Noise Area Momentum

Noise Area Momentum is an automated Expert Advisor for MetaTrader 5 that trades intraday momentum on the Nasdaq 100 index CFD (NAS100, US100, USTEC and similar).

How it works

For every half-hour of the US cash session, the advisor averages how far the index moved from its 09:30 New York open over the last 14 days. That average move, placed either side of today's open, is the noise area. Inside it, supply and demand are in balance and the advisor does nothing. Decisions are made only on the half-hour (10:00, 10:30 ... 15:30 New York), so short spikes are ignored.

• Price closes the half-hour above the upper band: buy.
• Price closes the half-hour below the lower band: sell.
• One position at a time. It is closed, or reversed, when a half-hour check finds price on the other side of the noise area.
• Every position is closed just before the 16:00 New York close. Nothing is held overnight or over the weekend.
• After an opening gap the band is widened by the gap, using the previous close.

The noise-area idea comes from published academic research on intraday momentum (Zarattini, Aziz and Barbon, 2024, Swiss Finance Institute). The code, testing and settings are our own. We ship the simpler base rule, which stayed profitable in both halves of our test; the paper's full version (VWAP stop and volatility-targeted size) faded after 2025 and is available only as an option.

Position size

Position size is a fixed share of your equity: exposure = equity x Exposure Scale. Losses never increase the next position. There is no grid, no martingale and no averaging down. Before every order the advisor checks trade permission, the volume step and limits, and free margin; if margin is short the size is reduced, and if the size is below the broker's minimum lot the day is skipped.

Recommended settings (Exposure Scale)

• LOW, 0.5: recommended capital 2,500 USD (absolute minimum about 600 USD)
• MEDIUM, 1.0 (default): recommended capital 1,500 USD (absolute minimum about 300 USD)
• AGGRESSIVE, 2.0: recommended capital 1,000 USD (absolute minimum about 150 USD)

One 0.01 lot of NAS100 is about 290 USD of index at current prices. The low setting needs more capital because a smaller share of a small account rounds down below the minimum lot. Ready set files for the three levels and a 7-page PDF guide are available to buyers in the Comments section.

Backtest results

MetaTrader 5 Strategy Tester, NAS100, 2 January 2023 to 7 October 2026, 10,000 USD start, 1-minute OHLC model, broker spreads included. All three settings take the same 568 trades (57% winners); only the size differs.

• LOW (0.5): +22.5%, profit factor 1.29, maximum equity drawdown 4.8%
• MEDIUM (1.0): +49.1%, profit factor 1.29, maximum equity drawdown 9.4%
• AGGRESSIVE (2.0): +114.4%, profit factor 1.27, maximum equity drawdown 18.0%

MEDIUM by calendar year: 2023 +10.7%, 2024 +15.1%, 2025 +7.1%, 2026 (to October) +9.3%. 14 of 16 quarters were positive.

Requirements

• MetaTrader 5, a Nasdaq 100 CFD. The same rules did not make money on the Dow (US30) in our tests.
• Any chart timeframe (the advisor reads 1-minute data). M5 is convenient.
• Server time: the defaults assume a server at New York time + 7 hours (09:30 New York = 16:30 server), common for GMT+2/GMT+3 brokers. If your server differs, set Open Hour and Open Minute to your server time at 09:30 New York.
• A VPS is recommended: the advisor trades between 16:30 and 22:58 server time on weekdays.

Inputs

• Session: open hour and minute (server time), session length (390 minutes), minutes between decisions (30), minutes before the close to flatten (2).
• Noise area: lookback days (14), band multiplier (1.0), gap adjustment (on), exit rule (opposite band; current band and band plus VWAP are optional variants).
• Sizing: exposure rule (fixed notional; volatility target is optional and far more aggressive), exposure scale.
• General: magic number, slippage.

Please read

• The results are historical simulations on one broker's price history and will differ from live trading. The statistical evidence is modest.
• Momentum strategies give back part of their gains on choppy days. Expect losing weeks. The longest losing streak in the test was 10 trades, and at the aggressive setting the worst single day cost 19% of the starting balance.
• Test the free demo in the Strategy Tester on your own broker's data, and run the advisor on a demo account before trading real money.
• For prop-firm challenges, see the separate Noise Area Momentum PROP edition.

No DLLs, no external files, no web requests.