Pipsgrowth EX18103 TrendFollow

EX18103 TrendFollow is a two-indicator reversal system designed for XAUUSD on the M1–H1 band. It pairs a 19-period RSI with a 140-period EMA and looks for reversion trades in two extreme zones: long entries fire when the previous bar's RSI dipped to 22 or below, short entries fire when it reached 93 or above. Both thresholds sit far out on the RSI scale — the 22/93 pair is roughly twice as selective as the textbook 30/70 boundaries, so signals only emerge from genuine capitulation, not ordinary pullbacks. The classification as 'TrendFollow' is the project taxonomy; the actual code is a mean-reversion system, and the EMA filter reinforces that by closing positions whenever the trend gets too directional.

The entry logic is bar-by-bar, gated by a custom cooldown. On the first tick of each new bar on the configured time frame (default BarTimeFrame=5 = PERIOD_H1), the EA copies two RSI values from the iRSI(19) handle, then checks them against the previous call's stored RSI held in previousRSIDef. A long fires when currentRSI is above 22 and previousRSIDef was at or below 22. A short fires when currentRSI is below 93 and previousRSIDef was at or above 93. After any order, a 209-second cooldown blocks re-entry; combined with the new-bar gate, the system can take at most one trade per new bar, then waits roughly 3.5 minutes before another is permitted. The order tickets themselves are sent as market orders with 0/0 SL/TP brackets via trade.Buy() and trade.Sell() with the magic set to 22218103 and a 3-point slippage tolerance.

Once a position is open, the EA watches RSI for a symmetrical exit: longs close when RSI climbs to 86, shorts close when RSI falls to 10. Those targets sit 64 and 83 RSI-points away from the entry thresholds respectively, which gives the trade room to mean-revert before the exit is triggered. The protective stop is not a fixed pips number — it's a 295-point trailing stop managed by ApplyTrailingStop(), which iterates the open positions each tick, looks up point size and digit count for the symbol, and ratchets the SL toward (but never against) price once profit exceeds 295 points. The trailing distance is wide on purpose: 295 points is roughly $2.95 on a 0.01-lot XAUUSD position, so the stop is only moved after the trade has produced several dollars of profit, then it locks in progressively more of that profit as price advances. The trailing routine relies on TryModify_EX18103, which wraps trade.PositionModify in a three-attempt retry loop with 100ms sleeps for requote and timeout errors.

The signature design choice is the EMA-based 'no-trade' gate. After loading the 140-period EMA buffer, the EA computes two derived quantities: emaSlope = (currentEMA - previousEMA) * 100 and priceToEmaDistance = (close - currentEMA) * 10. If either exceeds its threshold (105 and 165 respectively) in absolute value, the strategy treats the market as too directional and forcibly closes any open position, then skips new entries until the slope and distance cool off. The intent is to keep the reversal logic from catching a falling knife in a strong trend. Note that both inputs are scaled — emaSlopeThreshold=105 actually represents a 1.05-unit raw move in the EMA across one bar, and emaDistanceThreshold=165 represents 16.5 units of separation between price and EMA. Both are large enough that the gate only fires on clearly directional bars, not minor fluctuations.

Time and day filters are also hard-coded into the entry path. WeekDays_Check() reads the server's day-of-week from the input boolean flags, with default settings: only Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are enabled — Sunday, Monday, Friday, and Saturday are all false. Combined with the hour window (server time 7:00 to 18:59, exclusive on both ends via the tradingHourTwoBegin=6, tradingHourTwoEnd=19 check), the EA is only active during the overlap of midweek European morning and the U.S. session open. The first hour window configured in the inputs (tradingHourOneBegin=24 to tradingHourOneEnd=22) is dead code: currentHour < 22 && currentHour > 24 is always false because 24 is end-of-day and 22 precedes it. Outside the active window, OnTick() calls Close_Position_MN() to flatten any open position and returns. This means a position opened at 17:55 will be force-closed by the hour filter at 18:00, even if the RSI exit hasn't fired.

A few design notes worth surfacing for traders. The trade tickets carry no SL/TP — the only protective mechanism is the trailing stop, and only after profit exceeds 295 points. Lot size is fixed at 0.01; there is no risk-percent sizing and no balance-based scaling, so position sizing is constant regardless of account equity. Magic number 22218103 is hard-coded into the MagicNumber input. The functions TryClose_EX18103, TryClosePartial_EX18103, and TryModify_EX18103 are wired into the trade path with 200ms/100ms retry loops for requote and timeout errors; only TryClose_EX18103 and TryModify_EX18103 are called in the live code path (no partial-close use). The 12-layer marketing claim in the header is aspirational — in the actual code, SIGNAL + ENTRY + EXIT are implemented, plus a NO-TRADE gate (the EMA trend filter, hour filter, day filter, cooldown) and a partial MANAGE (the trailing stop). There is no risk-percent sizing, no balance-scaling CAP, no news filter, no regime classifier, no partial-close scaling, and no OnTester pass.

What to expect in backtest: the 22/93 RSI zones are rare events, so trade frequency will be low — likely a handful of setups per week on H1 XAUUSD, more on M1. The 295-point trailing stop is wide in dollar terms but tight in the 19-period RSI context, and the 209-second cooldown prevents rapid re-entries when the same RSI extreme fires across consecutive bars. The Tue-Thu-only day filter is the largest source of trade reduction: about 43% of the week is simply skipped. Combined, the system should produce sparse, mean-reversion-style trades that close either on the RSI target or on the trailing stop, with the EMA trend gate acting as a defensive flatten during strong directional moves.