MQL4 and MQL5 Programming Articles

icon

Study the MQL5 language for programming trading strategies in numerous published articles mostly written by you - the community members. The articles are grouped into categories to help you quicker find answers to any questions related to programming: Integration, Tester, Trading Strategies, etc.

Follow our new publications and discuss them on the Forum!

Add a new article
latest | best
TradeObjects: Automation of trading based on MetaTrader graphical objects

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.
Advanced Analysis of a Trading Account

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

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.
Extracting structured data from HTML pages using CSS selectors

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.
The power of ZigZag (part II). Examples of receiving, processing and displaying data

The power of ZigZag (part II). Examples of receiving, processing and displaying data

In the first part of the article, I have described a modified ZigZag indicator and a class for receiving data of that type of indicators. Here, I will show how to develop indicators based on these tools and write an EA for tests that features making deals according to signals formed by ZigZag indicator. As an addition, the article will introduce a new version of the EasyAndFast library for developing graphical user interfaces.
Random Forests Predict Trends

Random Forests Predict Trends

This article considers using the Rattle package for automatic search of patterns for predicting long and short positions of currency pairs on Forex. This article can be useful both for novice and experienced traders.
R-squared as an estimation of quality of the strategy balance curve

R-squared as an estimation of quality of the strategy balance curve

This article describes the construction of the custom optimization criterion R-squared. This criterion can be used to estimate the quality of a strategy's balance curve and to select the most smoothly growing and stable strategies. The work discusses the principles of its construction and statistical methods used in estimation of properties and quality of this metric.
Custom presentation of trading history and creation of report diagrams

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.
A New Approach to Interpreting Classic and Hidden Divergence. Part II

A New Approach to Interpreting Classic and Hidden Divergence. Part II

The article provides a critical examination of regular divergence and efficiency of various indicators. In addition, it contains filtering options for an increased analysis accuracy and features description of non-standard solutions. As a result, we will create a new tool for solving the technical task.
LifeHack for trader: "Quiet" optimization or Plotting trade distributions

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.
preview
Useful and exotic techniques for automated trading

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.
Learn how to design a trading system by Envelopes

Learn how to design a trading system by Envelopes

In this article, I will share with you one of the methods of how to trade bands. This time we will consider Envelopes and will see how easy it is to create some strategies based on the Envelopes.
Deep Neural Networks (Part VI). Ensemble of neural network classifiers: bagging

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 Walk Forward optimization in MetaTrader 5

Custom Walk Forward optimization in MetaTrader 5

The article deals with the approaches enabling accurate simulation of walk forward optimization using the built-in tester and auxiliary libraries implemented in MQL.
Testing Visualization: Manual Trading

Testing Visualization: Manual Trading

Testing manual strategies on history. Check how your trading algorithm works turning a deaf ear to programming niceties!
Genetic Algorithms vs. Simple Search in the MetaTrader 4 Optimizer

Genetic Algorithms vs. Simple Search in the MetaTrader 4 Optimizer

The article compares the time and results of Expert Advisors' optimization using genetic algorithms and those obtained by simple search.
Universal Expert Advisor: Pending Orders and Hedging Support (Part 5)

Universal Expert Advisor: Pending Orders and Hedging Support (Part 5)

This article provides further description of the CStrategy trading engine. By popular demand of users, we have added pending order support functions to the trading engine. Also, the latest version of the MetaTrader 5 now supports accounts with the hedging option. The same support has been added to CStrategy. The article provides a detailed description of algorithms for the use of pending orders, as well as of CStrategy operation principles on accounts with the hedging option enabled.
Graphical Interfaces I: Animating the Graphical Interface (Chapter 3)

Graphical Interfaces I: Animating the Graphical Interface (Chapter 3)

In the previous article, we started developing a form class for controls. In this article, we are going to continue doing that by filling this class with methods for moving a form over the chart area. We will then integrate this interface component into the core of the library. Also, we will ensure that the color of a form control changes when the mouse cursor is hovering over it.
Improving Panels: Adding transparency, changing background color and inheriting from CAppDialog/CWndClient

Improving Panels: Adding transparency, changing background color and inheriting from CAppDialog/CWndClient

In this article, we continue studying the use of CAppDialog. Now we will learn how to set color for the background, borders and header of the dialog box. Also, this article provides a step-by-step description of how to add transparency for an application window when dragging it within the chart. We will consider how to create child classes of CAppDialog or CWndClient and analyze new specifics of working with controls. Finally, we will review new Projects from a new perspective.
MQL5 Wizard: How to Create a Risk and Money Management Module

MQL5 Wizard: How to Create a Risk and Money Management Module

The generator of trading strategies of the MQL5 Wizard greatly simplifies testing of trading ideas. The article describes how to develop a custom risk and money management module and enable it in the MQL5 Wizard. As an example we've considered a money management algorithm, in which the size of the trade volume is determined by the results of the previous deal. The structure and format of description of the created class for the MQL5 Wizard are also discussed in the article.
Applying network functions, or MySQL without DLL: Part II - Program for monitoring changes in signal properties

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

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.
Practical evaluation of the adaptive market following method

Practical evaluation of the adaptive market following method

The main difference of the trading system proposed in the article is the use of mathematical tools for analyzing stock quotes. The system applies digital filtering and spectral estimation of discrete time series. The theoretical aspects of the strategy are described and a test Expert Advisor is created.
MQL5 Cookbook: Using Indicators to Set Trading Conditions in Expert Advisors

MQL5 Cookbook: Using Indicators to Set Trading Conditions in Expert Advisors

In this article, we will continue to modify the Expert Advisor we have been working on throughout the preceding articles of the MQL5 Cookbook series. This time, the Expert Advisor will be enhanced with indicators whose values will be used to check position opening conditions. To spice it up, we will create a drop-down list in the external parameters to be able to select one out of three trading indicators.
Using WinInet in MQL5.  Part 2:  POST Requests and Files

Using WinInet in MQL5. Part 2: POST Requests and Files

In this article, we continue studying the principles of working with Internet using HTTP requests and exchange of information with server. It describes new functions of the CMqlNet class, methods of sending information from forms and sending of files using POST requests as well as authorization on websites under your login using Cookies.
Indicator for Kagi Charting

Indicator for Kagi Charting

The article proposes Kagi chart indicator with various charting options and additional functions. Also, indicator charting principle and its MQL5 implementation features are considered. The most popular cases of its implementation in trading are displayed - Yin/Yang exchange strategy, pushing away from the trend line and consistently increasing "shoulders"/decreasing "waists".
A Universal Channel with the Graphical Interface

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).
Library for easy and quick development of MetaTrader programs (part XXV): Handling errors returned by the trade server

Library for easy and quick development of MetaTrader programs (part XXV): Handling errors returned by the trade server

After we send a trading order to the server, we need to check the error codes or the absence of errors. In this article, we will consider handling errors returned by the trade server and prepare for creating pending trading requests.
Learn how to design a trading system by ADX

Learn how to design a trading system by ADX

In this article, we will continue our series about designing a trading system using the most popular indicators and we will talk about the average directional index (ADX) indicator. We will learn this indicator in detail to understand it well and we will learn how we to use it through a simple strategy. By learning something deeply we can get more insights and we can use it better.
Library for easy and quick development of MetaTrader programs (part XXIII): Base trading class - verification of valid parameters

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

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.
MQL5 Wizard: How to Teach an EA to Open Pending Orders at Any Price

MQL5 Wizard: How to Teach an EA to Open Pending Orders at Any Price

The article describes a method of modifying the code of a trading signal module for the implementation of the functionality allowing you to set pending orders at any distance from the current price: it may be the Close or Open price of the previous bar or the value of the moving average. There are plenty of options. Important is that you can set any opening price for a pending order. This article will be useful to traders who trade with pending orders.
Cross-Platform Expert Advisor: Orders

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.
Error Handling and Logging in MQL5

Error Handling and Logging in MQL5

This article focuses on general issues linked to handling software errors. Furthermore, the logging term is brought up and the examples of logging implementation with MQL5 tools are shown.
Cross-Platform Expert Advisor: Order Manager

Cross-Platform Expert Advisor: Order Manager

This article discusses the creation of an order manager for a cross-platform expert advisor. The order manager is responsible for the entry and exit of orders or positions entered by the expert, as well as for keeping an independent record of such trades that is usable for both versions.
Using OpenCL to test candlestick patterns

Using OpenCL to test candlestick patterns

The article describes the algorithm for implementing the OpenCL candlestick patterns tester in the "1 minute OHLC" mode. We will also compare its speed with the built-in strategy tester launched in the fast and slow optimization modes.
preview
MQL5 Cookbook – Economic Calendar

MQL5 Cookbook – Economic Calendar

The article highlights the programming features of the Economic Calendar and considers creating a class for a simplified access to the calendar properties and receiving event values. Developing an indicator using CFTC non-commercial net positions serves as a practical example.
An Example of a Trading Strategy Based on Timezone Differences on Different Continents

An Example of a Trading Strategy Based on Timezone Differences on Different Continents

Surfing the Internet, it is easy to find many strategies, which will give you a number of various recommendations. Let’s take an insider’s approach and look into the process of strategy creation, based on the differences in timezones on different continents.
Creating a new trading strategy using a technology of resolving entries into indicators

Creating a new trading strategy using a technology of resolving entries into indicators

The article suggests a technology helping everyone to create custom trading strategies by assembling an individual indicator set, as well as to develop custom market entry signals.
preview
Practical application of neural networks in trading. It's time to practice

Practical application of neural networks in trading. It's time to practice

The article provides a description and instructions for the practical use of neural network modules on the Matlab platform. It also covers the main aspects of creation of a trading system using the neural network module. In order to be able to introduce the complex within one article, I had to modify it so as to combine several neural network module functions in one program.