Advanced Market Structure Sniper Strategy

This backtestable trading strategy leverages market structure through pivot-confirmed swing highs and lows, confirmed by EMA trend filters and optional impulsive candle requirements, to execute long or short trades in confirmed regimes. The strategy integrates comprehensive backtesting capabilities with date-bound testing and performance metrics for rigorous historical validation.

Strategy Overview

Designed for trend-following or reversal traders, this strategy automates entries on structural breaks, enforces risk-reward discipline with offset stops and scaled targets, and adapts to ranging or trending conditions. It enables comprehensive evaluation of expectancy across market cycles with realistic slippage and equity-based sizing.

Strategy Configuration Settings

Date Range Settings

Use Date Filter: Enables or disables time-bound backtesting, allowing users to isolate specific periods like bull runs or bear markets for targeted performance analysis without the noise of full historical data.

Start Date: Defines the commencement of the test window, facilitating focused reviews of recent volatility spikes or prolonged trends to assess strategy resilience in relevant contexts.

System Metrics Display

Display Curve: Options include strategy equity, open profit, gross/net profit, or none, overlaying key performance curves on charts to correlate trade outcomes with price action and visualize drawdown recovery or compounding effects.

Table Position: Positions the metrics panel from top-left to bottom-center, ensuring unobstructed views of critical data like win rate or Sharpe ratio during strategy reviews.

Table Type: Chooses full (detailed stats including max drawdown, profit factor), simple (core P/L metrics), or none, tailoring depth for quick scans or in-depth post-trade audits.

Mode and Style Settings

Mode: Restricts to long-only (uptrend focus), short-only (downtrend emphasis), or both (unbiased) to align backtests with directional hypotheses, reducing irrelevant trades and sharpening equity curve trends.

Trade Style: Implements conservative (single position, pausing opposites) or aggressive (overlapping for scaling) to test capital utilization in drawdown scenarios, evaluating compounding efficiency or overexposure risks.

Sniper Mode: Mandates impulsive candles for entries, simulating conviction filters to measure impact on historical win rates, reducing whipsaw trades in low-momentum breakouts.

Swing Detection Settings:

Left Bars: Configures the number of prior bars for pivot validation, higher values for fewer but more robust swings in strong trends, lower for sensitivity in choppy historical periods.
Right Bars: Sets post-pivot confirmation, finer for timely signals in fast-moving backtests or coarser for reliable structure in sideways accumulations.
Line Length: Extends swing projections forward by bars, visualizing how levels interacted with past entries for confluence analysis in strategy tuning.

Interim High/Low Swing Detection:

Interim High/Low Left Bars: Defines left confirmation for intermediate pivots used in SL placement, adjustable to capture recent extremes without excessive noise in varying volatility regimes.
Interim High/Low Right Bars: Controls right validation for these levels, balancing quick SL anchoring with confirmation to test drawdown impacts across timeframes.

EMA Settings:

EMA Mode: Selects Basis (single pair for unified trend confirmation) or Advanced (dedicated pairs for up/down biases) to evaluate different confirmation granularities in backtests.
Short EMA Length (Basis): Tunes the faster EMA in Basis mode for trend sensitivity, shorter for aggressive signals or longer to minimize false confirmations in sideways tests.
Long EMA Length (Basis): Sets the slower EMA for baseline trend, longer periods smoothing out minor fluctuations to focus on major shifts in equity curves.
Short EMA Length for Long/Short (Advanced): Customizes fast EMAs per direction, enabling precise bullish or bearish validation for regime-specific historical performance.
Long EMA Length for Long/Short (Advanced): Adjusts slow EMAs for directional depth, higher values for enduring trends or lower for quicker adaptations in choppy backtest data.
EMA Exit Trigger: Chooses intrabar (real-time reversals) or closed bar (confirmed flips) to simulate slippage effects on profitability and drawdown profiles.

Impulsive Candle Settings:

Length for Average Calculation: Establishes ATR and volume baselines over this span, longer periods yielding stable thresholds for reliable historical impulse detection.
Size Multiplier: Amplifies the range criterion for impulsive size, stricter values reducing false positives in low-vol trending phases of backtests.
Volume Multiplier: Scales volume threshold for momentum conviction, higher for emphasizing high-participation breakouts in volume-heavy symbols.
Body-to-Wick Ratio: Ensures body dominance in candles, validating strong directional intent over wicky indecision in simulated setups.
Use Volume Check: Incorporates volume in impulse criteria, optional for testing on instruments with sparse or unreliable volume data streams.
Entry Window (Bars): Permits delayed EMA confirmation post-impulse, accommodating realistic execution lags in backtest slippage models.

Colors:

EMA UpTrend Color (Basis): Greens lines for bullish confirmation in Basis mode, aiding visual correlation with profitable trending segments in equity plots.
EMA DownTrend Color (Basis): Reds lines for bearish bias, highlighting potential short opportunities or long avoidance in historical reviews.
Interim High/Low Line Color: Yellows swing projections, neutral amid structure to focus on level interactions without trend bias.
Stop Loss Line Color: Reds dashed lines for risk boundaries, clearly delineating downside protection in active trade visualizations.
Take Profit Line Color: Greens dashed lines for reward targets, emphasizing upside potential in backtest path projections.
Impulsive Candle Color: Oranges bar highlights in Sniper mode, pinpointing momentum catalysts in filtered historical sequences.

Risk Management Settings:

Risk Reward Ratio: Multiplies stop distance to set take profits, backtesting optimal ratios for positive expectancy across diverse market conditions.
SL Offset %: Applies buffer to interim levels for stops, simulating wick protection and quantifying drawdown resilience in varying volatility.

Detector Decision:

Detector Decision: Restricts to range, trending, or unrestricted, isolating performance in specific regimes for regime-optimized tuning and reduced overfitting.

Range/Trend Settings:

Show Range: Toggles band and label visualization for regime classification, overlaying on equity curves to contextualize performance in ranging vs. trending phases.

Market Structure

Pivot-Based Swings: Confirms highs and lows using left and right bar thresholds on candle bodies, mapping structural levels where price tends to react, such as potential support for longs or resistance for shorts.
EMA Trend Confirmation: In Basis mode, a single pair reads overall bias; Advanced mode uses specialized pairs for uptrend (green) or downtrend (red) validation, ensuring signals align with prevailing direction to avoid counter-trend traps in trending or ranging environments.
Impulsive Candle Validation: Requires large-bodied, high-volume breaks for entry in Sniper mode, reading momentum as a catalyst for structural shifts, distinguishing genuine breakouts from false tests in low-conviction setups.
Regime Classification: Bands based on volatility-derived ranges label sideways consolidation (yellow) or directional bias (blue), with L/S/R labels on transitions, allowing the strategy to read and adapt to accumulation phases or impulsive expansions.
Interim Level Buffers: Separate pivot detection for SL anchors reads recent extremes, providing dynamic risk levels that evolve with structure, supporting the overall reading of market internals like liquidity pools or exhaustion points.

Entry & Exit Logic

Long Entry: Activates on upward breaks of swing highs during confirmed uptrends via EMA (Basis or Advanced), optionally within a post-impulsive window in Sniper mode, to capture bullish continuations or reversals in aligned regimes.
Short Entry: Triggers on downward breaks of swing lows in downtrends, symmetrically confirmed, targeting bearish momentum with impulse validation if enabled, for balanced short-side participation.
Confirmation Window: Entries must occur within a specified bar count post-break, accommodating realistic execution delays while preventing endless chases in extended moves.
Stop Loss: Placed with percentage offset below swing lows (long) or above highs (short), buffering against minor retracements while maintaining tight risk for favorable expectancy.
Take Profit: Scaled at a predefined reward multiple from entry, rewarding winners proportionally to risk without trailing complexity, to enforce asymmetric outcomes in backtested equity curves.
EMA Exits: Confirms on trend reversals (intrabar for speed or closed for reliability), closing profits or losses dynamically to adapt to bias flips, enhancing responsiveness in shifting structures.
Trade Locking: Conservative mode prohibits opposites until closure, minimizing concurrent drawdowns; Aggressive allows layering for scaled conviction in strong setups.
Regime Filter: Restricts to appropriate conditions (e.g., range pullbacks for longs in trends), ensuring historical alignment and reducing mismatched trade frequency.

Risk Management

Offset Stop Losses: The percentage buffer on swing levels absorbs typical wick extensions or minor tests, quantifiable in backtests to optimize for max adverse excursion without widening risk excessively.
Reward Scaling: Take profits fixed at RR multiples ensure winners cover losers, with historical testing revealing optimal ratios (e.g., 2:1 for balanced, 3:1 for patient) to maximize profit factor.
EMA Trailing: Dynamic exits on trend reversals trail profits in sustained moves or cut losses early on breakdowns, adapting to structure without rigid fixed levels, reducing opportunity costs in prolonged trends.
Impulsive Conviction: Sniper's volume/range demands lower false entry rates, simulating real-world momentum requirements to mitigate whipsaw drawdowns in low-conviction historical periods.
Position Constraints: Conservative enforces single-trend focus, capping exposure to one direction and preventing overleveraged overlaps; Aggressive enables scaling but pairs with equity percentage sizing for controlled compounding.
Regime-Specific Filtering: The detector avoids ranging whips in trends or vice versa, preserving regime-appropriate risk by matching setups to historical volatility profiles and minimizing out-of-context trades.
Date-Bounded Testing: Restricts backtests to defined periods, enabling targeted evaluation of robustness in bull/bear phases, preventing over-optimization on irrelevant data and ensuring forward applicability.

Visualization

EMA Trend Lines: Basis mode colors a single short/long pair green for uptrends and red for downtrends; Advanced displays multiple pairs with green/red for confirmed trends and gray for neutrals, using varying linewidths to emphasize primary bias in equity overlays.
Swing Projection Lines: Dashed yellow lines extend from confirmed pivots forward, labeled "SH" for highs and "SL" for lows, projecting structural levels for visual confluence with historical entries and exits.
Entry Markers: Small green triangles below bars for longs and red triangles above for shorts, precisely marking activation points without cluttering the chart during strategy reviews.
Exit Indicators: Purple triangles for loss closures and blue for profit triangles, positioned below/above bars to distinguish outcomes and facilitate post-trade analysis of win/loss patterns.
Impulsive Candle Highlights: Orange bar coloring in Sniper mode spotlights high-conviction catalysts, visually correlating momentum bursts with successful filtered entries in backtest sequences.
Regime Trend Bands: Yellow bands for ranging conditions or blue for trending, with "L" (long bias), "S" (short), or "R" (range) labels on shifts, overlaying to contextualize the trend landscape and regime impacts on performance.
Trade Candle Recoloring: Green for long positions and red for shorts during active trades, immersing the chart in the strategy's lifecycle without additional overlays, aiding in visual tracking of drawdown periods.
Metrics Curve Overlay: Plots equity or profit curves in the pane, aligning with price for direct correlation of trade impacts on capital growth or contraction.
Performance Table: Positioned per user choice, displaying full/simple stats like win rate, Sharpe, and drawdowns, with clear columns for quick auditing of historical efficacy.

Uniqueness & Value

This strategy uniquely synergizes pivot-detected market structure with EMA regime confirmation and impulsive candle validation, to deliver high-conviction breakouts in contextually appropriate conditions, while the regime detector ensures setups align with the prevailing trend or range dynamics for enhanced reliability.
The components interlock with intention: pivots provide the structural canvas for break identification, EMAs confirm directional validity to filter counter-trend noise, impulsive demands add momentum conviction to validate the move's strength, and regime bands contextualize everything to avoid mismatched trades like chasing breakouts in sideways chop—creating a layered framework that transforms basic trend-following into adaptive, probability-weighted execution with built-in backtesting transparency via date bounds and metrics, offering far more than standalone indicators or unfiltered strategies by embedding clear value in regime-aware risk control and visual trend mapping for practical, timeframe-agnostic deployment.

Key Takeaways

Synergizes structure pivots with EMA confirmation and impulse filters for trend-aligned, high-conviction entries.
Regime bands classify market conditions, ensuring setups match ranging pullbacks or trending continuations for optimal expectancy.
Offset SL/TP and EMA trails enforce disciplined asymmetry, adapting to volatility without manual intervention.
Visual projections, colored candles, and metrics overlay provide immersive, transparent backtesting of historical performance.
Conservative/aggressive modes and date filters enable robust validation across cycles, priming for live execution.