A practical tuning guide for operators of The Impossible Prop EA on M5 currency pairs. Covers the most common cause of low trade frequency and the exact inputs to change.
1. The symptom
You are running The Impossible Prop on a typical parallel EUR/GBP M5 setup. The dashboard looks perfectly healthy:
- PROP FIRM status: GREEN
- Shield: WAITING or ARMED
- Daily trades: 0 / 10
- Regime: FLAT with GATE OPEN
- Score sitting near MinScoreToTrade
- Equity is fine, no losses, no drawdown
And yet — one or two trades for the entire month. Sometimes none.
The EA is not broken. In every case I have investigated, the cause is the same: multiple direction, session and news filters overlap, each one defensible in isolation but compounding into a near-empty executable window.
2. What is NOT the cause (verified)
Before you go hunting for bugs, rule these out:
- Regime FLAT does NOT block trades. The weekly EMA-slope regime sets a label of UP, DOWN or FLAT. FLAT explicitly allows trading in both directions. Only the BlockCounterTrend input can restrict directionality, and only when regime is UP or DOWN.
- The "awaiting 5+ samples" diagnostic line on the dashboard is informational only. It controls whether per-session win-rate stats display. It does not gate trade entry.
- Daily trade cap ( MaxTradesPerDay ) — not the cause unless you actually see 10 / 10 used today.
- Prop firm drawdown / Shield — if PROP FIRM is GREEN and Shield is WAITING or unarmed, neither is blocking.
- Score 55 / 65 on the dashboard — that means you are 10 points below the trigger. It is a "close but no cigar" indicator, not a block reason on its own.
3. The real cause — overlapping filter stacks
Here is a typical over-tightened EUR M5 config. Each line is reasonable in isolation. Together they leave roughly 1–2 qualifying bars per day before the breakout and score conditions are even evaluated.
| Input | Typical over-tight value | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| SessionStart / SessionEnd | 8 / 16 | 8 trading hours total (London + early NY) |
| ExcludeStart / ExcludeEnd | 11 / 14 | General block — removes 3 hours from BOTH directions |
| BuyExcludeStart / BuyExcludeEnd | 11 / 14 | Often redundant — same window already blocked above |
| BuyExclude2Start / BuyExclude2End | 22 / 23 | Often outside session — no effect, just noise in the inputs |
| SellExcludeStart / SellExcludeEnd | 9 / 10 | SELL blocked at hour 9 |
| BlockFriday (or any day block) | true | 4 trading days / week instead of 5 |
| MaxSpread | 5.0 | Far too tight for EURUSD. News windows routinely push spread to 6–10 pips for 30+ minutes — entries are filtered silently with no obvious log entry. |
| EnableNewsFilter (±30 / 15 min) | true | Wipes 1–2 additional hours on data-heavy days |
| BlockIfSiblingHalted | true | If the parallel sibling pair's Shield arms or its prop limits trip, this pair also stops trading |
| MinScoreToTrade | 65 | High bar — combined with the above leaves very few qualifying bars |
Net result on a tight EUR config: BUY allowed only in roughly hours 8, 10, 14 and 15 (Mon–Thu) ≈ 16 hours / week, minus news, minus spread spikes, minus sibling halts. That is typically 1–2 candidate bars per day — and that is before the actual 60-bar breakout plus score-above-threshold conditions even have a chance to qualify.
4. Recommended starting config (conservative loosening)
Target: 3–5 trades per week per pair without changing the underlying strategy. Apply these changes from the EA Inputs tab, or update your .set file and reload the EA on the chart.
EUR pair
ExcludeStart = 0 ExcludeEnd = 0 BuyExcludeStart = 0 BuyExcludeEnd = 0 BuyExclude2Start = 0 BuyExclude2End = 0 SellExcludeStart = 0 SellExcludeEnd = 0 BlockFriday = false ; or keep if you have evidence Fri loses MaxSpread = 15.0 ; was 5.0 — too tight for news windows MinScoreToTrade = 60 ; was 65 — match the GBP threshold
GBP pair
ExcludeStart = 0 ExcludeEnd = 0 BuyExcludeStart = 0 BuyExcludeEnd = 0 BuyExclude2Start = 0 BuyExclude2End = 0 SellExcludeStart = 0 SellExcludeEnd = 0 BlockWednesday = false ; or keep if evidence-based
Keep EnableNewsFilter = true and BlockIfSiblingHalted = true . These are sensible prop-survival defaults and are not the cause of low trade count on their own.
5. Verify with the Expert log before going live
Before pushing the loosened config to a funded account, enable diagnostics for 1–2 trading days and confirm which filter was firing most often:
DebugMode = true EnableDiagnostics = true
In the MT5 terminal, open View → Toolbox → Experts and look for these lines:
- [BO DEBUG] Blocked: BUY excluded H...
- [BO DEBUG] Blocked: SELL excluded H...
- [BO DEBUG] Blocked: BUY counter-trend (regime=DOWN)
- [BO DEBUG] Blocked: SELL counter-trend (regime=UP)
- [!] Weekly Trend LOADING — open a W1 chart to force history download
- Anything containing PHANTOM , NEWS or spread
The most frequent Blocked: reason tells you which filter to relax first. If the log is mostly OK BUY/SELL SIGNAL lines with no actual entries, check that AutoTrading is enabled, the symbol is permitted by the broker, and orders are not being rejected for spread or session reasons.
6. Pre-challenge sanity checklist
- Confirm PropStartBalance matches your account starting balance exactly.
- Confirm PropMaxDD and PropDailyDD match your prop firm's rules (e.g. 10% / 5% for typical FTMO 100K challenges).
- Confirm MagicNumber is unique per chart and unique vs any other EA on the same account.
- Confirm RiskPerTrade is appropriate for phase 1 (0.5–1.0% is a reasonable starting point on 100K accounts).
- If you run parallel siblings, confirm each has SiblingSymbol and SiblingMagic pointing at the other.
- Open the W1 chart of each symbol at least once so the weekly EMA regime has full history loaded.
- Run for 24 hours in a demo before promoting to the funded account.
7. Dashboard quick-reference
- GATE OPEN / GATE CLOSED — pre-conditions (regime, session, news). GATE OPEN means you are eligible to trade.
- BUY / SELL ARMED vs BLOCKED — directional gates (exclusion zones, counter-trend). If both BLOCKED for hours at a time, that is your culprit.
- SHIELD WAITING / ARMED / TRIGGERED — equity-curve protection. ARMED is good (peak high enough to monitor). TRIGGERED means trading stopped until recovery.
- PROP FIRM GREEN / AMBER / RED — distance to daily and total DD limits.
- SCORE n / n — current breakout score vs MinScoreToTrade . If hovering 10+ points below the threshold all day, the threshold is too high for current volatility.
8. Links & further reading
| The Impossible Prop — on MQL5 Market |
| The Impossible Prop — Settings & Optimisation Guide |
| The Impossible Gold — FREE on MQL5 Market (by the same author) |
| MQL5 Seller Profile |
| Discord Community — signals, prop firm tips, trader chat |
9. Takeaway
The Impossible Prop ships with a deliberately conservative default to protect prop accounts during their first 48 hours. If you have left those defaults in place and tightened them further over time with hour blocks, day blocks and aggressive spread caps, the most likely outcome is exactly what we see here: a healthy dashboard, GATE OPEN, ARMED, and almost no trades.
Loosen the overlapping filters one layer at a time, verify with debug logs for 48 hours, then promote to the funded account.
Educational content for users of The Impossible Prop EA. Strategy internals, source code, scoring weights and historical performance datasets are intentionally not included. Trading involves risk; past performance is not indicative of future results.
