A London-open system with a fixed daily routine

Shadow GBPUSD is a session Expert Advisor for MetaTrader 4 that trades one instrument, GBPUSD, during one part of the day, the London session. It follows the same routine every trading day: measure the range that formed during the late Asian session, wait for London liquidity to arrive, trade the first move that leaves that range with conviction, and be flat again before the New York lunch period when volume dries up.

The daily sequence

From 05:00 to 07:55 London time the EA records the high and low of the M15 bars. At 08:00 it places a buy stop above the range and a sell stop below it, each offset by a configurable buffer to avoid being triggered by the first spike. When one order fills, the other is cancelled. The stop loss sits at the opposite side of the range, and the take profit is set as a multiple of the range height, capped so that unusually wide ranges do not produce unrealistic targets. If neither order has filled by 10:30 London time, both are removed and the EA waits for the next day.

Managing the open trade

Once in a trade, Shadow moves the stop to break even after price has covered half the range height, then trails behind swing points on the M15 chart. Any position still open at 12:30 New York time is closed at market. Because the routine is fixed, you always know when the EA can and cannot have exposure, which makes it straightforward to run alongside a separate afternoon strategy.

Filters that keep it out of bad days

Shadow skips the session when the pre-London range is narrower than a minimum in pips, because tiny ranges tend to produce false breakouts, and when the range is wider than a maximum, because the stop would be too far away for the configured risk. It also skips days with a scheduled Bank of England rate decision or UK CPI release inside the trading window when the broker supplies calendar data, and it never trades the last banking day of the year or the Monday after a UK bank holiday, both of which are input-controlled.

What you receive

The archive includes ShadowGBPUSD.ex4, presets for brokers on GMT+2/GMT+3 and GMT+0 server time, the tester configuration for the sample backtest, and a PDF guide. The guide devotes a full page to verifying that your session window lines up with real London hours, because a wrong offset is by far the most common setup mistake with session systems.

Expectations

Breakout systems win less than half of their trades and rely on winners being larger than losers. The sample backtest below shows a win rate in the low forties and includes stretches of five or six consecutive losing sessions. Those figures are tester output labelled as sample data, not a promise. Please run Shadow on a demo account through at least one month of real London sessions before committing capital.

• MetaTrader 4 build 1415 or later.
• GBPUSD with a typical London-open spread under 2 pips.
• Minimum recommended balance: USD 250 at 1 percent risk per trade.
• Terminal online from 04:55 London time onward every weekday; a VPS is strongly recommended.
• Correct broker GMT offset and daylight-saving setting so the range window lands on real London hours.

1. Download and extract the archive from your account downloads page.
2. Open MetaTrader 4, go to File > Open Data Folder and copy ShadowGBPUSD.ex4 into MQL4/Experts.
3. Copy the .set files into MQL4/Presets.
4. Restart the terminal so the expert is listed in the Navigator.
5. Turn on AutoTrading on the toolbar and allow live trading in Tools > Options > Expert Advisors.
6. Open a GBPUSD M15 chart and drag ShadowGBPUSD onto it, ticking Allow live trading.
7. Load the preset that matches your broker's server time, enter your license email and click OK.
8. Confirm the chart label shows the next range window in your broker's time and that the Experts tab logs a successful initialisation.