- Is Ballast a martingale or grid EA?
- No. It opens one position at a time with a fixed lot, a fixed 114-pip stop and a fixed 100-pip target. There is no averaging down, no grid, no recovery trade and no lot progression of any kind. A second RSI extreme while a position is open is ignored.
- How was it tested?
- On Exness MT5 EUR/GBP history in the MetaTrader 5 strategy tester, on the "every tick based on real ticks" model (Model 4), from 2019-01-01 to 2026-04-01 with 0.1 lot on a $10,000 balance. The tester reported the history quality of that run as 100% real ticks. All 318 closed trades are published on this page and downloadable as CSV, alongside the out-of-sample trades measured after the cutoff.
- Does the backtest include swap?
- Yes, and it matters here. The gross result of the run was 3,905.58 before carry; swap subtracted 969.99 of that, and the published net of 2,935.59 is the figure after it. Roughly a quarter of the gross profit went to carry because the median position is held for several days and the longest was held for about two months. Commission was zero in this run, so a broker charging per-lot commission will subtract more.
- Why is the win rate so high?
- Because the stop is wider than the target. Winning more than three trades in four is what a 114-pip stop against a 100-pip target produces — it is a description of the shape, not evidence of an edge. The average win was 45.47 and the average loss 118.70, so it takes several wins to pay for one loss.
- Why does it trade so rarely?
- Both an RSI extreme and a free position slot are needed, and EUR/GBP reaches those extremes only a few times a month. Across the measured record it averaged under four trades a month, and the recent years are thinner than the early ones — a real change in the pair's behaviour, not a setting you can turn up.
- What is in the verification window?
- The published backtest runs to 2026-04-01, which is also the cutoff. Everything past that date was measured in a separate run and is kept apart from the backtest figures — 9 closed trades so far, which this page reports on their own rather than folding them into the backtest's numbers. A window that thin is a sample, not a verdict; the EA averages under four trades a month.
- Does it trade at particular hours?
- No. There is no time, session or day filter. Any closed H1 bar whose RSI is past the threshold can open a trade, provided no position is already open.