Hack the Game

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Some trading strategies have been very successful and have been very popular because of that. These strategies are popular because they are easy to build, they have solid backtest results, and they have built up reliable live results over the years. Great news for us, less so for prop firms. Prop firms need to protect themselves from overexposure to the same asset at the same time. Simply said, if too many people trade the same strategy, the strategy becomes a risk to the prop firm. As a result, prop firms can ban you or deny your payouts simply for doing the same thing as everyone else using the same strategy. 

In this week’s article, we are going to build one of those successful strategies and give you some suggestions on how to make it your own so you're not so easily flagged for trading the same strategy as everyone else. m

The goal is to keep the same basic edge, but adjust the details so your version becomes different, testable, and more suitable for prop firm trading.

Disclaimer: Templates are for educational purposes only!

👉 Get the Asian Breakout Prop Firm Strategy Template → Template Link

This template is built around a daily imbalance candle and an Asian Range-High breakout.

You might also want to watch the full YouTube video on this strategy here to get the full explanation of the trading plan, the optimization process, and the Profectus AI blocks used to automate it.

automate it.

What Makes a Good Prop Firm Strategy?

A good prop firm strategy is not only profitable. A good prop firm strategy is one that is tailored to comply with the rules of the challenge and funded accounts. 

A strategy that everyone copies exactly can become a problem. If hundreds of traders use the same symbol, same entry, same stop loss, same take profit, and same timing, the trade behavior becomes very similar. That means a good prop firm strategy should be simple enough to understand, but flexible enough to adjust. 

The strategy we’re showing you today is a good example because there are several things you can adjust without changing the core idea.

The Prop Firm Strategy Rules

The strategy we’re going to build and modify today is our famous Asian Breakout strategy. The core concept is based on the previous daily candle being an imbalance candle. In this strategy, an imbalance candle means that the body of the candle is smaller than 50% of the total candle size. So, if the total candle size is 100 pips (from high to low) and the body (open to close) is only 40 pips, we are talking about it being a 40% imbalance candle. This is smaller than the 50% threshold and thus classifies as an imbalance candle according to our rules. 

Let’s write out the complete strategy rules: 

1. At 6:00 in the morning (London time), check if yesterday’s daily candle was an imbalance candle.
2. Place a buy pending order at the highest price of the last 6 candles, on the 1-hour timeframe
3. Use a stop loss based on a percentage of price or fixed pips.
4. Use a target based on risk-to-reward, such as 1:3.
5. Delete the pending order at 21:00 if it is not triggered.
6. If the trade moves into enough profit, move the stop loss to break-even.

The base version of this strategy only has 7 blocks.

Building the Base Prop Firm Strategy in Profectus

1. Start at 6:00 every morning. Use a Run at Time block and set the time at 06:00 to indicate you want to do something, once per day, at 06:00.
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2. Find the imbalance. Checking if the previous daily candle is an imbalance candle is pretty simple using a Trade rule block.
   
   Candle, Candle Body size (pips), Candle ID 1, Timeframe Daily =< Candle, Candle total size (pips), Candle ID 1, Timeframe Daily, Adjust *0.4
   
   
3. Buy pending order. Use a Buy Pending Order block to pace the trade and apply the following settings.
   
   Open at price: Custom price, MarketProperty, Highest Price (Candle period), Start Candle ID 0, End Candle ID 6, Get Price Value
   
   Stop-loss: Percentage of the Price, Amount 0.3
   Take-profit: Percentage of Stop-loss, Amount 300
   
   
4. Select all trades. Open trades
   
   
5. Check profit/loss. Use the Check profit/loss block and set the Reference as % of Balance, Type Profit, Operator =>, Amount 0.5
   
   
6. Once per trade.
   
   
7. Modify SL/TP. Here we trail the stop-loss using the Modify Sl/TP block. Make sure to only update the Stop-loss.
   
   Mode: % of Stop-loss, Amount:0.5

Making the Strategy Your Own

This is the base strategy, and I can assure you that many people are running this strategy on their own trading accounts or on prop firms. But the goal of this week’s article is to make it your own and unique. Let’s walk through a few options to do this.

Offsets

The first thing you can change is the entry price. Instead of entering exactly at the Asian high, you can test entering 5 or 10 pips above it, or even slightly below it. You can achieve this using the Price offset option in the Buy Pending Order block under Advanced options. 

You can experiment with different values, and what it does is simply change where the order will be placed in reference to the original price. This can lead to you entering the trade at a different price than all the other traders using this or a similar strategy. 

Stop loss variations

In this basic example, we are using a POP (percentage of price) stop loss. For some, this might be the option of choice for every strategy. This doesn’t mean that this is the best option for this strategy. We invite you to play around with the different options for setting a stop loss or simply try different values for the POP. 

Take profit variations

This is also an easy one to change because there are so many options. You can use a fixed risk-to-reward target, remove the take profit and manage the trade with a trailing stop, or test partial profit-taking. 

Trade times

We are currently looking to place a trade on the Asian high at 06:00 in the morning. This is a flexible time that can be adjusted to your liking or to simply make the strategy more unique. You can change the Run at Time input alone, or you can combine it with the Trade rule lookback period for finding the Asian high.

Add a news filter

One of the most important features for running a system on a prop firm is to use a news filter to protect yourself from the News Trading rule. You can use the News filter to close open positions before news comes in or to delete open pending orders before news comes in.

Using Optimizations in MT5

For all the suggestions above, you can create Inputs in Profectus. With these inputs, you can run optimizations in Metatrader 5 that will help you find all the profitable combinations of the elements we have discussed above.

I recommend you to watch the full Youtube video to see how these optimizations are done efficiently. 

In the video, the example optimization uses:

• lookback from 5 to 10
• offset from -10 to +10 pips
• target from 100 to 300
• stop loss from 0.1 to 0.5

Get Access to the Asian Breakout Prop Firm Strategy Template

Want to see how this Asian Breakout Prop Firm Strategy works when fully automated?

Access the automation template used to turn this trading concept into a deployable MQ5 trading bot inside Profectus AI. The template includes the daily imbalance filter, Asian range breakout level, buy pending order logic, stop loss, target, order expiration, and trade management module.

Disclaimer: Templates are for educational purposes only!

👉 Get the Asian Breakout Prop Firm Strategy Template → Template Link

You can test the original version, adjust the inputs, add a News Filter, change the symbol, change the timing, or rebuild the strategy with live market execution instead of pending orders.

That is the real idea: do not copy the strategy blindly. Use it as a base and make it your own.

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