GoldenShot - Manual v1.40
Trading Strategies

GoldenShot - Manual v1.40

28 August 2026, 10:02
Adam Hrncir
Adam Hrncir
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GoldenShot - User Guide v1.40

Welcome, and thank you for choosing GoldenShot! This guide walks you through everything the EA does, every input it shows, and how to read its dashboard. GoldenShot is a single-position Expert Advisor for Gold (XAUUSD/GOLD) on MetaTrader 5: it waits for a qualified setup, takes one trade with a real broker stop loss, manages that trade, and only then looks for the next one. There is no grid, no martingale, and no lot scaling anywhere in the product. Take a few minutes to read this before your first launch — most support questions are answered below.

Live signal: GoldenShot on MQL5 Signals

⚡ Installation and First Launch

If you only read one section, read this one.

Step 1 — Allow Algorithmic Trading

  1. Open MT5 and select Tools > Options > Expert Advisors.
  2. Enable Allow algorithmic trading.
  3. Add https://nfs.faireconomy.media/ to Allow WebRequest for listed URL. This lets GoldenShot read the ForexFactory calendar. The same address is shown read-only at the top of the News Filter input group so you can copy it from there.
  4. Restart MT5 after changing WebRequest permissions.

Step 2 — Attach GoldenShot

  1. Open your broker's Gold chart, any timeframe.
  2. Drag GoldenShot from Navigator > Expert Advisors onto the chart.
  3. Confirm Allow Algo Trading on the Common tab.
  4. Review the Inputs tab. For a first run keep the defaults; they are the tested configuration.
  5. Click OK and confirm that the MT5 AutoTrading button is enabled.

Step 3 — Verify the Setup

  • Open the Experts tab. Check the GoldenShot 1.40 ready on <symbol> line with the detected distance unit and enabled strategies, plus the Dynamic Protection, Position Size, Entry Validation, and Momentum adaptive-trailing lines. Also check the news source and any calendar warnings; successful initialization alone does not mean news data is ready.
  • While a Momentum trade is open, Milestone risk ratchet stage ... confirmed means an early-profit checkpoint was reached and the tighter broker stop was confirmed. BUY uses quick checkpoints within the first minutes; SELL uses slower checkpoints within the first hour. The line reports the stage, best favourable movement, trade age, and resulting stop distance; it is not a market close or a breakeven claim.
  • If the dashboard is enabled, confirm the header shows your symbol and a bracketed status, the Settings block shows your sizing and protection choices, and both strategy cards read Waiting for signal. [RUNNING] in green means new entries are possible right now; any other text tells you what is holding them back.
  • Run a back-test on the exact symbol with real ticks from 2025 to today before live use. A result from another broker does not prove your feed behaves the same way.

⚠️ Before You Start

What GoldenShot expects from your setup. Getting these right on day one makes everything that follows much smoother:

  • Platform: MetaTrader 5, hedging account, RAW/ECN pricing strongly preferred. Spread, commission, slippage, and the broker's minimum stop distance all affect results.
  • Symbol: Gold. XAUUSD, XAUUSD with a broker suffix, and GOLD are recognised automatically, including three-decimal gold quotes. GoldenShot calibrates its price geometry to the quote precision and prints the resulting distance unit at start-up; read that line once on a new broker.
  • Chart timeframe: Any. Both strategies read their own internal timeframes; the chart timeframe is only what you look at.
  • Pips: Every distance in this guide is a GoldenShot pip = 0.10 in the gold price (10 cents), so 200 pips is a 20.00 USD move. That holds on two-decimal and three-decimal gold feeds alike, because the EA calibrates to the quote precision instead of counting broker points. Three-decimal feeds execute with the same distances but have not yet been performance-validated on real ticks; back-test such a feed before trusting the default profile there.
  • Capital and lot size: Strategy 1 uses a 200-pip stop and Strategy 2 a 250-pip stop. On 0.01 lot that is roughly 20 USD and 25 USD of risk per full stop. The default 1% risk per trade can therefore be sized exactly from about 2,500 USD upwards (Strategy 2's 250-pip stop is the larger of the two). On a smaller account the EA can fall back to the broker minimum lot (see Use Broker Minimum Lot) and prints the real percentage it is risking. It still skips that minimum before sending an order if current free margin cannot cover both its entry margin and estimated full-stop loss.
  • VPS: Recommended. Trailing steps, breakeven moves, protective stop tightening, and the daily protection rules all need a connected terminal. The broker-side stop loss and take profit stay in force even when the terminal is offline.
  • Cent accounts: Not recommended. The tested sizing assumes standard account units.

Risk warning: A single position with a real stop loss is the most transparent way to trade gold, but it is still leveraged trading. Gaps, slippage, disconnections, and rejected requests can produce a larger loss than the intended stop. Daily protection and the news filter reduce exposure; they cannot remove market risk.

🎯 How GoldenShot Operates

Think of GoldenShot as a loop with four stages. It spends most of its time in the first one.

1. Wait

New entries are considered only when every gate is open: the broker session is open, the current time is inside your trading windows, no news pause is active, spread is inside your configured limit, the post-close cooldown has expired (Strategy 1 only; Strategy 2 does not wait for it), and neither daily protection rule has fired. If any gate is closed, the dashboard header tells you which one. None of these gates touches an open position.

2. Qualify, validate, size, enter

  • Qualify: Each strategy watches for its own setup on its own timeframes. Whichever qualifies first owns the trade.
  • Validate: Before any order is sent, the signal is compared against failure structures measured in real trading history — a bounce inside a collapsing move, a stall after an overextended day, a continuation that has already run out of road. A match means no order. In testing this removed most full-stop losses while skipping fewer than one signal in a hundred.
  • Size: The lot is calculated from the trade's actual stop distance and your risk percentage, or taken from your fixed lot size.
  • Enter: A market order with a broker-side stop loss and a broker-side take profit attached. No pending orders are ever placed.

3. Manage

  • Trailing stop: Once the trade reaches its trailing-start distance, the broker stop loss follows price in fixed steps. Strategy 1 starts at 12 pips. Strategy 2 adapts between 18 and 24 pips from the average volatility of five closed M15 bars; the value is selected before entry and cannot change while that trade is open. Every move is a confirmed broker modification, and the previous stop stays in force until the new one is accepted. The separate broker take profit (40 pips for Strategy 1 and 50 pips for Strategy 2) remains active and closes the trade if price reaches it before the trailing stop does.
  • Breakeven (Strategy 1 SELL only): After eight pips of favourable movement, the stop is moved to a cost-aware breakeven that covers spread and commission plus a small safety margin, so a fast fill through the stop still closes at or just above break-even.
  • Rapid-failure protection (Strategy 1 only): A narrowly defined rule for a trade that turns against you shortly after entry. It needs the position to be at least 15 minutes old, several closed-candle confirmations that the move has genuinely reversed, and a fast adverse speed. When all agree, the stop is tightened to a small controlled loss (or to breakeven if the trade is still a few pips in profit) instead of waiting for the full 200-pip stop. Strategy 2 deliberately does not use this candle-confirmation rule; it has only the separate, gentle early-profit risk reduction described next.
  • Early-profit risk reduction (Strategy 2 only): When a Momentum trade moves clearly in your favour soon after entry, GoldenShot pulls the broker stop loss closer in one or two small steps. BUY reacts to a quick burst within the first minutes; SELL uses a slower version that watches the first hour. The stop stays well away from the entry price, so this is a loss limiter for a trade that later reverses completely, not a breakeven or a profit lock. It never loosens a stop that trailing or breakeven has already placed closer.
  • Never a hidden market close: Every protective action is a broker-side stop modification. The only thing that closes a trade at market is Daily Drawdown Protection, and only when you have enabled it.

4. Close and cool down

After the position closes — at the trailing stop, the take profit, the stop loss, or a tightened stop — GoldenShot waits seven minutes before evaluating a new Strategy 1 entry. Strategy 2 signals are not delayed by this pause: they only appear when a closed 15- or 30-minute candle confirms them, and a late entry after the pause would come at a worse price than the signal. The cooldown is restored from trade history after a reload, an input change, or a timeframe change, so restarting the EA cannot skip it.

Only one position exists at any time, across both strategies and both directions. There is no stacking, no hedging against yourself, and no second position opened behind the first.

🎯 The Two Strategies

  • Strategy 1 — Pullback: Waits for price to pull back into a short-term support or resistance area and show a genuine rebound, confirmed by trend strength, momentum, and candle structure. Trades BUY and SELL. Higher frequency, tighter management: 200-pip stop, 40-pip take profit, trailing starts at 12 pips profit and steps every 3 pips. It is the only strategy carrying the rapid-failure protection, and its SELL side uses the eight-pip breakeven. Entry window 06:00 to 21:00 server time.
  • Strategy 2 — Momentum: Looks for a fresh directional move backed by expanding volatility and healthy trend strength, and joins the continuation while structure holds, with its own guards against late and exhausted entries. Trades BUY and SELL. It checks both 15-minute and 30-minute signals. The additional 30-minute lane uses buying-strength and extension checks for ordinary BUY entries and a trend-strength floor for SELL entries. These strategy rules are fixed and require no input changes. Its protection profile is a 250-pip stop, 50-pip take profit, and a trailing start that adapts to recent volatility. SELL may join a selloff a little earlier than BUY joins a rally, and it declines a late repeat entry once the move is already deeply oversold. When a fresh move is confirmed but one borderline strength reading declines the first entry, GoldenShot still follows that move and can join it on a later pullback, so accounts on different brokers see more of the same continuation entries. Both sides carry the gentle early-profit risk reduction described in Manage. Entry window 01:15 to 20:00 server time.

Each strategy's stop, target, trailing profile, and entry window were tuned separately in single-position mode across independent broker feeds and are protected in this build. Strategy 2's bounded adaptive start is automatic; there is nothing to tune. Their Enable and Magic Number controls are yours. The per-strategy windows sit inside the global Time Management windows; both must allow the time for an entry to happen.

Direction transparency: Trade Direction is a global permission. Both strategies implement both directions, so BUY only or SELL only simply restricts them; neither becomes idle.

🎯 Reading the Dashboard

The dashboard is a read-only panel. It never trades, and it is skipped automatically in non-visual Strategy Tester runs so it cannot slow a back-test or optimisation (enable Visual mode to see it there).

Header

The right side shows your symbol and a bracketed status. It answers one question: may GoldenShot open a new position right now, and if not, why? The most binding reason is always shown first.

  • [RUNNING] (green) — every gate is open; a qualifying signal would be traded.
  • [COOLDOWN] (orange) — inside the seven-minute pause after the last close; Strategy 1 waits, Strategy 2 may still enter.
  • [PAUSED (NEWS)] (orange) — the News Filter is blocking entries. The Settings block shows the event, or NEWS: Waiting for news data when usable news data is unavailable (with (market closed) appended while the broker session is closed, because the next check happens when trading resumes).
  • [OUTSIDE HOURS] (orange) — outside your Monday-Thursday windows, on a Friday, or on a blocked calendar day.
  • [MARKET CLOSED] (orange) — the broker publishes no trading session right now (weekend, daily break).
  • [HALTED (LOSS LIMIT)] (red) — the maximum losing trades for today has been reached. Resumes on the next broker day.
  • [HALTED (DRAWDOWN)] (red) — Daily Drawdown Protection has fired. Resumes on the next broker day.

The two red HALTED header states normally clear on the next broker day. Other pauses clear when their condition resolves. A red news message is not a daily halt; a persistent calendar wait may need the connection or WebRequest setup checked as described below.

Settings block

Left column: Risk per trade (or Fixed lot), Direction, and Daily DD — your configured limit, shown as a percentage or as money with the account currency, or OFF. Right column: Strategy 1 and Strategy 2 with their stop and current trailing profile (for example SL 200 | TSL 12/3 = 200-pip stop, trailing from 12 pips with a 3-pip first lock), and Max losses/day. The card shows the base profile; once the first lock is in place, some paths tighten in smaller steps than displayed, which only ever keeps more of the profit. The news status sits in the block's top-right corner: News: Clear in green, or the active block in red — NEWS: for an ordinary minute window, NEWS DAY: for a full-day event, POST-NEWS: for the following-day pause, and USD BANK HOLIDAY (ALL DAY). Hover it for the source event time and when the pause ends.

Performance block

  • CLOSED P/L — realised result of all GoldenShot trades on this symbol, found by the two Magic Numbers.
  • DAILY P/L — realised result for the current broker day.
  • DAILY DD — the live drawdown from today's GoldenShot-only virtual-equity peak. The curve includes realised costs/P&L and current floating P&L belonging to the configured Strategy 1 and Strategy 2 Magic Numbers on this symbol; other EAs and manual trades are excluded. While Daily DD Protection is enabled, the product peak is restart-safe. While it is off, the display is a session measurement beginning when this EA instance attaches; it is not reconstructed after a restart. This is a measurement, not your limit; the limit is in the Settings block.

Strategy cards

The card headers identify Strategy 1 as Pullback and Strategy 2 as Momentum. While flat, each enabled strategy card shows the broker-normalized lot that the selected sizing mode would use before Waiting for signal. In Risk Per Trade mode the two lots can differ because the strategies have different stops; in Fixed Lot Size mode both cards show the selected fixed lot. The bottom line always shows that strategy's hard Stop Loss and Take Profit distances together with their estimated money outcomes, for example SL 200 ($160) | TP 40 ($32) . The amount uses the account currency: common currencies use their symbol, while other accounts show the ISO code. Estimates use current quotes and exclude commission, swap, and possible slippage.

Once a position opens, its card switches to the actual side, volume, and Floating. The bottom line then shows the live broker Stop Loss and the trailing-start price labelled Trail. Reaching that Trail price starts broker-side trailing protection; it is not an instant close. The optional orange dash-dot chart line marks the same price. The separate broker take profit remains 40 pips for Strategy 1 and 50 pips for Strategy 2 and closes the trade if reached first. The number at the top-right of each card is floating P/L while open and that strategy's realised result for the current broker day otherwise.

🛡️ Input Parameters Explained

Your reference section. The defaults are the tested configuration, so start there and come back whenever you want to understand or adjust a specific input.

▶ Support

Two read-only rows at the top of the Inputs tab: the link to this user guide and the link to the Discord community. They are there so you can copy them from inside MT5; editing them changes nothing.

▶ Main Settings

  • Position Size (default: Risk Per Trade (%)) — Chooses between a fixed lot and a percentage of your account per trade.
  • Risk Per Trade (%) (default: 1.0) — Used only in Risk Per Trade mode. The lot is calculated so that a full stop loss costs this percentage of your capital base. The base is the smaller of balance and equity, with any broker credit or bonus excluded, so floating profit and bonus money never inflate the lot. Decimal values such as 0.5 are allowed. Because it is sized from the real stop, Strategy 1 (200-pip stop) and Strategy 2 (250-pip stop) receive different lots for the same percentage.
  • Fixed Lot Size (default: 0.01) — Used only in Fixed Lot Size mode. The broker's minimum, maximum, and volume step are still applied.
  • Max Spread (points, 0 = disabled) (default: 50) — Skips a new entry while the current spread is wider than the limit. On supported two- and three-decimal Gold feeds, 50 GoldenShot policy points means 0.50 in the gold price. Set 0 to disable this entry filter. It never pauses trailing, rapid-failure protection, or the broker-side stop and target of a position already open.
  • Use Broker Minimum Lot if Affordable (May Exceed Selected Risk) (default: true) — Risk Per Trade mode only. When the calculated lot is below the broker minimum, true may use that minimum and logs the real percentage at risk. Before sending it, GoldenShot checks that current free margin can cover both the required entry margin and estimated full hard-Stop-Loss loss; an unaffordable minimum is skipped. false skips every above-budget minimum and keeps your percentage a strict ceiling.
  • Trade Direction (BUY/SELL) (default: BUY and SELL) — Allows BUY only, SELL only, or both, for both strategies.
  • Trade comment (default: GoldenShot) — Text written to each order comment.
  • Append strategy code to comment (default: true) — Adds the strategy tag to the comment so you can see which strategy opened each trade in your history.

▶ Strategies

  • Enable Strategy 1 (default: true) and Strategy 1 Magic Number (default: 5991)
  • Enable Strategy 2 (default: true) and Strategy 2 Magic Number (default: 5992)

Magic Numbers are ownership IDs, not risk settings. Never share them with another EA on the same account. If you run two GoldenShot instances on one account, give the second instance two different numbers. The dashboard's Closed and Daily P/L are found by these numbers, so a fresh pair correctly starts from zero. On an MT5 netting account, do not run another system on the same Gold symbol: MT5 merges same-symbol trades into one broker position, so no EA can provide clean Magic-level floating-P/L ownership inside that merged position. Hedging-account positions and other symbols remain separate.

▶ Daily Loss Protection

Two independent rules, both off by default, both designed with prop-firm daily limits in mind. Each resets at the start of the next broker day.

  • Daily DD Protection (Prop Firm Style) (default: false) — Monitors a GoldenShot-only virtual equity curve from its current broker-day peak. The curve changes only with realised commission, fee, swap and trading P&L plus current floating P&L owned by the configured Strategy 1/2 Magic Numbers on this symbol. Another EA or manual trade cannot lower it, raise its peak, or trigger GoldenShot's protection. Several GoldenShot stops still accumulate and the limit can trip between trades as well as during one. Monitoring and persistence begin only while this rule is enabled; time spent with it off is not reconstructed later. Enabling it during a broker day starts a fresh product reference unless matching same-day state was recorded earlier. When the limit is reached, GoldenShot closes only its own open position and takes no new trades for the rest of the broker day. The state is stored under a versioned broker-server/account/symbol/Magic identity, so a matching instance restores it after an input reload or MT5/VPS restart, while a different Magic pair has independent protection. An older broker day is replaced automatically, and there is no persistent lock that can be stranded when an EA or terminal is stopped. This is the only situation in which the EA closes a trade at market.
  • Daily DD Limit Type (Percent or Money) (default: Percent) — Percent measures against GoldenShot's virtual daily peak. Money uses an absolute amount in your account currency.
  • Daily DD Limit (% of GoldenShot Daily Peak, or Money) (default: 5.0) — 5% in Percent mode, or 5 currency units in Money mode. Must be positive, and below 100 in Percent mode; an invalid value is rejected at start-up. Execution can finish slightly beyond the limit in a fast market.
  • Max Losing Trades Per Day (0 = Unlimited) (default: 0) — Counts positions fully closed with a net loss (including entry/exit commission and swap) during the broker day. When the count reaches the limit, new entries pause until the next day. An open or partially closed position, its stop, and its trailing are untouched. The count is rebuilt from the position's complete deal history, so a long-held trade or restart cannot reset or truncate it.

▶ Time Management

Times are server time, anchored to the broker's winter offset and adjusted automatically for the usual GMT+2/GMT+3 seasonal shift. A global window and the strategy's own window must both allow the time.

  • [INFO] GMT offset — Read-only reminder: the default works with Vantage, VT Markets, IC Markets, BlackBull, RoboForex, Titan FX and most other brokers.
  • Base GMT offset, auto-adjusts for DST (default: 2) — Your broker's winter server offset. Change it only if your broker does not use GMT+2 in winter.
  • Enable Monday-Thursday time filter (default: true)
  • Monday-Thursday start times (default: 01:15;14:35;15:45)
  • Monday-Thursday end times (default: 14:20;15:20;22:30) — The defaults form three windows: 01:15-14:20, 14:35-15:20, and 15:45-22:30. Use 24-hour HH:MM , separate pairs with semicolons, and keep the number and order of start and end values matched.
  • Christmas holiday filter (no new trades Dec 20 - Jan 7) (default: true) — Blocks new entries in that range. An open position continues to be managed.

Fridays: GoldenShot does not open new trades on Fridays, and there is no input to change that. Across 2025 to today Friday was the only net-negative weekday in testing; leaving it out removed a handful of entries, cut gross loss by more than a third, and raised the profit factor without lowering net profit. A position opened earlier in the week keeps its stop, trailing, and protection and can be held into Friday or across the weekend. Time rules block new entries only.

▶ News Filter

Gold reacts violently to news, so this is one of your most valuable tools. It blocks new entries; it never closes or stops managing an open trade. ForexFactory is used when the WebRequest permission is in place, otherwise GoldenShot falls back to the MQL5 Economic Calendar automatically.

NEWS: Waiting for news data means GoldenShot cannot currently verify its news data. While the broker session is closed the line reads Waiting for news data (market closed): nothing is wrong, the next check simply runs when trading resumes. GoldenShot reads news from Forex Factory first and falls back to the MT5 terminal's own economic calendar; this message appears only when it is on that fallback and the terminal calendar cannot be read. With the News Filter enabled, new entries pause until usable data returns; an open trade keeps its normal stop, trailing, breakeven, and protection management. This is not a daily halt and does not require waiting until tomorrow. The EA retries every minute and resumes normal news checks as soon as the data recovers, which is usually a matter of minutes. If the message persists, it means the terminal calendar is unavailable on your MT5 and Forex Factory is not reachable: allow https://nfs.faireconomy.media/ under Tools > Options > Expert Advisors and restart the EA so it can use Forex Factory instead, and check your internet connection and the Experts log.

If the message persists, open Tools > Options > Expert Advisors, enable Allow WebRequest for listed URL, and add https://nfs.faireconomy.media/ . Restart the EA after changing permissions so it can try Forex Factory again. If the address is already allowed, check the terminal connection and Experts log for calendar or WebRequest errors. Keep the News Filter enabled; allowing the URL cannot resolve a provider or connection outage by itself.

  • Forex Factory: Allow This URL in MT5 WebRequest Settings — Read-only reminder of the address to allow.
  • Enable News Filter (ForexFactory, MQL5 Calendar) (default: true)
  • Filter High Impact events (default: true)
  • Filter Medium Impact events (default: false)
  • Minutes before news to stop trading (default: 60)
  • Minutes after news to resume trading (default: 60)
  • Also Watch These News Currencies (USD by default) (default: USD) — Comma-separated list. USD is the primary news currency for gold.
  • Other Medium Events to Treat as High (default: empty) — Add your own event-name keywords, comma-separated, case-insensitive.
  • Other News to Block All Day + Next Day (default: empty) — Add your own keywords to the full-day list.
  • Don't Trade on Selected News Day + Next Day (default: false) — When enabled, a matching high-impact event blocks its whole server date and the following one. GoldenShot ships with this off because a single position with a real stop does not need the wider margin a recovery system does; turn it on if your risk rules prefer it.
  • Don't Trade on USD Bank Holidays (All Day) (default: true) — Blocks the holiday date only.

The protected event list (FOMC decision day, rate statements and press conferences, NFP in both spellings, CPI, and Fed Chair speeches) is kept inside the EA, so an old set file cannot remove it; the two Other fields only add to it. FOMC minutes keep the ordinary minute window rather than the full-day block.

▶ Dashboard Appearance

  • Enable Dashboard (default: true) — Shows the panel described above and the orange Profit Target guide. Turning it off removes every GoldenShot chart object.
  • Show Trailing-Start Profit Target Line on Chart (default: true) — Draws the orange dash-dot guide at the open trade's trailing-start price. Presentation only; it follows the dashboard switch.
  • Scale override (0=auto, typical 1.0-1.5) (default: 0) — Keep 0 for automatic DPI scaling. Set a manual value only if the panel is unsuitable on a specific remote-desktop setup.
  • Font name (default: Calibri) — Must be installed on the machine running MT5.
  • Base font size (default: 9)

▶ Fixed on purpose

Max Spread is adjustable in Main Settings. The values deliberately kept internal are the no-Friday rule, the seven-minute post-close cooldown for Strategy 1 and each strategy's stop, take profit, trailing policy, entry window, breakeven rule, and validation thresholds. Strategy 2's 18-24-pip volatility adaptation is automatic. These values are protected because they were tuned together, and changing one without the others would invalidate the evidence behind the product.

🛡️ Setting Up for a Prop Firm

GoldenShot fits evaluation and funded accounts naturally: one position, a real stop on every trade, and no recovery layer to explain to a risk desk. One honest caveat first: back-test and live results from a regular broker are not guaranteed to carry over to a prop-firm feed. Many firms deliberately run wider or erratic spreads, add execution delays, slip fills, or quote through a bridge that is not a real market, and an EA that trades a single tight stop feels every one of those. Treat the first weeks on a prop account as its own test. A few settings deserve a conscious choice:

  • Daily loss rule: If GoldenShot is the only trading system on the account, turn on Daily DD Protection and set the limit below the firm's rule. GoldenShot measures its own curve from today's product peak, while most firms measure the whole account from starting balance or equity and may count costs differently. If other EAs or manual trades share the account, GoldenShot deliberately ignores them and therefore cannot replace a separate account-wide prop-firm guard.
  • Losing streaks: Set Max Losing Trades Per Day to 1. One full stop is already a meaningful share of a typical daily limit, and stopping after it keeps a bad day from compounding; the open trade is never touched. Use 2 or 3 only if the firm's daily limit leaves clear room for it.
  • Risk per trade: With a full stop of 200-250 pips, 0.5-1% is a reasonable range. Check the start-up log line to see what the minimum lot really risks on your account size, and set Use Broker Minimum Lot to false if you need the percentage to be a hard ceiling.
  • Max spread: The default limit of 50 points is tuned for RAW/ECN feeds and is one setting you will most likely have to change. Watch the spread your firm actually quotes during the trading windows; if it sits above the limit, GoldenShot simply never enters and the Experts tab logs that the spread was too wide. Raise the limit only as far as the firm's normal spread requires, because every extra point is paid on both sides of each trade and moves the effective stop and target against you.
  • News rules: If the firm forbids trading around news, widen the minutes before and after. The filter blocks entries only; a trade opened earlier can still be open when the release comes, with its stop in place.
  • Weekend holding: GoldenShot does not close a position because the week is ending. If your firm forbids holding over the weekend, that is a rule you must manage yourself.
  • Strict stop distances: Some prop feeds enforce a large minimum distance between price and the stop. GoldenShot checks every known constraint before sending a stop change (trading session, stop and freeze distance, tick size, broker preflight) and defers the trailing step until the distance allows it, noting that in the log. Should the server still reject a request, nothing is lost: the previous confirmed stop stays in force the whole time.

✅ Recommended First-Use Process

  1. Keep the defaults for the first run.
  2. Decide your sizing consciously: Risk Per Trade with a percentage you understand, or a fixed lot. Read the sizing line in the Experts log after the first signal.
  3. Back-test the exact broker symbol with real ticks from 2025 to today. Look at maximal equity drawdown and the losing trades, not only net profit.
  4. Run on demo and compare spread, number of entries, and execution with the back-test.
  5. Change one setting at a time and save a fresh set file.
  6. Keep Algo Trading, the internet connection, and the terminal running whenever a GoldenShot position is open.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is GoldenShot not opening trades?
Look at the dashboard header first; the bracketed status names the reason. The most common ones: it is Friday (GoldenShot never opens trades on Fridays), the time is outside a window, a news pause is active, the seven-minute cooldown is running (Strategy 1), a position is already open, spread is above the limit, or a daily protection rule has halted the day. Also remember that a signal can be declined by the pre-entry validation; the Experts log records those decisions. GoldenShot is selective by design, and stretches of quiet are normal.

Why did my trade close before reaching the stop loss?
Either the trailing stop was hit after the trade had been in profit, Strategy 1's rapid-failure protection tightened its stop, or a Momentum trade had earned one of the gentle early-profit risk reductions described above. All are broker-side stop modifications and appear in the log with their reason. Strategy 2 does not use Strategy 1's candle-confirmation rapid-failure rule; its volatility-adjusted trailing start is selected before entry and then frozen.

The card says TP at one price but my broker shows a different take profit. Which is right?
Both. The card and the orange line show the trailing-start Profit Target, where protection begins. The broker's separate hard take profit is 40 pips for Strategy 1 and 50 pips for Strategy 2. Whichever exit is reached first closes the trade.

I set 1% but the EA traded 0.01 lot and the log mentions a higher percentage. Why?
1% of your account was less than the broker's minimum lot could risk, and Use Broker Minimum Lot is on. The log tells you the real risk of that minimum lot. GoldenShot still skips it automatically if the account cannot cover its entry margin plus estimated full-stop loss. Set the option to false to skip every trade that exceeds the selected percentage.

Does the back-test avoid news the same way the live EA does?
Not completely. The configured trading windows, fixed Friday rules, and Christmas pause apply in both environments. Standard Strategy Tester runs cannot load the live economic calendar or use WebRequest, so calendar-based news windows and USD bank holidays are not reproduced; Visual mode shows News Filter: N/A (tester). Live, the enabled filter adds the configured event and bank-holiday pauses, and waits if usable news data cannot be verified. A back-test does not validate live news blocking or guarantee the same trades and results.

What happens when Daily DD Protection triggers?
GoldenShot closes its own open position at market, if there is one, and opens nothing else until the next broker day. The ownership-scoped halt survives a reload or terminal restart for an instance using the same account, server, symbol, and Strategy Magic Numbers; another Magic pair remains independent. The header turns red with [HALTED (DRAWDOWN)]. The actual closing price depends on broker execution.

Can I deliberately resume after a Daily DD halt?
Waiting for the next broker day is the supported and safest path. Turning Daily DD Protection off is an explicit override for that instance. The stored same-day halt is not erased and will return if protection is enabled again before the next broker day with the same symbol and Strategy Magic Numbers.

Does a news or time block affect the open trade?
No. Those filters stop new entries only. Trailing, breakeven, rapid-failure protection, and the broker stop loss keep working.

Another account or broker took a trade mine did not, or closed it differently. Why?
GoldenShot decides on closed candles of your broker's own prices, and every broker's prices differ by a few cents. Most of the time that changes nothing, but occasionally one reading sits right at a decision threshold: one account enters and another skips, or the same move ends at the take profit on one account and at the trailing stop on another. An account that was already in a trade, was restarted, or sat in a news pause at the key moment can also miss an entry. Version 1.40 reduces these differences: when a move is confirmed but one borderline reading declines the first entry, GoldenShot still follows the move, so different brokers now agree on more Momentum entries. Individual trades can still differ; over weeks and months the results on different brokers line up.

Can I attach the EA to M1, M5, or H1?
Yes. The chart timeframe is only the display timeframe.

Can I use a broker suffix such as XAUUSD.a, XAUUSD+, or a three-decimal gold symbol?
Yes. GoldenShot works on the attached chart symbol and calibrates its price unit to the quote precision: one pip is 0.10 in the gold price on two- and three-decimal feeds alike. Verify the distance unit printed at start-up and back-test that exact symbol before going live; three-decimal feeds are not yet performance-validated.

Can I run two instances on one account?
Yes, with two different Magic Numbers per instance. Remember that each instance can hold its own position, so total exposure doubles.

Is there any grid, martingale, or averaging inside?
No. One position, one stop, one target. Lot size never changes because of a previous loss.

What remains protected if MT5 disconnects?
The broker-side stop loss and take profit. Trailing steps, breakeven, rapid-failure protection, and the daily rules need the terminal online, which is why a VPS is recommended.

The dashboard does not appear in the Strategy Tester.
That is intentional in non-visual runs, to keep back-tests fast. Enable Visual mode to see it.

Real-tick tests felt slow in version 1.00.
Version 1.10 removes daily-state and terminal-persistence work that has no active consumer in a non-visual tester pass. The exact speed gain depends on the broker history and machine. Live trailing, entries, enabled Daily DD Protection, and visual rendering remain active; with Daily DD Protection off, the dashboard's DAILY DD measurement is intentionally session-local.

Why does the recommended test period start in 2025?
Gold does not trade the way it did in 2019, and GoldenShot was built and tuned on the market as it is now, with real ticks from 2025 to the current day. Older history is neither what the strategies were tuned on nor reliable enough on most feeds to be trusted.

Have a question this guide did not answer? Reach out through the GoldenShot product page on MQL5 Market and the developer will be glad to help.

Disclaimer: Trading leveraged products carries a high level of risk. Past performance and back-tests do not guarantee future results. Broker feeds, spreads, swaps, commissions, slippage, liquidity, and execution differ. Test on demo, use conservative sizing, and never trade money you cannot afford to lose.