Messis Dei
- Experts
- Version: 1.4
- Activations: 12
Messis Dei is a buy-only Expert Advisor for gold (XAUUSD). On days when the London session holds above the session Volume Weighted Average Price (VWAP), it buys small afternoon dips and closes each position at a fixed 5.00 target. Every order is sent with a safety stop. No grid, no martingale, no averaging of losing positions.
The idea
Messis means "harvest" in Latin. Gold does not trend every day, but on the days it does, the afternoon pullbacks are often bought back. Messis Dei waits for those days and collects many small, quick targets instead of chasing large moves.
Trading rules (all times UTC, closed bars only)
1. Trend-day test: between 08:00 and 12:00 the robot counts the 15-minute bars that close above the session VWAP (anchored at 00:00). If 85% or more close above it, the day is treated as a long trend day. On all other days no new trades are opened.
2. Harvest window: from 12:00 to 19:15, when a 1-minute bar closes in the lowest 15% of the high-low range of the last 4 hours, the robot buys.
3. Spacing: at least 30 minutes between buys and at most 5 positions open at the same time.
4. Exits: each order is sent with a 5.00 take profit and a 100.00 safety stop (price distance, for example 4,150.00 to 4,155.00). Positions stay open overnight until one of the two levels is reached. There is no time exit.
5. Friday: no new entries from 15:00 on Friday, so late-Friday positions are not carried into the weekend gap.
The robot only buys. The same rules were tested on downtrend days for selling and lost money, so selling is switched off by default.
Growing the account step by step
Messis Dei is designed for slow, steady growth rather than fast results. A cap on the total open risk (default 29% of the balance) limits how much all open positions together can lose if every stop is reached. While the account is small, the cap reduces the lot automatically; as the balance grows, the lot can rise to the chosen size.
In the backtest below, the robot started with 0.01 lot on 500 USD, moved to 0.02 lot in June 2024 and to the full 0.03 lot in October 2024 - only after the balance had grown. Many traders prefer this approach: start small, let the account earn its larger position size, and withdraw part of the profit at regular intervals.
Backtest results
MetaTrader 5 (MT5) Strategy Tester, Deriv XAUUSD, every tick based on real ticks (100% history quality), February 2023 to October 2026. Initial deposit 500 USD, fixed lot 0.03 with the 29% open-risk cap. These are backtest results, not results of a live account.
- 649 trades, all buys; 640 profitable (98.6%), 9 losing (1.4%)
- Total net profit 6,391 USD; profit factor 3.95; recovery factor 8.29
- Maximal balance drawdown 601 USD (11.1%); maximal equity drawdown 771 USD (14.4%)
- Average profitable trade 13.37 USD; average losing trade -240.65 USD
- 36 of 42 months positive
- Median holding time about 30 minutes; some positions are held for several days
Important: this is a high win-rate method. Each safety stop costs about as much as 20 profitable trades, and stops can happen on two positions on the same day. The results depend on gold continuing to recover after dips; in a long falling market the robot trades less and the stops become more frequent. Live trading includes spreads, slippage, swap and broker differences that can change the outcome. Please test on a demo account first.
Recommendations
- Symbol: XAUUSD (gold). The robot can be attached to any chart timeframe; it reads M15 and M1 data internally.
- Account: hedging account recommended so that up to 5 positions can be open. On netting accounts the robot holds one position at a time.
- Balance: 500 USD or more for the default settings. Gold stops in this method are about 100 USD per 0.01 lot, so the open-risk cap starts with 0.01 lot on small balances.
- Strategy Tester: use "Every tick based on real ticks" or "1 minute OHLC". "Open prices only" is not suitable because the robot works on 1-minute bars.
- A Virtual Private Server (VPS) is recommended.
Broker clock setting
All rules use UTC. Set the input "Broker clock vs UTC": "Manual" with offset 0 for brokers whose server time is UTC (for example Deriv), "GMT+2/+3 with US DST" for many other brokers, or "Manual" with the server offset in hours. The panel shows the detected clock. A wrong clock moves all time windows and changes the results.
Support
Questions are welcome in the product comments or by private message on MQL5 or DM at my twitter handle @RyanBBrian. Messis Dei is developed by Brian Bwengye.
