Here is a simple price driven strategy (probably I am not the first):
Most of the candles are with needles, so if at the opening of each candle we will buy or sell for sure at some point our position will be in profit. This is the idea in a rough.

Now to the fine tuning:
What is the best time frame, are there preferred hours during the 24-hour period, what pairs, how to decide to sell or buy or both (both could cut our spread to half - hedging), what about the numbers - take profit, stop loss.

I already start checking the statistic using scripting in Meta trader and I think it has its potential but low spread reliable broker is essential, and for each position the EA will need to statistically calculate the stop loss / take profit numbers.
The constant calculating will help us to adjust the trading numbers to the pair and time frame at hand.
One more thing to consider is not to calculate the statistical data on too long period because the behavior of the pairs changes significantly during the years.

This is very simple and direct approach but once we will succeed to map out the more volatile time in a day where it is more likely to have candle with needles it could work.

On a trending market we can try to stay with the trade that goes along the trend direction and use a trailing stop loss.

Since you are basing your strategy on candle formations, please remember that anything above the 1H timeframe is unreliable because the 4H, dailies, etc. all start at a different time depending on where your broker is located. Keep that in mind.

Hope this helps,

Happy trading !

Ms_Mel

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Thanks
We never cease to learn
doron

Dear,Doron continue please.....

Hem

may not be that feasible, many info and chart that you won't able to get it easily, like pip spread vs time, big outbreak, sometime it move majority of it movement in 2 to 3 minutes, then it just stand still in the rest of the bar
-- beside, if you skip some TIME during the day, will your EA allow you to do so or continuity is the basic assumption of the EA

UNLESS, you want to trade only in late US trading housr and AUSTRALIA time zone only and you could close all the remaining position before taking your time out --- and will it be NEWS related
== insider info === this is HOW BROKER make more money from us -- i.e. during price break-out, they increase the pip spread, i.e. no matter which way you trade during 1 minute break-out, you are likely to loss more pip to the BROKER

I got similar logic in the past, but the conclusion is to watch more closely for 5min chart in certain hour --- I was trying to do manual trading on demo (5M)

it may save you some TIME , NEEDLE part of the bar -- can you see it as -- if your EA can set a PENDING limit order , around the future needle area and delete the pending limit order previously, and you EA can react withinin 5 second, this will enable for you to trade WHERE human simply can't react that fast --