Eternal Channel Breakout
- Experts
-
Rafael Lanza Carioca
Focused on developing fully automated trading systems that operate 24/7 on the cloud, utilizing a combination of position sizing and equity stops for effective risk management - Version: 1.0
- Activations: 5
Eternal Channel Breakout
A channel breakout Expert Advisor with ATR-based stop placement, an ATR trailing exit, and
percent-of-balance position sizing. Every decision is taken on the close of a bar.
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WHAT IT DOES
The EA watches a Donchian price channel of a configurable length. At the close of each
bar, if price is above the top of that channel the EA opens a long position; if it is
below the bottom, a short. While price stays inside the channel the EA holds no position
and places no orders. It is flat by design, not by accident.
One position at a time. There is no grid, no averaging down, no martingale, and no
recovery mode after a loss.
HOW A TRADE IS MANAGED
- Stop loss. Every position is opened with a stop loss already attached, placed at a
multiple of the current ATR away from the entry price.
- Trailing exit. Once the position is ahead by a configurable amount of ATR, the stop
begins to follow price at a fixed ATR distance behind it. The stop is only ever moved in
the direction that reduces risk; it is never widened.
- No take profit. The trailing stop is the only exit. A trade ends when the stop is hit,
and not before.
- Re-entry cooldown. After a position closes, the EA waits an amount of time equal to a
configurable number of bars before it will consider a new entry.
POSITION SIZING
Lot size is derived from the stop distance, so that a full stop loss costs a fixed
percentage of account balance. Sizing is based on balance rather than equity, so open
floating profit does not inflate the size of the next trade.
If the calculated lot lands below the broker minimum, the behaviour is controlled by a
single input. By default the EA falls back to the broker minimum lot. See the manual: this
fallback means an undersized account risks more per trade than the configured percentage.
It can be switched off, in which case an undersized account simply does not trade.
DECISIONS HAPPEN ON BAR CLOSE
Entry, and every movement of the trailing stop, are evaluated once per bar, on the close.
The stop resting at the broker works intrabar, as it must, but the EA itself never reacts
to a mid-bar tick. This is a deliberate design constraint: a strategy whose stop moves
intrabar cannot be reproduced faithfully in a bar-based backtest. What you see in the
Strategy Tester is what the logic actually does.
RISK CONTROLS (OPTIONAL, OFF BY DEFAULT)
Three account-level limits can be enabled independently:
- maximum drawdown from the peak of account balance;
- maximum loss in a single day;
- profit target for a single day.
All three are measured against realised balance, not floating equity: an open position
moves none of them until it is closed. When a limit is reached the EA stops opening new
positions. All three are disabled by default and are configured as a percentage.
OPTIONAL REGIME FILTERS (OFF BY DEFAULT)
- EMA trend filter - restricts entries to the direction of a moving average.
- Efficiency Ratio filter - blocks entries when the market is ranging rather than trending.
Both are disabled in the default configuration.
ON-CHART PANEL
An optional panel shows symbol and timeframe, current status, spread, equity and balance,
drawdown against the configured limit, session and cumulative profit or loss, the current
channel length and position state, and net exposure. The panel can be turned off, and it
is not created at all during a non-visual Strategy Tester run.
RUNS ON ANY SYMBOL AND ANY TIMEFRAME
There is no symbol lock, no timeframe lock and no broker lock in this product. Attach it to
whatever chart you want to test and it will run there.
That is the point of the design: the logic is a price channel, an ATR and a stop, and none
of those assume a particular instrument. It was developed and parameterised on BTCUSD H1,
so the default values reflect that instrument - but forex, metals, indices and other
crypto pairs are all yours to test in the Strategy Tester before you commit a cent to
them.
PARAMETERS ARE YOURS TO SET
The defaults are a starting point, not a recommendation for your account. Spread, tick
value, volatility and minimum lot differ from broker to broker and from symbol to symbol,
and a channel length that suits one instrument will not suit another.
Every part of the behaviour is exposed as an input: channel length, ATR period, initial
stop distance, trailing distance, the profit level at which the trail starts, risk per
trade, maximum spread, and the re-entry cooldown. Nothing is hidden and nothing is
hard-coded. Run the Strategy Tester on the instrument you actually trade, on your own
broker's data, and set the values from what you see there.
If you want an EA that you attach and never look at again, this is not that product.
WARM-UP
The EA does not trade until enough bar history is available to compute the channel and the
ATR. With the default settings this is 118 bars. On a daily chart that is roughly six
months of trading history. It prints one message when it starts waiting and does not
repeat it.
WHAT TO EXPECT FROM THE APPROACH
This is a breakout strategy. It takes a series of small losses while price stays inside the
channel, and stays in a position as long as the trailing stop allows once price leaves it.
Consecutive losing trades in a ranging market are inherent to the approach, not a fault
condition. Test it on a demo account, with your own broker and your own spread, before
running it live.
SUPPORT
Support is provided through the comments section of this product page and through private
messages on mql5.com.
