Strategy Lab Gold Session Pullback EA

Strategy Lab Gold Session Pullback EA (free, MT5, XAUUSD M15)

Backtest (simulated). Past results do not guarantee future results.

Headline figures at the default 2% risk per trade (backtest, $10,000 start, costs included):

- Last 12 months (17 Oct 2025 - 16 Oct 2026, not used to choose the settings): +23.5%, max drawdown 18.4%.

- 2021-2026 full period: about 63% a year, max drawdown 42.4%. This period includes the data the settings were chosen on, so it looks better than live trading is likely to be.

You can lower the risk to 1% in the inputs: last 12 months +12.8%, max drawdown 9.6%.

What it does

An intraday gold EA for London and New York hours. It does not hold trades overnight.

- Module A (EMA pullback): EMA 20 above EMA 50 on M15, price dips to EMA 20 and the bar closes back above it, bullish and above the previous close: buy. Mirror rules for sells. Only with the hourly trend (close vs H1 EMA 200) and the daily trend (close vs D1 EMA 50), and only when volatility is at least 0.8x its recent average.

- Module B (session-average pullback): price pulls back to the day's average price (a VWAP-style line from M15 typical prices since server midnight) and closes back on the trend side. Hourly trend filter, volatility at least 1.0x average, stop moves to entry at +1R.

- Every trade has a stop loss (3x ATR for A, 3.5x ATR for B). No fixed take profit: trades close at 22:00 server time (21:00 on Friday).

- At most one trade per module per day, so at most two trades open at once. Signals use closed bars only.

- No grid, no martingale, no hedging, no averaging down, no DLLs.

Activity: about 0.7-1.0 trades per day across both modules. Some days have none. This is not a high-frequency scalper.

What $1,000 and $10,000 became in the backtest (compounded, costs included)

Risk 1%: last 12 months $1,000 -> $1,128 | $10,000 -> $11,279 | max DD 9.6%. Full 2021-2026: $10,000 -> $49,012, max DD 23.4%.

Risk 2% (default): last 12 months $1,000 -> $1,234 | $10,000 -> $12,344 | max DD 18.4%. Full 2021-2026: $10,000 -> $171,940, max DD 42.4%.

Risk 3%: last 12 months $1,000 -> $1,312 | $10,000 -> $13,125 | max DD 26.6%. Full 2021-2026: $10,000 -> $440,778, max DD 57.7%.

Statistics at 2% risk (last 12 months | full 2021-2026)

- Trades: 179 | 1,393

- Trades per day: 0.69 | 0.92

- Win rate: 45.3% | 44.1%

- Profit factor: 1.19 | 1.29

- Max drawdown: 18.4% | 42.4%

- Profitable months: 58% | 62%

- Average month: +2.05% (about $205 on $10,000) | +5.10%

- Best / worst month: +15.9% / -16.0% | +57.8% / -22.0%

2021-2022 at 2% risk: about 68% a year, max drawdown 28.4%.

Test setup: XAUUSD M1 data 2021-01 to 2026-10, 0.30 spread + 0.07 commission + slippage. Settings were chosen on data up to 16 Oct 2025.

Things to know

- The edge is small (profit factor about 1.2-1.3). Win rate is below 50%: profits come from a minority of trades that run until the session close. Losing streaks of 10 trades occurred.

- Higher risk raises drawdowns faster than profits. At 3% the full-period drawdown was 58%.

- Session hours are in broker server time. Defaults fit brokers on GMT+2 (winter) / GMT+3 (summer). Adjust the hour inputs for other brokers.

- Can run next to the Golden Trend EA (H4, different magic number) on the same account.

Backtest (simulated). Past results do not guarantee future results. Test on a demo account first.