Express Yourself EA - Build your own strategy

Introduction

This is a simple example but shows most of the possibilities. As you can see you can use variables that either represents an indicator (like adx) or a price value (like ask and bid), or something else. See the lists below for further informations about variables. Especially the indicator variables need to be understood before using them.

You also see that the expressions uses some functions (like highest and lowest). In this functions one optimization parameter (p1) is used. You can use up to six of these optimization parameter variables (p1, p2, ..., p6) in your expression. Each variable evaluates to one double input parameter value of the EA. This allows you to optimize your strategy like you would do with other EAs.

What you have not seen in the example is that you also could use arithmetic operations in your expression. E.g. adx*1.05<20 would expect that the 105% of the adx value is below 20. Allowed arithmetic operators are *, /, +, -.

You also can group your expressions into parentheses and combine them with logical operator AND (&) and/or OR (|). The example above also contains the AND operator as you can see.

Beside conditions to enter long and short trades you also can enter conditions to close those trades. I usually use those conditions like time==2259 & profit<=0 which closes my trades one minute before market close if they are in loss (in my timezone).

Timeframes

By default all indicator or series values are calculated by the timeframe that is configured in the "Signal detection timeframe" input parameter. If this parameter is set to 1 Hour the adx value of above example would be calculated on this timeframe. Also the signal detection would occur at each new bar on the 1 Hour timeframe.

You can also let indicator or series be calculated on other timeframes as the "Signal detection timeframe". The syntax for this is tf{<expr>}, where tf is one of the standard timeframe m1, m2, m3, ..., d1, w1, mn1. For example d1{adx<20} & ask>=h1{highest(high,10)} would evaluate only to true if ADX main line of daily bar is below 20 and ask price is above or equal of highest bar of 10 last 1 hour bars.

Note that if you choose "Every Tick" as signal detection timeframe then the current timeframe of the chart will be used as default timeframe for variable calculation.

Variables

The following tables contains an overview of all available variables that can be used in expressions.

What you should know before using variables: Some values of them can be accessed via an index, either a single index or a double index.

For example the open, close, high, low variables are single indexed variables. This means you can access the value of nth bar backwards via open[n] (e.g. open[0] for current bar or open[1] for previous bar).

An example for a double indexed variable is the ADX indicator variable. The ADX indicator has overall three values. Each of these values are stored in a different buffer. In case of the ADX indicator the first buffer (buffer 0) contains the MAIN_LINE values, the second buffer (buffer 1) contains the PLUSDI_LINE values and last buffer (buffer 2) contains MINUSDI_LINE values. The syntax to access these different values is adx[b,n] where b is the buffer number and n is the nth bar backwards (e.g. adx[0,1] evaluates to MAIN_LINE value of previous bar, adx[1,10] evaluates to PLUSDI_LINE value of 10 bars ago).

If you use an indexed variable without index (like seen in the introduction example) the buffer and bar index defaults to 0.

Note that you can change the variable names of each indicator in the EAs input parameters if you want. This is only valid for indicator variable names. The input parameter also contains a list of other variable names that are available. This is only to give an overview.

Indicators

Prices/Quotes