Free Donchian Trend Engine: Set Files (Conservative/Standard/Aggressive) and Your First Real-Tick Backtest
6 August 2026, 04:00
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Three ready-to-load set files for our free Donchian Trend Engine — Conservative, Standard and Aggressive — plus a five-minute walkthrough for running your first proper backtest with them. If you have never tried one of our EAs, this free one is the place to start.
Donchian Trend Engine (free, MT5): https://www.mql5.com/en/market/product/185534
MT4 version (also free): https://www.mql5.com/en/market/product/185537
The Donchian Trend Engine is the complete trend core we use inside our paid EAs, released free with no demo limit and no crippled features. The logic fits in four sentences: a bar closes beyond the N-bar Donchian channel, that is the entry. A hard stop-loss goes in at SL_ATR x ATR on every single trade and is never removed or widened. An ATR trailing stop follows the trend, and a time-out closes trades that never develop. One position at a time — no grid, no martingale, no averaging down.
The inputs that matter
- N_Channel (default 40): the breakout lookback. The defining input of the whole system — it decides what counts as a genuine range break on your market.
- SL_ATR (default 2.0): the hard stop distance in ATR. Smaller means tighter stops and more stop-outs; larger means fewer but costlier losses per trade.
- Trail_ATR (default 8.0): the trailing distance. Deliberately wide, so ordinary pullbacks do not end a good trend early.
- HoldBars (default 60): the time-out for breakouts that stall.
- RiskPercent (default 0.5): the fixed fraction of balance risked per trade. This is the only value our three set files change.
- AllowBuy / AllowSell (default long-only): the published USDJPY configuration trades upper breakouts only.
The three set files
- DONCHIAN_ENGINE_Conservative.set — RiskPercent 0.25, half the published default. For first live tests or small accounts. No separate backtest is published for this level; the signal is identical, only the risk fraction is halved.
- DONCHIAN_ENGINE_Standard.set — RiskPercent 0.5. This IS the published configuration, byte for byte: the numbers below were measured with exactly these values.
- DONCHIAN_ENGINE_Aggressive.set — RiskPercent 1.0, double the default. With fixed-fraction sizing, return and drawdown scale roughly in proportion — expect roughly double the swing of Standard, and verify in the tester before going live.
Download
Run your first backtest (five minutes)
1. Download the EA from the product page (it is free) and open MT5.
2. Press Ctrl+R to open the strategy tester. Select the Donchian Trend Engine, symbol USDJPY, timeframe H1.
3. Set the model to "Every tick based on real ticks" and the date range to 2017-2026 if your broker's history reaches that far.
4. In the "Inputs" tab, right-click the parameter list, choose "Load", and select DONCHIAN_ENGINE_Standard.set.
5. Run it, then compare your result against the published figures below. It will not match to the dollar on a different feed — but the shape and the statistics should be close. That check, on your own terminal, is worth more than anything a seller can tell you.
To use it on a chart instead: drag the EA onto USDJPY H1, open the "Inputs" tab of the properties window, click "Load", pick the set file and confirm.
The published numbers (measured with the Standard values)
USDJPY H1, 2017-01 to 2026-06 (9.4 years), Dukascopy real ticks, every-tick model, $10,000:
- Profit factor 1.50
- Net profit +$16,522 (account x2.65)
- Maximum equity drawdown 10.3%
- 631 trades, win rate 34.5%
A 34.5% win rate is normal for breakout trend following: most trades are small losses, a few large winners carry the result. Also honest: our own real-feed tests say Donchian breakouts work on strongly trending markets like the yen crosses and crypto majors — they did NOT work on ranging majors like EURUSD, or on gold. We would rather tell you that than let you spend weeks discovering it.
All backtest figures above are historical simulations, not a live track record, and not a promise of future results. Trade only with money you can afford to lose.
The EA is free — if it earns a place on your chart, a review on the product page helps us more than anything else.
Our measured backtest data for every EA (profit factor, equity drawdown, trade count, year-by-year results) is published at fxea365.com/ea/ranking
All of our products and free tools are listed on our seller profile: mql5.com/en/users/app.develop.sk/seller
