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This is where a few ideas come together into something that feels like a real playbook: only trade when the bigger trend is up, only when the move has strength, buy the dip — not the rip — and size your risk to current volatility instead of a fixed dollar amount. It’s an intermediate build. Take the EMA cross tutorial first if structured exits are new to you.
You’ll learn: a daily-timeframe regime filter, an ADX(14) strength gate, a pullback entry confirmed by RSI(14), ATR-based stops and targets, a trailing stop, and a one-trade-per-day cap. Time: about ten minutes.

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The idea, in plain English

Five separate conditions, each doing one job:
  • Regime — only go long when the daily 50-EMA is rising (the bigger trend is up).
  • Strength — only when ADX(14) is above 20 on the trading timeframe (the trend has some force behind it).
  • Trigger — buy a pullback: RSI(14) turning up from below 40 (price dipped, then started to recover).
  • Adaptive risk — stop at 1.5x ATR(14), target at 3x ATR, both measured at entry, plus a 20-tick trailing stop once the trade is in profit.
  • Discipline — flatten at end of day, one trade per day, longs only.

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Step 1 — Describe it

Type the whole thing in one message. AskFutures reads it as a single connected idea — you don’t need to break it up:
On ES 5-minute bars: when the daily 50-EMA is rising and ADX(14) is above 20, buy a pullback to the rising 5-minute 20-EMA confirmed by RSI(14) turning up from below 40. Stop at 1.5x ATR(14), target at 3x ATR, trail by 20 ticks once in profit, and flatten at the end of the day. One trade per day, longs only.
Notice this prompt names everything explicitly — 5-minute bars, longs only, the EOD flatten, the one-trade-per-day cap. That overrides the silent defaults (which would otherwise be 1-minute bars, both directions). When you’re this specific, AskFutures follows your lead.

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Step 2 — Read the strategy card

This strategy reads from two timeframes — daily for the regime, 5-minute for the entry — so check the card carefully.
1

Market & timeframes

Trades ES on 5-minute bars, while reading a daily series for the 50-EMA regime filter. See timeframes & bars for how the two fit together.
2

Trend filter (regime)

The daily 50-period EMA must be rising. When it’s flat or falling, no long is allowed — the strategy simply sits out.
3

Strength gate

ADX(14) above 20. ADX measures trend strength regardless of direction, so it keeps you out of choppy, going-nowhere stretches.
4

Entry trigger

A pullback toward the rising 5-minute 20-EMA, confirmed by RSI(14) turning up from below 40 — the dip-then-recover that gives the strategy its name.
5

Exits — adaptive to volatility

A 1.5x ATR(14) stop, a 3x ATR target, and a 20-tick trailing stop that activates once you’re in profit, plus an end-of-day close. The first one to trigger wins. Because ATR scales with volatility, your risk widens in fast markets and tightens in quiet ones.
6

Filters

One trade per day and longs only — so a losing morning doesn’t turn into revenge trading.
Here’s the logic as the Strategy Flow chart shows it:
Read the Assumptions notes on the card. ATR and EMA are real TA-Lib indicators, so confirm the periods match what you asked for (14 for ATR and ADX, 50 for the daily EMA, 20 for the 5-minute EMA).

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Step 3 — Backtest and read the results

Backtest it.
The engine replays a year of 5-minute ES bars, checking the daily regime on each day before allowing any entry. With a one-trade-per-day cap and several conditions stacked, expect fewer trades than a bare crossover — that’s the point of a selective strategy.
Backtest results are hypothetical and simulated. No real trades were placed, so live outcomes can differ. Reported P&L is net of modeled slippage (default 1 tick) and commission (default $2.50/side for full-size ES). Past performance — actual or simulated — does not guarantee future results. Always test before you trade.
What to look at, in order:
Did the filters leave you any trades? A handful is normal here. Too few to judge? Loosen one condition (for example, ADX above 15 instead of 20).
A healthy trend-pullback shows a mix of target and trailing stop exits on winners. A flood of stop exits usually means the regime filter isn’t actually keeping you on the right side of the trend.
Adaptive (ATR) risk is meant to keep losers proportional. If a few outliers dominate the drawdown, the trailing stop may be activating too late.

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Step 4 — Iterate

Change one thing at a time so you can tell what helped. Each edit is a new saved version you can compare.
Loosen the strength gate to ADX above 15.
Tighten the ATR stop to 1x and keep the 3x target.
Add a time filter so it only trades between 09:30 and 12:00.
Optimize the ATR stop and target multipliers and the ADX threshold.
When you’re ready to search instead of guess, hand the parameters to the optimizer — the ATR multipliers, the ADX threshold, and the RSI level are all natural things to sweep.
This example is illustrative, not a recommendation. It exists to exercise a daily regime filter, an ADX gate, an RSI trigger, ATR-based exits, a trailing stop, and a per-day cap together in one strategy — not because this exact combination is profitable. Treat it as a learning template, then build and test your own.

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Next steps

Spread, z-score and COT

Go advanced: trade the ES-NQ spread with positioning and correlation filters.

Signals & indicators

How ATR, ADX, RSI, and EMA are computed — real TA-Lib, not approximations.

Timeframes, bars & sessions

How a daily regime filter and a 5-minute entry coexist in one strategy.

Optimize a strategy

Sweep the ATR multipliers and ADX threshold instead of guessing.