Grid Aroon Oscillator EA

Run it free before you decide: load Grid Aroon Oscillator EA in the MetaTrader 5 Strategy Tester, switch on visual mode, and see how rarely it agrees to start a grid, and why.

A NEW HIGH MEANS LITTLE IF THE OLD LOW IS STILL FRESH.

Most trend tools measure how far price has gone. Aroon, created by Tushar Chande, measures something simpler and easier to trust: how many bars have passed since the last extreme. A market making new highs keeps Aroon Up close to 100, and a market that has stopped making new lows lets Aroon Down drain away. Grid Aroon Oscillator EA starts a grid cycle only when that picture is clean on a closed bar, and it refuses the many crossings where it is not. After that, a full management engine works on shrinking the oldest exposure through group closures and partial slices.

Share a screenshot of your order with me, and I will personally select a free product from my catalogue to send you as a gift.

At a glance

• A cycle can begin only on a closed-bar crossing of the Aroon Oscillator. Closed bars only, so accepted signals do not repaint.

• Aroon is calculated inside the EA from the chart's own highs and lows. No custom indicator file is needed.

• New in this product: the Freshness Guard. A crossing counts only when the winning line is near its ceiling and the losing line has already been weak for several bars.

• The Range Guard skips crossings inside a tight box, where every small poke registers as a new extreme.

• The default EMA 200 trend filter accepts a crossing only on the same side as the slow trend.

• On the live chart, past crossings are marked on their candles: a small arrow when one passed every rule, a grey dot when a guard refused it. You can see at once how much the guards throw away.

• Profits are banked by groups of the oldest and newest orders, and a heavy old order is retired in partial slices rather than waiting for a full return.

• No stop loss and no forced close-all. A reached limit refuses new levels while the existing book keeps being managed.

• Every limit is exposed as an input.

FIRST STEPS

Start on EURUSD H1 with the default 0.01 lot and the additive ladder. Set RunMode to Scan only for your first session: the panel shows each plan the EA would carry out and sends no orders, and one button moves it to Armed when you are ready. Repeat the Strategy Tester runs below on your own broker's data before going live, because spreads, swaps and commissions differ between brokers.

What our tests showed

Default settings, Strategy Tester, 1 minute OHLC model, 1:100 leverage, 2025.01.01 to 2026.09.30, one broker's demo data:

• EURUSD H1, $10,000 deposit: net result +171.41, maximal equity drawdown 0.87%, 93 trades, no stop-out and no margin refusals.

• EURUSD H1, $1,000,000 deposit: net result +171.41, maximal equity drawdown 0.01%, 93 trades, no stop-out and no margin refusals.

• XAUUSD D1, $10,000 deposit: net result +16.59, maximal equity drawdown 0.25%, 7 trades, no stop-out and no margin refusals.

• XAUUSD D1, $1,000,000 deposit: net result +16.59, maximal equity drawdown 0.00%, 7 trades, no stop-out and no margin refusals.

These are simulations of one past period, not a forecast. The defaults are selective on purpose, so 93 trades in 21 months is a slow rhythm, and the 7 XAUUSD trades are far too few to prove anything. The warning matters more than the figures: during development, the same EURUSD H1 test at $10,000 with looser guards ended in profit but reached a maximal equity drawdown of 66.15% and logged thousands of margin refusals. A closing balance can hide how close a grid came to trouble. That is why the shipped defaults are stricter, and why you should test any loosening yourself and read the drawdown, not only the net result.

Why Aroon, and why the guards

Aroon does not average prices, so it has no smoothing lag in the usual sense. It counts time since the extreme, which makes a very readable pair of lines: each one jumps to 100 on a new extreme and then steps down bar by bar until the next. The oscillator is simply Up minus Down. The weakness of the raw crossing is that it can happen for a poor reason, for instance when one line has only faded while the other has barely moved.

The improvement in this release

The Freshness Guard is this EA's own addition. It asks for two things together. The winning line must be at or above your minimum, so the extreme is genuinely recent. The losing line must have stayed at or below your maximum across the last few bars, so the other side had already lost its hold before the crossing arrived. Either half can be switched off. The panel shows both values on the last closed bar, each with OPEN or HOLD, so you can see why a crossing did or did not qualify. Margin-level timeframe safety is included and is off by default.

One cycle, step by step

1. The read. On each new bar the EA rebuilds Aroon Up and Aroon Down from closed highs and lows. The forming candle is not used by default.

2. The crossing. The oscillator must pass through your cross level on the signal bar.

3. The Freshness Guard. Fresh extreme on the winning side, weak line on the losing side.

4. The Range Guard. The width of the Aroon window, measured in ATR, must reach your minimum.

5. The trend filter. By default a slow EMA must agree with the side. You can also fade it, or switch it off.

6. The rhythm. A quiet gap of bars between accepted signals stops a choppy session from starting cycle after cycle, and a signal stays valid for a few bars if a level cannot be placed at once.

7. The ladder. Levels are spaced by fixed points or by ATR, with a floor, an upper limit and an option to freeze the distance for the whole cycle. BUY and SELL grids can run side by side or in one direction only.

8. The harvest. The closer searches for groups of the oldest and newest orders and closes a group as soon as its combined result, after swap and commission, beats your target. When the oldest order is still too heavy, only a slice of it is closed, paid for with result already available.

9. The safety checks. A reopen guard blocks any closure that would reopen the same level straight away. Every leg is checked against the deal history, failed legs go into a retry queue, and a plan is dropped if the book changes between the scan and the send.

10. The optional hedge cycle. Off by default. When switched on it holds a balanced pair on a symbol you choose and retires it in equal slices, funded by a small surcharge on closures the grid is already making.

The panel

The panel sits on the left of the chart and keeps the right side and the price scale clear. It shows the symbol and magic number, a status pill (ARMED, SCAN ONLY or PAUSED), grid mode, lot step, spacing, banked result, the book in lots with its net result, the closing plan for each side with its own close button, and the order list. The AROON PULSE row shows the period, Up, Down and Oscillator values of the last closed bar and how many bars ago the last crossing happened. The FRESH GUARD row shows the favoured side, the winning and losing line values and the window width in ATR, each with OPEN or HOLD, then the EMA side. Buttons switch Armed / Scan only, Pause / Resume, chart marks and slicing. The Hedge Vault card is docked directly under the main panel and follows it when you drag or minimise. The panel draws nothing in a non-visual backtest, so optimisation stays fast.

Protection you control

No stop loss and no forced close-all. A reached limit stops new levels; it never dumps the book at a bad moment.

Before each order the money check asks one plain question: is there enough free margin, with a safety buffer, for this order?

Limits on levels per grid, orders per side and lot per order keep the ladder bounded, and the lot ladder stops growing at the level limit. MinMarginLevelPercent and MaxAccountRiskPercent are off by default; consider setting them for your account.

Optional margin-level timeframe safety moves the signal and the spacing to a higher timeframe when the margin level falls to your chosen levels, and moves back only after margin recovers past a cushion. Off by default.

Every copy isolates itself by symbol and magic numbers, so several charts never touch each other's orders or saved state.

Scan only mode shows every decision without sending any order.

Who it suits, and who it does not

It suits patient traders who would rather skip most crossings than trade them all, who prefer many small closures to one distant target, and who will size the lot for their own account. It does not suit anyone who needs a stop loss on every order, a promised monthly figure, frequent action, or a set-and-forget robot running large lots on a tiny balance.

Quick answers

Does it repaint? Accepted signals use closed bars only. The chart marks and both panel rows also read closed bars.

Why so few trades? The guards are strict and the default gap between signals is 30 bars. On XAUUSD D1 that leaves very few signals. Loosen the guards for more cycles, and read the drawdown warning above first.

Which setting should I loosen first? The Freshness Guard minimum and maximum and the Range Guard change the trade count the most. Change one at a time and compare the drawdown in the tester.

Can I use another Aroon period? Yes. A shorter period produces more crossings and a longer one fewer. The Range Guard is measured over the same window, so review it when you change the period.

Does it work on netting accounts? The EA has a separate margin cap for them, but we have not verified netting behaviour, so test your own account type first.

Every setting explained

Grid - how levels are opened

TradeMode - dual grid by default (BUY and SELL side by side), or one direction only.

GridSpacePoints - fixed distance between levels in points when ATR spacing is off (25).

GridSpaceMultiplier - 1.0 keeps levels evenly spaced; a higher value spreads deeper levels further apart.

MaxGridLevels - the most levels one grid may hold (1000).

UpDirectionIsBuy - decides which side an upward move belongs to.

EAMagicNumber - the ID written on this EA's grid orders (9754360).

GridOrderComment - the comment on each grid order (GARN).

OneOrderPerBar - no more than one new level per bar.

Lot ladder

InitialLotSize - volume of the first level (0.01).

LotSizingMode - additive by default, or multiply.

LotMultiplier - in multiply mode, each level is the previous lot times this value (1.25).

LotAddStep - in additive mode, the volume added at each level (0.01; 0 means the starting lot).

MaxOrderVolume - the largest lot any single order may use (1.0).

UseAutoLot - scales the starting lot with the balance (off).

AutoLotBaseBalance - the balance that matches the starting lot (1000).

AutoLotAllowDecrease - lets auto lot go below the starting lot (off).

ATR spacing

GridSpacingMode - ATR by default, or fixed points.

ATRTimeframe - the timeframe volatility is measured on (current chart).

ATRPeriod - ATR length (14).

ATRSpacingFactor - spacing equals ATR times this value (1.0).

ATRBarShift - 1 uses the last closed bar.

ATRMinSpacingPts - the smallest allowed spacing in points (50; 0 means none).

ATRMaxSpacingPts - the largest allowed spacing in points (5000; 0 means none).

ATRFreezeOnStart - keeps one spacing for the whole cycle (off).

Profit target

DesiredProfitPerClosure - the base target in account currency (2.0).

ProfitMultiplier - scales the final target between 1.00 and 2.00.

ProfitTargetMode - scaled by default, so a bigger and deeper book must earn a bigger result.

ProfitVolumePower - how strongly closing volume lifts the target (1.0; 0 turns it off).

ProfitDepthBonus - extra target for each additional open level (0.10).

ProfitMaxMultiple - the cap on the scaled target as a multiple of the base (50).

ProfitMaxReachFraction - keeps the target within a fraction of one grid step so it stays reachable (0.50).

Fragment scanner

UseMultiLegScan - tests combinations of several orders before the simple pair (on).

MaxOldestLegs - the most oldest orders allowed in one closure (3).

MaxNewestLegs - the most newest orders allowed in one closure (6).

ScanPriority - how qualifying groups are ranked; most orders first by default.

NeverBankLessThanPair - a group must also beat the plain pair target (on).

RequireCloseVolumeExceedsTarget - the newest volume must outweigh the oldest volume (on).

MinCloseVolumeRatio - minimum ratio of closing volume to target volume (1.5).

Target slicing - partial closes

EnableTargetSlicing - closes a slice of the oldest order when the whole lot cannot be paid off yet (on).

FragProfitWeightPower - how profit is weighted per closing lot (1.5).

FragMinSlicePercent - the smallest slice as a percent of the target order (20).

FragAllowMultiCloser - lets several newest orders pool their profit to pay for one slice (on).

FragPreferFullClosure - a full closure wins over a slice whenever both qualify (on).

Reopen guard

ReopenGuard - blocks closures that would immediately reopen a level (step based).

ReopenGuardCushion - the safe distance as a fraction of one grid step (0.90).

Account protection

MinMarginLevelPercent - no new levels below this margin level percent (0 = off).

MaxAccountRiskPercent - no new levels above this floating loss as a percent of balance (0 = off).

NetMaxMarginPercent - on netting accounts, the largest margin of the net position as a percent of equity (5.0).

MaxTotalOrders - absolute cap on grid orders per side (1000).

Execution and verification

RunMode - Armed or Scan only; Scan only is the gentle first step.

CloseSequence - the order in which legs are sent; oldest first by default.

MaxSlippagePoints - maximum slippage (30 points).

MaxSpreadPoints - trading pauses above this spread (7500 points).

MinSecondsBetweenClosures - minimum pause between two closures on the same side (5 seconds).

CloseAttemptsPerLeg - send attempts before a leg moves to the retry queue (3).

VerifyTimeoutSeconds - how long a stuck leg keeps being checked (90 seconds).

DeferWhenMarketClosed - waits for the session instead of halting when the market is closed (on).

MarketClosedRetrySeconds - retry interval while the broker refuses orders (30 seconds).

AutoResumeAfterSeconds - clears a halt by itself after this many seconds (300; 0 waits for the panel button).

NoPartialRetryMinutes - tries partial closes again this many minutes after a broker refusal (15; 0 never).

AbortIfBookChanged - drops a plan if a leg changed between the scan and the send (on).

UseFullCommission - counts commission for both sides of a trade (on).

CommissionPerLot - fallback commission when history has none (0 reads it from history).

CloseOrderComment - the comment on closing deals.

Hedge cycle

EnableHedgeCycle - off by default.

HedgeSymbols - comma-separated list of hedge symbols; repeating one gives it more turns (XAGUSD).

HedgeSymbolRotation - how the next cycle's symbol is picked (per cycle).

HedgeMaxSymbolsInTester - limits rotation in the Strategy Tester only (2; 0 means no limit).

HedgeCycleLots - lots on each side of the balanced pair (0.01).

HedgeSliceLots - lots retired from each side per slice (0.01).

HedgeFragmentBonus - extra amount added on top of the slice cost (100).

HedgeBonusIsPercent - the bonus is a percent of the slice cost; false makes it a fixed amount (on).

HedgeMaxSurcharge - money cap on what one closure may be surcharged (0 = no cap).

HedgeMaxSurchargePercent - the most the hedge may raise any closure target, in percent (50).

HedgeMagicNumber - the hedge legs' ID; it must differ from the grid's (9754361).

HedgeReopenOnFinish - opens a fresh cycle when one finishes (on).

HedgeStartRequiresTrade - waits for the grid to open something before the first cycle (on).

HedgeIntegritySeconds - how often both legs are checked to be equal (5 seconds).

HedgeAutoRepair - repairs a lone leg automatically (on).

HedgeNakedAction - what to do with a lone leg; re-hedge by default.

HedgeMaxSpreadPoints - no hedge orders above this spread (0 = off).

HedgeSlippagePoints - maximum slippage on hedge orders (30 points).

HedgeAttemptsPerLeg - send attempts per hedge leg (3).

HedgeVerifyTimeout - how long a stuck hedge leg keeps being checked (90 seconds).

HedgeCommissionPerLot - fallback hedge commission (0 reads it from history).

HedgeOrderComment - the comment on hedge deals.

Weekly cash day

WeeklyCashDay - no new hedge cycle and no slice during your withdrawal window (off).

CashDayOfWeek - 0 Sunday, 1 Monday and so on (1).

CashCutoffHour - server hour after which no new slice is fired (21).

Panel and chart

ShowPanel - shows or hides the panel.

PanelX and PanelY - panel offsets from the chart edges (12 and 15).

PanelFontSize - base font size (9).

ShowArabic - adds an Arabic line under the English on the panel (on).

ShowChartMarks - draws plans and levels on the chart (on).

MaxTableRows - order rows shown per grid (13).

PanelCorner - the chart corner the panel is anchored to.

Entry trigger

EntryTriggerMode - the Aroon strategy arms the first level by default.

SignalBarShift - 1 means the last closed bar.

SignalBarsDelay - bars that must pass between accepted signals (30; 0 accepts every signal).

SignalValidBars - a signal stays usable for this many bars (3).

SignalAllowBuy and SignalAllowSell - turn each direction on or off separately.

SignalReverse - inverts the direction (off).

Aroon Oscillator - the signal

InpARNPeriod - bars looked back for the highest high and lowest low (25; 2 or more).

InpARNCrossLevel - the oscillator level to cross; 0 is the zero line, and a higher value asks for a stronger crossing (0).

InpARNFreshMin - Freshness Guard: the smallest value of the winning line on the signal bar (92; 0 = off).

InpARNWeakMax - Freshness Guard: the highest value the losing line may show across the weak bars (30; 100 = off).

InpARNWeakBars - Freshness Guard: how many bars, counting the signal bar, the losing line must have been weak (3).

InpARNRangeMinATR - Range Guard: the smallest width of the Aroon window, in ATR (5.0; 0 = off).

InpARNATRPeriod - the ATR length used by the Range Guard (14).

InpARNTrendFilter - 1 trades with the EMA side (default), 2 trades against it as a fade, 0 is off.

InpARNTrendMAPeriod - the trend EMA length (200).

InpShowSignalArrows - arrows on the candles where a cycle was armed (on).

InpShowARNOnChart - marks past crossings on the live chart: small arrow = passed, grey dot = refused (on).

Debug

DebugMode - detailed journal logging (off).

Margin timeframe safety

UseMarginTFSafety - off by default.

Level1MarginPct and Level1TF - at or below 6000 percent margin level, work on M15.

Level2MarginPct and Level2TF - at or below 5000 percent, work on H1.

MarginTFHysteresisPct - how far margin must recover above a level before stepping back (500).

Honest expectations

A grid carries real risk. It adds to positions while the market moves against them, there is no stop loss, and a long one-way move can hold the book open for a long time or, with too large a lot for the balance, lead to a stop-out and heavy loss. A clean Aroon crossing can still fail straight away, because a fresh extreme tells you what has happened and not what comes next. Grid Aroon Oscillator EA is careful about when a cycle begins and works steadily on each old order, but no result is promised. Pick a lot your account can carry through a bad run, test on your own broker first, and trade live only what you can afford to lose. It runs on any symbol and timeframe and needs no DLLs and no extra files.

If you try it, a short and honest review of how it behaved on your account, good or bad, helps other traders make their choice.