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Jab — User Manual

Instrument: XAUUSD (gold) · Timeframe: M15 · Magic: 89721 Account type: Hedging, raw-spread / ECN required Version: 1.51

What it does

Rests a stop order beyond a confirmed M15 swing level, in the direction of the last closed candle. On a fill, the position is managed by a two-stage trailing stop: a first stop move once the trade is 6 $/oz ahead, then a 2 $/oz trail once it is 4 $/oz ahead. Every order carries a hard stop 5 $/oz from entry the moment it is placed. Version 1.43 widened this exit: the earlier 0.37 $/oz trail sat inside the spread of most live feeds and gave back the edge. At most one position per side. No averaging, no grid, no martingale.

What changed in version 1.51 - choose a risk level

• One input decides the size: Risk level (group "1. Start here"). Each level risks a share of the balance on every trade, measured against that trade's own $5 stop: Low 0.5 %, Medium 1.0 % (the default), High 1.5 %, Hot 2.0 %. Custom uses the MONEY section exactly as before - with its defaults (a fixed 0.01 lot) Jab trades identically to 1.50 (proved deal for deal).
• The trades do not change with the level - only their size. Every level takes the same entries and exits; the drawdown grows roughly in proportion to the level.
• Small accounts. One 0.01 lot with the $5 stop risks 5 in account currency, which is 1 % of 500. Below roughly 500, Medium (and below roughly 1,000, Low) cannot size smaller than the broker's 0.01 minimum, so the trade risks more than the level says; the Journal prints a size note when that happens. The EA never refuses to trade on a small balance - the size is your choice.
• When Risk level is not Custom, the Journal says so if the MONEY section's lot or risk inputs were changed: they are not in use until Risk level is set to Custom.

Measured - MetaTrader 5 Strategy Tester, real broker ticks (100 % history quality), compiled defaults apart from the level, 10,000 deposit, 2 January 2024 to 26 September 2026 (Vantage from 4 July 2025). These are backtests:

What changed in version 1.50

• Trades identical to the previous version (proved deal for deal). It no longer sends an order into a closed market (the broker's daily break, a holiday): the request the broker would have refused is skipped, so the trades are unchanged and the journal no longer fills with 'Market closed' errors.

What changed in version 1.49 - panel, chart labels, restart-safe

• Trades identical to 1.48 (proved deal for deal; see the MANIFEST).
• A restart no longer places a new order in the middle of a bar. The bar it last acted on is saved on the account and re-read.
• Clearer journal. Every line says JAB. With Sizing = Automatic, when the free margin cannot carry your lot the order goes out at the broker minimum - now one line a day says so (Sizing = Exact sends your lot as given).
• A control panel and chart labels (below).

The panel and the chart (since 1.49)

A small panel in the top-left corner shows what the EA is doing, and the chart labels every level it waits at, every open trade's exit and every closed trade's result. Nothing is drawn in a plain Strategy Tester run; on a live chart and in the visual tester it refreshes every second. Inputs: InpPanel, InpDrawTrades, InpCleanChart (hides the grid while the EA runs and puts it back when it is removed), InpTextSize.

4 buttons. Every action is sent by the EA itself and written to the Experts tab; a panel close carries the comment "... panel close". The second-click buttons need the same button again within 5 seconds.

On the chart: the resting order as a dotted line at its swing level; the open trade's price where the trail tightens. A closed trade shows as a dotted line from its entry to its exit, labelled with why it closed and its net result.

Getting started

1. Attach to an XAUUSD (gold) M15 chart. No set file is needed; the defaults are the validated ones.
2. Confirm the journal banner shows your broker's clock and the resolved profile.
3. Leave it running. It manages its own stop on every tick, so a VPS is recommended.

Settings that matter

Advanced inputs (gating, level selection, exit geometry) are grouped in the panel and documented in their labels. The defaults are what was validated; change them only deliberately.

Optional preset: Cadence

presets/Cadence.set loosens three entry inputs (Minimum room 8, Extreme lookback 36 hours, Maximum rejections 3) and leaves everything else at the defaults. Strategy Tester, real broker ticks, Fusion Markets / Vantage Markets / Pepperstone EU / BlackBull Markets, 2025-2026: it roughly doubles the number of trades and earned 31-56 % more than the defaults at a lower profit factor on every feed, with the same time between equity highs. It is a cadence choice, not a better trade: each trade earns less, there are more of them, and the extra trades are the ones that suffer most from a wide spread — on a demo feed with a poor spread the preset barely kept pace with its own cost while the defaults stayed clear of it. Use it only on a tight-spread broker, and expect a rougher curve.

Deposit and position sizing

Since 1.51 the size follows the Risk level (Medium by default, see 'What changed in version 1.51'); before that it shipped with a fixed 0.01 lot, and the table below is that fixed-lot record. The strategy never refuses to trade on a small balance; what changes with the deposit is how large its drawdown feels. The table below is Strategy Tester, real broker ticks (100% history quality), the shipped 0.01 lot, expressed against different balances.

* OANDA's profit factor over this window sits under the floor this manual quotes; the feed still closed positive over the window and is shown only as the spread-survival check, never as a performance claim.

Note on risk percent. Below roughly 500 USD (0.01 lot x the $5 stop = 5 USD = 1 % of 500), a 1% risk calculation produces a position smaller than the broker's 0.01 minimum lot, so it floors there and behaves exactly like the fixed lot. The risk knob only starts doing anything once the balance can express a larger position. Compounding multiplies the end balance and the drawdown together; judge a setting by its drawdown, not by its end balance.

Quiet gold. Strategy Tester, real ticks, OANDA (a demo account, shown only as era context), 2021-2023: the only feed that carries that period's tick data. Jab sat flat across those three quiet years at 0.01 lot, with a shallow deepest drawdown of 1.7% of a 10,000 deposit. It earns when gold ranges expand and preserves capital when they do not.

Requirements and limits

• Raw-spread/ECN account is required. On a wide-spread dealing account the strategy's small, frequent profits do not survive the cost. This is a measured dependency.
• Backtested on real broker tick data. Backtest results only — not a promise or forecast of future performance. Trading carries risk of loss.
• This build is designed for its own instrument family. Loaded on another symbol it will report that fact and remain flat rather than trade an unvalidated market.

Is it waiting, or is it broken? — the regime monitor

This product earns in a particular market state and goes quiet outside it. That is disclosed above, but a disclosure without a number is not usable: meeting a flat stretch, you cannot tell whether the machine is waiting for its conditions or whether its edge has changed. This section gives you the one measurement that separates those, taken from this product's own record.

The state to watch is the daily Average True Range of the traded instrument, expressed as a percentile of its own trailing 250 days — not a fixed number of dollars or pips, which goes stale as the instrument reprices. Most charting packages will plot ATR; the percentile is simply where today's ATR sits within the last year of its own values.

Not yet measured on this product. The tripwire requires a real-tick record of at least 36 months so the good-state sample can bound anything; the validation runs behind this manual are shorter than that. Rather than print a number from a sample too thin to support it, this section states the method and leaves the threshold open.

What to do in the meantime. Track the daily ATR percentile as described above alongside your monthly result. A flat stretch while the percentile is low is the behaviour this manual already describes. A flat stretch while the percentile is high is the case worth reporting, because that is the combination that would indicate a change rather than a wait.

What this cannot tell you. While the market is outside the good state, a temporary quiet period and a permanent change in behaviour look identical. The tripwire is the earliest point at which they separate, not an early warning. Nothing here is a guarantee; it is the historical extreme of a backtested record, and being beyond it is evidence rather than proof.

Prop-firm rules: your firm's own numbers (since 1.48)

The input group Prop-firm rules enforces your firm's limits. Every rule is off (0) until you type your firm's number, and with every rule off the EA trades exactly as it did before the group existed.

When a limit is about to be reached, the EA closes its own trades, deletes its own orders and stops opening new ones: until the firm's next day for the daily rules, for good for the maximum loss and the profit target. The Journal says which rule acted and at what equity:

JAB prop-firm rule: daily loss limit (equity 95512.40, day start 100020.00, firm limit 95020.00) - trades closed, orders deleted, paused until the firm's next day

and the start line lists what is on:

JAB prop-firm rules: account size 100000.00 | daily loss 5.00% of account size from the higher of day-start balance and equity - the EA acts at 4.50% of account size | maximum loss 10.00% (fixed) - the EA acts at 9.50% | ...

The inputs (group "Prop-firm rules - your firm's numbers")

Examples - what to type

From the LuxAlgo prop-firm directory on 23 September 2026 (the daily-loss wording is inferred by that directory; your firm's own rules page is always the authority, and firms change their rules):

All six count the daily loss as a share of the account size from the previous day's closing balance, open trades included. Leave counted from at the higher of balance and equity - it is never later than the firm's own meter.

Profit target: set it for the challenge phases only. When the target is reached the EA stops for good on that login; on the funded account set it back to 0.

The firm's day. Most firms restart the daily loss at midnight of the platform's own clock: leave 0. If your firm names another time, convert it to the Market Watch clock. Gold is closed for about an hour around the broker's midnight on most platforms, so for gold an hour's difference rarely matters; a market that trades through midnight (Bitcoin) needs the exact hour.

Restarts. The EA remembers the account size, the day's starting value, the highest balance and whether a rule stopped it, across restarts of the platform (terminal global variables named PR<login>_<magic>_...). A restart in the middle of the day does not give it a fresh daily allowance.

What these rules do not do

• They close this EA's trades only. The limits are measured on the whole account's equity, so trades from another EA or by hand count toward them; give every EA on the account the same numbers.
• The EA acts on the first price tick past its limit. A gap or a very fast market can carry the loss a little further before the closing trades fill - that is what the safety margin is for; do not set it to 0 on a real challenge.
• No news filter. Some funded accounts forbid opening or closing trades a few minutes around high-impact releases. The platform's economic calendar cannot be replayed in the Strategy Tester, so a news rule could not be proved the way every rule above was; pause the EA by hand around those releases if your firm requires it.
• No minimum trade duration and no minimum number of trading days.

Proof. With every rule off, this version placed the same deals as the version before it, deal for deal (20 trades, net +12.19, Pepperstone real ticks, 28 August - 19 September 2026). Each rule was then switched on at a level the same weeks reach; at all 3 triggers the EA closed its trades, opened nothing until the pause ended, and placed exactly the same deals as with the rules off up to the first trigger.

Support

Questions and issue reports through the MQL5 Market product page.

Leverage changes the minimum more than anything else

The deposit table above assumes a broker that grants 1:500 on gold, where one 0.01 lot ties up about 8 USD of margin and the binding constraint is drawdown. On an EU-regulated account the retail cap for gold is 1:20, where the same 0.01 lot ties up about 202 USD. This EA rests up to two pending orders, so on such an account it needs roughly 600 USD before it can operate at all, regardless of how well it performs.

On a broker offering 1:20 (the EU retail cap for gold) a 100 USD deposit cannot open even one pending order - the server rejects it for insufficient margin, and Jab takes no trades. On a 1:500 broker the same 100 USD deposit trades normally; see the deposit ladder above (Strategy Tester, real ticks, OANDA) for how its drawdown grows as the balance shrinks. That is the broker's margin rule, not the EA's: Jab never refuses to trade because a balance is small - it narrows to the broker's minimum volume and sends the order.

Complete reference — every input, its set-file key and default