Giskard Trade Assistant (GTA) — user manual, v1.0
A trade panel for MetaTrader 5. It sits on one chart, watches a small set of rules, works out how big a trade should be so that a loss costs a fixed slice of your account, and lets you place that trade with one click or plan it visually on the chart first. It does not trade on its own on a live chart. You are always the one who clicks.
This manual assumes you know nothing about MetaTrader, indicators or trading. Every term is explained the first time it appears. Everything in it applies to the product sold on the MQL5 Market as Giskard Trade Assistant; "GTA" is its short name and the word the panel uses on screen.
This is a tool, not a promise. It does not guarantee any winnings; it makes trading easier to navigate by sizing, placing and managing your trades the way you set it up. Every decision to trade, and every result of it, remains yours.
1. The words you need
MetaTrader 5 (MT5) is the program your broker gives you to look at price charts and send orders. XAUUSD is gold priced in US dollars; it is the market this panel was built and tested on, but it runs on any symbol.
A chart shows price over time as candles. Each candle covers one period — on an "M1" chart one minute, on "H1" one hour. This panel only ever looks at candles that have finished ("closed"); the candle still forming is ignored, so nothing it says can change halfway through a bar.
A position is a trade you have open. Going long means you bought and profit if price rises; going short means you sold and profit if price falls. Lots measure the size of a position; the bigger the lot size, the more money each point of movement is worth.
A stop loss (SL) is a price at which the broker closes your trade automatically to cap the loss. A take profit (TP) is a price at which it closes the trade to bank the gain. The distance from your entry to the stop is the stop distance; the panel measures everything against it. If the target is twice as far away as the stop, the trade is "2 R" — a win pays twice what a loss costs. That ratio is called R:R (reward to risk).
A market order is filled immediately at the current price. A pending order waits at a price you choose: a limit order waits for price to come back to a better level (buy lower / sell higher), a stop order waits for price to push through a level (buy higher / sell lower).
Spread is the gap between the price you can buy at (ask) and sell at (bid) — a small cost you pay on every trade. Equity is what your account is worth right now, open trades included.
Indicators are calculations drawn from price. Three are used here. An EMA (exponential moving average) is a smoothed line that follows price; a long one (200 bars) shows the broad direction, a shorter one (50 bars) shows where price tends to pull back to. RSI (relative strength index) is a number from 0 to 100 that says whether recent moves were mostly up (high) or mostly down (low). ATR (average true range) is how far price typically moves in one bar — a measure of volatility, used here as the ruler for stop distances.
Algo Trading is a button in MT5's toolbar. When it is off, no program is allowed to send orders. The panel will tell you when it is off.
2. What the panel does, in one paragraph
Every time a candle closes, the panel checks five rules on that candle (time of day, volatility, trend direction, whether price has pulled back, and an RSI trigger). It shows you which rules pass and which fail. Independently of the rules, it keeps a live plan ready: where the stop would go, where the target would go, and how many lots that means so that a loss costs your chosen percentage of equity. If you click BUY or SELL it sends a market order with that stop and target already attached and checks the broker kept them. On the PLAN tab you can instead draw the trade on the chart, drag its levels around, and place it as a market or pending order. On the MANAGE tab you can close your longs, shorts, winners or losers with two clicks, move every stop to break-even, and watch what is open and what was closed today. On the PROTECT tab you switch on a trailing stop and a table of levels that move the stop and close part of the position on the way to the target. Optional automatic management (off by default) can close a trade when RSI reaches the opposite extreme or after a set number of bars, and can put back a stop loss that has gone missing.
3. Installing and starting it
- In MT5, make sure you are signed in to your MQL5 account (Tools → Options → Community). The Market only delivers products to a signed-in terminal.
- After you buy or rent Giskard Trade Assistant (or press Free demo for the Strategy-Tester-only demo), it appears in MT5's Navigator (Ctrl+N) under Expert Advisors → Market. Nothing to compile.
- Drag it onto a chart. A settings window opens; press OK for the defaults.
- Make sure the Algo Trading button in the toolbar is green. Without it the panel can show everything but cannot trade.
The panel appears at the top-left of the chart with the caption GTA - <symbol> <timeframe> . Drag it by the caption to move it; the small buttons on the caption minimise or close it. Only one copy can run per symbol and magic number (see §10) in a terminal; a second copy refuses to start and says why. One panel per chart.
If you want to see the panel live on a demo account before buying, the separate 30-day demo-account build is described in its own post (linked from the product page); it installs like any expert and runs on demo accounts only.
4. The TRADE tab
This is the tab you use to place a trade by hand. Reading from the top:
Status band. A coloured strip with one word and up to two lines of explanation. READY means all five rules pass and there is nothing to warn about. WAIT means at least one rule fails but nothing else is wrong; the line below says how many pass, for example "3 of 5 rules pass". WARN means something other than a rule deserves attention — the spread is wide, the stop is unusually tight or wide, the lot cap is binding, you already have a position, or RSI is already at the exit level — and the lines below say what. STRICT is the same situation with Strict mode on, which means the panel will refuse the trade. BLOCKED means Algo Trading is off. When there are more warnings than the two lines can hold, an amber note at the right of the word reads +N more - click to see all : click anywhere on the band and the rows below it list every warning, one per row; the note then reads click to go back . The list stays until you click again, change tab, or there is nothing left to warn about. The same works on the PLAN tab's band.
RULES. Five rows, one per rule, each with a tick (passes), a dot (fails) or a dash (that rule is switched off), the rule name and the number that decided it. The heading reads RULES - checked on the last closed bar (hh:mm) with the time of that candle. The rules, in plain terms:
- Session window — the candle closed inside your trading hours (broker server time, see §10). This rule only applies on intraday charts (anything faster than D1); on a daily or slower chart every candle opens at midnight, so the row reads Session window (not intraday) and counts as passed.
- Volatility — the market is moving at least as much as it usually does (ATR on the last candle is above the median ATR of the last 100 candles). A quiet market fails this rule.
- Trend — price closed above the 200-bar EMA (only longs allowed) or below it (only shorts allowed).
- Pullback — within the last 6 candles, price touched the 50-bar EMA. In an uptrend that means a dip; in a downtrend a bounce.
- RSI cross — for a long, RSI just came back up through the lower level (35); for a short, it just came back down through the upper level (65). This is the trigger: the pullback has ended and price is turning back with the trend.
READY therefore only shows while a setup is actually on the chart — all five rules, the RSI cross included, true on the last closed candle. On a quiet chart you will mostly see WAIT; that is the panel doing its job.
PLAN · LONG / SHORT. The trade the panel would place right now, for the direction the trend allows. Stop shows the stop distance in price and in ATR multiples — the stop is placed at the wider of 1.5 × ATR (the ATR of the timeframe chosen on the SETTINGS Stop row, see §6; the row names it, e.g. 1.5 ATR H1 ) and the lowest low (or highest high) of the last 10 candles, and never closer than the broker allows. Target is the stop distance times your Target R (default 2). Size is the lot size that makes a full loss equal your risk percentage of equity; "min lot" means the calculated size was below the smallest the broker allows and the minimum is used instead (your real risk is then higher — the Risk row shows both numbers); "capped" means the Maximum lot size setting is binding. Risk shows the money at stake and the percentage of equity. A row in amber carries a warning.
This chart's own stop and target. The Stop and Target rows each carry a small field right after the row name, with its unit ( x ATR , R ) to the right: the stop multiple and the target R the next entries on this chart will use — the BUY/SELL buttons and the seed of a new plan. They start at the SETTINGS values. Type a different number and press Enter: the field turns amber, the rows and the size recalculate at once, and every entry on this chart uses it until you change it back (or press APPLY on SETTINGS with a new default, which resets it). The SETTINGS values are untouched, so other charts keep their defaults. It is remembered per symbol.
BUY and SELL. Green and red, each showing the live price. One click sends a market order with the stop and target attached, then the panel reads the position back from the broker and repairs the stop or target if either was dropped. The buttons are never greyed out; the status band and the Trend row tell you whether the panel thinks this is a good moment, the buttons only do what you ask. Only two things stop a click from trading: no indicator data yet (right after loading) and Algo Trading off. In Strict mode, any warning also stops it.
CLOSE ALL. Amber. Closes every position this panel opened on this symbol. It needs two clicks: the first arms it (it turns orange and says how many positions it will close), the second closes. If you do not click again within 5 seconds it disarms itself.
Position block. When you have a position: its side, lots and entry price; the open profit or loss in money and in R; the stop, the target and how many bars it has been open against the time cap. With several positions it shows the count, total lots and net P/L. When you are flat it says so.
Footer. Two lines of live numbers: spread, ATR (tagged with its timeframe, e.g. ATR H1 , when it is not the chart's) and RSI; the broker's server clock and the mode (MANUAL, MANAGE, AUTO-MANAGE or TESTER). Any message the panel needs to show you replaces the footer for 8 seconds and is also written to MT5's Experts tab, where it stays.
5. The PLAN tab — drawing a trade on the chart
This tab lets you see a trade before you place it and adjust it by dragging.
PLAN LONG / PLAN SHORT draws a position box on the chart: a green shaded zone from the entry to the target (your potential gain), a pink zone from the entry to the stop (your potential loss), and three label bars across the box:
- the TP bar (green) at the target, reading TP <points> | +<money> | <% of equity> | <price> ;
- the entry bar (green for a long, red for a short) reading <order type> | Lot <size> | <price> , with Place (or Open) and X buttons at its right end;
- the SL bar (red) at the stop, reading SL <points> | -<money> | <% of equity> | <price> .
The plan starts at the current price with the same stop, target and size the TRADE tab would use. A dotted line in your chart's stop-level colour runs across the whole chart at each of the three levels so you can see them against candles far from the box; the lines stop at the panel's edges rather than crossing it.
Dragging. Press anywhere on a bar and drag; there are no little squares to grab and the chart does not scroll while you drag. Dragging the entry bar moves the whole plan — up or down in price, left or right in time. Dragging the SL bar moves only the stop; the TP bar moves only the target. A bar cannot be dragged past the entry to the wrong side. Every number on the tab and on the bars updates as you drag.
Lock R:R (tick box, on by default, remembered between sessions). With it on, the target follows the stop so the reward-to-risk ratio stays fixed: move the stop further away and the target moves out with it. The ratio the lock holds starts at your Target R setting; if you drag the TP bar while locked, the lock adopts the new ratio. With the lock off, stop and target move independently.
Box width. Two thin grey grips sit on the right edge of the box, one above the entry bar and one below it. Drag either left or right to make the box narrower or wider (minimum 3 candles). The width only affects how the box looks; the last width you chose is remembered per symbol and used for the next plan.
Which order it will be. The panel decides from where you put the entry:
- at or very near the current price → a market order, and the button reads OPEN;
- for a long, below the current price → a BUY LIMIT (waits for price to come down to your level); above it → a BUY STOP (waits for price to rise through your level);
- for a short, the mirror: above the price → SELL LIMIT, below → SELL STOP.
The Order row on the tab, the status band and the big button all say which it is.
The tab itself shows Order, Entry, Stop, Target, Size, Risk and Reward live, a status band with every warning the order would carry (the five rules included — the rules apply to a planned trade exactly as to a BUY/SELL click), then the big OPEN / PLACE button, LOCK, CLEAR and the Lock R:R tick box. LOCK freezes the plan so nothing can be dragged; CLEAR and the X on the entry bar remove it. If the market has already moved past the plan's stop, the band turns red and says so: move the plan or clear it.
Placing. OPEN sends a market order through the same path as the BUY/SELL buttons. PLACE sends the pending order with the stop and target attached, valid until you cancel it. Once placed, the box freezes, the entry bar shows the order's ticket number and the levels and size the broker actually accepted (a broker can widen a stop that is too close), and the button becomes CANCEL. When the order fills (a partial fill counts), the box disappears and the position appears on the TRADE tab; if it is cancelled from anywhere, the box disappears too. Only one plan can exist at a time; a second PLAN click replaces an unplaced one, and is refused while an order is placed (cancel it first). A plan that has not been placed disappears when the panel is removed; a placed pending order stays with the broker, and the panel picks it up again when re-attached if it was an OCO pair or a trailing order (see below).
OCO (tick box, next to Lock R:R). "One cancels the other": with a pending plan on the chart (entry away from the price), tick OCO and a second box appears, the mirror of the first around the current price — a BUY STOP above the market gets a SELL STOP the same distance below it, a BUY LIMIT below gets a SELL LIMIT above — with the same stop distance and the same reward-to-risk. Each box can then be dragged on its own. The button reads PLACE OCO PAIR and sends both orders; the Risk row shows the risk of each side, because only one of them can ever fill. The moment one order fills, the panel cancels the other (journal: OCO: #a filled, #b cancelled ). If you cancel one of them by hand, the other stays and the pair is dissolved. CANCEL on the tab cancels both; the X on one box cancels that one. The classic uses: a breakout in either direction out of a range (two stop orders), or the first touch of either edge of a range (two limit orders). MT5 itself has no such link — this is the panel watching the orders — so with the panel removed the pair is only remembered, not enforced, until the panel is back; on re-attach it checks both orders and cancels a survivor if the other filled meanwhile. Untick OCO before placing to drop the second box.
Trail order (tick box, remembered per symbol). A placed pending order follows the price instead of waiting at a fixed level: the panel keeps it at the distance it had from the market when it was placed, for as long as the market moves away from it, and leaves it alone when the market comes toward it — so it fills when the price turns around and covers that distance. A BUY STOP above a falling market is dragged down after each new low and fills on the first bounce of that size; a BUY LIMIT below a rising market is dragged up and fills on the first pullback of that size; the sell orders mirror this. The stop and target travel with the entry, so the R stays what you drew, and the box follows on the chart with TRAIL on its bar. Moves are made in steps of a tenth of the distance and never inside the broker's freeze distance. Ticking it on an order that is already placed starts trailing from where the market is now. Both boxes of an OCO pair trail together. Fair warning, because the panel cannot judge it for you: this suits "buy the bounce" or "buy the dip" entries in a range; in a strong trend a trailing stop order chases the price for hours and fills on the first wobble.
6. The SETTINGS tab
Everything that matters day to day can be changed here without reloading the program, and the changes are remembered per symbol.
BEHAVIOUR — four tick boxes. Auto-manage exits (off by default; see §9). Strict mode: refuse any entry that carries a warning instead of just showing it. Session gate and Volatility gate: switch those two rules off; the rules table then shows them as "(off)".
RISK — risk per trade: the unit next to the Risk field is a three-way selector — % eq (percent of equity, the default), % bal (percent of balance) or your account currency (a fixed amount per trade); the chosen one is filled in blue and the field takes the number for that unit; maximum lot size; Target R; the stop band (warn if the stop is tighter than the first number or wider than the second, in ATR multiples); maximum spread in points before a warning.
RULES — the RSI lower and upper levels; the stop distance in ATR multiples, with the Stop ATR timeframe selector next to it (explained below); the pullback window in candles; the time cap in candles; the session start and end hours.
Stop ATR timeframe. The unit of the Stop row is a five-way selector, like the Risk one: five small buttons reading, by default, M1 · M15 · M30 · H1 · H4, the chosen one filled in blue. Which five timeframes they offer is set in the properties window (F7, Stop ATR timeframe button 1…5; Current means the chart's own timeframe and the button then reads chart). When the panel starts it selects the chart's own timeframe if it is one of the five, otherwise the first button. From then on every stop the panel measures uses the ATR of the chosen timeframe: the stop of a new trade, the Stop band warnings, the stop the auto-manage repair puts back and the ATR trailing stop. Wherever a stop is shown in ATR the timeframe is named — 1.5 ATR H1 on the TRADE and PLAN tabs, ATR H1 in the footer, ATR H1 min / max on the Stop band row — so you always know which ruler was used (nothing is tagged when chart is chosen). The Volatility rule keeps the chart's own ATR, because it asks whether this chart is moving. The choice is remembered per symbol like every other setting; DEFAULTS puts it back to the start-up choice. The value used is that timeframe's last closed candle, so on H4 it is the ATR of the last finished four-hour candle. Why use it: on a fast chart such as M1 the ATR is small and changes every few minutes; a stop measured on H1 or H4 sits where the larger swings live and stays put.
Type a value and click APPLY; DEFAULTS puts everything back. Values outside the sensible range are clamped. If you later change a setting in MT5's own properties window (F7), the panel's stored edits are discarded in favour of what you typed there.
7. The MANAGE tab — looking after open trades
Everything on this tab acts only on positions this panel opened on this symbol. The settings are remembered per symbol.
RULES. One rule here, with a tick box: Close all at profit — when the combined open profit of the panel's positions (profit plus swap) reaches the amount in the field, in your account currency, every one of them is closed. The trailing stop and the level table are set up and switched on the PROTECT tab (§8); this tab reports what they are doing in the Rules row below.
BREAK-EVEN NOW · GROUP BE NOW. Two buttons under the rule, both working whether or not any level rule is on. BREAK-EVEN NOW moves the stop of every open position to its own entry plus the break-even offset (set on PROTECT), right now, where the broker's minimum distance allows it. GROUP BE NOW is for several positions in the same direction opened at different prices: it moves each long's stop to the longs' volume-weighted average entry plus the offset (and each short's to the shorts'), so the whole group together is at break-even; a stop already better than that level is left alone. Both report how many stops moved and how many were skipped (already there, or price too close).
CLOSE. Four buttons: LONGS, SHORTS, WINNERS (positions currently in profit) and LOSERS (positions currently in loss). Like CLOSE ALL, each needs two clicks: the first arms it and shows how many positions it would close, the second closes them; the arm expires after 5 seconds. A position exactly at zero is neither a winner nor a loser.
OPEN POSITIONS. Eight live rows:
- Total — how many positions, their lots and the net profit; then Longs, Shorts, Winners and Losers with a count and profit each, so you can see what each CLOSE button would do before you press it.
- Risk-free — how many of the open positions already have their stop at or beyond the entry ( 2 of 3 ), in green when all of them are.
- Closed today — what this panel has closed on this symbol since the broker's day began: the number of closing deals and the result including swap and commission, green or red.
- Rules — what the PROTECT rules are doing: BE 1/2 (how many stops are already at or beyond the entry under the level rule), the trailing distance in force ( trail 1.5xATR H1 ), and the profit target; off when none of them is on.
On the chart. Whenever a rule or a button moves a stop, a small amber mark — GTA BE , GTA L2 or GTA TRAIL — appears at that stop just right of the last candle, so you can tell a stop the panel moved from one you moved yourself. It follows the stop and disappears with the position.
The RSI and time-cap exits and the stop-loss repair are a separate switch, Auto-manage exits on the SETTINGS tab (§9). The footer's mode word reads MANAGE when any PROTECT rule or the profit close is on and Auto-manage is off.
8. The PROTECT tab — trailing and levels
Two rules live here, one above the other: the trailing stop (top) and the level table (bottom). Each has a tick box that switches it on.
Trailing stop. Six buttons choose what the stop follows; the one or two fields in the row below change with the choice.
- ATR — a distance of Multiple × ATR behind the price (default 1.5, on the Stop ATR timeframe from SETTINGS). Checked on every tick, moved in steps of a tenth of the distance.
- pts — a fixed Distance in points behind the price (default 300). Every tick, tenth-of-distance steps.
- MA — a moving average of the closing prices, period bars long (default 20), minus an Offset in points (plus, for a short). The stop sits under the average on a long and over it on a short. The kind of average (EMA by default, or SMA, SMMA, LWMA) is chosen in the properties window (F7) and the row name says which.
- SAR — the Parabolic SAR indicator with its Step (default 0.02) and Maximum (default 0.2): the dots that trail a trend and flip when it turns. While the dots are on the right side of the price the stop follows them; once they flip, there is no level to follow and the stop stays where it is.
- fractal — the last confirmed fractal (a five-candle pattern with the lowest low, or highest high, in the middle) beyond the price, minus or plus an Offset in points. A fractal counts only once the two candles after it have closed.
- high/low — the lowest low (long) or highest high (short) of the last Bars closed candles (default 10), with an Offset in points.
The four candle-based types (MA, SAR, fractal, high/low) read the last closed candle of the chart you are on, so they can move the stop at most once per candle and never chase the price tick by tick. The trailing stop only ever tightens, never loosens. A level that is closer to the price than the broker allows is not used until it is far enough. A level on the wrong side of the price (price below the average on a long, say) is not used either; the position row says so.
Start after — the trail only begins once the trade is in profit by this many R (R = the stop distance the trade was opened with). 0 , the default, starts at once; 1 means "trail only after the trade has earned its first R", which keeps a freshly tightened stop out of the noise near the entry.
WHAT IT WOULD DO NOW — one row per open position (the first three), whether the rule is on or not, so you can try a type before switching it on: the current stop, then an arrow and the level the stop would move to; or at stop when the stop is already there or better; or waiting 0.4R < 1.0R while the start threshold is not reached; or the reason there is no usable level yet. While the rule is on, a short blue dotted line over the last candles marks that level on the chart for each position, and every move leaves the GTA TRAIL mark at the new stop.
Levels. Up to four steps on the way to the target, one row each: at R (the open profit, in R of the stop distance the trade was opened with, at which the level fires; 0 empties the row), SL to — a three-way selector: - leaves the stop alone, BE moves it to the entry plus the break-even offset, R moves it to entry plus the number of R in the field that appears beside it (it starts at the previous level's R, so 2R > +1R is one click) — and close % (how much of the position to close, as a percentage of the size it was opened with; 0 or blank closes nothing). On a fresh install the table holds one level, 1R > BE , which is the classic break-even: once a trade's open profit reaches 1 R the stop loss moves to the entry price plus the offset. The BE offset above the table is a two-way selector: spread (the default: the stop lands one live spread beyond the entry, a small cushion that covers commission on most accounts) or pts, with the number of points in the field beside it ( 0 is the entry itself).
Each level fires once per position. The close comes first: the slice is rounded down to the broker's lot step, never below the minimum lot, and if what would remain is below the minimum lot the whole position is closed and the message says so. Then the stop moves, only ever tightening, and waits if the broker's minimum distance does not yet allow the level. Later levels measure their percentage against the opening size too, so 50 % then 25 % then 25 % leaves nothing. A stop target beyond the level's own R is refused, because it could only be placed later anyway. Every field takes numbers only; anything else is refused with a message and the previous value comes back.
Under the table, one row per position shows where its levels stand, in one line: the open profit in R first, then the state — -0.2R next L1 1.0R (nothing fired yet, the first level waits at 1 R), 2.3R 2 done next L3 3.0R (two levels taken, the third is next), 1.3R L1 SL pending (the close happened, the stop is waiting for the broker's distance), 4.3R all 4 done . Every stop the table moves leaves a GTA BE or GTA L2 mark at the new stop, and every action is written to the Experts tab and the log ( PARTIAL , LEVEL_CLOSE , LEVEL_SL rows).
A worked example: L1 1.0 · BE · 50 , L2 2.0 · R 1.0 · 25 , L3 3.0 · R 2.0 · 25 . A 0.10-lot trade closes 0.05 at 1 R and becomes risk-free, banks another 0.02 at 2 R with the stop at +1 R, and closes the last 0.03 at 3 R (the 25 % slice is 0.02, the 0.01 left would still exist, so the panel closes the slice only — tell it 100 on the last level if you want everything gone).
Everything on this tab is remembered per symbol like the other settings. If you remove the panel while positions are open and attach it again, it remembers which levels already fired for them.
9. Auto-manage (off by default)
With Auto-manage exits ticked, the panel does three things to positions it opened on this symbol, checked on every tick. It closes a long when RSI reaches the upper level and a short when RSI reaches the lower level — the idea being that the move that got you in has run its course. It closes any position that has been open for more than the time cap (60 candles by default). And if a position has lost its stop loss for any reason, it puts one back at 1.5 × ATR (your stop multiple, on the Stop ATR timeframe) from the worse of the entry price and the current price, so the new stop is always on the correct side; a take profit you removed on purpose is left alone. Each action is reported in the Experts tab and in the log file. With the box unticked, the panel never touches an open trade on its own; the broker's stop and target, and the rules you switched on, do the work.
10. Settings in the properties window (F7)
Most of these are also on the SETTINGS tab. The ones that are not:
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Indicator periods (RSI, trend EMA, pullback EMA, ATR, swing lookback, ATR median bars) | 7 / 200 / 50 / 14 / 10 / 100 | The lengths of the calculations in §4. Changing them needs a reload. |
| Trailing stop: moving-average method | EMA | The kind of average the MA trailing type follows (§8): EMA, SMA, SMMA or LWMA. Its period is set on the PROTECT tab. Changing it needs a reload. |
| Stop ATR timeframe button 1…5 | M1 / M15 / M30 / H1 / H4 | The five timeframes the Stop row selector offers (§6). Current = the chart's own timeframe. Changing them needs a reload; a stored choice that is no longer a button falls back to the start-up choice. |
| Lock SL/TP lines | off | Stops the stop and target lines on the chart from being dragged by mouse while the panel is loaded. |
| Tester auto-trade | on | Only inside MT5's Strategy Tester: trade the rules automatically so they can be backtested (§11). Has no effect on a live chart. |
| Slippage | 30 points | The most the fill price may differ from the price you clicked. |
| Magic number | 770501 | A tag the panel writes on every order so it can tell its own trades from others. One panel per symbol and magic number per terminal. |
| Write log | on | Writes GTA_<symbol>_<magic>.csv in MQL5\Files : one row per open, close, plan, pending order and cancellation, with time, event, ticket, direction, price, stop, target, lots, R, spread, ATR, RSI and a note. |
| Debug | off | Prints the size calculation and click routing to the Experts tab. |
Session hours are the broker's server time, not your local time; the footer clock shows server time so you can compare. The end hour is exclusive: 10 to 24 means candles closing from 10:00 up to, but not including, 24:00 (midnight).
11. The Strategy Tester
MT5's Strategy Tester replays past prices. In it, the panel trades its own rules automatically (once per new candle, when it is flat and all five rules pass), with the same stop, target and sizing a click would use, so you can see what the rule set would have done. Management (RSI exit, time cap, stop repair) is always on inside the tester. In a visual test the panel draws and the footer mode reads TESTER; in a non-visual test there is no panel. Sessions are still server time. On a daily chart the session rule does not apply (§4), so a D1 test trades on the other four rules.
A backtest is the only place this program ever opens a trade without a click. The Market's Free demo button gives you exactly this: the panel inside the Strategy Tester.
12. What it will never do
It will not open a trade on a live chart by itself. It will not move your stop or target unless you switched on a rule that does so: auto-manage's stop repair, a level, or the trailing stop. It will not trade when Algo Trading is off. It does not connect to anything outside MT5: no internet, no files other than its own log, no external libraries. Every stop and target it places is a real order on the broker's server, so a prop-firm dashboard sees exactly what you see.
13. Known limits in v1.0
MT5 paints its own Bid/Ask lines and trade-history marks over any panel; the program cannot change that. After you scroll the chart or move the panel, the dotted level lines can show under the panel for a fraction of a second before they re-anchor. If you press on a label bar in the very same instant the mouse arrives on it, the chart may scroll instead of the bar moving — move onto the bar first, then press. If the timeframe you pick for the stop ATR has no price history on your broker, the panel says so, keeps the chart's ATR and leaves no button selected until you pick another. The panel is drawn in one size; it does not scale with the chart's font or a high-DPI setting beyond what MT5 itself does. Footer messages longer than the footer are cut short on screen; the full text is always in the Experts tab.
14. Versions and support
The version number is in the properties window and in the first line the panel writes to the Experts tab when it loads ( GTA v1.0 … ). Updates come through the Market like any product; your settings are not inside the program but in the terminal's global variables, one set per symbol and magic number, so an update does not reset them. MT5 deletes a global variable that has not been touched for four weeks, so a symbol you have not had the panel on for a month starts from the defaults again.
Questions, problems and requests go in the product's Comments tab, in English or Spanish. When something looks wrong, the three things that settle most cases are the panel's lines in the Experts tab, the symbol and timeframe, and a screenshot of the tab in question.
