The Midas Scalper: Precision Gold Scalping

The Midas Strategy is a highly specialized, grid-style scalping algorithm designed exclusively for the Gold (XAUUSD) market. This bot thrives in quiet, stable, and range-bound conditions. It is built entirely around the philosophy of "aim small, miss small"—it meticulously accumulates small, consistent gains by buying micro-dips and optionally selling micro-peaks, locking in profits via trailing stops, and shutting down automatically once a predefined profit target is reached.

Performance & Backtest Results This algorithm has been rigorously tested. Based on the provided historical replay report, the cBot (named "The Newer Midas" in the test) was evaluated on the XAUUSD symbol.

• The strategy required a starting capital of $10,000.
• During the testing period, it generated a net profit of $1485.24.
• The algorithm executed a total of 2720 trades.
• Out of the total executions, 2530 were winning trades.
• The system maintained a highly efficient profit factor of 36.79.
• The maximum equity drawdown reached during the test was 28.11%.

⚠️ IMPORTANT MARKET WARNINGS - READ BEFORE USE

• Capital Requirement: This bot requires a minimum account balance of $10,000 to safely absorb floating drawdowns.
• Market Conditions: This bot requires a stable market. If Gold suffers an economic shock or is experiencing exponential, violent price action, do not run this bot. Wait for the storm to pass.
• Don't Get Greedy: Keep your profit goals modest and your maximum positions reasonable. The bot relies on Gold reverting to its mean.

All proceeds from the sale of this beta version go directly toward funding future improvements and advanced AI integrations.

How to Use the Parameters (User Guide)

To safely operate The Midas Strategy, you must understand how to configure its core modules. You can run it on default settings for standard scalping or tweak it to buy only large, $100+ dips.

Core Trading Setup

• Volume (Lots): The position size for every individual trade. Keep this low (e.g., 0.01) because the bot opens multiple positions.
• Take Profit: Your target exit per trade.
• Lock SL Trigger & Lock SL Level: This acts as a trailing stop. Once a trade is in profit by the "Trigger" amount, the Stop Loss is permanently moved into profit at the "Lock Level." This ensures winning trades cannot turn into losing trades.
• Move Threshold (DipThresholdPips): The distance the price must move from the recent peak/trough before the bot opens a new trade. Increase this to a high number if you only want the bot to buy major price crashes.
• Max Open Positions: The absolute cap on how many trades the bot can hold in a single direction. While it allows up to 100, choosing a lower number is highly recommended for account safety.
• Min Time Between Trades: A throttle (in seconds) to prevent the bot from opening too many trades at the exact same price during a flash crash.
• Enable Sell Grid: By default, the bot only buys dips. Toggle this to True if you want it to also short the market at local peaks.

Profit Goals & Pausing

• Profit Goal ($): The ultimate target for your trading session. Once your total gain hits this dollar amount, the bot stops opening new trades. It will immediately close all trades that are currently in profit, and patiently let any losing trades ride until they individually turn a profit.
• Auto-Resume After Goal: If False, the bot shuts down entirely after banking the goal. If True, it rests and starts a new cycle.
• Rest Before Next Goal Leg: If Auto-Resume is enabled, this dictates how many hours the bot rests before starting its next cycle.

Risk Management (Kill Switches)

• Capital Floor Guard: Your ultimate safety net. Set a minimum Total P&L dollar amount. If your total strategy P&L drops below this floor, the bot will dynamically close its worst losing position tick-by-tick until you are back above the floor. A floor of $0 means the bot will never risk your initial principal—only banked profit.
• Danger Zone Swing & Window: An early-warning volatility detector. If the market swings too far (Pips) in too short a time (Minutes), it defensively closes trades that have a small loss and pauses trading for a cooldown period.
• Hard Kill Switch: The last resort for extreme market shocks. If tripped by massive, violent movement, the bot instantly liquidates all positions—win or lose—and forces a multi-day rest period to let the market stabilize.

This guide breaks down the operational mechanics, risk management layers, and parameter configurations for the Midas Grid Strategy cBot.

Designed for volatile assets like Gold (XAUUSD), this algorithm is a dual-directional grid scalper built around an absolute prioritization of capital preservation. Rather than relying on simple stop-losses, it utilizes dynamic profit-locking, soft and hard kill switches for extreme volatility, and a managed wind-down protocol for hitting daily/weekly targets.

1. Core Operating Principles

• Execution Logic: It buys localized dips from a tracked high and sells localized peaks from a tracked low.
• Slippage Control: It uses MarketRange orders. If liquidity thins and the broker cannot fill the order within your exact pip tolerance, the order is rejected rather than entering at a terrible price.
• State Persistence: The bot saves its realized profit, drawdown limits, and cooldown timers to local storage. If cTrader crashes or you restart your VPS, it remembers exactly where it left off.

2. Parameter Reference Guide

Every parameter is mapped exactly to the cTrader UI groupings.

General

• Volume (Lots): The base position size for every single trade (both Buy and Sell). Position size is static to maintain predictable grid risk scaling.

Buy Settings

Controls the dip-buying logic. These operate completely independently of the Sell side.

• Buy Take Profit (Pips): Hard broker-side take profit level for every buy order.
• Buy Stop Loss (Pips): Hard broker-side stop loss. This is an absolute "disaster" stop and should sit outside the bot’s internal danger-zone limits (e.g., 400+ pips). It protects against sudden server disconnects.
• Buy Lock SL Trigger (Pips): The amount of floating profit a position must reach before the bot secures a breakeven/profit-lock stop loss.
• Buy Lock SL Level (Pips): Where the stop loss is placed once triggered. (Example: Trigger at 25, Level at 20 = when profit hits 25 pips, SL moves to +20 pips, locking in profit).
• Buy Dip Threshold (Pips): The required price drop from the tracked peak (for the first trade) or from the lowest open buy position (for subsequent grid trades) to trigger a new buy.
• Max Buy Positions: The hard cap on concurrent open buy trades.

Sell Settings

Controls the peak-selling logic.

• Enable Sell Grid: Toggles the short side. Disabled by default.
• Sell Take Profit / Stop Loss (Pips): Hard broker-side limits for short trades.
• Sell Lock SL Trigger / Level (Pips): Profit-locking mechanism for short trades.
• Sell Rise Threshold (Pips): The required price rise from the tracked trough (or highest open sell) to trigger a new short.
• Max Sell Positions: Cap on concurrent open sell trades.

Trade Timing

• Min Time Between Trades (Seconds): A throttle on high-frequency execution. Prevents a cluster of market ticks from firing multiple grid entries in the same microsecond. Does not throttle closing orders.

Session Filter

Blocks new entries during highly illiquid or unpredictable hours. Open trades will continue to be managed and closed normally.

• Enable Session Filter: Toggles time-based execution.
• Session Start / End Hour (UTC, 0-23): The operational window. The logic automatically supports wraparound windows (e.g., 22 to 1 correctly means 10 PM to 1 AM).

Execution

• Max Acceptable Slippage (Pips): Bounds the Market Range order. If the broker attempts to fill the order worse than this distance from the requested price, the bot rejects the entry.
• Max Acceptable Spread (Pips): Live spread monitor. If the spread widens beyond this cap (typical during major news events or rollover), the bot suspends new entries until liquidity returns.

Profit Goal

A managed target system. When reached, the bot enters a "Wind-Down" phase rather than force-closing the whole grid.

• Profit Goal ($): The target dollar amount (realized + floating profit combined).
• Auto-Resume After Goal: If true, the bot rests for a specified period and then starts a new cycle. If false, the bot halts permanently and awaits your manual restart.
• Rest Before Next Goal Leg (Hours): The cooldown timer before the bot begins trading again (requires Auto-Resume to be true).

The Wind-Down Mechanic: When the goal is hit, new entries stop. The bot immediately closes any positions currently in profit. It leaves negative positions open to ride out the market until they independently hit profit or their own stop losses. Once the grid is clear, the rest period begins.

Capital Floor Guard

Your ultimate algorithmic equity protection. It monitors total strategy P&L (ignoring manual trades or other bots on the same account).

• Capital Floor - Min Total P&L ($): An absolute dollar floor. If set to $0, the bot will never allow the strategy to go net-negative on starting capital—it only risks previously banked profits.
• Min Loss Before Eligible (Pips): Prevents the bot from closing fresh trades that are displaying normal spread-related floating loss. A trade must be in the red by at least this many pips to be eligible for emergency trimming.
• Reference Capital for Drawdown % ($): Your starting allocation for this specific bot.
• Max Drawdown From Peak (%): Triggers the guard if the strategy falls this percentage from its highest historical high-water mark.

How it acts: If breached, the bot blocks all new entries and trims the single worst eligible loser. It checks again on the next tick. This acts as a bleed-arrestor rather than a panic-close.

Danger Zone

A soft volatility detector designed to catch early signs of a market flush.

• Danger Zone Swing (Pips): The size of the price swing required to trigger a defensive stance.
• Danger Zone Window (Minutes): The lookback period for calculating the swing.
• Max Acceptable Closure Loss (Pips): The soft-close threshold. If the Danger Zone triggers, the bot will instantly close any position whose loss is less than this cap (cutting small losses early) but will leave heavy bags alone to avoid locking in catastrophic localized damage.
• Danger Zone Cooldown (Minutes): How long the bot waits for the market to calm down before allowing new entries.

Hard Kill Switch

The nuclear option for black swan events. Overrides everything, including the Profit Goal wind-down.

• Hard Kill Switch Swing (Pips): The violent price movement required to trigger.
• Hard Kill Switch Window (Minutes): The lookback period.
• Rest Period After Hard Stop (Days): An extended penalty box.
• Manual Override (End Active Hard Stop Rest Now): A safety toggle. Because the bot remembers its state, simply restarting a stopped bot will not bypass a Hard Kill timeout. You must check this box, restart the bot, and then uncheck it.

Win Streak Rest

• Consecutive Wins Before Rest: Number of sequential closed winners (Buy and Sell combined) before the bot takes a breather.
• Win Streak Rest Duration (Minutes): Pauses execution to prevent the bot from rapidly deploying into the exact top of an exhausted trend.

3. Operational Workflow

On every single incoming price tick, the bot processes logic in this exact hierarchy. A trigger at step 1 prevents step 2 from even being evaluated.

1. State Loading: Checks local memory (is it in a cooldown? is it winding down?).
2. Hard Kill Switch: Is the market crashing? If yes -> liquidate everything, halt.
3. Capital Floor Guard: Is the equity curve breaking structure? If yes -> block entries, trim the worst loser.
4. Profit Goal: Have we made enough money today? If yes -> block entries, harvest winners.
5. Danger Zone / Win Streak: Are we in a soft timeout? If yes -> hold.
6. Environment Filters: Is the spread too wide? Is the session closed? If yes -> hold.
7. Execution Logic: If price has dropped/risen past the threshold -> send MarketRange entry.

UPDATED Chart Setup

• Symbol: XAUUSD
• Period: m1 (1-minute chart)

General & Trade Timing

• Starting Capital: $10,000.00 (This must be set in cTrader to match the Reference Capital parameter mathematically)
• Volume In Lots: 0.01
• Min Seconds Between Trades: 0.0

Buy Settings

• Buy Take Profit: 100.0 pips
• Buy Stop Loss: 10000.0 pips
• Buy Lock Trigger: 25.0 pips
• Buy Lock Level: 20.0 pips
• Buy Dip Threshold: 100.0 pips
• Max Buy Positions: 1

Sell Settings

• Enable Sell Grid: true
• Sell Take Profit: 100.0 pips
• Sell Stop Loss: 10000.0 pips
• Sell Lock Trigger: 25.0 pips
• Sell Lock Level: 20.0 pips
• Sell Rise Threshold: 100.0 pips
• Max Sell Positions: 1

Execution & Filters

• Enable Session Filter: true
• Session Start Hour (UTC): 3
• Session End Hour (UTC): 7
• Max Slippage: 25.0 pips
• Max Spread: 30.0 pips

Profit Goal

• Profit Target: $1000.0
• Auto-Resume After Goal: true
• Goal Rest Hours: 0.0

Capital Floor Guard

• Capital Floor: -$2000.0
• Min Loss Pips For Guard: 100.0 pips
• Reference Capital: $10000.0
• Max Drawdown From Peak: 20.0%

Danger Zone

• Danger Zone Swing: 5000.0 pips
• Danger Zone Window: 30 minutes
• Max Closure Loss: 10000.0 pips
• Danger Zone Cooldown: 120 minutes

Hard Kill Switch

• Hard Stop Swing: 10000.0 pips
• Hard Stop Window: 240 minutes
• Hard Stop Rest Days: 1.0
• Override Hard Stop Rest: false

Win Streak

• Win Streak Rest Count: 100
• Win Streak Rest Minutes: 1

Key Parameter Quick Reference for Users:

• Trailing Lot Scaling: Enable EnableTrailingLotScaling, define step profit in Reference Capital ($), and set lot increments via Reference Lots.
• Calm Hours Strategy: Keep EnableDeadZone and EnableAsianSession set to true while disabling EnableLondonNyOverlap to keep entries restricted to lower-volatility market windows.