Documentation

FlashPips is a desktop app that connects to MetaTrader 5 and automates news trading. Before each scheduled high-impact release it places a dual stop order — a buy-stop above price and a sell-stop below it — so whichever direction the spike takes, an order is triggered. It then manages the trade with one-cancels-other (OCO) logic, stop-loss, take-profit, and a trailing stop.

The goal is simple: capture news-driven volatility without you watching the screen. Connect it to MT5 once, pick the event you want, and FlashPips does the rest on schedule.

• The FlashPips desktop app — Windows only.
• MetaTrader 5 desktop terminal installed and running (latest build recommended).
• A trading account with any MT5-supporting broker (demo or live).
• A stable internet connection — required to activate the Full version and to sync the community data pool.

1. Download the FlashPips installer from your account page or purchase email, and run it.
2. Install and open MetaTrader 5, then log into your broker account inside MT5 at least once.
3. Launch FlashPips. It opens to the Trade tab, with Account, AI Studio, Smart Execution, Simulate and Datasets tabs across the top.

There are two editions:

• Free version — no key needed; it runs immediately. It trades ADP events plus your own Custom (manual) events, one currency pair at a time, at any lot size. Basic trailing, the Trailing-Strength dial and AI smart parameters are included. All Smart Execution features and the RL trailing controller are Full-only.
• Full version — click 🔓 Activate in the app, paste your key, and press Activate. The key is validated online and bound to that one device. Every news event, unlimited pairs at once, the News Sniper one-sided entry mode, the Pre-News Guard, the full Smart Execution suite, the RL controller and community data sync unlock immediately.

1. Make sure MetaTrader 5 is installed, open, and logged into your broker account.
2. In FlashPips, open the Account tab, add or select your saved account, and click 🔗 Connect.
3. After connecting, enable Algo Tradingin MT5 (the toolbar button, or Ctrl+E) — FlashPips confirms this for you; orders are rejected if it's off.
4. Back on the Trade tab, pick a news event and the pairs to trade, then press Start.

The key controls live on the Trade tab. Start from the pre-tuned defaults and adjust one thing at a time.

• Lot Size — fixed lots per leg. Begin at 0.01 while you learn the tool.
• Gap — how far the buy-stop and sell-stop sit above and below the mid price.
• SL & TP — protective and target distances (pips) from the entry.
• Trailing band + Trailing Strength (0–10) — the stop follows the running peak and tightens as the spike stalls; strength dials how hard it clamps down (adjustable live, mid-trade).
• Place-before lead — how many seconds before the event to place the straddle (it re-quotes to the mid until a leg fills). Defaults to 0: orders go in exactly at the event time.
• OCO — when one leg fills, cancel the other (keep it on).

FlashPips loads the month's High/Medium-impact economic calendar. Which of them you can trade depends on your edition:

• Free — ADP releases and your own Custom (manual) events. Other events are shown with a 🔒 and prompt you to upgrade.
• Full — every event on the calendar (CPI, FOMC, rate decisions, PMI, and more) plus fully custom events, and unlimited pairs at once.

The event picker also lets you:

• Select a real calendar event, which auto-loads its relevant currency pairs.
• Choose 🛠 Custom (manual) to trade any moment you like — set the time, and FlashPips places the straddle then.

The Smart Executiontab is where FlashPips protects your fills and P&L on violent news ticks. Every feature here is Full-version only, except Trailing Strength which is free.

• Spread Guard — auto-skips any pair trading wider than your limit when the spread blows out at the release.
• Slippage Cap — sets the broker deviation so an instant-execution broker rejects fills worse than your limit.
• Slippage Bail-out — if a fill slips past the cap anyway, the position is closed at market immediately.
• Price-Lock Fills — turns your stop orders into stop-limits so you never fill worse than your cap (a gapping fill may be skipped instead).
• Volatility Auto-Gap— sizes the straddle gap to each pair's current volatility (× ATR) instead of a fixed distance.
• Momentum TP — measures the initial burst after the release and pushes the take-profit out to a multiple of it, so an explosive event runs to a bigger target.
• Spike Math Filter — a Kalman filter tracks the true price and velocity beneath tick jitter, while a CUSUM drift detector, volatility z-score and activity-burst monitor score every move: real spike or fake-out? The trailing stop rides the filtered velocity — wider while the spike genuinely runs, tighter the moment it stalls, and immune to one-tick spasms. It also gives the Pre-News Guard a statistical second opinion (see below).

The 🚨 Pre-News Guard tab fixes the oldest problem in news straddling: the market gets jumpy before the release, springs one of your stop orders early, and takes the stop-loss — so when the real spike finally arrives, your trade is already gone. With the Guard on, a fill that happens before the scheduled event time is treated as a fake-out, not the spike.

• Any leg that fills more than a second before the release is closed at market instantly — costing roughly the spread instead of a full stop-loss.
• OCO is suppressed for the fake fill, so the opposite pending leg stays live— you're never left one-sided by pre-news noise.
• The moment your broker confirms the close, the leg is re-placed at the current price. The straddle is whole again, and it re-arms as many times as the market fakes, right up to the release second.
• From the event time onward every fill is real — OCO, trailing, Momentum TP and the RL controller all behave exactly as normal.
• With the Spike Math Filter enabled, the Guard gets a statistical second opinion: a fill backed by overwhelming spike evidence — a genuinely early release — is left to run instead of being undone.

The 🎯 News Sniper tab replaces the two-sided straddle with a one-sided market entry read straight off the release — pure direction instead of catching both sides. Enable it, pick a calendar event and pairs on the Trade tab, and press Start: instead of staging stop orders, FlashPips watches the wire for the number.

• At the release, the actual is polled every second from two independent calendar feeds — the first print wins.
• Actual beats forecast → the event currency strengthens → the Sniper buys the pairs where that currency is the base and sells where it's the quote. A miss mirrors it. Example — GBP GDP beats: buy GBP/USD, sell EUR/GBP.
• Orders fire at market with your Lot / SL / TP. A dead-on print — or an event with no published forecast — places nothing: no edge, no trade.
• A higher actual = stronger currency switch covers inverted indicators (unemployment rate, jobless claims — where a lower number is the good one). When the feed publishes its own better-than-expected verdict, that overrides the switch automatically.

FlashPips includes an AI Studio that learns from your own trade history and suggests the best Gap, StopLoss, and TakeProfit per event — and can even control the trailing stop. It is advisory by default: you stay in control and approve every trade.

1. Your trades are recorded per event

Every time you place a straddle, FlashPips records the live price action and tags it with the news event it traded (for example, USD · Non-Farm Payrolls). This builds an event-by-event dataset automatically — you don't have to do anything.

2. Train the parameter model

1. Open the AI Studiotab. It lists every event you've collected data for, with the average and maximum move it produced.
2. Check the data-points banner. It tells you how much history you have and rates it from Very limited to Good.
3. Click 🧠 Train ML. A genuine training-loss curve is drawn so you can see the model fit your data.

3. Apply AI parameters to a trade

1. On the Trade tab, select the event and the pairs you want to trade.
2. Click 🤖 AI Params. FlashPips fills Gap / SL / TPfrom the model — sized to that event's typical move.
3. Each pair gets its own values: a pair you've recorded for the event uses its own learned move, others fall back to the event average.

4. RL trailing controller (Full only)

For trade management, a reinforcement-learning controller can decide how tightly to trail the stop as a spike runs, learned from replaying your recorded ticks to maximise realised profit.

1. In AI Studio, click 🎮 Train RL. A reward curve shows the policy improving over training iterations.
2. Tick Use RL controller for the trailing stop.
3. On the Trade tab, make sure Trailing band is on. The trailing stop is now driven by the learned policy instead of the fixed formula.

Models get sharper with more data, so FlashPips pools real trades from the whole community. When one of your trades triggers and closes on TP or SL, it's recorded and uploaded automatically — every user contributes, on any plan.

• Uploads are automatic — completed trades sync the moment they finish; nothing to click.
• Sync Down (Full) — on the Datasetstab, pull the shared pool into your app so your RL & ML models train on thousands of real news moves, not just your own. You choose which dataset to save it into (a community dataset is created for you).

• Always test on demo first. See how FlashPips behaves across several events before going live.
• Keep MaxSpreadPipsrealistic so you don't skip every event, but tight enough to avoid terrible fills in the first seconds of a spike.
• Use MaxOpenTrades and EquityGuardPercent. The latter halts new trades if your equity falls below a chosen threshold.
• Size positions to survive a run of losses. Stay at 0.01 lots until you are confident.

• In-app— every order placement, fill, and exit is drawn on FlashPips' own live chart and written to the on-screen status log as it happens.
• Push notifications — enable MT5 notifications (Tools → Options → Notifications, enter your MetaQuotes ID) to get order alerts on your phone.
• Email — Tools → Options → Email (SMTP).

• Hedging accountsare recommended — the straddle needs a buy-stop and a sell-stop pending at the same time.
• Look for tight spreads on EURUSD, GBPUSD, and XAUUSD, fast execution, EAs allowed, and no news-trading restrictions.
• Some brokers disable trading or widen spreads sharply around high-impact news. Test yours on demo first.

Share FlashPips and earn $25 cash for every new customer who buys the Full version through your referral link — and everyone who buys through your link gets 10% off. There is no cap — refer as many people as you like.

How it works. When you join the program you get a personal link with a unique code (for example flashpips.com/r/AB12CD34). That code does two things automatically:

• Your friend saves 10%. Anyone who opens your link gets 10% off the Full version, applied automatically on the payment page — there's no coupon to type in.
• You earn $25. When they buy, the sale is tied back to your code and $25 is credited to your referral balance.
• The link is remembered for 60 days. If your friend clicks now and buys later, you still get credit and they still get the discount — as long as it's within 60 days on the same device.

Getting started takes a minute:

1. Open the referral dashboard or click the Earn $25 per referral button anywhere on the site.
2. Copy your unique referral link.
3. Share it — post it on X, send it through Telegram or email, or paste it anywhere your audience will see it.
4. Earn $25 automatically when each referred friend purchases the Full version.
5. Watch your signups, conversions, and earnings grow on the dashboard, then request a payout once you reach the $50 minimum.

The dashboard shows you everything at a glance:

• Total earned & available balances across all your referrals.
• Pending commissions that clear as referred purchases pass their refund window.
• Conversionstats — clicks, signups, and paid conversions.

• No orders are placed — Is FlashPips connected to MT5 (Account tab)? Is Algo Trading enabled in MT5 (the app warns you if it's off)? Did you select an event and pairs and press Start?
• “Algo Trading is OFF” — click the Algo Trading button in the MT5 toolbar (or Ctrl+E) so it turns green, then try again.
• App freezes when connecting — make sure MetaTrader 5 is already open and logged in before you press Connect.
• License won't activate — remove stray spaces from the key, confirm you have internet access, and that the key isn't already activated on another device (Deactivate there first).
• Big slippage or no fill — on the Full version enable Price-Lock or Slippage Bail-out (Smart Execution), widen the Gap, or try a broker with better news liquidity.

• Does it need a VPS? No. FlashPips only runs for the few minutes around a scheduled release, so you just open it before the event — no 24/5 uptime or VPS required. (A VPS is optional if you'd rather not keep your own machine on.)
• Will it trade automatically? Yes — at each enabled event, hands-free.
• Can I run it on many symbols and brokers? The Free version is limited; the Full version allows unlimited brokers and accounts.
• Does FlashPips hold my money? No. Your broker and MT5 hold your funds; FlashPips only places and manages orders.
• Is this financial advice? No. FlashPips is a tool. You configure it and are responsible for every trade.

Stuck? Email support@flashpips.com with your license key, broker, symbol, and a screenshot of the app and the Journal tab. The more detail you include, the faster we can help.

For refund terms and the full risk disclosure, see our Terms & Conditions.