Wave Rider EA — User Guide (v3.5)
Welcome to the official guide for Wave Rider — a hybrid grid-scalper built specifically for Gold (XAUUSD). This guide covers everything you need to get up and running: recommended setup, all input parameters explained in plain language, and tips for getting the most out of the EA.
Product Page: Click Here
⚡ Core Setup Requirements
- Symbol: XAUUSD (Gold)
- Chart Timeframe: Any — the EA uses its own hard-coded timeframes internally
- Account Type: Hedge
- Minimum Deposit: $300 (at 0.01 lot)
- Recommended Deposit: $1,000+ for comfortable grid recovery
- Leverage: 1:100 minimum, 1:500 recommended
- Broker: ECN / RAW spread brokers recommended — VT Markets, IC Markets, IC Trading, Fusion Markets, FP Markets, FxTrading, or similar
- Gold Digits: 2 decimal places only (e.g. 2645.30). The EA is not compatible with brokers that quote gold with 1 or 3+ digits.
- Account: Standard or Pro accounts only. Do not use cent accounts — lot sizing, margin calculations, and profit targets will not work correctly on cent accounts.
- VPS: Recommended for 24/5 uninterrupted operation
Why Broker Selection Matters
Wave Rider runs 4 strategies that rely on precise entry timing and a grid system with tight profit targets. Low spreads directly impact how quickly the grid reaches its profit target. High spreads or excessive slippage can delay closures and increase exposure time. If you want the cleanest results, stick with a RAW/ECN account from one of the brokers listed above.
🧠 How Wave Rider Works
Wave Rider is not a blind grid EA and not a random scalper. It combines scalping precision with intelligent grid recovery:
- 4 independent strategies scan for entries across different market conditions
- Every entry is confirmed by triple timeframe analysis — H1 trend direction + lower timeframe signal confirmation
- The grid system only activates when the market moves against an open position — it's your safety net, not your main strategy
- The EA does not trade against the trend
- Most trades close in under 30 minutes — minimal market exposure
📊 The 4 Strategies
Each strategy targets a different market condition. Run them all together, or pick the ones that suit your style:
- S01 — Support & Resistance: Dual timeframe ZigZag-based detection of real support and resistance levels on M15/M30 — zones where price actually reversed, not arbitrary lines. Filters entries with volatility and trend strength confirmation.
- S02 — Pullback: Watches multiple timeframes (M1/M5/M15) for momentum shifts and catches retracements at the right moment. Includes bounce zone detection and exhaustion filtering to avoid false entries.
- S03 — Trend Breakout: Detects when price breaks out of a consolidation range with momentum confirmation. Rides strong directional moves with multiple entries.
- S04 — M5 Strategy: Identifies oversold bounce setups on the M5 chart using market strength, momentum, and candle pattern analysis. Multiple confirmation layers keep entries precise.
When one strategy waits, another may fire — giving you consistent coverage across different market conditions.
🛠️ Input Parameters Explained
▶ Main Settings
- Enable UI Dashboard (default: false) — Turns on an on-chart visual dashboard showing account info, strategy status, daily P/L per strategy, drawdown tracking, and TP/breakeven prices. Useful for monitoring but uses a bit more CPU.
- Entry Strictness (default: Normal) — Controls how selective the EA is when opening new positions. Think of it as a quality dial:
- Relaxed — Least strict trend filtering. Allows more entries in less defined trend conditions. More trades, slightly less filtered.
- Normal — Balanced default. Moderate trend filtering that works well for most accounts.
- Selective — Strictest trend filtering. Only enters when the trend direction is clearly established. Fewer trades, higher quality.
- Enable only one strategy open at time (default: true) — When enabled, only one strategy can have an open position at any time. This prevents multiple strategies from stacking positions simultaneously, keeping your exposure controlled. Disable if you want parallel trading across strategies.
- Enable automatic currency conversion (default: false) — If your account is not in USD, enable this so the EA correctly calculates position sizes and profit targets in your account currency.
- Max spread (points) (default: 50) — The maximum allowed spread before the EA will skip a trade. Set to 0 to disable the filter. If your broker has wider spreads during news events, this prevents the EA from entering at bad prices.
- Trade comment (default: "Wave Rider") v3.6 — The comment attached to every trade. Useful for identifying EA trades in your account history.
- Append strategy code to comment (default: true) v3.6 — Adds the strategy code (e.g. [S01], [S02]) to the trade comment so you can see which strategy opened each trade.
▶ Position Sizing
- Size Method (default: Auto Risk) — How the EA calculates lot size:
- Fixed lot size — Uses the same lot size for every trade, no matter your balance.
- Automatic (matching risk level) — Scales lot size based on your account balance using a predefined risk level. This is the recommended option.
- Custom lot scaling by balance — You define your own ratio (e.g. 0.01 lot per $1,000 balance).
- Fixed Lot Size (default: 0.01) — The lot size used when "Fixed lot size" method is selected.
- Auto Risk Level (default: Low risk) — When using Auto Risk, this sets how aggressively the EA scales:
- Very low risk — 0.01 lot per $4,000 balance
- Low risk — 0.01 lot per $2,000 balance
- Medium risk — 0.01 lot per $1,500 balance
- High risk — 0.01 lot per $800 balance
- Custom: Scale by Balance (default: 1000) — When using Custom scaling, the EA adds one base lot for every X dollars of balance.
- Custom: Base Lot Size (default: 0.01) — The base lot size used in custom scaling calculations.
▶ Strategies
- [S01] Enabled (default: true) — Enable or disable the Support & Resistance strategy.
- [S01] Magic Number (default: 8001) — Unique identifier for S01 trades. Change this if you run multiple instances of the EA.
- [S02] Enabled (default: true) — Enable or disable the Pullback strategy.
- [S02] Magic Number (default: 8002) — Unique identifier for S02 trades.
- [S03] Enabled (default: true) — Enable or disable the Trend Breakout strategy.
- [S03] Magic Number (default: 8003) — Unique identifier for S03 trades.
- [S04] Enabled (default: true) — Enable or disable the M5 Strategy.
- [S04] Magic Number (default: 8004) — Unique identifier for S04 trades.
Each strategy has its own magic number so the EA can track and manage positions independently. If you run multiple copies of Wave Rider on the same account, make sure each instance uses different magic numbers.
▶ Grid System
The grid is your recovery mechanism. When the market moves against an open position, the grid opens additional positions at calculated intervals to lower the average entry price. Once the combined position reaches the profit target, everything closes together.
- Maximum Grid Orders (default: 16) — The maximum number of grid positions the EA will open for a single trade direction. Higher values give more recovery room but require more margin.
- Lot Size Multiplier (default: 1.0) — Each new grid order's lot size is the previous order's lot multiplied by this value. At 1.0, every grid order is the same size (no martingale). Values above 1.0 increase lot sizes as the grid deepens — use with caution.
- Fixed Grid Distance (Pips) (default: 22) — The distance in pips between each grid level. When price moves this far against you, a new grid order is placed.
- Profit Target (Pips) (default: 12) — The combined profit target in pips for the entire grid basket. Once the weighted average price of all positions is this many pips in profit, the EA closes everything.
- Show TP Line on Chart (default: true) — Draws a horizontal line on the chart showing where the grid's take-profit level is. Helpful for visual monitoring.
- Enable Trailing Stop Loss (default: true) — Once the grid basket reaches its profit target plus the trailing start distance, a real trailing stop is placed on all positions. This lets profits run beyond the initial target while protecting gains.
- Trailing Start (Pips) (default: 2.5) — How many pips beyond the profit target the price must move before the trailing stop activates. For example, with a 12-pip target and 2.5-pip trailing start, trailing begins at 14.5 pips of profit.
- Trailing Step (Pips) (default: 3.0) — The step size for the trailing stop. Each time price moves this many additional pips in your favor, the stop loss is tightened by one step.
- Enable Progressive Spacing (default: true) — When enabled, grid levels get wider as the grid deepens. This prevents the classic grid blowup where positions stack too close together during strong trends.
- Progressive Start Position (default: 4) — Progressive spacing kicks in starting from this grid position number. The first few levels use the fixed distance, then spacing begins to widen.
- Spacing Multiplier (default: 1.2) — How much wider each progressive level gets. At 1.2, each level beyond the threshold is 20% wider than the previous one.
▶ Time Management
Wave Rider supports multiple trading windows per day, with separate schedules for different days of the week. Time values use your broker's server time.
- Enable weekly time filter (default: true) — Master switch for the time filter. When disabled, the EA trades 24 hours on all enabled days.
- Monday–Thursday start times (default: "01:15;14:35;15:45") — Semicolon-separated list of session start times. Each start time pairs with the corresponding end time. This example creates three trading windows: 01:15–14:20, 14:35–15:20, and 15:45–22:30.
- Monday–Thursday end times (default: "14:20;15:20;22:30") — Matching end times for each Monday–Thursday session.
- Enable Friday trading (default: true) — Whether the EA trades on Fridays. Friday has its own schedule since markets can be thinner and more volatile before the weekend.
- Friday start times (default: "01:30;16:00") — Friday-specific trading windows.
- Friday end times (default: "10:00;17:00") — Friday-specific end times.
- Enable Friday NFP trading (default: true) — Allows trading during Non-Farm Payroll Fridays. The EA has built-in NFP detection. Disable this if you prefer to sit out NFP days entirely.
▶ Protection Manager
Three layers of protection keep your account safe. These are independent of the trading strategies and act as hard limits.
- Enable Drawdown Protection (default: true) — Master switch for daily drawdown protection. When triggered, the EA closes all open positions and stops trading for the rest of the day. Resets automatically the next day.
- Drawdown calculation mode (default: Percentage) — How the drawdown threshold is measured:
- Percentage — As a percentage of your starting daily balance (e.g. 40% means if floating loss reaches 40% of today's opening balance).
- Money — As an absolute dollar amount (e.g. $500 means if floating loss reaches $500).
- Drawdown threshold (default: 40) — The value at which drawdown protection triggers. In percentage mode, this is 40%. In money mode, this is $40.
- Prevent trading close to All-Time High (default: false) — When enabled, the EA will not open new positions when price is near the all-time high of the symbol. This prevents buying the top. Grid orders for existing positions still execute normally.
- ATH calculation timeframe (default: W1) — The timeframe used to calculate the all-time high. Weekly (W1) gives a broad view.
- ATH lookback periods (default: 100) — How many bars to look back when calculating the ATH. At W1 with 100 periods, that's roughly 2 years of weekly data.
- Distance from ATH threshold (%) (default: 0.25) — How close price needs to be to the ATH before protection kicks in. At 0.25%, if gold ATH is $3,000, trading pauses when price is above $2,992.50.
▶ H1 Trend Filter (EMA)
This is the master trend filter that all strategies share. It uses two EMAs on the H1 timeframe to determine the overall market direction. Strategies will only enter trades that align with this filter.
- Slow EMA period (default: 50) — The period of the slower-moving EMA. This represents the broader trend.
- Fast EMA period (default: 21) — The period of the faster-moving EMA. This represents the shorter-term trend.
- Require Fast EMA above/below Slow EMA (default: true) — When enabled, the Fast EMA must be above the Slow EMA for buy signals (and below for sells). This ensures the short-term trend agrees with the long-term trend.
- Price must be above/below Fast EMA (default: true) — Price itself must be on the correct side of the Fast EMA. For buys, price must be above the Fast EMA.
- Price must be above/below Slow EMA (default: false) — An additional stricter filter requiring price to also be on the correct side of the Slow EMA. Disabled by default since it can be too restrictive.
▶ Per-Strategy Settings
Each strategy has a few user-facing settings. The internal parameters are pre-optimized and locked to defaults — you don't need to touch them.
[S01] Support & Resistance Strategy
- Use H1 Trend Filter (default: true) — Whether S01 respects the H1 trend filter. Recommended to keep enabled.
- Trading time start (default: "05:00") — When S01 starts looking for signals.
- Trading time end (default: "20:00") — When S01 stops looking for signals.
- Enable 15min timeframe (default: true) — Allow S01 to detect support/resistance levels on the M15 chart.
- Enable 30min timeframe (default: true) — Allow S01 to also use M30 for level detection. Using both timeframes gives broader coverage.
[S02] Pullback Strategy
- Use H1 Trend Filter (default: true) — Whether S02 respects the H1 trend filter.
- Trading start times (default: "01:15") — When S02 begins scanning for pullback entries.
- Trading end times (default: "13:00") — When S02 stops scanning. This strategy focuses on the earlier part of the day.
[S03] Trend Breakout Strategy
- Use H1 Trend Filter (default: true) — Whether S03 respects the H1 trend filter.
- Trading time start (default: "06:00;16:30") — Two trading windows for breakout detection.
- Trading time end (default: "11:00;21:00") — Matching end times for each window.
[S04] M5 Strategy
- Use H1 Trend Filter (default: true) — Whether S04 respects the H1 trend filter.
- Trading time start (default: "06:00") — When S04 starts looking for setups.
- Trading time end (default: "21:00") — When S04 stops scanning.
- Require bullish candle + higher low for entry (default: false) — An extra price action filter. When enabled, S04 requires a bullish candle with a higher low before entering. Makes entries more selective but may reduce trade count.
🔒 3 Layers of Protection
- Drawdown Protection — Tracks your daily floating loss against your starting balance. If it exceeds your threshold, all positions are closed and trading pauses until the next day. Configurable as percentage or absolute money amount.
- ATH Protection — Monitors the all-time high of the symbol and blocks new entries when price is too close to the top. Grid orders for existing positions continue normally — only new trade entries are blocked.
- Grid Trailing Stop — Once the grid basket reaches its profit target, a trailing stop locks in gains. If price continues in your favor, profits grow. If it reverses, the trailing stop closes everything at a guaranteed profit level.
💡 Tips for Best Results
- Start with defaults. Wave Rider is pre-optimized. The default settings work out of the box on XAUUSD with a RAW/ECN broker. Run it on demo first to see how it behaves with your broker's spreads and execution.
- Use Auto Risk sizing. Fixed lots don't scale with your account. Auto Risk (Low) is a safe starting point — it scales 0.01 lot per $2,000 of balance.
- Keep drawdown protection enabled. This is your hard safety net. A 40% threshold gives the grid enough room to recover while protecting you from catastrophic loss.
- Don't disable the H1 Trend Filter. It's the backbone of the EA's edge. Trading without it removes the trend confirmation that keeps entries aligned with the market direction.
- Use a VPS. Wave Rider needs to be running 24/5 to manage grid positions and trailing stops. If your PC shuts down or loses internet, open grid positions won't be managed.
- ECN/RAW spreads matter. The grid profit target is 12 pips by default. If your spread is 3–5 pips on a standard account, that eats into your profit significantly. RAW accounts with 0.5–1.5 pip spreads on gold make a real difference.
- Sufficient margin is key. The grid system needs room to work. With 16 max grid orders at 1.0 multiplier, you need enough free margin to support all levels. $1,000+ at 0.01 lot with 1:500 leverage is a comfortable starting point.
❓ FAQ
Can I run Wave Rider on symbols other than XAUUSD?
The EA is optimized and tested exclusively for XAUUSD (Gold). While it may technically run on other symbols, the internal parameters, time windows, and strategy logic are all tuned for gold's behavior. Running it on other pairs is not recommended.
What timeframe should I attach the EA to?
It doesn't matter. The EA uses its own internal timeframes regardless of the chart timeframe. Attach it to any chart — M1 or H1, the behavior is identical.
Can I run multiple instances on the same account?
Yes, but make sure each instance uses different magic numbers. The default magic numbers are 8001–8004 for strategies S01–S04. Change them to a different range (e.g. 9001–9004) for the second instance.
What happens if drawdown protection triggers?
All open positions are immediately closed and trading is paused for the rest of the day. The EA resets automatically at the start of the next trading day.
Is this a martingale EA?
No. The default lot multiplier is 1.0, meaning every grid order is the same size. You can increase the multiplier if you want, but the default behavior is flat-lot grid recovery — not martingale.
What is progressive spacing?
Instead of placing grid orders at equal intervals, progressive spacing makes the gaps wider as the grid gets deeper. This prevents positions from stacking too close together during strong trends, which is the main cause of grid blowups.
For questions or support, contact the developer via the MQL5 product page: Wave Rider on MQL5 Market
DISCLAIMER: Trading foreign exchange and CFDs carries a high level of risk. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Always test on a demo account first. Grid trading requires sufficient margin — use the drawdown protection features and start with conservative lot sizes. Wave Rider is a professional tool built for patient traders who understand risk management.
