This is the full user manual for SmartEA Trade Manager, a MetaTrader 5 utility for accounts that run several Expert Advisors at once. Product page: https://www.mql5.com/en/market/product/189294
SmartEA Trade Manager enforces an EXCLUSIVE TRADING LOCK (only N EAs may hold positions at the same time) and adds a news filter, two pause schedules, drawdown protection on three levels, a losing-streak guard, a direction filter and manual pause buttons - all from a single chart panel. It does NOT open trades of its own. It manages the EAs you already run.
1. HOW IT WORKS - READ THIS FIRST
The manager pauses an EA by taking a snapshot of its chart into a template, then applying a blank template - the EA is removed from the chart, so it cannot open new trades. When the pause reason clears, the saved template is re-applied and the EA comes back with exactly the inputs it had before. Nothing about your EA's settings is lost.
Key consequences of this design:
- Each managed EA must run on its own chart (one EA per chart - the normal MT5 setup).
- The manager identifies each EA two ways: by NAME (to find its chart) and by MAGIC NUMBER (to find its positions). Both must be configured correctly.
- An EA that has open positions is NEVER paused - it stays on its chart to manage its stop loss, trailing and baskets. It is paused only after its positions close. (Exception: drawdown actions that close positions first, then pause.)
- The manager's state survives terminal or VPS restarts: paused EAs are recorded in a state file and re-adopted on startup.
2. REQUIREMENTS AND INSTALLATION
1. MetaTrader 5, hedging or netting account, any broker.
2. Install from the Market - the EA lands in MQL5\Experts automatically.
3. Enable Algo Trading (the toolbar button must be green).
4. For the news filter: open Tools -> Options -> Expert Advisors, tick "Allow WebRequest for listed URL" and add: https://nfs.faireconomy.media
5. Attach the manager to any chart - a chart that no EA uses is ideal. The symbol does not matter. One manager per account is the normal setup.
6. Keep the terminal (or your VPS) running - the manager can only act while it is running.
Strategy Tester note: this is a chart-management utility. It cannot be meaningfully backtested - the tester has no other charts or EAs to manage. Try it on a demo account instead.
3. QUICK START (5 MINUTES)
Say you run three EAs: "Gold Scalper" (magic 1234), "Trend Rider" (magics 7001 and 7002) and "Night Owl" (magic 555).
1. Attach SmartEA Trade Manager to a free chart.
2. In group "1. EA LIST" set: Gold Scalper:1234; Trend Rider:7001,7002; Night Owl:555
3. Leave "Max EAs/Groups Trading At Once" = 1.
4. Click OK.
The panel appears. Each EA row should show RUNNING (green). If a row shows NO CHART! (red), the name in your list does not match the EA name shown in that chart's top-right corner - fix the spelling. Matching is case-insensitive and "contains" is enough, so "Gold Scalper" matches "Gold Scalper v2.1 EA".
From now on: the first EA to open a position "owns the lock" - the other two are removed from their charts. When its positions close, the others are restored 30 seconds later (configurable) and the race is open again.
4. INPUT REFERENCE
GROUP 1 - EA LIST (required)
- EA Name:Magics - the core mapping, format: Name:magic[,magic...];Name2:magic. A magic ending in * is a prefix wildcard: 12345* matches 12345, 1234501, 1234599 and so on - useful for EAs that derive many magics from one base. Up to 24 EAs, 16 magic entries each. Duplicate or overlapping magics are rejected at start.
- Together Groups - EAs that may trade at the same time, e.g. "Gold Scalper,Night Owl | Trend Rider,Other EA". Groups separated by |, members by comma. A group occupies ONE lock slot no matter how many members trade.
- Max EAs/Groups Trading At Once (default 1) - the lock threshold. 1 = classic exclusive mode.
- Wait Before Re-Enabling EAs (default 30 s) - after the last managed position closes, wait this long before restoring paused EAs. Important for grid/basket EAs that close a basket and immediately reopen.
- Also Delete Pending Orders When an EA Is Paused (default false) - if true, the EA's pending orders are deleted on pause.
- If a 2nd EA Opens a Trade in the Same Moment (default: Close It Immediately) - two EAs can fire within the same second. "Close It Immediately" closes the latecomer's fresh position at market, so overlap never happens. "Allow It" lets the latecomer keep and manage that one trade. Grid additions to an existing basket are never treated as late entries.
GROUP 2 - STATUS PANEL AND LOGGING
- Show Status Panel (true), Panel Font Size (10, range 8-20), Panel Position X/Y (10/20).
- Verbose Log (false) - extra detail in the Experts tab.
- Save Event History to CSV (false) - appends every pause/resume/DD/news event to MQL5\Files\SmartTM_events.csv.
GROUP 3 - ALERTS
- Popup Alert (false) - terminal popup on pause / resume / drawdown events.
- Push Notification (false) - push to your phone (set your MetaQuotes ID in terminal options).
GROUP 4 - NEWS FILTER (see section 6)
GROUP 5 AND 6 - SCHEDULES A AND B (see section 7)
GROUP 7, 8, 9 - DRAWDOWN AND DAILY PROTECTION (see section 8)
GROUP 10 - LOSING STREAK GUARD (see section 8)
GROUP 11 - DIRECTION FILTER (see section 8)
GROUP 12 - ADVANCED (usually leave alone)
- Template File Prefix (tm_paused), Blank Template Name (blank), Auto-Create the Blank Template on Start (true). Caveat: if your Default.tpl contains an EA, a clean blank template cannot be produced - the manager warns; remove the EA from Default.tpl.
- Instance ID - only needed when you run two or more managers in one terminal whose own charts share a symbol.
- Max Slippage When Closing Trades (50 points).
5. THE EXCLUSIVE LOCK
- The lock counts GROUPS holding open positions (a solo EA is its own group). When that count reaches "Max EAs/Groups Trading At Once", every other FLAT managed EA is paused with reason LOCK.
- EAs in the same Together Group as an active trader are not paused - they may join their teammate.
- When all managed positions close, the manager waits the restore delay, then restores every LOCK-paused EA. News/schedule pauses do not use this delay - they end exactly with their window.
- A paused EA whose leftover pending order triggers is immediately restored to its chart so it can manage the position.
- EAs not in the list are never touched - manual trades and unlisted EAs are invisible to the lock.
6. NEWS FILTER
Pauses managed EAs around scheduled economic events, using the ForexFactory weekly calendar (fetched once per day).
Inputs: Enable (true), Currencies to Watch (USD - CSV, e.g. USD,EUR,GBP), Minimum News Impact (High / Medium+High / All), Pause X Minutes Before News (240), Keep Paused X Minutes After (240), Action (Pause EAs Only / Close All Positions Then Pause), WebRequest URL (https://nfs.faireconomy.media - must be whitelisted, see section 2).
Worth knowing:
- Event times come from the feed in UTC and are compared against UTC - no broker-offset configuration needed.
- The feed is refreshed at most once per 24 h with polite back-off on failures, so running many terminals behind one IP does not trip the feed's rate limit.
- FAIL-SAFE: an EA paused for NEWS is never resumed "blind". If the calendar cannot be loaded, the manager keeps NEWS-paused EAs paused until data is available again.
- The panel's News row always shows the state: next pause window countdown, ACTIVE window with the event name, or NO DATA with the reason.
7. SCHEDULES A AND B
Two independent weekly pause schedules, each with its own day windows, its own action and its own EA scope. Typical uses: pause everything over midnight rollover, pause one specific EA during the Asian session, close everything Friday evening.
- Windows are set per weekday in HH:MM-HH:MM format, BROKER time; empty = no window that day.
- Cross-midnight windows are supported: 22:00-01:00 starts at 22:00 and ends 01:00 the next day.
- "Apply Only To These EAs" limits a schedule to some EAs (names CSV, empty = all).
- Action: Pause EAs Only (finish open trades first), or Close All Positions Then Pause.
While a window is active the affected EAs are paused with reason SCHED; they resume the moment the window ends. The footer shows the next upcoming action, e.g. "Next: Sched A pause in 2h 14m".
8. PROTECTION STACK
All protections act only on managed EAs (except the one explicitly account-wide option). Money values are in account currency; percent values are of account BALANCE.
PER-EA DRAWDOWN LIMIT: if one EA's floating loss exceeds a $ or % limit, the chosen action fires: Close Positions + Pause EA (recommended), Close Positions Only, or Pause EA Only. A per-EA DD trip is LATCHED: the EA stays paused until you re-initialize the manager - deliberate, a DD hit deserves a human look.
ACCOUNT DRAWDOWN PROTECTION: same logic at account level, on the floating P/L of managed positions - or of ALL positions including manual ones if "On Trigger Close ALL Trades" is enabled. On trigger every managed EA is latched paused.
DAILY PROTECTION: watches today's closed + floating P/L of managed magics against a daily max loss and/or a daily profit target. On trigger it closes managed positions and pauses all managed EAs until broker midnight, when the latch resets automatically.
LOSING STREAK GUARD: after N losing closed trades in a row by one EA (same day), that EA is paused for X minutes. Resumes automatically; the streak resets on any winning trade and at midnight.
DIRECTION FILTER: reactively closes NEW sell entries (or buy entries) whose magic is in the given list - within one tick of the fill. Existing positions are untouched.
Pause priority when several reasons apply: DD > DAILY > MANUAL > NEWS > SCHED > STREAK > LOCK.
9. THE STATUS PANEL
The status banner shows the current mode: MONITORING (green), LOCKED - name trading (orange), RESUMING with countdown (yellow), NEWS / SCHEDULE / STREAK PAUSE, EA DD TRIPPED / ACCOUNT DRAWDOWN / DAILY LIMIT (red), PAUSED BY USER, or SETUP REQUIRED when the EA list is empty.
EA table states:
- RUNNING (green) - on its chart, flat, free to trade.
- ACTIVE - n pos (orange, highlighted row) - holding positions, owns the lock.
- PAUSED - reason (yellow; red for DD) - removed from its chart.
- NO CHART! (red) - no chart's expert name matches this list entry - fix the EA List.
Buttons: each row's II button pauses that EA manually (latched - it stays paused, even across restarts, until you press the play button). If it has open positions it finishes them first, then pauses. PAUSE ALL / RESUME ALL toggles every EA at once.
Footer: last manager action with time, and the next planned action (news window, schedule window, daily reset or streak release - whichever comes first).
10. SAFETY RULES AND RESTART BEHAVIOR
1. An EA with open positions is never left off its chart.
2. Removing the manager from its chart restores everything first - the manager never leaves your EAs "disappeared".
3. Terminal restart / recompile / input change: paused EAs are recorded in a state file; on start the manager re-adopts them and resumes each one when its pause reason clears. DD, MANUAL and DAILY latches survive the restart.
4. If you change the EA List while EAs are paused, an EA no longer in the list is restored to its chart immediately on the next start.
5. If something outside the manager re-attaches a paused EA to a chart (profile reload, manual template apply), the manager notices, drops its stale record and re-evaluates - no duplicate instances.
6. NEWS pauses are never lifted without calendar data.
11. TROUBLESHOOTING
- Row shows NO CHART! -> The list name does not match the chart's expert name (top-right corner of the EA's chart). Spelling/substring must match; the EA's chart must be open in this terminal.
- News row: NO DATA - allow the WebRequest URL -> Add https://nfs.faireconomy.media in Tools -> Options -> Expert Advisors -> Allow WebRequest.
- News row: feed rate-limited, retrying -> Many terminals behind one IP hit the feed's limit. The manager backs off and retries automatically - no action needed.
- EA did not pause during news although the window was active -> Was it holding positions? With action "Pause EAs Only" an EA finishes its open trades first, then pauses. Use "Close All Positions, Then Pause" for a hard cutoff.
- Panel warns about blank template / Default.tpl -> Your Default.tpl auto-attaches an EA to every new chart, so a clean blank template cannot be produced. Remove the EA from Default.tpl.
- Paused EA came back with a wrong/blank chart -> Do not manually apply templates to charts of paused EAs, and do not close those charts - the manager needs an expert-less chart of the same symbol and period to restore onto.
- Two managers in one terminal overwrite each other's state -> Give each a unique Instance ID (group 12), or attach them to charts of different symbols.
- SETUP REQUIRED on the panel -> The EA List (group 1) is empty or invalid - see the exact parse error in the Experts tab.
Hard limits: 24 managed EAs, 16 magic entries per EA, 14 EA rows visible on the panel (extra EAs are managed but summarized as "+n more").
12. RECOMMENDED BASELINE SETUP
- EA List: all your EAs. Max Active = 1.
- Late entry: Close It Immediately.
- Restore delay: 30-60 s (longer for grid EAs).
- News: enabled, your traded currencies, High impact, 30-60 min before/after.
- Schedule A: enabled, 23:30-23:59 Mon-Thu against rollover spreads.
- Daily protection: max loss around 2-3% of balance.
- Account DD protection: 5-10% floating, Close Positions + Pause.
- Alerts: push notifications ON.
Then watch the panel for a day - the footer's "Next:" line and the Experts-tab log tell you exactly what the manager plans and why it did what it did.
QUESTIONS?
Ask in the Comments section of the product page or send me a private message - I answer and support the product: https://www.mql5.com/en/market/product/189294
