MQL4 Moving Average Crossover System

[Jim]

There's nothing quite like taking one on the chin to know exactly how it feels though

Sounds like you're the victim of a Forex Ambush Highfield? Unfortunately such scammers are lying in wait around almost every corner, snake oil at the ready.

[Highfield]

Fortunately I've never fallen victim to any scams other than the forex market itself - OK, that's conjecture but who in reality knows for sure the exact motives of many large market participants?

I've been running your 3A EA today and it was in fact what I thought it wasn't ... erm,

Guru3 takes each trade on the crossover but does not have a stop loss or profit target setting, whereas Guru3A takes a trade on the crossover until the profit target or stop loss is met, ignoring all subsequent crossovers in the meantime.

What I was thinking is for the EA to take each crossover as a trade until either the stop loss or profit target is met, whichever came first; a combination of Guru3 and Guru3A.

For example, were the EA to have a maximum, profit target of 500 pips and stop loss of 250 pips initiated by an MA crossover the EA would SAR each trade until it managed to reach the target or stop loss. The effect would be something like:-

Trade 1: Long +20
Trade 2: Short -30
Trade 3: Long -25
Trade 4: Short +85
Trade 5: Long +100
Trade 6: Short -100
Trade 7: Long +500 (Alt. Trade 7:Long -250)
Stop the EA and wait for next crossover.

[Jim]

Hi Highfield,

Fortunately I've never fallen victim to any scams other than the forex market itself - OK, that's conjecture but who in reality knows for sure the exact motives of many large market participants?

I'm glad to hear that! Goldman Sachs are certainly a "large [forex] market participant". In view of recent publicity I wonder what their real motives are?

I've been running your 3A EA today and it was in fact what I thought it wasn't ... erm,

Sorry for my delayed response, but I've been busy porting Guru3 to MetaTrader 5, amongst other things. I will see what I can come up with for you. Would you prefer it coded in MQL4 or MQL5?

[Highfield]

Trust nothing of what you hear and only half of what you see

Hello Jim,

If you have the time then MQL4 is the language of the Metatrader software I'm using and that would be super but please, only if you really do have a moment to make the changes, thank you.

[Highfield]

Obviously GS are a bunch of (alleged) criminals ... we'll see.

[rv73]

Hi guys,
Getting some good results with this EA (GuruEx03A on MT4) and have weeks of data now, and have an interesting solution to ensure profit.
Best results I find are seen with a small TP of around 10, SL of around 50.
I have this running on over a dozen currency pairs for testing, and the following feature would have made all the failed trades I have seen simply re-coup the losses.
One in 10 trades or so hit SL, and tend to blow the account, BUT... then go to reverse quite substantially.
It's almost as if when the MACS signal fails it indicates a sharp reversal, and of course a chance to do a reverse order and re-coup.
You could experiment with doubling the Lot size, and halving the TP for this 'Reverse Stop Order' too.

I believe adding this feature would make this MACS system quite solid, and interesting to play with:

Description:

Reverse Order on Stop Loss
When the Stop Loss is reached on an order, immediately place an order in the opposite direction.
This only happens once. If this Stop Order hits its own SL, then the order is closed and the loss is taken.
eg. If a BUY order has hit its SL, immediately place a SELL order, and vice versa.

Settings:

Stop order placed ? = TRUE/FALSE (default=TRUE)

Stop order Lot Size = X (default= 1.0)

Stop order TP = X (default= 25 pips)

Stop order SL = X (default=50 pips)


Waddya think Jim ?
My programming skills are somewhat lacking, so would be interested if you thought the new feature had merit and worth some of your time ?

[Jim]

I received a question from tkkimble about "signals not being generated" by our moving average EA.

Here's the thing. Our example EAs are designed to be used as educational tools in conjunction with the MetaTrader backtester (or Strategy Tester using MetaTrader speak). They are not designed to be complete trading systems, or to generate signals or alerts useful for manual trading. The "signals" such as they are can be viewed by throwing up a chart of the backtest results, or by examining the strategy tester logs.

I'm not sure if I've answered the question yet, but feel free to ask some more by replying to this thread!

If you experiment with backtesting our EAs on a variety of different timeframes you can start to get a feel for which sorts of system work best on particular timeframes, and also which timeframes suit your own trading style best. You can then also experiment with changing the various input settings to see how that improves (or not as the case may be!) the profitability of a trading strategy. If you're really keen you can even experiment with cutting and pasting bits of code from different EAs to create one that works more the way you want.

Rinse and repeat countless times, and start learning how to become a trader in the process. Maybe even learn how to become a programmer too!

[Jim]

Hi Richard,

What timeframe were you working with when you got those encouraging results, albeit with a small TP?

If it were me I'd be working on trying to reduce the ratio of SL to TP, but that doesn't necessarily mean a 5:1 ratio can't be got to work. As you point out, the best way to discover whether your modification might improve matters is to program it and backtest it. What I think might happen is irrelevant!

Now the MT5 strategy tester is out I'm going to be spending most of my programming efforts over in that department, and I still owe Highfield an MT4 tweak. What do you think to the idea of working through what it would take to implement your idea in MT4 here on the forum? Hopefully that way other people could benefit from the process too. Maybe you could learn one or two programming skills along the way also?

If you fancy that here's something to get you started. If you look at the existing code for GuruEx03A there's a block of source code near the start that sets up the configurable input settings, and looks like this:

//---- input parameters
extern int     Magic = 30001;
extern int     Slippage=30;
extern double  Lots=1.0;
// 
extern int     ProfitTarget=100;  
extern int     StopLoss=1000;  
extern bool    StpMode = TRUE;
//
extern int     FastPeriod=20;
extern int     SlowPeriod=33;
extern int     Hysteresis=4;

Sounds like you've already changed StopLoss from 1000 to 500 if your broker uses 5 decimal places. What do you suggest we add to get started on implementing your idea?

By the way, in the new MQL5 language MetaQuotes have changed the word "extern" to "input", which actually makes a lot more sense!

[rv73]

I have tested on H1 only and definitely had good results.
The winning trades certainly move further than the TP of 10 I set, but it was just about taking a token profit and seeing if the signals were basically profitable.
I think I will move up to TP=50, SL= 100 (pips) and try that ratio.

I will keep testing, but putting in a 'Reverse order on Stop Loss' feature will make this a very exciting EA.

I'd love to roll up my sleeves and make this happen, but I just don't know where to start ? I am a music composer for video games by trade, and apart from doing some BASIC on my Commodore 64 back in the '80's, modern programming hasn't been an area I have developed.

With that said, I will try though !

[Jim]

I'd love to roll up my sleeves and make this happen, but I just don't know where to start ? I am a music composer for video games by trade, and apart from doing some BASIC on my Commodore 64 back in the '80's, modern programming hasn't been an area I have developed.

With that said, I will try though !

A bit of rusty BASIC ought to be sufficient to get you started on tweaking an EA! MQL4 is based on the programming language "C", which was certainly around in the early 80s also.

In the meantime, have you tried experimenting with the MetaTrader optimizer? Over optimization is often indulged in by the "robot" scammers of course, but the MT4 optimizer is a useful tool nonetheless. If you haven't, here's how to get started.

1. Hit Control-R to view the strategy tester
2. Select the correct EA, pair, timeframe and so on just like a backtest, and make sure the "Optimization" box is checked:
Opt-Enabled.jpg
3. Click the "Expert Properties" button, then turn off the "genetic algorithm":
Opt-Testing.jpg
4. Set up the "variables" you want to test:
Opt-Inputs.jpg
5. Click the "Start" button and wait for an hour or two! Here's one I did earlier for EUR/USD over the first three months of 2010. If your Optimization Graph doesn't look like this try right clicking and checking "2D Surface":
Opt-Ex03-EU-Q110.jpg

Unfortunately the nice picture MetaTrader produces doesn't tell you that it shows TP across the bottom, and SL up the right hand side.

Does that picture give you any ideas about what combination of take profit and stop loss levels might be a good place to start experimenting?