Modular Range Breakout EA

Modular Range Breakout — no magic, just a range breakout strategy known and proven for decades.

Most breakout EAs stop at the entry signal. Everything after it — risk, exits, market conditions, and whether you can actually see what is happening — is left to the user. This one is built the other way round. The breakout is the simple part. Everything around it is where the work went.

No hidden logic, no curve-fitted tricks, no unrealistic promises. A transparent system where every filter, risk profile and protection layer is optional and in your hands.

• No martingale, grid or recovery systems
• Every position always carries a stop loss, so risk is defined before the trade exists
• Ready to use with fully integrated symbol presets, built on anti-overfitting optimisation
• Fully customisable, so you can develop your own edge across multiple markets
• Multi-symbol trading as a foundation for a diversified portfolio
• Optional KPI visuals on the chart (profit, drawdown, news)
• Prop firm features: daily drawdown limit, hard stops, profit target protection, account-wide news filter and configuration randomisation
• No silent misconfigurations — anything that does not add up is explained in the Experts tab

Designed for traders who care about structure, risk control and consistency, on a personal account and inside a prop firm environment alike.

The EA measures a range between a start and an end time you choose. Once that range closes it places a stop order on each side and waits. Price breaks out, the order fills, and from that moment the exit is entirely yours to define.

Every position always includes a stop loss. Choose the one that fits the market: the opposite side of the range, a fixed distance in points, or a percentage of the entry price. It can trail as the trade moves in your favour, with your own trigger, distance and step.

The exit method is a separate choice:

• Time-based — a stop loss and no take profit; the position closes on the stop or at a fixed time
• Hybrid — a take profit is used, but the position still closes at a fixed time if it is not reached
• SL and TP only — the position closes strictly on its levels

Take profit, when you use one, can be a fixed distance in points, a percentage of the entry price, or a multiple of the range size.

• Direction filter — long only or short only, so you never trade against your own bias
• Breakout selection — take only the first breakout of the day, or allow a second attempt
• Breakout confirmation — wait for a candle to close outside the range (M1, M5, M15 or H1) instead of entering on the tick
• Range size filter — skip ranges that are too tight or too wide, in points or as a percentage of price
• Moving average filter — only trade in the direction the market is already leaning
• Day-of-week filter — switch off the days that do not suit the market you trade

Not everyone wants to spend weeks on optimisation runs. Select a preset, set your risk, and you are trading. No external files, no manual setup, no guesswork.

Each preset is the result of large-scale optimisation, often more than 100,000 parameter combinations over a ten-year period. The output is analysed on profitability, drawdown and stability together rather than on a single metric, weighted deliberately towards consistency and risk control instead of absolute return. A robustness test then discards configurations that fall apart when their inputs are nudged slightly; only parameter sets sitting inside stable plateaus, where similar values produce similar results, are kept. The aim is not the best backtest, it is a configuration that still behaves the same when the market does not.

A preset is not a single configuration. It runs the full set of range setups that belong to that symbol, each with its own timing and its own character, so one quiet range does not decide the whole day. The US30 preset runs three of those setups. The EURJPY, GBPUSD, USDJPY and XAUUSD presets run two each.

Every setup takes at most one trade per day: it enters on the first breakout and holds one position at a time. That gives you a hard daily ceiling — up to three trades a day on US30, up to two a day on each of the other presets. Read that ceiling correctly: the risk you enter applies to each trade, not to the day. Running US30 at 1% per trade, a day on which all three setups trade puts 3% at risk, not 1%. The EA prints the exact number for your preset in the Experts tab the moment you attach it, so your total exposure is never a guess.

Presets are actively maintained and evolve along with my own trading. Improvements and newly added symbols arrive through a normal EA update — nothing to download, nothing to import.

Risk management that scales with your account

Choose the profile that fits your approach: a fixed amount per trade, a percentage of equity, a fixed lot size, or a daily risk budget distributed automatically across your trades — the profile for anyone who wants to manage risk centrally and strictly, such as prop firm trading. Under that budget profile the EA calculates the available risk from your equity at the start of the day and spreads it across the maximum number of trades, while a cap on any single trade keeps one position from ever becoming too large.

Trading a smaller account? If a calculated position size would fall below your broker's minimum, you decide what happens: skip the trade so the risk stays exactly as configured, or execute at the minimum lot and accept slightly more risk. The EA never scales a position without telling you.

A maximum drawdown, measured against either a fixed starting balance or a trailing equity high, blocks new trades once the limit is reached. A daily drawdown limit closes what is open. A profit target closes everything the moment it is genuinely reached, spread and commission included, so a met challenge target is not handed back.

The filter retrieves the live economic calendar and, depending on your preference, blocks new trades, closes positions, or temporarily lifts stop loss and take profit around the event and restores them afterwards. It works in three ways: on this EA's trades only, on every position on the symbol including those of other EAs, or as a pure protection layer that opens no trades at all — useful for shielding another EA that has no news filter of its own.

It survives a restart or a crash without ever leaving a position unprotected, and if a stop loss or take profit cannot be restored for any reason, the EA closes the position rather than leave unmanaged risk open.

Trailing stop, break-even and trailing take profit each activate independently, so an open position moves with the market instead of waiting statically on a fixed level.

The daily risk budget, the drawdown limits and the profit target protection are all built with challenge and verification phases in mind. Alongside them, a built-in randomisation feature lets you vary your configuration slightly, so your setup is not identical to everyone else running the same preset. Always verify your prop firm's own rules before running the EA on a live account.

The equity curves and full reports further down this page show the complete picture, including drawdown and profit factor. Each image covers one preset with all of its setups running together — that is how the preset actually trades, so that is what is tested.

Test conditions:

• Historical tick data: Dukascopy
• Test period: 01-01-2016 to 01-01-2026
• Starting balance: $10,000
• Two separate runs per preset: a fixed $100 per trade, and 1% of account equity per trade
• Commissions and spread set to standard broker rates within the test environment

Results are based on historical data and do not guarantee future performance. Extended drawdown is part of this strategy: a symbol can underperform for months before recovering. That is precisely why the presets run several setups, and why spreading across low-correlated symbols matters. Because this strategy captures expansion and momentum, it also pairs well with approaches that do better in quiet, sideways markets.

Magic numbers are reserved in a block

A preset runs several setups, and each needs its own magic number to keep its trades apart. They are derived from the single magic number you enter, so you never have to type more than one. The EA prints the exact numbers it claims in the Experts tab at startup — keep those free for this EA and do not assign them to anything else on the same account. Running the EA on several charts with the same base number is safe: every lookup matches on symbol and magic together.

Presets only override the strategy

Selecting a preset configures the entry and exit settings, which are marked accordingly in the inputs. Risk profile, position sizing, account protection, chart visuals and magic number always remain your own choice.

Daily risk budget is portfolio-wide

Under that risk profile, the maximum daily positions setting is the total across your entire setup that day, not just this chart. If you run the EA on several symbols or alongside other EAs, enter your full portfolio total; otherwise the budget is divided incorrectly.

Enabling the news filter (required setup)

The news filter retrieves live data from Forex Factory, so WebRequest access has to be enabled or it stays inactive:

1. Go to Tools → Options
2. Open the Expert Advisors tab
3. Enable "Allow WebRequest for listed URL"
4. Add: https://nfs.faireconomy.media

WebRequest does not work inside the Strategy Tester, so the news filter is disabled automatically during backtests.

Checking the news filter

Enable "Show news filter status on chart" to see directly whether a news window is active, or enable "Print news event in Experts journal for verification" to log every detected event with its currency, impact and exact timing. Compare that with the Forex Factory calendar; if they match, the filter is working. The EA converts news times to your broker's server time automatically, with the GMT offset set to auto-detect. If the times do not line up, set the offset manually.

Resetting the equity-trailing-high reference

Using a trailing equity high as your protection reference? That value is stored in a terminal Global Variable so it survives a restart, which means it can go stale after a withdrawal. To reset: press F3, find the equity-high variable for this EA, and delete it. It reinitialises from your current equity.

Incorrect settings are never silently ignored

If a combination does not add up — a filter enabled without a valid value, a trailing stop without a stop loss — the EA does not quietly run with it. It shows a clear message in the Experts tab explaining exactly what needs to change. You will never be left wondering why nothing is happening.

Timeframe, execution and VPS

The EA does not depend on the timeframe of the chart it is attached to. It places stop orders at the range boundaries, so the broker watches the level rather than the EA — but stable execution still matters. A VPS and a broker with low costs and fast execution are strongly recommended.