Pipsgrowth EX18054 TrendFollow

Pipsgrowth EX18054 TrendFollow trades gold on the M5 chart by stacking four independent Hull moving averages (periods 55, 89, 144, and 233) and waiting for them to vote in the same direction before it fires an entry. The Hull MA in this EA is calculated inline rather than pulled from iMA — the function HullAt() builds a custom LWMA (linear weighted) backbone, halves it, subtracts the full LWMA, then smooths the result with a square-root-period rolling average. Each of the four Hulls gets compared to its own previous value, producing a slope-color of 0 (rising), 1 (falling), or 2 (flat). The HullSignal() function then tallies bulls vs bears across the four lines and only returns +1 (long) when InpMinVote or more Hulls (default 3) are rising and zero are falling, with the inline Jurik filter direction agreeing. The mirror condition fires shorts.

The inline Jurik filter is the second gate. JurikAt() reconstructs Mark Jurik's smoothing filter from the price series — no external indicator handle is allocated for it. With DEF_JURIK_LENGTH set to 14, the filter smooths the close over a 14-bar phase and returns its current value. The signal module compares the filter's current value to its previous value (shift 1 vs shift 2) and demands that the Jurik slope point in the same direction as the Hull vote. Without the Jurik agreement, a fully-aligned Hull stack is still not enough to enter.

The Choppiness Index acts as the third veto. ChoppinessAt() sums true range over a 14-bar window, divides by the period high-low range, and runs the result through 100 * log10(sumTR/range) / log10(period). When the index climbs above InpChopThreshold (default 61.8), the market is judged too range-bound for trend entries and the signal function returns 0. This protects the strategy from triggering fake breakouts in sideways regimes.

Once a signal survives the triple gate, the EA runs it through the regime classifier in ClassifyRegime(). The classifier reads the previous bar's ATR(14), ATR percentile over the last 100 bars, Bollinger Bands (20, 2.0) width as (upper-lower)/middle, and ADX(14). It returns one of six states: Expand (ATR percentile ≥ 80 with BB width > 0.01), StrongTrend (ADX ≥ InpAdxTrendMin=22), WeakTrend (ADX ≥ 18), Compress (ATR percentile ≤ 20 with BB width < 0.005), Range (ATR percentile ≤ 35), and Choppy (default fallback). Entries are blocked when regime is Choppy or Compress — both are interpreted as 'wait for a clean break' states. The remaining four regimes are all tradeable.

The confirmation layer in ConfirmEntry() adds three final checks. The HTF H1 EMA(50) must agree with the trade direction — the function reads h_htf_ema (the H1 EMA50 handle allocated in OnInit) and demands that the M5 close[1] be above the H1 EMA for longs, below for shorts. The RSI(14) blocks entries against extreme momentum: longs are refused if RSI > 75, shorts if RSI < 25. Finally, the live spread is compared against InpMaxSpreadPts (default 50 points) and trades are denied on wide quotes. All MT5 indicator handles (h_atr, h_adx, h_bands, h_htf_ema, h_rsi) are created in OnInit() and released in OnDeinit().

Risk and trade construction happen in CalcLots() and TryEntry(). The lot size is computed against the effective capital — that is MathMin(InpCapitalCapAmount, equity) if a cap is set, otherwise raw equity, with today's realized PnL folded back in via EffectiveCapitalToday(). The risk budget per trade is InpRiskPercent (default 0.5%) of effective capital. The SL distance is InpAtrSlMult × ATR(14) (default 2.0×), the TP distance is InpAtrTpMult × ATR(14) (default 3.0×) — a hard-coded 1:1.5 reward-to-risk ratio, with a final InpMinRR (default 1.2) gate that refuses entries when the realized R:R falls below threshold after broker stop-level adjustment. m_trade.SetDeviationInPoints(20) allows 20 points of slippage, and OrderCalcMargin pre-checks free margin before the order is sent. A retry loop handles requotes and price-change errors with one refresh of rates.

Position management runs on every tick. ManageOpen() walks every open position with the matching magic and does four things in sequence. First, PositionBEPrice() checks if price has moved 1R in profit (where R is the initial ATR-multiple SL distance) and, if so, ratchets the stop to entry plus the spread point — the standard break-even step. Second, an ATR trailing stop kicks in at InpTrailAtrMult × ATR(14) (default 2.5×) and only moves forward — never backwards. The trailing modifies the SL in TryModify_EX18054(), which retries up to three times with 100ms sleeps on requote or timeout. Third, at 1R in profit DEF_PARTIAL_FRACTION (50%) of the position is closed via TryClosePartial_EX18054() — three retries with 200ms sleeps on transient errors — leaving the remainder to run under the trailing stop. Fourth, after DEF_MAX_BARS_IN_TRADE (120 bars = 10 hours on M5) elapses, the position is force-closed by TryClose_EX18054(). ExitOnReverse() additionally closes any position whose direction contradicts a new opposite-signal vote, with DEF_EXIT_ON_REVERSE defaulted to true.

The no-trade gate in NoTradeAllowed() is the safety layer. It refuses entries when: InpKillSwitch is on, effective capital has fallen below InpCapitalCapFloor (default $50, but only active when InpCapitalCapAmount > 0), CountMyPositions() has reached InpMaxConcurrent (default 3), a cooldown window is active, the daily realized loss has hit 3% of equity, the weekly realized loss has hit 6% of equity (both pulled from RealizedPnLSince() which scans history deals by magic and symbol), the current broker-server time is outside the 08:00-20:00 window configured by InpSessionStart/InpSessionEnd, or the EA is past the Friday 20:00 server cutoff (the IsNearFridayCutoff() guard, which is DEF_AVOID_FRIDAY_CUTOFF=true). The 4-hour cooldown in TrackLossesForCooldown() activates when three consecutive losing deals accumulate during the day, resetting the loss counter on any winning deal.

The InpDryRun flag (default true) makes the EA a paper-trader out of the box — SendMarket(), ModifySLTP(), and the partial-close calls all print their intended actions to the log without actually placing or modifying orders. Set it to false to go live. OnTester() returns (net × profit_factor) / (1 + balance_dd_percent) for any backtest with at least 30 trades, scoring strategies by risk-adjusted return rather than raw profit. The order comment is hard-coded to Psgrowth.com Expert_18054 for downstream journal filtering. Magic 22218054 must remain unique per chart to keep position-counting and the cooldown counter correct.

For live deployment, the recommended minimum balance is $100 — the 0.5% risk per trade keeps the loss-on-stop well under 1% of equity per position. The 08:00-20:00 server-time window captures the London and the first half of the New York session, when gold volatility is highest. The 50-point spread cap and the 60-point hardcoded m_trade.SetDeviationInPoints(20) mean the EA prefers tight-spread execution — a RAW-spread or ECN account is recommended for both XAUUSD and any other instrument the strategy is ported to. The InpMinRR=1.2 floor and the Regime-block rules will turn the EA off during quiet Asian sessions, so don't be surprised by a low trade frequency during low-volatility weeks — the system is designed to wait for clean trend setups rather than to trade every session.