MQL5 Programming Articles

Is it allowed to trade this symbol on Monday? Is there enough money to open position? How big is the loss if Stop Loss triggers? How to limit the number of pending orders? Was the trade operation executed at the current bar or at the previous one? If a trade robot cannot perform this kind of verifications, then any trade strategy can turn into a losing one. This article shows the examples of verifications that are useful in any Expert Advisor.

In this article, we will continue analyzing the algorithms of the CStrategy trading engine. The third part of the series contains the detailed analysis of examples of how to develop specific trading strategies using this approach. Special attention is paid to auxiliary algorithms — Expert Advisor logging system and data access using a conventional indexer (Close[1], Open[0] etc.)

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.

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.

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.

This article is an introduction to a series of articles about programming. It is assumed here that the reader has never dealt with programming before. So, this series starts from the very basics. Programming knowledge level: Absolute Beginner.

Comparing several time series during a technical analysis is a quite common task that requires appropriate tools. In this article, I suggest developing a tool for graphical analysis and detecting correlations between two or more time series.

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.

In this chapter, we will extend the library implementation to the possibility of creating multi-window interfaces for the MQL applications. We will also develop a system of priorities for left mouse clicking on graphical objects. This is required to avoid problems when elements do not respond to the user's actions.

This is the must read article for anyone wanting to improve their programming career. This article series is aimed at making you the best programmer you can possibly be, no matter how experienced you are. The discussed ideas work for MQL5 programming newbies as well as professionals.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

In this little video course you will learn how to download, install and setup MetaTrader 5 for Automated Trading. You will also learn how to adjust the chart settings and the options for automated trading. You will do your first backtest and by the end of this course you will know how to import an Expert Advisor that can automatically trade 24/7 while you don't have to sit in front of your screen.

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.

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.

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.

The article arranges the work of an account object on a new base object of all library objects, improves the CBaseObj base object and tests setting tracked parameters, as well as receiving events for any library objects.

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.

The article deals with applying DoEasy library for creating multi-symbol multi-period indicators. We are going to prepare the library classes to work within indicators and test creating timeseries to be used as data sources in indicators. We will also implement creating and sending timeseries events.

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.

Expert Advisor Visual Wizard for MetaTrader 5 provides a highly intuitive graphical environment with a comprehensive set of predefined trading blocks that let you design Expert Advisors in minutes. The click, drag and drop approach of Expert Advisor Visual Wizard allows you to create visual representations of forex trading strategies and signals as you would with pencil and paper. These trading diagrams are analyzed automatically by Molanis’ MQL5 code generator that transforms them into ready to use Expert Advisors. The interactive graphical environment simplifies the design process and eliminates the need to write MQL5 code.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The MetaTrader 5 platform features functionality for saving trading reports, as well as Expert Advisor testing and optimization reports. Trading and testing reports can be saved in two formats: XLSX and HTML, while the optimization report can be saved in XML. In this article we consider the HTML testing report, the XML optimization report and the HTML trading history report.

In this new article from our series for learning how to design trading systems, I will present the Commodities Channel Index (CCI), explain its specifics, and share with you how to create a trading system based on this indicator.

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.

MQL5 Market has many products for sale but some of their descriptions leave much to be desired. Many texts are obviously in need of improvement, as common traders are not able to comprehend them. This article will help you to put your product in a favorable light. Use our recommendations to write an eye-catching description that will easily show your customers what exactly you are selling.