Gold Swing Scalper

Gold Swing Level Scalper is a rules-based Expert Advisor for XAUUSD on MetaTrader 5. It trades price reactions at confirmed higher-timeframe swing levels, with fixed risk on every trade. It holds one position at a time and never uses grid, martingale, averaging or hedging.

How it works

• Identifies significant, unbroken swing levels on the 4-hour chart and keeps them active for a limited time.
• Enters when price approaches an active level.
• Every trade is opened with a server-side stop loss ($15 per oz) and take profit.
• Active management on bar closes: a break-even lock after a confirmed move in favour, and an early exit when the first candles close against the position.
• A level can trigger again after an early exit or a stop, and is retired after a winning exit.
• Session and news filter: skips the start of the trading day, NFP Fridays and FOMC evenings.
• Flat every Friday before the market close.

Main features

• Fixed risk per trade: $15 per oz, which is $1,500 per 1.0 lot.
• About 7 trades per month. Holding time ranges from seconds to about one hour, with no weekend exposure.
• Checks lot limits, free margin and broker stop levels before every order.
• Restart-safe: rebuilds its levels from history.
• Writes every trade to a CSV log with execution delay, slippage and exit reason.
• Signal-only mode for testing without trading.

Backtest information

Backtest on real tick data, January 2025 – October 2026, 1.0 lot on a $50,000 account, with raw spread and $7 per lot commission. Results: profit factor 2.39, win rate 74%, maximum drawdown 6.9%, 17 of 22 months positive. These are simulated results, not real trading results. Part of this period was used to develop the rules. Results depend on market conditions and execution quality, and past performance does not guarantee future results.

Recommendations

• Use a raw or ECN account with a low XAUUSD spread.
• Run the EA on a VPS close to your broker's server. The strategy is sensitive to execution speed.
• Attach it to one XAUUSD M1 chart per account and set the broker time shift correctly.
• Start on a demo account. Size positions so that several consecutive stops stay within your risk limits.
• Historically the strategy has performed better when gold's daily volatility is high, and weaker in quiet markets.

Parameters

• Lots per trade: position size; 1.0 lot = 100 oz. Suggested: 0.10 per $50,000 for conservative risk.
• Magic number: a unique ID for this EA's trades.
• Trading enabled: set to false to only log signals.
• Max slippage (points): the maximum slippage for market orders.
• Server time shift (hours): hours to add to your broker's server time to reach New York + 7 hours. It is 0 for most brokers on GMT+2 / GMT+3 with US daylight saving.
• News filter: skip NFP Fridays and FOMC evenings (default on).