Defensive news handling for any strategy

Orion News Shield is a MetaTrader 5 utility that protects an account around scheduled economic releases. It reads the economic calendar built into the terminal, identifies events that affect the currencies of your open and watched symbols, and applies the protective action you have chosen for a window before and after each event. Orion does not trade the news; its whole purpose is to keep other strategies, automated or manual, out of the few minutes each week when spreads widen and prices gap.

Three levels of protection

For each impact level, high, medium and low, you choose one of three actions. Pause disables Algo Trading for the window so that no Expert Advisor on the terminal can open new positions, then re-enables it afterwards. Tighten moves the stop loss of open positions to a configurable distance or to break even where the trade allows it, leaving the trade open. Close exits positions on the affected symbols at market a set number of minutes before the event and, optionally, blocks re-entry until the window has passed. Actions can be restricted to specific magic numbers, so a strategy that is designed to trade news can be excluded.

Currency matching

Orion maps each event's currency to the symbols it affects, so a US release protects EURUSD, USDJPY, XAUUSD and US index CFDs while leaving EURGBP alone. Gold and indices can be given their own sensitivity, because they often react to US data more than a currency pair does. You can also add manual events, for example a central bank speech that the calendar does not classify as high impact, from the panel.

Reliability details

The utility refreshes its event list every fifteen minutes and displays the next three events on the chart panel with a countdown. If the calendar cannot be reached, the panel shows a warning and Orion falls back to the last list it saved to disk. Every action is written to the Experts log with the event name, the affected symbols and the exact time, so you can audit afterwards what Orion did and why. Actions are idempotent: if the terminal restarts inside a window, Orion re-reads the calendar and re-applies the correct state without repeating a close.

What you receive

The download includes OrionNewsShield.ex5, three profiles (scalper, swing and prop-firm) that preselect actions and windows for common use cases, and a PDF explaining how to combine Orion with Expert Advisors that have their own news filters so the two do not fight. Updates are included for the lifetime of the product.

Limits

Orion depends on the calendar data your broker provides through MetaTrader 5, which can differ in timing and impact classification from other sources. Closing positions before news protects against gaps but also gives up moves that would have gone your way; that trade-off is yours to make. Orion carries no performance data because it does not generate returns.

• MetaTrader 5 build 4410 or later with the broker's economic calendar enabled in the terminal.
• Attach to one chart only; Orion supervises the whole account from that chart.
• Permission for the utility to toggle Algo Trading when using the Pause action (enabled by default in the terminal options).
• Continuous connection; a VPS is recommended so windows are never missed.

1. Download and extract the archive from your account.
2. In MetaTrader 5 open File > Open Data Folder and copy OrionNewsShield.ex5 into MQL5/Experts.
3. Copy the profiles folder into MQL5/Files/OrionNews.
4. Restart the terminal so the utility appears in the Navigator under Expert Advisors.
5. Enable Algo Trading on the toolbar and confirm automated trading is allowed under Tools > Options > Expert Advisors.
6. Open any chart, for example EURUSD H1, and drag OrionNewsShield onto it, ticking Allow Algo Trading.
7. Enter your license email, choose a profile in the inputs and click OK.
8. Confirm the panel lists upcoming events with countdowns; if it shows a calendar warning, check that the calendar is enabled in your terminal settings.