Introduction
This is mostly a reflection on me and what I came to realise verses what I thought
I knew about financial instrument development. I will mainly focus on two instruments
Custom Indicators and Expert Advisors AKA trading robots, please note, MQ4 can deliver
other applications in the metatrader eco-system.
WHAT DO YOU FIRST NEED TO KNOW (YOUR BACKGROUND)
When I first started I had no finance knowledge, which I thought would be a huge disadvantage,
turns out financial skills are only needed if you plan to be a trader yourself (which i do recommend)
or plan to use Artificial Intelligent to scope fundamental events. Really all you need to be equipped with
a bit of statistic terminology and a basic C+ programming language background, just enough to be able
to call pre-defined statistic functions.
My background is PHP (backend stuff), I have 3 years’ experience coding website and online systems. So understanding C++ was a
manner of learning C++ strict rules oppose to PHP's not so many rules. But if you have zero coding experience but excel in maths,
you will catch up really fast.
DO I REALLY NEED MATHS?
Not right away, BUT most of the hardest things you will come across, is the logic in which metatrader draws on its window chart, hence maths will
help you better grasp the buffing process, which took me a while to finally get my head wrapped around it. Once u understand buffing, everything
else is already calculated for you, you just need to take those output values and based on your strategy determine EXACTLY when to draw, open order
or close order (stop loss or trailing stop loss).
KNOWLEDGE OF COMMON INDICATOR FUNCTIONS...
iMA Moving Average : https://docs.mql4.com/indicators/ima (learn more)
Accumulation/Distribution : https://docs.mql4.com/indicators/iad (learn more)
Standard Deviation : https://docs.mql4.com/indicators/istddev (learn more)
Stochastic : https://docs.mql4.com/indicators/istochastic (learn more)
TASTE YOUR OWN MEDICINE
If you still starting out, people won’t trust you unless you prove to them that you can develop a fully functioning custom indicator
or expert adviser NOT necessarily profitable. Practice by sharing your products on platforms like mql5 market, to be discovered
by potential clients while building your portfolio.
ENGAGE WITH USERS AND HELP OUT ON FORUM
Helping each other, is one of the fastest ways to understanding a new subject. So to test your level of understand, by being
active on forums, answer questions and all ways ask if you do not understand.
Conclusion
Always test your product before Appling it to a live account, even after back testing, you should first test on a demo account.
They are no short cuts when it comes to expert advisor testing, I recommend at least two or three months before you go live, and
even after this period you should always check on the health of robot or you will wake up with your account busted.
I hope this was valuable to you, if you have any question, leave me a comment below, and i will reply to it.
