False-Breakout Range Reversal

How the rule works

A false breakout is defined here by a completed return inside a range that existed before the signal. The wick alone is insufficient. A second genuine breakout can follow the first rejected one; freezing the range stops the analysis from moving its goalposts to turn every adverse move into a new “support” level.

Setup

• Before the signal, define a range from highs/lows of bars 2 through 21. Its width must be 1.5 to 5.0 ATR and ADX[1] below 20.
• All boundaries exclude the signal bar, preventing a look-ahead range.

Indicators

• ATR(14)
• MT5 ADX Wilder(14)

Long entry

• Buy next ask when Low[1] breaks below the prior 20-bar range low but Close[1] returns above that low and into the upper half of its own range.

Short entry

• Sell next bid when High[1] breaks above prior range high but Close[1] returns below it and into the lower half.

Stop loss

• 0.30 ATR beyond the signal extreme.

Exit

• Freeze the reference high, low and midpoint at the signal. Take half at the midpoint and the remainder at the opposite boundary. Skip the trade if the midpoint is not beyond entry in the profit direction or two valid volume legs cannot be created.
• After the midpoint fill, trail long SL to max(old SL, minimum low of the three most recently completed bars − one tick); short SL to min(old SL, their maximum high + one tick). Tighten after closes only. Close any remainder after 12 complete holding bars.

Risk and position size

• 0.4% equity initial risk; do not re-enter the same boundary for five bars.

Costs and execution

• Use spread at signal time rather than a constant average; include adverse stop slippage and swaps.

When the method can fail

• A news spike can resemble a false break but continue violently. Skip known releases and rollover.

Worked example

• Hypothetical frozen range is 1.1000–1.1040; signal low 1.0990 and close 1.1008 return inside. At entry 1.1010 and ATR 0.0010, SL is 1.0987. Half targets midpoint 1.1020; the remainder targets 1.1040, subject to its three-bar trailing stop after the first fill.

Historical test results

No tested pair meets the complete research-screen criterion. Positive cells alone do not qualify the strategy.

18 mechanical runs across 3 pairs on H1. Decisions use completed strategy bars; fills use native ICMarketsEU-Demo M15 Bid candles with explicitly modelled costs. Full window: 1 January 2025–18 September 2026. Each row starts with an independent USD10,000 account.

Interpretation: these are mechanical bar-model tests, not verified real-tick or live performance. Price rules were held fixed; subjective market-quality exclusions remain outside the mechanical model. Strategy adaptation requires a new test.

Download all test metrics and assumptions (JSON) · Download simulated trade logs and reproducible research code · Broker commission and swap documentation

Execution conventions

• Bar [0] is forming; [1] is the most recently completed bar. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, indicators use Close with zero plot shift and signals use completed bars. EMA is exponential, SMA is arithmetic and MT5 ATR is its native true-range average. Use at least 300 completed warm-up bars; a longer rule-specific requirement takes priority.
• A close-based signal is executed at the first available quote after the close, never retrospectively at the signal close. Buy at ask, sell at bid; close longs at bid and shorts at ask. A standing stop or target can fill within a bar. A gap through a stop fills at the first executable price, which can be worse than the stop.
• R means the initial entry-to-protective-stop distance, fixed at entry. Convert that distance into account-currency loss using the symbol tick size and loss-side tick value. Lots = cash risk / loss per lot, rounded down to the broker volume step. Round prices to the trade tick and recheck risk plus minimum stop/freeze distances before submitting. Budget commission and slippage separately; skip if minimum size exceeds the risk limit.
• Use one position per symbol and no averaging down. A trailing stop only tightens after a completed bar and becomes active on the next quote. The entry bar is holding bar one; a time exit executes on the quote after the specified holding bar closes. When a hard stop and a close-based exit compete, the stop already active takes precedence. With OHLC-only data, assume stop before target if both can occur in one bar; tick data is needed to resolve the order.
• The article defines the price rule. Any discretionary news exclusion changes the tested variant and must be recorded in advance. Map broker timestamps to the named London/New York time zone using historical daylight-saving offsets; do not assume a fixed UTC offset. Include spread, commission, slippage, overnight financing and triple-swap days in a profitability test.

Adapt and test your version

• Treat these inputs as a reproducible starting specification. Choose a currency pair, session and holding period that match the time you can monitor the market, then record any changes to indicator periods, thresholds, stop distance or exits as a new version.
• Change one hypothesis at a time. Reserve a later period and additional pairs for evaluation before looking at their results. Include your account’s actual trading and financing costs, compare small parameter changes, and forward-test on demo. A selected profitable window does not validate the strategy or its modified version.

Reproduce the chart in MT5

• Open EURUSD on H1. Add the indicators listed above through Insert → Indicators; use Close and zero shift unless a different setting is specified. The Data Window displays exact values for the selected completed candle.
• Compare the signal candle with the required earlier bars before moving forward. Use the crosshair to read prices and times. For custom channels, session levels or Supertrend, reproduce the formula in this guide and check the calculation before relying on an external indicator.
• Draw entry, initial SL and target only after a candle has satisfied every condition. Label planned levels as plans; they do not demonstrate a historical fill. The featured chart is genuine historical MT5 context and is not a trade-performance report.

Sources

• Average True Range — ATR use for volatility-normalized stops.
• MT5 Help: Average Directional Movement Index Wilder — Wilder indicator definition; not strategy performance.
• Currency Orders and Exchange-Rate Dynamics — Carol L. Osler (2001) — Order-clustering explanation for some support/resistance and breakout effects; not validation of this exact rule.

Multi-year EURUSD benchmark — EA 22 v1.01

False-Breakout Range Reversal · H1. All 20 planned base/stress cases completed and reconciled. The research binary uses the version 1.01 strategy with the documented tester cost overlay.

EURUSD only, using genuine historical bid/ask ticks in MT5’s real-tick mode. Ten independently started segments span selected dates from 2 July 2018 to 18 September 2026 (end exclusive). Excluded broker-calendar dates and short residual windows are listed in the downloadable benchmark data. Broker time is UTC+2 in US winter and UTC+3 in US summer; source ticks are UTC. Earlier history supplies warmup only, with at least 400 observed completed bars required at the first decision; warmup gaps remain a limitation. The full ten-year data archive is not a ten-year continuous performance test.

Each segment starts flat at USD 10,000. Base uses USD 3.50 per lot per side and no added execution delay. Stress uses USD 7.00 per lot per side plus a 200 ms delay. Observed spread is included in price P/L. Stress changes both commission and delay, so its difference from base does not isolate either effect. Remaining positions are closed and charged at each segment end.

Results below sum independent segment cash outcomes; they are not a compounded account return. Drawdown is the worst observed individual segment, not a continuous full-period or intratick worst-case drawdown. It uses observed native equity after modeled fees and native booked swap. Profit factor groups complete positions, including partial exits; n/a means the loss denominator is unavailable. Native booked swap is shown separately and has not been checked against historical financing rates. Native equity can affect subsequent sizing, so subtracting swap does not recreate a separate no-financing simulation.

The rules were fixed before this campaign, but parts of the historical period had already been inspected during development. This is not an untouched out-of-sample test, and no automatic profitability badge is awarded. Ledger reconciliation is not a complete independent replay of every indicator and decision. These figures describe this exact implementation and sample; they do not establish why an apparent edge would persist. Account-level and portfolio controls described elsewhere on this page still apply.

Base: Summed price gains did not cover modeled commission; the sample lost money before financing.

Stress: Summed price gains did not cover modeled commission; the sample lost money before financing.

Execution limitation: Reviewed server rejections remain included in these results. Their native outcomes were retained; this is not evidence of error-free execution. p101-id22-eurusd-20210105-20220101-stress: A protection modify was attempted after a take-profit close. Event time(s): 2021.09.22 21:00:00.

Download the benchmark figures, exact segment dates and evidence hashes.