Perky,
40 trades is not enough for the EA to extinguish any outliers. Some trades may last a very long time... weeks probably, which will be several hundred trades later. It depends on where the outliers are and how much churning the market does to erase those trades.

I only enabled the routines that would find the farthest opposite order (a single order) from the current closing of profitable trades. So, if the EA is closing long trades, it will attempt to close a short trade as far down in price as possible... all the while closing with a profit. Closing multiple outliers against a profitable position will paralyze this EA. If you did that, you turn this EA into an equity manager... and we don't want that. So far, this EA can consistently churn out 10-30% profit monthly. But there is one period of time that I cant get through.

This EA works great in short trending markets, churning and trendless are fine. But the larger volatility, following with a longer trending market will kill your account. Look at EURUSD, Jan 2006 through May 2006. I cannot find settings to get through this specific timeframe. I use the 5 min chart, spacing of 2. You can use "open prices only" on the method of backtest, because that is how the EA works anyway. And, its much faster.

I want to find a filter that will cut off trading at the end of a trend. This seems to exaggerate the drawdown when the market turns the other way.

Carl