The Crew

The Crew is an MT5 Expert Advisor for gold (XAUUSD): a recovery grid with a stop loss.

Session-timed specialists run a shared equal-lot grid: every layer the same size, no martingale.
Every grid group carries its own hard stop: 150 USD per 0.01 lot, read on every tick.

A one-way night closes the group at a known, fixed cost.
It does not keep averaging down until the margin runs out.

Above the groups sits one account-level warden.

Eleven specialists, one warden

There is an old idea in markets that one method should work at every hour of the day.
Anyone who has watched gold trade at three in the morning and again at nine knows better.

The Asian hours breathe slowly.
London opens like a door thrown wide.
The last hours of the American session have a character of their own.

So this expert does not send one method into all of them.
It runs eleven, each built for one window and no other.

Above them stands Constance, the warden.
She is not one of the eleven, and she outranks all of them.

She keeps the ledger for the whole book and applies the limits you set:
who may open at all, how far any one group may fall, and when the whole house closes.

None of the eleven can overrule her, and she never overrules you.

The eleven, by temperament

• Nadia, Nerissa and Nova work the quiet night hours, each on her own horizon.
• Thea fades the last of the night.
• Delphine buys sharp dips at any hour, and stands aside around the 08:30 and 10:00 New York releases.
• Cassandra leans against the crowd at the London open.
• Amara works before the Western session stirs.
• Clara works the long European morning.
• Juno takes London's midday push.
• Imogen goes through the London open with the crowd.
• Evelyn steps in as the American session closes out its business.

Three councils - you choose how much of the house works

• Low risk - 6 strategies (the default)
  The night crew (Nadia, Nerissa, Thea, Nova) with Delphine and Cassandra.
  No group of this council reached its stop on any of the four test records below.
• Medium risk - 9 strategies
  Low plus Amara, Clara and Juno.
  About a third more profit, and about half as much again in capital.
• High risk - 11 strategies
  Every specialist.
• Custom
  Choose the specialists one by one.

Each council contains the one before it.
Their measured profit, stops and capital needs are in the Results section.

How it trades

Each specialist waits for its own hour and its own conditions.

A position that does not reach its small target quickly gets a recovery ladder.
The ladder averages the entry with equal-sized layers and closes the whole group as one.

No martingale: every layer is the same size as the first.
Each specialist has a fixed maximum number of layers, so the depth is a design constant.

The stop on every group

Every group has a hard dollar stop.
It closes when the group's floating loss reaches 150 USD per 0.01 lot, read on every price tick.
That is the same gold move on a USD, EUR or cent account.

A one-way move that never turns costs a known amount, instead of growing with the move.

Above the groups sits the account level:

• a free-margin floor for new groups,
• a per-direction exposure cap,
• a breaker that flattens The Crew's groups if the account falls too far below its peak (thirty percent by default).

New in this version

• The broker clock sets itself.
  Gold pauses for an hour every day. The Crew finds that pause in your broker's own price history and aligns every specialist to it, including daylight-saving changes.
  A manual shift remains available.
• A status panel on the chart.
  It shows the council, the lot, the breaker level and each specialist's hours on your server clock.
  For every open group it draws the target, the next layer and the stop as lines on the chart.
• Static lot or compounding - your choice.
  Static trades the same lot on every group.
  Compounding sizes each new group from your balance and a risk tier.
• Runs beside other gold EAs on the same account.
  It recognises only its own trades, and its exposure cap counts only its own positions.

Scheduled news and holidays

By default The Crew opens no new groups:

• on the first Friday of the month (US Non-Farm Payrolls),
• on FOMC decision days (the Federal Reserve's published schedule, built in through December 2027),
• from 15 December to 15 January,
• after 22:00 on Friday.

Groups that are already open keep their normal exit.
Each filter is a switch you can turn off.

These are the only dates in the code.
There is no list of good or bad trading days taken from the backtest.
Every result shown comes from rules that apply the same way to dates the EA has never seen.

What it does not do

• No martingale or lot escalation inside a recovery.
• No backtest-derived day lists.
• No DLL imports and no custom includes.
• No licensing or account-locking code.

It never changes a setting you chose.
It warns in the journal, and then it does what you configured.

Settings

Thirty-five inputs, and every one of them is yours.
The presets load the tested configurations.

• Council - Low risk - 6 strategies (default), Medium risk - 9, High risk - 11, or Custom.
• Broker clock - Auto-detect (default) or Manual.
• Sizing - Static lot, or Compounding with a risk tier (Conservative 10 percent is the default).
• Protection - account breaker, free-margin floor, spread ceiling, daily entry cap, per-direction exposure caps, lot cap.
• No new groups on - payrolls Friday, FOMC days, Friday night, the holiday pause.
• Group stop: 150 USD per 0.01 lot, read on every tick (0 switches it off).
• Chart - the status panel and its lines.

Results

Backtest, MetaTrader 5 Strategy Tester, real ticks, 100 percent history quality, XAUUSD, 10,000 starting balance.
The shipped defaults of build 3.10: Low risk - 6 strategies, Compounding Conservative, group stop 150, news and holiday filters on.
These are backtest figures; nothing below is from a live account.

The headline is the lowest of the three, BlackBull.
The same configuration takes near-identical trades on every broker, so plan with the lowest figure.

No group stop fired on any of the three.
Results differ by broker; test on the broker you intend to trade with.

The three councils compared
Backtest, The Crew councils at a static 0.01 lot with the 150 group stop, BlackBull, IC Markets and Vantage, 2022 to 2026 (windows in the column headers), real ticks.
Net per record. The last column is the minimum balance at 0.01 lot for a Cautious / Balanced / Bold risk appetite (see the manual).

Frequently asked questions

Which broker and account type does The Crew need?
A hedging account on XAUUSD (any broker spelling: XAUUSD, XAUUSD+, XAUUSD-ECN, GOLD.pro) with reasonable gold spreads.

What is the minimum deposit?
The Small Account preset runs Low risk - 6 strategies at a static 0.01 lot, every group closed at a 150 USD floating loss per 0.01 lot.

It needs about 330 if you accept a 1-in-40 chance of losing 35 percent of the starting balance within a year.
It needs about 690 if you want that chance below 1 in 100 for a 20 percent loss (backtest, raw-spread feeds 2022-2026).

One stop costs about 150-165 at 0.01 lot.
The EA runs whatever you choose on any balance, and prints at start-up what your configuration needs.

Which council should I start with?
Low risk - 6 strategies, the default: the smallest capital need, and no group stop on the four test records.
Medium and High add specialists that earn more and stop more often.

Which chart and timeframe do I attach it to?
Any timeframe on a gold chart. The Crew runs its own internal one-minute clock.

Do I have to set my broker's clock?
No. With Broker clock = Auto-detect (the default) The Crew finds gold's daily pause in your broker's price history.
It prints the shift it uses in the journal at start-up.

Is it a grid, and is it martingale?
It is an equal-lot recovery grid: a position that misses its small target is averaged by same-sized layers and closed as one group.
No martingale. Every layer matches the first, each specialist has a fixed maximum depth, and every group has a 150 USD per 0.01 lot stop.

Can it run on the same account as another EA?
Yes. It manages only its own trades, by their magic numbers. Put it on its own gold chart.
The account breaker and the free margin are shared with the other EA; the manual explains how to size for that.

Does The Crew trade through news?
By default it opens no new groups on NFP Fridays, FOMC decision days, 15 December - 15 January and late Friday.
Delphine also stands aside around the 08:30 and 10:00 New York releases. Open groups keep their exit.

Do I need a VPS?
A VPS or an always-on computer is recommended.
The specialists work through the night, and the stops and the breaker need the EA running to act.

Can I backtest The Crew myself?
Yes. It is one self-contained Expert Advisor with no DLLs or custom includes, and it runs in the MetaTrader 5 Strategy Tester on real ticks.
Use the feed, window and starting balance in the Results section to reproduce a figure.

Requirements

• XAUUSD (gold), a hedging account.
• Any chart timeframe - the EA keeps its own internal clock.
• A broker with reasonable gold spreads; the EA skips entries above a configurable spread ceiling.
• A VPS or an always-on computer, because the specialists work through the night.

Risk disclosure

Trading leveraged instruments carries a substantial risk of loss.

This is a grid strategy: it holds losing positions through adverse moves and recovers them by adding equal-sized layers.
Each group is bounded by its dollar stop. On a small account one stop is a large share of the balance (the manual gives the figures).
The account breaker flattens everything if the account falls further than you allow. Both realise the loss they were holding.

The results above come from a period in which gold rose overall.
A long decline without bounces is the condition this design has the least evidence about, and the one in which the group stop fires most often.

Past backtest performance does not predict future outcomes.
Test on a demo account first, long enough to see a recovery ladder open, deepen and close, before funding a live account.