Pipsgrowth EX18087 TrendFollow

Pipsgrowth EX18087 is a thin, deliberately minimal trend-following expert for MT5 that leans entirely on MetaQuotes' standard CExpert library. The .mq5 file at the source-of-truth level reveals its real architecture: it instantiates one signal module (CSignalMA), one trailing module (CTrailingPSAR), and one money module (CMoneyNone), then delegates every tick to the base CExpert engine through ExtExpert.OnTick(). Despite the header's reference to a "12-layer stack," the actual implementation is small, readable, and built on well-known library primitives — the kind of EA a developer can audit in a single sitting.

The entry layer is a moving-average signal. The user-configurable inputs drive signal.PeriodMA(12), signal.Shift(6), signal.Method(MODE_SMA), and signal.Applied(g_Inp_Signal_MA_Applied), where the applied price defaults to PRICE_CLOSE through the int-to-ENUM_APPLIED_PRICE mapping (value 1 = close, 2 = open, 3 = high, 4 = low, 5 = median, 6 = typical, 7 = weighted). What the CExpert framework does on top of these settings is the classic MA cross: it compares the MA value at the configured shift against price, and when the relationship flips it issues a long or short signal. The 6-bar shift is unusually large — most M5 setups use shift 0 or 1 — which gives the entry layer a deliberately delayed, anti-whipsaw posture. With shift=6 on an M5 bar, the EA evaluates MA-vs-price using a candle that closed half an hour ago, so it will routinely miss the first impulsive leg of a move and only engage once the new direction is already several bars old. That conservatism is the defining character of EX18087's entry engine: a slow SMA(12) with a 6-bar shift, not a fast EMA cross.

The exit layer is where EX18087 differs from most of the corpus. There is no fixed take-profit, no fixed stop-loss, no breakeven ratchet, no time-stop, and no per-trade TP/SL bracket at all. Instead the EA relies entirely on the Parabolic SAR trailing stop defined by CTrailingPSAR, configured with step = 0.02 and maximum = 0.2. PSAR in trailing mode works as a moving stop-loss: the SAR dot is recomputed every tick, the dot sits below price in an uptrend (or above price in a downtrend), and the EA continuously tightens the position's stop to that dot. When price finally violates the SAR (the dot flips to the other side of price), the trailing module closes the position. The 0.02 / 0.2 step/maximum pair is the standard MetaTrader PSAR default — sensitive enough to lock meaningful profit on gold's 30–60 point M5 swings, loose enough to give a real trend room to breathe. The result is a pure trend-runner: enter on a slow MA cross, ride as long as PSAR stays on the correct side, exit when PSAR flips.

The money layer is CMoneyNone, which means there is no built-in risk percent, no fixed-lot override, no lot cap, and no balance-based scaling. Trades open at the broker's default lot, which on most MT5 ECN setups is 0.01 for micro accounts and 0.10 or 1.00 for standard accounts. The risk profile is therefore entirely a function of position size, and EX18087 itself does not protect the account beyond what the trailing stop provides. A trader wiring this up to a $100 account on XAUUSD at 0.01 lot is exposed to roughly $1 per point of gold — at 30 points of adverse excursion (well within a normal M5 PSAR cycle on gold), that is $30 of risk per trade, and on a quiet day the account can absorb that easily. A trader on the same $100 account running 1.00 lot is exposed to $100 per point, which a single PSAR flip will blow through. The risk input is therefore not a setting inside the EA — it is the choice of trade volume on the broker side. Anyone testing EX18087 should treat lot size as the most important risk dial they have, because the EA does not regulate it.

The code includes three retry wrappers — TryClose_EX18087, TryClosePartial_EX18087, and TryModify_EX18087 — that loop up to three times on REQUOTE / TIMEOUT / PRICE_OFF / PRICE_CHANGED with 200ms backoff on close attempts and 100ms backoff on modify attempts. These are defined at the bottom of the file and are exposed for any caller that wants to override the CExpert base class behaviour, but the base CExpert engine does not call them by default. In practice they are scaffolding rather than active code paths; the EA's actual close and modify traffic flows through CExpert's own PositionClose and PositionModify machinery. This is the cleanest possible structure for an EA that wants to be auditable: every behaviour the user sees at runtime is implemented in two library classes, and the wrapper functions are present but dormant unless someone wires them up.

In OnInit the code follows the canonical CExpert setup sequence: initialize the ExtExpert, create a CSignalMA, call signal.PeriodMA / Shift / Method / Applied, validate signal settings, create a CTrailingPSAR, call trailing.Step / Maximum, validate trailing settings, create a CMoneyNone, validate money settings, then call ExtExpert.InitIndicators(). On any initialization failure the EA returns a negative code (-1 through -11 depending on the layer) and prints a labeled error string. The four event handlers — OnTick, OnTrade, OnTimer, OnDeinit — are all one-liners that forward to ExtExpert. There is no custom OnTimer code, no news filter, no time-window filter, no regime classifier, no spread gate, no pyramid logic, no dashboard, no OnTester optimization function. What runs at runtime is exactly what the input panel advertises: an MA(12, SMA, close, shift 6) signal with PSAR(0.02, 0.2) trailing, no SL, no TP, no money management, no time filter.

The operating picture is therefore straightforward. EX18087 will hold positions through M5 noise as long as PSAR stays put; it will exit on a PSAR flip with whatever profit or loss the trailing allowed; and it will re-enter on the next MA cross without any session restriction. The XAUUSD M5 default in the database matches the M5 bias of the 6-bar shift, but the header explicitly notes the EA is portable to FX majors and other metals. On EURUSD M5 the same logic plays out at a smaller per-point scale, the PSAR dot is tighter in absolute pips, and the 6-bar shift is more meaningful because EURUSD M5 ranges are narrower than gold's. On H1 the shift becomes 6 hours of delay, which is a serious commitment to late entries. The most useful parameter to tweak in a live forward-test is the MA period — dropping it from 12 to 8 or 10 speeds up entries and produces more signals at the cost of more PSAR-flip noise; raising it to 20 or 30 produces sparser but more durable trends. Everything else in the input panel is a library default and changing it (e.g. PSAR step/maximum, applied price) is meaningful only if the trader has a clear reason to deviate from the MetaTrader standard.

The bottom line: EX18087 is a deliberately compact, library-based trend runner for traders who want a clean, auditable CExpert implementation rather than a custom-coded monolith. Its edge comes from the MA-signal/PSAR-trailing pair working together — the slow MA with its 6-bar shift suppresses whipsaws, and the PSAR trailing captures trends while clipping drawdowns. It does not manage risk, does not filter sessions, does not scale positions, and does not protect against broker-side events beyond the CExpert base class's defaults. It is best deployed on instruments with strong intraday trends (gold M5, FX majors M5), on accounts where the user has chosen a lot size that matches their own risk tolerance, and within a broker environment where the CExpert base class can operate without micro-lot rounding artefacts.