Pipsgrowth EX18099 TrendFollow

Pipsgrowth EX18099 TrendFollow is a single-indicator RSI scalper with one entry model on each side and a double exit gate. It runs a 14-period RSI on the close of the active timeframe (H1 by default — the TimeFrame=5 input maps to PERIOD_H1 inside the code, not the M5 listed in the database card) and trades every crossover through a fixed pair of trigger levels. It does not use ATR, ADX, EMAs, volume, or higher-timeframe confirmation; the decision is made entirely from the three most recent RSI bars.

The most important thing to know about this EA before you run it is that the input names are inverted relative to their conventional meaning. RSI_Oversold defaults to 50, and RSI_Overbought defaults to 19. The CheckEntrySignals function does not compare RSI to a deep-oversold zone and a deep-overbought zone — it compares RSI to a midline and a deep-oversold zone. A long fires when the RSI two-bars-ago value was at or below 50 and the previous-bar value crossed above 50. A short fires when the RSI two-bars-ago value was at or above 19 and the previous-bar value crossed below 19. In other words, the long is a midline-breakout entry, and the short is a momentum-exhaustion entry off a deep-oversold print. Calling them both RSI_Overbought/RSI_Oversold levels is misleading; the long side behaves like a momentum filter and the short side behaves like a contrarian reversion trigger.

Once a position is open, two independent exit conditions are evaluated on every new bar in CheckExistingPosition. The first is a target condition: the long closes when the current bar's RSI reaches 71 (RSI_Target_Buy = 71), and the short closes when the current bar's RSI reaches 70 (RSI_Target_Sell = 70). The two targets are deliberately close in value but asymmetric in the distance they need to travel. From a 50-entry long, the indicator has to climb 21 RSI points to print 71. From a 19-entry short, the indicator has to drop 51 points to print a 70 oversold reading, which in practice means the short target is rarely hit and most short exits are driven by the second path. The second exit path is a bars-against counter. If the long has been below 50 for BarsToWait=1 closed bar, the position closes; if the short has been above 19 for BarsToWait=1 closed bar, the position closes. The counter is forgiving — it resets the moment the indicator returns to the friendly side of the trigger — so a one-bar dip below 50 in an otherwise uptrending RSI does not flatten the long.

The architecture is intentionally minimal. There is one indicator handle — iRSI(14, PRICE_CLOSE) — and 9 functions: UpdateRSI, CheckExistingPosition, CheckEntrySignals, OpenBuyPosition, OpenSellPosition, ClosePosition, plus three retry helpers TryClose_EX18099, TryClosePartial_EX18099, and TryModify_EX18099. Only TryClose_EX18099 is actually called in the live code path; the partial-close and modify helpers are defined but unused. The trade object is configured with SetTypeFilling(ORDER_FILLING_FOK) and SetDeviationInPoints(3) in OnInit, and the slippage input is wired straight through. There is no OnTester function, no OnTradeTransaction handler, no equity-floor drawdown breaker, no regime classifier, no HTF alignment check, no news filter, no session filter, no spread cap, no consecutive-loss counter, and no equity-percent position sizing. The header advertises a "12-layer" stack in the comment block, but the actual implementation contains only the signal, the entry, and the exit layers — the rest of the stack named in the comment is aspirational.

Position sizing is the single biggest configuration concern. The LotSize input defaults to 50, which is a notional size intended for an institutional or test-harness context and will not work on a retail MT5 account. There is no risk-percent input and no balance-aware sizing helper — the value is passed verbatim to trade.Buy and trade.Sell inside OpenBuyPosition and OpenSellPosition. For live use on a $100–$1,000 account, you must lower this to whatever the broker's minimum lot allows, and treat the default as a placeholder, not a recommendation. The trade is opened with 0 SL and 0 TP at the CTrade level, so no bracket is attached — the only stop in the system is the bars-against exit on the next bar. There is no SL/TP modification loop; the TryModify_EX18099 helper exists but is not invoked by any of the active functions.

The single-position gate is enforced by a plain boolean. After OpenBuyPosition or OpenSellPosition writes the ticket from trade.ResultOrder() to position_ticket, the position_open flag prevents the OnTick loop from re-entering CheckEntrySignals on the next bar until the existing position is closed. There is no pyramiding, no hedging, no scaling-in, and no partial-close logic. When ClosePosition runs, it calls TryClose_EX18099 which attempts the CTrade.PositionClose up to three times, sleeping 200ms on requote/timeout/price-change responses, and clears the state on a successful DONE or DONE_PARTIAL return code.

The 12 inputs divide into three groups. The Strategy group holds TimeFrame (1-7 with H1 as the default fall-through), RSI_Period (default 14), RSI_Applied_Price (1-7 with PRICE_CLOSE as the fall-through), the four RSI thresholds, and BarsToWait (default 1). The Risk Management group contains only LotSize (default 50). The Identity group holds MagicNumber (22218099), InpTradeComment, and Slippage (default 3). There are no defines, no enum-style macro guards, and no compile-time constants — every numeric is a runtime input. Note that the source has 4 duplicate copies of the MapTimeframeInt and MapAppliedPriceInt helper functions spread across lines 32-130; this is a copy-paste artifact of the auto-template, not a runtime behavior, and the MQL5 compiler absorbs the duplicates into a single symbol.

What to expect in a backtest: this is a single-indicator, two-signal system with no risk-percentage and a 1-bar adverse-bar exit. The behavior will be choppy on H1 gold because the bars-against timeout (1 bar) lets through the first pullback and then closes the trade quickly on the second, often before a real pullback has finished. To tune it for a given symbol, the most useful inputs are RSI_Overbought (move it up if you want only deeply-oversold short triggers), RSI_Oversold (move it down toward 45 if you want the long to fire on a softer midline break), BarsToWait (raise it to 3-5 if you want the position to survive the first pullback), and the two targets. Treat the LotSize input as a placeholder and set it to your broker's allowed minimum. The 3-point slippage and FOK filling assume a low-spread, low-latency broker; on a wide-spread retail account, the slippage will eat a noticeable slice of any target hit, especially on the short side where the distance to the 70 target is short and the relative cost is high.