Pipsgrowth EX18040 TrendFollow

EX18040 is a single-pair trend-following EA that only fires when three independent filters agree on the same bar. Its core is a Gaussian-style EMA(10) on close, drawn with two parallel ATR(14) envelopes spaced at 0.85×ATR on each side; a long setup requires the previous bar's close to print above the upper band, while a short setup requires the close to print below the lower band. That band break alone is not enough — the entry is rejected unless Heikin-Ashi color and an inline SuperTrend(3.0, ATR14) read the same direction on the same bar. The three-way gate produces a binary confidence score of 100% when aligned, 0% when not, so the EA only ever attempts an order with full agreement rather than partial confidence tiers.

Before any signal logic runs, the EA calls ClassifyRegime(), which returns one of four states. StrongTrend requires ADX(14) ≥ 22 and the current ATR to be in the top 50% of the last 50 bars — the rare, high-energy state. WeakTrend fires when ADX ≥ 18 but the volatility percentile condition is not met. Range is the low-volatility quiet regime (ADX < 18 and ATR percentile < 40%). Everything else is Choppy, and a Choppy label on the live tick is a hard block on new entries. WeakTrend, Range, and StrongTrend are all valid trading contexts; only Choppy is filtered out.

A separate confirmation step in HTFTrendAgrees() adds a higher-timeframe agreement test. The EA builds a 50-period EMA on H1 and only allows longs when the H1 close prints above that EMA and shorts when the H1 close prints below it. The HTF selector input is exposed (InpHTFTimeframe) but with a default of 8 the mapped timeframe always resolves to H1. This decouples the trade from the noise of the 5-minute chart without requiring a multi-timeframe indicator stack on every tick.

The trade itself is sized off the original ATR(14): stop-loss is 1.8×ATR, take-profit is 3.0×ATR, which gives roughly a 1:1.67 R:R. The lot is computed by CalcLot() from 0.5% of effective capital divided by the per-lot loss at that stop distance, with a per-symbol volume clamp against the broker's lot step, min and max. Effective capital is the smaller of account equity and InpCapitalCapAmount if that input is set; with the default of 0.0, the cap is disabled and equity is used directly. A $50 capital floor (InpCapitalCapFloor) blocks new entries when equity is too small to make the math meaningful. Margin requirement is pre-checked via OrderCalcMargin before the order is sent; if free margin is insufficient, the entry is silently skipped.

Order execution has a single retry path. If the broker returns REQUOTE, PRICE_OFF, or TIMEOUT, the EA re-sends the order once at the latest market price. Other retcodes are logged and the entry is dropped. Filling mode is auto-detected per symbol via SetTypeFillingBySymbol, and slippage tolerance is set to 20 points. InpDryRun=true is the default; in dry-run mode the EA prints the full would-be trade line to the journal — direction, confidence, lot, prices, ATR, margin — but never sends an order, which is useful for shadow-testing on a live account.

Risk gates are checked in NoTradeReason(). They include the global InpKillSwitch (halts all new entries), the capital floor, the spread ceiling (default 60 points), the broker-server session window (8:00 to 20:00 by default), weekends, the per-magic max-open-trade cap (3), and a daily realized-loss check of 3% of effective capital. The daily PnL is computed by RealizedPnLToday(), which scans the deal history for trades that match both the EA's magic number and the current symbol and sums profit, swap, and commission. The check is magic-scoped, so a manual trade on the same account does not count against the EA's daily loss budget.

Open-position management is driven by ManagePositions(). The first rule is a one-shot break-even at 1R: once price has moved one full stop-distance in favour of the trade, the stop is ratcheted to open + StopsLevelPrice (or open - StopsLevelPrice for shorts), locking in zero-risk on the remainder of the trade. The second rule is an ATR trail at 1.5×ATR(14), applied forward-only — the trail can move up on a long but never down. The third rule is a 50% partial close at half the TP distance, which fires only if the remaining volume stays at or above 2× the symbol's minimum lot. The fourth rule is an HTF-flip exit: each tick, the EA re-evaluates the H1 close against the H1 EMA(50); if the trend direction on the higher timeframe has reversed, the position is closed immediately via TryClose_EX18040(). This is the dominant exit logic on slow trend days, where the band-break signal itself may not appear for a long time. TryClose/Modify/Partial each use a 3-attempt retry loop with 200ms sleep on requote-class retcodes, and 100ms on modify.

The OnTester custom criterion is (net * profit_factor) / (1 + max(drawdown_percent, 1.0)), with a hard floor of 30 trades — strategies that don't reach the minimum sample size return 0.0 and are excluded from the optimizer's ranking. Because the formula multiplies net profit by profit factor and divides by drawdown, it rewards both absolute return and consistency, and penalizes the curve shapes that look great on net profit alone but have a deep mid-backtest drawdown.

EX18040 is built to trade XAUUSD on M5 with a $100 minimum deposit, but the inputs are broker-portable to any symbol. The defaults assume a single-symbol setup with one position opened per signal, three concurrent trades max, and a per-day 3% loss budget. On a small account the capital floor becomes the binding constraint before the loss limit does. The dry-run default is intentional: the EA is meant to be observed in the journal for at least a few sessions before live orders are enabled.