Conditions a machine can test — a price crossing a level, a time window — become alerts; conditions that need the eye stay with the trader, who consults the decision table when the alert fires. Execution rules fix the order: type, expiry, the stop and target attached at placement, size from the volatility stop, and the spread and staleness limits that turn an alert into a skip. In MetaTrader 5 the stop loss and take profit are held on the server; a trailing stop runs only while the platform is open.
Alerts and execution rules are the part of the system that runs without the trader’s attention. The alert watches the conditions a machine can test and brings the eye to the chart when they are met; the execution rules fix everything about the order that would otherwise be decided at the moment of placing it. Between them, the moment of the trade contains one decision — reading the table — and no others.
The previous part gave the setup a column for every state of the market. A column is only consulted if someone is looking, and the Intermediate level’s forward test already found what happens when they are not: triggers missed while away from the screen, entries taken late, spreads that were wider than the record assumed. This part is about making sure the table is read at the right moment and the order that follows is the one the record measured.
What a machine can watch
Split the table’s condition rows in two. Some conditions a machine can test without judgement; some need the eye.
An alert is a machine-tested condition that summons the eye. In MetaTrader 5 the platform’s alerts trigger when the Bid or Ask price exceeds a preset value or at a set time, and notify by sound, email or a push notification to a phone. The InnoMP Market Watcher does the same for price levels and for moving-average, band, MACD, KDJ and RSI conditions, with AND and OR logic between them, which lets two rows of the table become one alert. Which tool is used matters less than the rule that governs all of them: an alert is a condition, not an instruction. It says the table may now be worth reading. It does not say enter.
Where the alert sits
The alert’s job is to have the eye on the chart before the trigger candle closes, not after. For a pullback entry that means the alert sits short of the level, by a fraction of the current ATR; for a breakout it sits beyond the level, for the reason the Market Watcher article gives — price probes levels constantly, and an alert on the level itself fires on every probe.
The distance is part of the rule, not a preference: a quarter of an ATR on the entry timeframe is a common choice, and it scales with the regime for the reason the volatility group gave. Set it in pips and it is right in one regime.
Execution rules
When the table’s answer is enter, the order has to be placed, and every property of an order that is chosen at the moment of placing it is a decision the record did not measure. Execution rules fix those properties in advance, one set per entering column of the table.
The rows draw on parts already written. The order type is Part 2’s choice — a limit at the level for a retest entry, a stop order beyond the trigger’s high for a confirmation entry, a market order only where the rule says the close itself is the entry — and each has a different fill and a different slippage, which is why the choice belongs in the rule. The expiry is what stops a pending order from becoming a trade in a state the table never approved: the level was valid in this session, so the order dies with the session. The stop and target are attached when the order is placed, at the distances the volatility stop sets, and the size follows from the stop through the calculator. Attached at placement is the operative phrase: a stop added after the fill is a decision made in the trade.
Gates: spread, staleness, news
Between the alert and the order there are conditions that can turn an enter into a skip, and they are rules too.
A spread filter is a ceiling on the spread at which the order may be placed, written as a fraction of the stop distance rather than in pips — a spread that is a tenth of the stop costs a tenth of an R on every trade, and the cost arithmetic of Foundations and the relative ordering of Part 3 both say the ceiling is crossed at the rollover, in the Asian hours and around news. A staleness rule is a window after the alert — one candle on the entry timeframe is common — beyond which the entry is treated as missed: the table’s conditions were true at the alert, and a quarter of an hour later some of them are not. A news gate is the calendar rule from Foundations written as a number of minutes. None of the three is exotic. What is new is that each is a rule with a number, tested in the order shown, and each fail is logged.
Key takeaway Give the machine the conditions it can test and set the alert where the context begins, not where the trigger is. Fix the order — type, expiry, attached stop and target, size — per column, before the alert exists. Put the spread, staleness and news gates between the alert and the ticket, and log every fail. The moment of the trade then contains one decision, and it is the table’s.
What still runs when the screen is off
Some of this system runs on the trader’s machine, some on the broker’s server, and the difference decides what survives a closed laptop.
The MetaTrader 5 help states it plainly: the trailing stop is executed in the trading platform rather than on the server, like stop loss or take profit; it will not work if the platform is off, and in that case only the stop loss level set by the trailing stop will trigger. So a rule that manages the open trade with the Chandelier trail has an unstated condition — the platform is running — and either the rule says so, or the trade is managed at review with the structural stop moved by hand, which is the Intermediate method and needs no platform at all.
The general point is the one this level has made about every mechanism: know which part of the system is doing the work, and test on a demo what actually fires with the platform closed rather than assuming it. Alerts that reach a phone are useful precisely because the phone is the part that is always on; whether a given alert is evaluated on the platform or elsewhere is a question for the platform’s own documentation, and the answer belongs in the rule.
The alert log
Every alert that fired is a row in the record whether or not it became a trade: entered under rule 1, waited under rule 2, refused by the eye, skipped at a gate, missed by the staleness window. The Intermediate level asked for the setups that fired and were not filled; this is the same list, kept by the system that fires them. It is the input to the last part, because a system is reviewed on what it decided, and most of what it decides is not a trade.
Next: Review cadence and kill criteria — when the system is examined, what each review may change, and the thresholds written in advance at which it stops.
- MetaTrader 5 alerts trigger on conditions such as the Bid or Ask price exceeding a preset value or a set time, and notify by sound, email or push notification.
- In MetaTrader 5 the trailing stop is executed in the trading platform rather than on the server; if the platform is off it does not work, and only the stop loss level it last set remains.
- Stop loss and take profit are attached to the position and held on the server, so they work with the platform closed.
- An alert is a condition, not an instruction: when it fires the decision table is consulted and the eye-only conditions are checked.
- Execution rules fix the order type, expiry, attached stop and target, size, a spread ceiling and a staleness limit before the alert is set.
