Pipsgrowth EX18021 TrendFollow

Pipsgrowth EX18021 is a UT Bot-style trend-following EA built for USDJPY. The strategy uses a Pine-style ATR trailing stop, ported to MT5 and walked forward across 250 closed bars, with signals triggering only on a trend flip.

The whole engine sits in OnTick. Each new bar DetectRegime() classifies the market using ADX(14), a 60-bar ATR percentile rank, and a Bollinger Band(20, 2.0) width ratio. Eight regimes are possible: REG_NONE, REG_STRONG_TREND, REG_WEAK_TREND, REG_RANGE, REG_BREAKOUT, REG_COMPRESS, REG_EXPAND, and REG_CHOPPY. ADX at or above 30 promotes strong trend; 20 to 30 gives weak trend; ATR percentile below 25 marks compression, above 70 combined with a 15% band-width expansion flags expansion; falling width with rising ADX catches breakout; everything else is range. CHOPPY is the only regime that fully blocks entries — RANGE and COMPRESS are tolerated at signal time but trigger a regime-change exit once a position is open.

CoreSignal() walks the UT Bot trail forward across TRAIL_SYNC_LOOKBACK (250) closed bars. The trail is seeded with the oldest close and updated per bar using a 2.0×ATR(10) buffer, with the canonical long-continuation, short-continuation, and flip-side rules. A long signal fires when the close of the last closed bar is above the trail while the prior bar's close was not; a short signal is the mirror. The same module also computes a confidence score between 0 and 100 from how far price has pushed beyond the trail relative to the 2×ATR band. The score is logged but not gated — the trade is binary on/off from the flip.

Before any order is sent, NoTradeBlock() runs through nine gates. Kill switch, spread above 35 points, low-liquidity session (outside the 6 to 21 server window), CHOPPY regime, news/big-candle detection (a bar with high-low range above 3×ATR), cooldown after three consecutive losses, equity below the $50 floor, daily loss above 3% of effective capital, and maximum open trade count of 1. The same function also blocks weekends: Friday after 21:00 server time and all of Saturday/Sunday. ConfirmEntry() adds the higher-timeframe EMA(50) on H1: longs require the last close above the H1 EMA, shorts require below. If the higher-timeframe copy returns fewer than two bars, the confirm is treated as passed (degraded but not blocking).

Sizing is risk-percent based. The lot formula reads riskMoney = g_eff_cap × 0.5%, then divides by per-lot loss = slDistance × tickValue / tickSize, before clamping to the broker's volume step and bounds. The capital cap input (InpCapitalCapAmount) defaults to 0, which disables it and uses raw equity; any non-zero value caps risk against the smaller of equity and the cap. The $50 equity floor still applies regardless. The minimum lot that comes out of the formula is checked against the broker's volume_min — if it falls below, the entry is skipped with a diagnostic print rather than sending an undersized order.

The stop is set at 1.5×ATR(14) from entry, with a minimum equal to the broker's stops level or 5 points, whichever is larger. Take-profit is twice that distance, giving a 1:2 risk-reward. TryEntry() also handles UT Bot flips correctly: if the new signal is opposite to an open position, the opposing position is closed first via TryClose_EX18021, then the new side is opened at market. Entry is suppressed on the same bar as the previous entry to avoid double-fires (g_last_entry_bar guard), and a one-attempt retry with 150ms sleep handles requotes and price-changed errors before the order is declared a hard fail.

Position management runs every tick. ManageExits() walks through all positions belonging to this magic and applies four layers in order. First, break-even: once price reaches +1R, the stop is ratcheted to the entry price. Second, partial TP: at +1R, 50% of the position is closed (one-shot per ticket, tracked in g_partial_done_tickets with a 64-ticket cap). Third, ATR trail: the stop follows price at 2.0×ATR(14) behind bid for longs or ahead of ask for shorts, but only forward — it never moves backward, and the minimum-stops-distance check prevents the trail from sitting too close to current price. Fourth, time exit: any position older than 100 bars is force-closed.

After the iteration, OppositeAndRegimeExit() runs a single pass. It calls CurrentTrend() (the same UT Bot walk, but with no flip detection — it just reports the current trend) and DetectRegime(). If the trend has flipped against an open position, the position is closed — this is the second, more aggressive exit on top of the per-tick trail. If the regime is now CHOPPY, RANGE, or COMPRESS, all positions are closed regardless of trend, because UT Bot flips generate noise in flat markets and the trail alone cannot react fast enough.

Loss tracking happens in OnTradeTransaction. After every deal that exits a position with negative realized P&L (profit + swap + commission), g_consec_losses increments. When it hits COOLDOWN_AFTER_LOSS (3), g_cooldown_until is set three bars into the future and the counter resets. A profitable deal zeroes the counter. The kill switch input is a manual close-all: setting it true causes every tick to call DoKillSwitch() and flatten the book, bypassing all other logic.

The OnTester() function reports a custom optimization criterion: (net × profitFactor) / (1 + |balance drawdown|), with a 30-trade minimum. This rewards raw return, penalizes drawdown, and refuses to score any backtest with fewer than 30 trades, which prevents overfitting to small samples during MetaTrader's strategy tester.

InpDryRun defaults to true, which means the EA logs the entry intent with full parameter snapshot but does not call Buy() or Sell(). Flip it to false to go live. The whole stack is portable: the inputs include a higher-timeframe selector (1 to 7 for M1 to D1, default 8 maps to H1 via MapTimeframeInt), the regime inputs are tunable, and the trail parameters can be retuned for different ATR behavior on different instruments. The trade comment is hard-coded to "Psgrowth.com Expert_18021" and the magic is 22218021, so multiple instances can run on the same account against different symbols without colliding.