MQL5 Programming Articles

Matrices and vectors have been introduced in MQL5 for efficient operations with mathematical solutions. The new types offer built-in methods for creating concise and understandable code that is close to mathematical notation. Arrays provide extensive capabilities, but there are many cases in which matrices are much more efficient.

The MetaTrader 5 platform allows developing and testing trading robots that simultaneously trade multiple financial instruments. The built-in Strategy Tester automatically downloads required tick history from the broker's server taking into account contract specifications, so the developer does not need to do anything manually. This makes it possible to easily and reliably reproduce trading environment conditions, including even millisecond intervals between the arrival of ticks on different symbols. In this article we will demonstrate the development and testing of a spread strategy on two Moscow Exchange futures.

This article describes techniques of operating with Kohonen maps. The subject will be of interest to both market researchers with basic level of programing in MQL4 and MQL5 and experienced programmers that face difficulties with connecting Kohonen maps to their projects.

With this article we begin chapter nine of series of articles dedicated to creating graphical interfaces in MetaTrader trading terminals. It consists of two chapters where new elements of controls and interface, such as color picker, color button, progress bar and line chart are presented.

MQL5 Standard Library makes your life as a developer easier. Nevertheless, it does not implement all the needs of all developers in the world, so if you feel that you need some more custom stuff you can take a step further and extend. This article walks you through integrating MetaQuotes' Zig-Zag technical indicator into the Standard Library. We get inspired by MetaQuotes' design philosophy to achieve our goal.

We continue to study machine learning methods. With this article, we begin another big topic, Reinforcement Learning. This approach allows the models to set up certain strategies for solving the problems. We can expect that this property of reinforcement learning will open up new horizons for building trading strategies.

We continue to develop the Multiline Text box control. This time our task is to implement an automatic word wrapping in case a text box width overflow occurs, or a reverse word wrapping of the text to the previous line if the opportunity arises.

In the previous chapter of the first part of the series about graphical interfaces, the form class was enriched by methods which allowed managing the form by pressing its controls. In this article, we will test our work in different types of MQL program such as indicators and scripts. As the library was designed to be cross-platform so it could be used in all MetaTrader platforms, we will also test it in MetaTrader 4.

Volatility based breakout system identifies market ranges, then trades when price breaks above or below those levels, filtered by volatility measures such as ATR. This approach helps capture strong directional moves.

In this article, we develop a Trendline Breakout System in MQL5 that identifies support and resistance trendlines using swing points, validated by R-squared goodness of fit and angle constraints, to automate breakout trades. Our plan is to detect swing highs and lows within a specified lookback period, construct trendlines with a minimum number of touch points, and validate them using R-squared metrics and angle constraints to ensure reliability.

Every developer wants to be able to write code faster, and being able to code faster and effective is not some kind of special ability that only a few people are born with. It's a skill that can be learned, that is what I'm trying to teach in this article.

Based on universal tools designed for working with Kohonen networks, we construct the system of analyzing and selecting the optimal EA parameters and consider forecasting time series. In Part I, we corrected and improved the publicly available neural network classes, having added necessary algorithms. Now, it is time to apply them to practice.

If an indicator uses values of many other indicators for its calculations, it consumes a lot of memory. The article describes several methods of decreasing the memory consumption when using auxiliary indicators. Saved memory allows increasing the number of simultaneously used currency pairs, indicators and strategies in the client terminal. It increases the reliability of trade portfolio. Such a simple care about technical resources of your computer can turn into money resources at your deposit.

Hiding of the implementation details of classes/functions in an .ex5 file will enable you to share your know-how algorithms with other developers, set up common projects and promote them in the Web. And while the MetaQuotes team spares no effort to bring about the possibility of direct inheritance of ex5 library classes, we are going to implement it right now.

This is the last of the three articles devoted to graphical controls. It covers the creation of the main graphical interface component - the form - and its use in combination with other controls. In addition to the form classes, CFrame, CButton, CLabel classes have been added to the control library.

The article considers the methodology for developing trading algorithms, in which a consistent scientific approach is used to analyze possible price patterns and to build trading algorithms based on these patterns. Development ideals are demonstrated using examples.

In this article, I will create two classes (the class of DOM snapshot object and the class of DOM snapshot series object) and test creation of the DOM data series.

We will present a modified version of the Expert Advisor from the previous article "MQL5 Cookbook: Position Properties on the Custom Info Panel". Some of the issues we will address include getting data from bars, checking for new bar events on the current symbol, including a trade class of the Standard Library to a file, creating a function to search for trading signals and a function for executing trading operations, as well as determining trade events in the OnTrade() function.

In this article, we will consider combining the lists of bar objects for each used symbol period into a single symbol timeseries object. Thus, each symbol will have an object storing the lists of all used symbol timeseries periods.

We continue to add new features to the rendered table: data sorting, managing the number of columns and rows, setting the table cell types to place controls into them.

In this article, we’ve transitioned from manually coding candlestick‑pattern detection in Python to leveraging TA‑Lib, a library that recognizes over sixty distinct patterns. These formations offer valuable insights into potential market reversals and trend continuations. Follow along to learn more.

A new version of the graphics library for creating scientific charts (the CGraphic class) has been presented recently. This update of the developed library for creating graphical interfaces will introduce a version with a new control for creating charts. Now it is even easier to visualize data of different types.

Every price action trader manually uses trendlines to confirm trends and spot potential turning or continuation levels. In this series on developing a price action analysis toolkit, we introduce a tool focused on drawing slanted trendlines for easy market analysis. This tool simplifies the process for traders by clearly outlining key trends and levels essential for effective price action evaluation.

In this article we will implement an algorithm that applies the Box and Jenkins Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average model by using Powells method of function minimization. Box and Jenkins stated that most time series could be modeled by one or both of two frameworks.

After I wrote a previous article on semi-automatic Expert Advisor with GUI interface it turned out that it would be desirable to enhance interface with some new functionalities for more complex indicators and Expert Advisors. After getting acquainted with MQL5 standard library classes I implemented new widgets. This article describes a process of designing and implementing new MQL5 GUI widgets that can be used in indicators and Expert Advisors. The widgets presented in the article are CChartObjectSpinner, CChartObjectProgressBar and CChartObjectEditTable.

In this article, I will create the class of the abstract graphical object. This object is to serve as a basis for creating the class of standard graphical objects. Graphical objects feature multiple properties. Therefore, I will need to do a lot of preparatory work before actually creating the abstract graphical object class. This work includes setting the properties in the library enumerations.

In this article, I will consider tracking property value modification, as well as removing and renaming graphical objects in the library.

In the previous chapter, we wrote classes for creating vertical and horizontal scrollbars. In this chapter, we will implement them. We will write a class for creating the list view element, a compound part of which will be a vertical scrollbar.

This article provides programmatic definition of one of the movement continuation models. The main idea is defining two waves — the main and the correction one. For extreme points, I apply fractals as well as "potential" fractals - extreme points that have not yet formed as fractals.