How it works

Both strategies share one position. If a position is open, the other strategy waits; the first signal wins. Each strategy can be switched off in the inputs, and buys or sells can be disabled separately.

All times are New York time (Eastern Time). The expert advisor converts them to your broker's server time on its own, including the daylight saving changes in the US and in Europe. You do not need to change anything twice a year.

The trading day is the CME day, from 17:00 to 17:00 New York time. Positions are closed 5 minutes before the daily CME halt, so nothing is held through the daily break or the weekend break. If a Strategy 1 trade was still valid at the halt, it can be reopened after the market reopens; it is then marked continued in the history.

On CME early-close days (for example around US holidays) the expert advisor closes 5 minutes before the early close. The list of these days is built in through 2027 and is updated every December. If your broker's session ends early on a day that is not on the list, it also closes 5 minutes before that end.

• Every order is sent with a stop loss and a take profit. There is no trade without a stop.
• Strategy 1: stop loss 75 index points and take profit 150 index points by default. These two values are the only strategy settings you can change. On 1 MNQ contract, 75 points are $150 and 150 points are $300.
• Strategy 2: the stop is placed on the other side of the opening range, within fixed minimum and maximum limits, with a fixed target. These are not adjustable.
• During a trade, the target can be moved closer to the entry price to take a smaller profit. The stop loss is never moved further away.
• A trade can also end earlier on the strategy's own exit rule, at the end of its window, or before the daily halt.

Distances are in index points, so the same settings work on MNQ, NQ and Nasdaq-100 CFDs. The volume and the money values come from the symbol's tick value. If the expert advisor is attached to a symbol that is not priced like the Nasdaq-100, it scales the distances to that symbol's price and says so in the journal. It is designed and tested for the Nasdaq-100 only.

• Daily profit target. When the day's closed profit reaches a fixed target, scaled to your lot size, no new trades are opened until the next CME day.
• Pause after three winning trades. After three winning trades in the same CME day, it stops opening new trades until the next day.
• Optional prop firm limits. A maximum daily loss and a minimum equity level, both off by default. When one is reached, the program closes its own positions and stops opening new ones (for the rest of the CME day, or while equity stays below the level). See installation & settings.

Only the expert advisor's own trades count toward these limits. The panel and the journal tell you when a limit is active ("Daily profit target reached", "Daily pause after winning trades").

• Margin. Before every order it calculates the margin needed and uses at most 95% of free margin. If the margin is not enough, it lowers the volume to what fits or skips the order, with a message such as "skipped: not enough free margin. Lower the volume or add funds."
• Broker limits. It respects the broker's minimum stop distance and freeze level, and normalizes the volume to the minimum, maximum and step of the symbol.
• Netting accounts. If another position already exists on the same symbol (a manual trade or another expert advisor), it does not open a trade and writes why.
• Hedging accounts. It tracks its own positions by ticket and still holds only one at a time.
• Broker clock. It detects the broker's time offset automatically and rechecks it every 5 minutes. Once a day it compares the clock with the price history and warns if your computer's clock or time zone look wrong.

On a live chart the expert advisor shows a small panel with: the instrument profile, which strategies are on, the Strategy 1 stop and target, the lot size, the broker clock and New York time, whether the trading window is open, the CME day, the day's result, the current position, and the reason it is not entering when it is waiting. It can be switched off in the inputs.

Messages in the journal are in plain English and include the cause and what to do about it.

The strategies are the product. We publish everything you need to judge the risk: when it trades, how each trade is protected, the full backtest with losses, and the forward test. We do not publish the entry conditions.

You can still see every trade it makes. The free demo on the MQL5 product page runs in your own Strategy Tester, on your broker's data.