Assay

Assay is an XAUUSD M5 Expert Advisor with six switchable entry strategies and a statistical signal filter. Launch price 249$.

Strategy

Assay was built for gold and nothing else. Six independent entry strategies watch the market: Ingot, Nugget, Lode, Vein, Crucible and Carat. Each one can be switched on or off on its own, and each one alone is enough to permit a direction. Before any signal becomes a trade, a statistical filter built from years of gold price history decides whether that signal is taken.

Every position opens with a stop loss and a take profit, and its stop follows the price once the trade is far enough ahead. A position that moves against the EA can receive recovery trades in the same direction, added at a fixed adverse distance, up to a set number of trades per basket. A basket is the original trade plus its recovery trades, and it is closed together at a profit target measured in points. The target can be raised for each extra trade in the basket, and it can be trailed, with the give-back set as a share of that basket's own target. With the trail on, a basket carries no take profit on its trades: the target is where the trail starts, and the trail is the basket's exit. A direction may run several baskets at once, with a minimum age required between them.

Main features

- Six independent entry strategies, one on/off switch each

- Statistical signal filter applied to every entry

- Stop loss, take profit and trailing stop on each position

- Recovery trades in the same direction at a fixed distance, with a per-basket limit

- Basket profit target in points, with an optional step per extra trade and an optional trail

- Several baskets per direction with a minimum delay between them

- USD news filter using the built-in MetaTrader 5 economic calendar

- Trading sessions in server time

- Spread warning written to the journal

- Automatic lot sizing from a risk percent, or a fixed lot

- Status panel with each strategy ON or OFF and its own result, plus session shading.

Recommended setup

- Platform: MetaTrader 5
- Symbol: XAUUSD or the broker's equivalent gold symbol
- Timeframe: M5
- Account: hedging account recommended. On a netting account the EA holds one position at a time and does not use recovery trades or baskets.
- Strategy Tester: Every tick based on real ticks
- Balance: read below.

The shipped defaults were made for gold. No other symbol or asset class was tested or validated for this release. Check broker point size, tick value, spread, minimum stop distance, server time and execution conditions before use.

The news filter reads the terminal's economic calendar, which is available on live and demo accounts only. The Strategy Tester has no calendar, so the filter does nothing in a backtest.

The lot size never goes below the broker's minimum lot. If the free margin cannot cover the minimum lot, the EA does not send the order and writes the reason to the journal, so the account must be large enough for the minimum lot on the chosen gold symbol.

Risk per strategy, 3 percent by default, is the loss the first trade of a basket would take if its stop loss is hit, as a share of the account balance. The EA turns that into a lot size from the stop distance and the symbol's tick value, and rounds it to the broker's lot step.

The lot size never goes below the minimum lot, so on a small account the real risk is higher than the number you typed. With the default stop of 5200 points on a standard gold contract, one lot of 0.01 loses about 52 USD at the stop. On a balance of 500 USD that is about 10 percent, on 1000 USD about 5 percent. The typed 3 percent becomes the real risk from a balance of about 1700 USD, and the lot grows by 0.01 for roughly every further 1700 USD. Brokers with a different contract size or stop distance give different numbers.

Recovery trades copy the size of the first trade and carry their own stop loss, so a basket of three trades can lose up to three times that amount if every stop is hit. Several baskets in one direction add up in the same way.

Evaluate the free Market demo in the Strategy Tester first, then run a fixed lot of 0.01 on a demo account before considering live use.

Past performance does not guarantee future results. Future performance is not guaranteed.

Trading gold and other leveraged instruments involves substantial risk. Recovery trades increase exposure: a basket can hold several positions in the same direction at the same time, so the total risk of one basket is larger than the risk of a single trade. Risk percent sizes each trade.

Stop losses cannot guarantee the exact closing price. Spreads, slippage, gaps, liquidity, commissions, swaps, price feeds and broker execution all change results. Backtests, screenshots and demo results do not guarantee future performance. Demo and live results will differ,  and losses are possible at any time.

Test in the Strategy Tester first, then on demo, use only money you can afford to lose, and confirm that the settings and the total exposure suit your account.

Support is available through the product comments and the MQL5 messaging system.

Seller profile: https://www.mql5.com/en/users/pixqz