Why an EA should use a minimum distance between consecutive entries

[FXS London Scalper]

Breakout EAs often take two or three trades in a few minutes when price oscillates around a level. Each looks valid, but together they add up to a big loss on a single idea.

A minimum distance rule fixes that: no new entry within 10 minutes and 5 pips of the previous entry in the same direction.

How to check whether it helps on your EA:

• Run a backtest with and without the rule.
• Look at which trades it removes and their average result.
• Check how the removed trades are distributed: they should be mostly second and third entries in choppy markets.

If the removed trades have a negative average, the rule is doing its job. If they're positive, your EA may be catching real continuation with re-entries, and the rule would cost money.

There's also a live-monitoring benefit. Bursts of trades are harder to check in real time and easier to misread.

On choosing the values: picking round numbers by eye and not optimising them is a good defence against curve fitting. If the result only works at 9 minutes and 4.5 pips, it isn't robust. Test a few nearby values and make sure the effect is similar.

Does anyone else use something like this?