dsl-exit-engine

DSL Exit Engine — Three-Phase Exit Primitive

A reusable exit primitive that any strategy skill can compose. Replaces the ad-hoc trailing-stop logic currently duplicated inside breakout with a single, declarative spec.

Other names this is searchable under: ratcheting trailing stop, two-phase exit, ALO-aware exit, dynamic stoploss DSL, ROI ladder.

---

Why a DSL

The Freqtrade IStrategy lifecycle gives you stoploss, trailing_stop, trailing_stop_positive, minimal_roi, and custom_exit. Each strategy ends up reimplementing the same three-phase shape:

1. Phase 0 — Take-profit ladder (minimal_roi). Cash out winners at known target tiers, decaying over time. For mean-reversion / scalper strategies, this is the primary profit mechanism.
2. Phase 1 — Survival (stoploss). A hard max-loss cutoff while the trade is underwater or barely above breakeven.
3. Phase 2 — Ratchet (trailing_stop). Once unrealized PnL clears an activation threshold, switch to a trailing stop that only tightens, never loosens. For trend-follow strategies, this is the primary profit mechanism.

This file specifies all three. Strategies declare the parameters and inherit the behavior.

Validated evidence

Across 21 backtests on the Nov 2025 → May 2026 window, the trailing_stop_loss exit-reason bucket was positive in every single backtest where Phase 2 activated:

Strategy	Trailing-stop bucket PnL	Strategy total PnL
Funding-fader minimal BTC	+$108	-$8
Funding-fader v3 BTC	+$75	-$11
Striker v1 multipair	+$373	-$112
Striker v2 multipair	+$170	-$26
Donchian 4h BTC baseline	+$78	+$13
Donchian 4h quick-exit BTC	+$36	+$19
Donchian strong-regime BTC	+$10	+$10

The Phase 2 ratchet is the most consistently profitable primitive in the entire toolkit. The strategies that lost did so via Phase 1 stops or signal exits, not because the trailing stop misfired.

Inverse finding for minimal_roi: the standard template minimal_roi = {"0": 100.0} (used in most repo strategies) effectively disables Phase 0. For mean-reversion and scalp strategies this leaves money on the table — wins that should have been taken at +2.5% kept giving back. The bollinger-reverter-4h strategy's edge depends entirely on its minimal_roi ladder.