseMoneyManagement=true and RiskPercent=2.0, the EA sizes each order so that a stop at the calculated distance would risk 2% of effective capital. Effective capital is the smaller of current equity and InpCapitalCapAmount when that cap is enabled above zero; with the cap at its 0.0 default, equity alone is used. The lot is floored to the symbol's volume step and clamped to min/max lot, then checked against free margin — if the requested lot would consume more than 90% of free margin, the EA scales the lot down to fit, and if even the minimum lot would not fit, the trade is skipped. The FixedLotSize fallback of 0.01 is for traders who prefer a flat size regardless of SL distance.

Stop placement is the most consequential part of the EA. The default StopLossPips of 20 pips is treated as a floor, not a fixed number. The actual SL distance is max(ATR(14) × 2.0, 20 pips, 1.5 × minimum stop level). On a quiet M15 bar with ATR near 0.5 USD on gold, ATR×2 comes in well below 20 pips and the user input wins; on a high-volatility bar (NFP, FOMC, Asian flash event) where ATR spikes to 1.5 USD, the ATR floor wins and the stop is widened to roughly 60 pips or more. This makes the stop volatility-adaptive: it never shrinks below the user's safety floor, but it expands automatically when the market does. The take-profit mirrors the same logic at a fixed 2:1 R:R — TP distance is exactly 2× the chosen SL distance, so on a 20-pip stop the TP is 40 pips, on a 60-pip ATR stop the TP is 120 pips. There is no partial close and no breakeven step; trades either run to TP, hit SL, get stopped out by the trailing stop, or get closed by an opposite MACD cross.

Pyramiding is enabled by default with MaxOpenPositions=2 and PyramidDistancePips=20. The pyramid logic is direction-locked: a long signal will not open a short, and a short signal will not open a long — opposite-direction entries are blocked. Pyramiding only adds to the existing direction, and the new entry must be at least 20 pips from the most recent entry on that symbol. With the default 2-position cap, the EA can hold at most 2 buys or 2 sells at a time, not a mixed basket. This is safer than grid-style pyramiding (no averaging into losers) but more aggressive than a single-position EA. The 20-pip spacing is wide enough that a single stop-hunt spike will not trigger a back-to-back entry.

Trailing-stop is enabled by default with TrailingStartPips=15 and TrailingStepPips=5. The trail is a classic server-side ratchet: once price has moved 15 pips in the trade's favor, the stop is set to (current − 15) pips, then on every subsequent 5-pip improvement the stop ratchets forward to (current − 15) pips again. The 5-pip step prevents the broker from being hammered with modify requests on every tick — the trail only fires when price meaningfully moves. The trail is always honored regardless of the MACD cross state, so a position can be trailed out even if the MACD cross would have kept it open.

The no-trade gate is where most of the 42 inputs end up. IsSafeToTrade() runs on every tick and checks, in order: capital cap not exceeded, capital floor not breached, equity above InpMinEquityPercent (default 95%) of initial balance, daily realized loss not below −InpDailyLossLimitPct% (3%) of effective capital, weekly realized loss not below −InpWeeklyLossLimitPct% (6%), not in cooldown after InpMaxConsecLosses (3) consecutive losses, trade count under InpMaxTradesPerDay (50), market is open (no Saturday, no Friday after 21 GMT, no Sunday before 22 GMT), currently in London (07–16 GMT) or New York (12–21 GMT) session with Asia avoided (00–07 GMT) by default, and not within InpNewsFilterMinutes (15) of a session-open news event. If any of these fails, the EA manages existing positions (trailing, opposite-cross exit) but does not open new ones. The OnTradeTransaction hook updates g_realizedToday, g_realizedWeek, g_tradesToday, and g_consecLosses from closed deals in the last 90 days of history.

The OnTester function is a single weighted score: (net_profit × profit_factor) / (1 + balance_dd_percent). The 1 + dd term means a 20% drawdown halves the score relative to a 0% drawdown. The hard requirement of at least 30 trades is enforced by returning 0 below that count, which prevents the optimizer from overfitting to a handful of lucky trades. There is no OnTesterPass hook, no custom fitness criterion per symbol, and no multi-criterion ranking.

The closing trades mechanism uses CTrade with auto-detected filling (FOK → IOC → RETURN), 3-attempt retry loops on REQUOTE / TIMEOUT / PRICE_OFF / PRICE_CHANGED with 200ms sleeps for closes and 100ms sleeps for modifies, and an early-return no-op when the requested SL/TP is within 1 point of the current values. TryClosePartial_EX08002 is declared and would close a partial volume, but it is never called from ManageOpenPositions, OpenPosition, or OnTick — the EA never scales out of a position, only all-in or all-out.

What to expect in backtesting: this is a high-trade-count trend EA. On M15 XAUUSD with default inputs you should see dozens of entries per month, frequent small losses on failed crossovers, and occasional large winners when MACD catches a sustained gold move. The 2:1 R:R TP plus the trailing stop means many trades exit at less than 2:1 in practice (the trail or the opposite cross usually fires first), but the winners that do run typically pay for several losers. The 95% equity floor, the 3%/6% daily/weekly loss caps, and the 3-consec-losses cooldown make the EA's worst-case drawdown profile predictable even when the strategy itself has a choppy losing streak. Backtests will look cleaner on H1 (fewer trades, smoother equity) and noisier on M15 (more trades, more granular P&L, but more commission drag on tight spreads). For live deployment, set InpServerGMTOffset to your broker's actual GMT offset (or leave at 0 for auto-detection via the weekend bar gap) and confirm that the London/NY session window lines up with the hours you actually want the EA active.