Testing Weekly Range Breakout Opportunities with EA

I am a fan of long-term trading. Or more exactly, of what is considered “long-term” in retail Forex market — when positions are held open for several days or more. I also prefer trading breakout set-ups more than anything else. Naturally, I would come to testing this rather obvious strategy: buy on the upper breakout from the previous weekly range and sell on the downward breakout of that range.
Even though the strategy may sound very simple, there are several ways to implement it and many nuances to consider while doing so. Should it use stop-loss? If so, where does it set SL? Should it use trailing stop? Take-profit? How long should it keep a trade open? These and other questions come to mind when dealing even with such a simple strategy.
After doing some backtests on major currency pairs, I have come to the conclusion that the best way would be to keep it as simple as possible, adding only a straightforward stop-loss level. The resulting expert advisor enters on the breakout of previous week’s High/Low and sets the SL on the opposite end of the candle (Low or High). It also closes the position on the new week’s opening instead of the right before the week’s closing.
The Weekly Breakout EA failed to show good results on many of the major currency pairs, but it produced some nice gains on the following three pairs:
GBP/USD

USD/CHF

USD/JPY

An entrepreneurial trader can try to enhance this expert advisor even more. There are still some untested opportunities: introduce some filters based on the weekly candle’s size, apply buffer zone for breakouts, add some candlestick pattern analysis to increase accuracy, keep positions open for more than one week, etc.

If you have any questions or comments regarding the Weekly Breakout EA for MetaTrader, please feel free to post them using the form below.