MQL5 Wizard: Placing Orders, Stop-Losses and Take Profits on Calculated Prices. Standard Library Extension
This article describes the MQL5 Standard Library extension, which allows to create Expert Advisors, place orders, Stop Losses and Take Profits using the MQL5 Wizard by the prices received from included modules. This approach does not apply any additional restrictions on the number of modules and does not cause conflicts in their joint work.
Better Programmer (Part 01): You must stop doing these 5 things to become a successful MQL5 programmer
There are a lot of bad habits that newbies and even advanced programmers are doing that are keeping them from becoming the best they can be to their coding career. We are going to discuss and address them in this article. This article is a must read for everyone who wants to become successful developer in MQL5.
Trading DiNapoli levels
The article considers one of the variants for Expert Advisor practical realization to trade DiNapoli levels using MQL5 standard tools. Its performance is tested and conclusions are made.
Universal Expert Advisor: Accessing Symbol Properties (Part 8)
The eighth part of the article features the description of the CSymbol class, which is a special object that provides access to any trading instrument. When used inside an Expert Advisor, the class provides a wide set of symbol properties, while allowing to simplify Expert Advisor programming and to expand its functionality.
Multicurrency monitoring of trading signals (Part 1): Developing the application structure
In this article, we will discuss the idea of creating a multicurrency monitor of trading signals and will develop a future application structure along with its prototype, as well as create its framework for further operation. The article presents a step-by-step creation of a flexible multicurrency application which will enable the generation of trading signals and which will assist traders in finding the desired signals.
Practical application of neural networks in trading
In this article, we will consider the main aspects of integration of neural networks and the trading terminal, with the purpose of creating a fully featured trading robot.
Mathematics in trading: Sharpe and Sortino ratios
Return on investments is the most obvious indicator which investors and novice traders use for the analysis of trading efficiency. Professional traders use more reliable tools to analyze strategies, such as Sharpe and Sortino ratios, among others.
Break Through The Strategy Tester Limit On Testing Hedge EA
An idea of testing the hedge Expert Advisors using the strategy tester.
Interview with Rogério Figurelli (ATC 2012)
Today we are going to talk with Rogério Figurelli (figurelli), a regular participant from Brazil that has not missed any Automated Trading Championship since 2007. This year, he also began to sell his Championship's Expert Advisor in the Market along with his other products. Rogério believes that MetaTrader 5 platform certification on the largest Brazilian exchange BM&FBOVESPA will reveal new professional developers and traders, who do not yet know the full potential of robot investors.
MQL5.com Freelance: Developers' Source of Income (Infographic)
On the occasion of the MQL5 Freelance Service fourth birthday, we have prepared an info-graphic demonstrating the service results for the entire time of its existence. The figures speak for themselves: more than 10 000 orders worth about $600,000 in total have been executed to date, while 3 000 customers and 300 developers have already used the service.
SQL and MQL5: Working with SQLite Database
This article is intended for developers who would be interested in using SQL in their projects. It explains the functionality and advantages of SQLite. The article does not require special knowledge of SQLite functions, yet minimum understanding of SQL would be beneficial.
Using indicators for optimizing Expert Advisors in real time
Efficiency of any trading robot depends on the correct selection of its parameters (optimization). However, parameters that are considered optimal for one time interval may not retain their effectiveness in another period of trading history. Besides, EAs showing profit during tests turn out to be loss-making in real time. The issue of continuous optimization comes to the fore here. When facing plenty of routine work, humans always look for ways to automate it. In this article, I propose a non-standard approach to solving this issue.
Quick Manual Trading Toolkit: Basic Functionality
Today, many traders switch to automated trading systems which can require additional setup or can be fully automated and ready to use. However, there is a considerable part of traders who prefer trading manually, in the old fashioned way. In this article, we will create toolkit for quick manual trading, using hotkeys, and for performing typical trading actions in one click.
Optimization management (Part I): Creating a GUI
This article describes the process of creating an extension for the MetaTrader terminal. The solution discussed helps to automate the optimization process by running optimizations in other terminals. A few more articles will be written concerning this topic. The extension has been developed using the C# language and design patterns, which additionally demonstrates the ability to expand the terminal capabilities by developing custom modules, as well as the ability to create custom graphical user interfaces using the functionality of a preferred programming language.
Dealing with Time (Part 1): The Basics
Functions and code snippets that simplify and clarify the handling of time, broker offset, and the changes to summer or winter time. Accurate timing may be a crucial element in trading. At the current hour, is the stock exchange in London or New York already open or not yet open, when does the trading time for Forex trading start and end? For a trader who trades manually and live, this is not a big problem.
Regular expressions for traders
A regular expression is a special language for handling texts by applying a specified rule, also called a regex or regexp for short. In this article, we are going to show how to handle a trade report with the RegularExpressions library for MQL5, and will also demonstrate the optimization results after using it.
Cluster analysis (Part I): Mastering the slope of indicator lines
Cluster analysis is one of the most important elements of artificial intelligence. In this article, I attempt applying the cluster analysis of the indicator slope to get threshold values for determining whether a market is flat or following a trend.
Random Walk and the Trend Indicator
Random Walk looks very similar to the real market data, but it has some significant features. In this article we will consider the properties of Random Walk, simulated using the coin-tossing game. To study the properties of the data, the trendiness indicator is developed.
Enhancing the StrategyTester to Optimize Indicators Solely on the Example of Flat and Trend Markets
It is essential to detect whether a market is flat or not for many strategies. Using the well known ADX we demonstrate how we can use the Strategy Tester not only to optimize this indicator for our specific purpose, but as well we can decide whether this indicator will meet our needs and get to know the average range of the flat and trend markets which might be quite important to determine stops and targets of the markets.
Better Programmer (Part 07): Notes on becoming a successful freelance developer
Do you wish to become a successful Freelance developer on MQL5? If the answer is yes, this article is right for you.
Parallel Calculations in MetaTrader 5
Time has been a great value throughout the history of mankind, and we strive not to waste it unnecessarily. This article will tell you how to accelerate the work of your Expert Advisor if your computer has a multi-core processor. Moreover, the implementation of the proposed method does not require the knowledge of any other languages besides MQL5.
LifeHack for trader: "Quiet" optimization or Plotting trade distributions
Analysis of the trade history and plotting distribution charts of trading results in HTML depending on position entry time. The charts are displayed in three sections - by hours, by days of the week and by months.
Data Exchange between Indicators: It's Easy
We want to create such an environment, which would provide access to data of indicators attached to a chart, and would have the following properties: absence of data copying; minimal modification of the code of available methods, if we need to use them; MQL code is preferable (of course, we have to use DLL, but we will use just a dozen of strings of C++ code). The article describes an easy method to develop a program environment for the MetaTrader terminal, that would provide means for accessing indicator buffers from other MQL programs.
TradeObjects: Automation of trading based on MetaTrader graphical objects
The article deals with a simple approach to creating an automated trading system based on the chart linear markup and offers a ready-made Expert Advisor using the standard properties of the MetaTrader 4 and 5 objects and supporting the main trading operations.
Testing Visualization: Manual Trading
Testing manual strategies on history. Check how your trading algorithm works turning a deaf ear to programming niceties!
Integrating MetaTrader 4 Client Terminal with MS SQL Server
The article gives an example of integrating MetaTrader 4 Client Terminal with MS SQL Server using a dll. Attached are both source codes in С++ and in MQL4, and a ready-made and compiled Visual C++ 6.0 SP5 project.
Creating an EA that works automatically (Part 01): Concepts and structures
Today we'll see how to create an Expert Advisor that simply and safely works in automatic mode.
Extracting structured data from HTML pages using CSS selectors
The article provides a description of a universal method for analyzing and converting data from HTML documents based on CSS selectors. Trading reports, tester reports, your favorite economic calendars, public signals, account monitoring and additional online quote sources will become available straight from MQL.
Advanced Analysis of a Trading Account
The article deals with the automatic system for analyzing any trading account in MetaTrader 4 terminal. Technical aspects of a generated report and interpretation of the obtained results are considered. Conclusions on improving trading factors are drawn after the detailed review of the report. MQLab™ Graphic Report script is used for analysis.
Practical Implementation of Digital Filters in MQL5 for Beginners
The idea of digital signal filtering has been widely discussed on forum topics about building trading systems. And it would be imprudent not to create a standard code of digital filters in MQL5. In this article the author describes the transformation of simple SMA indicator's code from his article "Custom Indicators in MQL5 for Newbies" into code of more complicated and universal digital filter. This article is a logical sequel to the previous article. It also tells how to replace text in code and how to correct programming errors.
Applying network functions, or MySQL without DLL: Part II - Program for monitoring changes in signal properties
In the previous part, we considered the implementation of the MySQL connector. In this article, we will consider its application by implementing the service for collecting signal properties and the program for viewing their changes over time. The implemented example has practical sense if users need to observe changes in properties that are not displayed on the signal's web page.
Studying candlestick analysis techniques (part IV): Updates and additions to Pattern Analyzer
The article presents a new version of the Pattern Analyzer application. This version provides bug fixes and new features, as well as the revised user interface. Comments and suggestions from previous article were taken into account when developing the new version. The resulting application is described in this article.
The power of ZigZag (part I). Developing the base class of the indicator
Many researchers do not pay enough attention to determining the price behavior. At the same time, complex methods are used, which very often are simply “black boxes”, such as machine learning or neural networks. The most important question arising in that case is what data to submit for training a particular model.
Library for easy and quick development of MetaTrader programs (part XXIII): Base trading class - verification of valid parameters
In the article, we continue the development of the trading class by implementing the control over incorrect trading order parameter values and voicing trading events.
Applying OLAP in trading (part 1): Online analysis of multidimensional data
The article describes how to create a framework for the online analysis of multidimensional data (OLAP), as well as how to implement this in MQL and to apply such analysis in the MetaTrader environment using the example of trading account history processing.
Useful and exotic techniques for automated trading
In this article I will demonstrate some very interesting and useful techniques for automated trading. Some of them may be familiar to you. I will try to cover the most interesting methods and will explain why they are worth using. Furthermore, I will show what these techniques are apt to in practice. We will create Expert Advisors and test all the described techniques using historic quotes.
A Universal Channel with the Graphical Interface
All channel indicators are displayed as three lines, including central, top and bottom lines. The drawing principle of the central line is similar to a moving average, while the moving average indicator is mostly used for drawing channels. The top and bottom lines are located at equal distances from the central line. This distance can be determined in points, as percent of price (the Envelopes indicator), using a standard deviation value (Bollinger Bands), or an ATR value (Keltner channel).
Deep Neural Networks (Part VI). Ensemble of neural network classifiers: bagging
The article discusses the methods for building and training ensembles of neural networks with bagging structure. It also determines the peculiarities of hyperparameter optimization for individual neural network classifiers that make up the ensemble. The quality of the optimized neural network obtained in the previous article of the series is compared with the quality of the created ensemble of neural networks. Possibilities of further improving the quality of the ensemble's classification are considered.
Custom presentation of trading history and creation of report diagrams
The article describes custom methods for assessing the trading history. Two classes have been written for downloading and analyzing history. The first of them collects the trading history and represents it as a summary table. The second one deals with statistics: it calculates a number of variables and builds charts for a more efficient evaluation of trading results.
Cross-Platform Expert Advisor: Orders
MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 uses different conventions in processing trade requests. This article discusses the possibility of using a class object that can be used to represent the trades processed by the server, in order for a cross-platform expert advisor to further work on them, regardless of the version of the trading platform and mode being used.