StraddleGrid Session Breakout Ladder for XAUUSD

StraddleGrid is a fully automated Expert Advisor that trades intraday breakouts on gold during the London and New York sessions. It places a pair of pending stop orders around the current price; when one side is triggered, the opposite side is cancelled. Every position is opened with a fixed stop loss and take profit. The EA does not use martingale, position averaging, or hidden virtual stops.

Trading approach

Order distances adapt to current volatility using the ATR on the M5 timeframe. Positions are managed with a step trailing stop, a time based exit, and a basket control that closes all open positions once accumulated floating profit retraces by a defined amount. A daily loss budget stops trading for the rest of the day when reached, and a weekly budget stops trading until Monday. In practice this means the EA trades actively on days that develop momentum and steps aside early on days that do not.

Expected behavior

The strategy is volatility dependent. In long testing across several years of tick data it performed best in active, trending market phases and produced flat or slightly negative results during extended quiet phases. It is designed so that losses in unfavorable phases remain small and controlled while favorable phases are traded fully. Please review the attached Strategy Tester reports, which include both favorable and unfavorable years, before purchasing.

Risk management

• Position size is calculated from account equity; a full stop out of one order ladder equals the configured risk percentage (default 0.3 percent).
• Daily and weekly loss budgets halt trading when reached. Both are limited by compiled ceilings that cannot be exceeded through the inputs.
• A total exposure cap applies across all open and pending orders.
• The EA pauses after consecutive stop loss exits and reduces size automatically when average slippage rises.
• A spread filter blocks trading during abnormal spread conditions, and a news filter avoids high impact USD events on live accounts (the economic calendar is not available in the Strategy Tester).

Input parameters

The default inputs are the tested configuration and are intended to be used as they are. The main inputs are the magic number, risk per ladder, daily and weekly loss budgets, session window in UTC, basket control levels, and filter switches. All internal trading parameters are derived from market data automatically.

Recommendations

• Symbol: XAUUSD. Any chart timeframe; the EA loads the data it needs internally.
• Account: hedging account. A low spread broker is important for this strategy; results degrade as spread increases.
• Deposit: 1000 USD or more. Below this the broker minimum lot can exceed the intended risk per trade and the EA may decline to trade.
• A VPS is recommended for continuous operation.

Testing

All performance figures shown in the screenshots are obtained in the MetaTrader 5 Strategy Tester with real tick data, including deliberately unfavorable test periods, and do not represent real trading results. Please run your own tests with your broker's data and forward test on a demo account before using the EA on a live account. Past performance, whether tested or real, does not guarantee future results.

Support

Questions are answered in the Comments section of this product page.