Pipsgrowth EX18023 TrendFollow

Pipsgrowth EX18023 TrendFollow is a UT Bot Alert implementation rebuilt from the canonical TradingView Pine port and ported into a single-instrument MT5 Expert Advisor. The strategy treats the market as a sequence of trailing-stop flips: each completed bar the EA walks a stop forward through the recent ATR-scaled envelope around price, and when the close of the most recent bar punches through that envelope on the opposite side, a trend flip fires. The whole rest of the file is dedicated to deciding whether that flip is worth trading and to managing the resulting position through to a clean exit. The EA is hardwired to magic 22218023, defaults to USDJPY, and ships in v2.00 with no martingale, no grid layer, and no pyramid — what you see in the source is the entire strategy, no hidden branches.

The signal core lives in CoreSignal(). On every closed bar the function copies N+1 closes and N+1 ATR(10) values into as-series arrays, seeds a running trail variable with the oldest close, and then iterates forward through 250 bars (the TRAIL_SYNC_LOOKBACK constant). At each bar the EA computes a no-loss envelope of InpKeyValue × ATR(10) (the default sensitivity is 2.0 × ATR). If both the current close and the prior close are above the trail, the trail ratchets up to max(trail, close − nLoss). If both are below, the trail ratchets down. If the bars disagree, the trail resets to close ± nLoss. After the forward walk the EA captures the trail value at bar 1 (last closed) and bar 2 (the one before), classifies each bar's trend as +1 / −1 / 0 by comparing close to trail, and returns +1 if bar 1 is bullish and bar 2 was not bullish — the canonical trend flip. Confidence is computed as 100 × |close[1] − trail1| / nLoss1, capped at 100. A CurrentTrend() helper runs the same forward walk without the flip logic and is used by the exit path. InpATRPeriod default 10 makes the envelope tighter than the usual ATR(14); a lower value trades more flips, a higher value filters for larger swings.

A higher-timeframe confirmation sits between CoreSignal and the order ticket. ConfirmEntry() copies the close value of the H1 EMA(50) (InpHTF=8 maps through MapTimeframeInt to PERIOD_H1 — values 1–7 also resolve to M1/M5/M15/M30/H1/H4/D1 respectively, anything else falls to H1), then blocks any long whose bar-1 close is below that H1 EMA and any short whose bar-1 close is above it. The spread cap InpMaxSpreadPts=35.0 and the session window SESSION_START_HOUR=6 / SESSION_END_HOUR=21 are also enforced inside this confirm step. This is the layer that drops counter-trend signals during strong H1 moves and that prevents the EA from acting during the Asian dead zone or the Friday 21:00 weekend window.

The regime classifier feeds the no-trade gate and the exit logic. DetectRegime() pulls ADX(14), ATR(14), and the upper, lower, and middle Bollinger Band (20, 2.0) on the closed bar, then computes an ATR-percentile rank by counting how many of the last InpATRPctLookback=60 ATR(14) values are smaller than or equal to the current ATR. The function emits one of seven enum states: REG_STRONG_TREND when ADX≥30, REG_WEAK_TREND when ADX≥InpADXMin=20, REG_EXPAND when the ATR-percentile is above 70 AND the current BB width is at least 15% wider than the prior bar, REG_COMPRESS when the ATR-percentile is below 25, REG_BREAKOUT when the BB width is below 0.0015 with ADX rising into the prior bar, and REG_RANGE as the default. Insufficient data returns REG_CHOPPY, which is treated as a hard block. Inside OppositeAndRegimeExit() a flip into REG_CHOPPY, REG_RANGE, or REG_COMPRESS force-closes any open position — the same classifier is used on the way in (via NoTradeBlock) and on the way out.

The no-trade gate that runs before any order is sent has nine explicit checks, each with its own reason string that gets logged. In order: kill switch is on, spread is above the 35-point cap, the current server hour is outside the 6–21 window, the regime came back as CHOPPY, the last closed bar's range is more than 3× the current ATR(14) (a news-spike / big-candle guard), there is an active cooldown after three consecutive losses, effective capital fell below the $50 floor, the realized P&L today has already eaten InpDailyLossPct=3% of effective capital, or the position count is at MAX_OPEN_TRADES=1. Each block is logged with the regime enum and the signal confidence so the user can see why the EA is sitting still.

Position sizing follows the standard risk-per-stop formula. EffectiveCapital() returns account equity unless InpCapitalCapAmount is set, in which case it caps the equity at that dollar figure — a $200 account with InpCapitalCapAmount=100 trades as if it were a $100 account for both sizing and daily loss computation. CalcLots() then divides InpRiskPercent=0.5% of effective capital by the per-lot loss at the stop distance, where the stop is InpATRSLMult=1.5 × ATR(14) on the closed bar (floored against the broker stops-level distance). The lot is clamped to the symbol lot step and to g_vol_min. The take-profit is computed as InpRRTP=2.0 × the stop distance — a fixed 1:2 R:R structure. OrderCalcMargin is called before send; if free margin is insufficient, the entry is skipped with a log line. The opposite-side position close is part of TryEntry(): if a BUY signal fires while a SELL magic 22218023 position is open, that position is closed first via TryClose_EX18023, then the BUY is sent. This is the canonical UT Bot flip behavior — the EA does not hold both directions at once.

Trade management runs on every tick through ManageExits(). The flow is: read the closed-bar ATR(14), compute slDist = ATR × 1.5 and the open P&L in R-multiples, then step through four exit paths in order. (1) Break-even at +1R: if curSL is below the entry price, push it to entry (broker-stops-level permitting). (2) One-shot 50% partial at +1R: if PartialAlreadyDone() returns false for the ticket, close 50% of the position and mark the ticket done. (3) ATR trail at InpATRTrailMult=2.0 × ATR(14): for longs, set the new stop to bid − trailDist if it is above the current stop; for shorts, set the new stop to ask + trailDist if it is below the current stop. (4) Time exit at MAX_BARS_IN_TRADE=100 bars: count bars between the position's open time and the current time, force-close if it hits the cap. After the per-position loop, OppositeAndRegimeExit() makes a second pass: any position whose side disagrees with CurrentTrend() is closed (the UT Bot flip fired the other way), and any position held while the regime is now CHOPPY / RANGE / COMPRESS is closed. The retry helpers TryClose_EX18023, TryClosePartial_EX18023, and TryModify_EX18023 each loop up to three times on REQUOTE / TIMEOUT / PRICE_OFF / PRICE_CHANGED with 100–200 ms sleeps — standard PipsGrowth retry plumbing.

The MT5 Strategy Tester is fed a custom fitness function: (net_profit × profit_factor) / (1 + |balance_dd|), with a hard minimum of 30 trades. A high-PF low-DD result scores best; a profitable run with a high DD or low PF will be de-prioritized in the optimizer. The default input set is engineered for the M15 chart — TRAIL_SYNC_LOOKBACK=250 bars of memory gives the trail plenty of time to settle into the live envelope. The InpDryRun=true default sends Print() statements instead of real orders, so the first week should be journal-only on a demo account, watching the PrintFormat log lines for the regime, confidence, and SL/TP distances that would have been used. Once the user is comfortable with the behavior, flipping InpDryRun=false is the only change required to go live.