Expert Advisor Studio has a very poweful News priority functionality that is completely missing in FSB Pro.

I tried to implement something similar for FSB Pro using the same news-feed.txt data source as used by Expert Advisor Studio .

The solution is using 3 components:

1. Downloader = data source updater for MT4
2. Gate = strategy execution filter on FSB Pro and exported strategies for MT4
3. Companion = chart UI / situational awareness for MT4 (optional)

What makes this architecture especially clean is that the three components are tightly related, but loosely coupled. They share the same local source news-feed.txt and the same health globals, but they do not overlap responsibilities. The feed is downloaded and served locally for other strategies or charts for manual trading, which makes this very lightweight.

The FSB news ecosystem achieves by splitting responsibilities into three focused components: a Downloader that maintains the local data source, a Companion that visualizes upcoming events on MT4 charts, and a Gate that applies the actual trade-permission logic inside exported strategies. The result is a workflow that is both practical and lightweight: Downloader = data source updater for MT4, Companion = chart UI / situational awareness for MT4, Gate = strategy execution filter on FSB Pro and exported strategies for MT4.

1) FSB News Downloader = feed maintenance service (FSBNewsDownloaderEAv2_2_fix1.mq4)

Uses only one FSB News Downloader EA for single MT4 instance.
Default feed refresh value is 360 minutes, do not make this smaller.

The Downloader is the foundation of the entire stack. Its role is not to decide trades and not to decorate charts. Its role is simply to keep the feed current, healthy, and locally available for the rest of the system. In the FSBNewsDownloaderEAv2_2 line, the EA downloads news-feed.txt, saves it into the MT4 files area.

Need to edit MT4 settings - allow WebRequests to https://forexsb.com

FSB News Downloader EA for MT4

2) Gate = strategy execution filter for FSB Pro and MT4 (FSBNewsGate_v2_1.cs and FSBNewsGate_v2_1.mqh)

FSBNewsGate_v2_1 was designed as a directionless LIVE MT4 news permission gate. On the FSB Pro side (.cs), the indicator keeps a clean UI and parameter contract, but always outputs allow=1 during FSB Pro runtime because the indicator is forward-looking and depends on live feed behavior. On the MT4 side (.mqh), the real blocking logic happens: it reads the offline news-feed.txt, applies symbol/currency matching, applies the configured news-priority mode and pre/post windows, and decides whether long and short entries are currently allowed.

That distinction is crucial. The Gate is not a downloader and not a visual aid. It is a strategy execution filter. It is the final policy layer that tells the strategy whether to open trades around upcoming news. In v2.1, the design was improved further by mirroring the priority mode into an MT4-visible numeric parameter so operators can choose Disabled / High only / High and Medium directly from MT4 after export. That keeps FSB Pro and MT4 aligned while still preserving the execution responsibility inside the Gate itself.

FSB NewsGate indicator for FSB Pro and MT4

3) Companion = chart UI / situational awareness (FSBNewsCompanion_fix5.mq4) (Optional)

The Companion exists because having a healthy feed is not the same as seeing the market context. FSBNewsCompanion_fix5.mq4 is deliberately chart-focused: it reads the local news-feed.txt, filters events to the current symbol, optionally includes USD on all charts, limits visibility to M1-H1 by default, and draws future events as vertical dotted markers with human-readable tooltips. It does not download anything and it does not make trade decisions. It is a visibility layer a situational-awareness tool for MT4 charts.

FSB News Companion indicator for MT4 (FSBNewsCompanion_fix5.mq4)