MQL5 Programming Articles

In this article, we continue to dwell on reversing techniques. We will try to reduce the maximum balance drawdown till an acceptable level for the instruments considered earlier. We will see if the measures will reduce the profit. We will also check how the reversing method performs on other markets, including stock, commodity, index, ETF and agricultural markets. Attention, the article contains a lot of images!

This article is a follow-up to the previous one called "Reversal patterns: Testing the Double top/bottom pattern". Now we will have a look at another well-known reversal pattern called Head and Shoulders, compare the trading efficiency of the two patterns and make an attempt to combine them into a single trading system.

Traders often look for trend reversal points since the price has the greatest potential for movement at the very beginning of a newly formed trend. Consequently, various reversal patterns are considered in the technical analysis. The Double top/bottom is one of the most well-known and frequently used ones. The article proposes the method of the pattern programmatic detection. It also tests the pattern's profitability on history data.

The article dwells on gaps — significant differences between a close price of a previous timeframe and an open price of the next one, as well as on forecasting a daily bar direction. Applying the GetOpenFileName function by the system DLL is considered as well.

Using limit orders instead of conventional take profits has long been a topic of discussions on the forum. What is the advantage of this approach and how can it be implemented in your trading? In this article, I want to offer you my vision of this topic.

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.

The main advantage of trading robots lies in the ability to work 24 hours a day on a remote VPS server. But sometimes it is necessary to intervene in their work, while there may be no direct access to the server. Is it possible to manage EAs remotely? The article proposes one of the options for controlling EAs via external commands.

The article dwells on the development of an application for selecting the best optimization passes using several possible options. The application is able to sort out the optimization results by a variety of factors. Optimization passes are always written to a database, therefore you can always select new robot parameters without re-optimization. Besides, you are able to see all optimization passes on a single chart, calculate parametric VaR ratios and build the graph of the normal distribution of passes and trading results of a certain ratio set. Besides, the graphs of some calculated ratios are built dynamically beginning with the optimization start (or from a selected date to another selected date).

The article provides an overview of the terminal's capabilities for creating and working with custom symbols, offers options for simulating a trading history using custom symbols, trend and various chart patterns.

In this article, we will study the reverse martingale technique and will try to understand whether it is worth using, as well as whether it can help improve your trading strategy. We will create an Expert Advisor to operate on historic data and to check what indicators are best suitable for the reversing technique. We will also check whether it can be used without any indicator as an independent trading system. In addition, we will check if reversing can turn a loss-making trading system into a profitable one.

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.

MetaTrader 5 is a multi-asset platform. Moreover, it supports different position management systems. Such opportunities provide significantly expanded options for the implementation and formalization of trading ideas. In this article, we discuss methods of handling and accounting of position properties in the hedging mode. The article features a derived class, as well as examples showing how to get and process the properties of a hedge position.

This article describes the implementation of a self-optimization mechanism under MetaTrader 5.

The article dwells on Elder-Ray trading system based on Bulls Power, Bears Power and Moving Average indicators (EMA — exponential averaging). This system was described by Alexander Elder in his book "Trading for a Living".

Members of the official MetaTrader Freelance service have completed more than 50,000 orders as at October 2018. This is the world's largest Freelance site for MQL programmers: more than a thousand developers, dozens of new orders daily and 7 languages localization.

There are numerous trading strategies out there. Some of them look for a trend, while others define ranges of price fluctuations to trade within them. Is it possible to combine these two approaches to increase profitability?

The article considers three methods which can be used to increase the classification quality of bagging ensembles, and their efficiency is estimated. The effects of optimization of the ELM neural network hyperparameters and postprocessing parameters are evaluated.

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.

The widget provides websites with a detailed release schedule of 500 indicators and indices, of the world's largest economies. Thus, traders quickly receive up-to-date information on all important events with explanations and graphs in addition to the main website content.

The article deals with the algorithm of developing stock indicators based on real volumes using the CopyTicks() and CopyTicksRange() functions. Some subtle aspects of developing such indicators, as well as their operation in real time and in the strategy tester are also described.

When developing trading algorithms, we often encounter a problem: how to determine where a trend/flat begins and ends? In this article, we try to create a universal indicator, in which we try to combine signals for different types of strategies. We will try to simplify the process of obtaining trade signals in an expert as much as possible. An example of combining several indicators in one will be given.

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.

The largest store of ready-made applications for algo-trading now features 13,970 products. This includes 4,800 robots, 6,500 indicators, 2,400 utilities and other solutions. Almost half of the applications (6,000) are available for rent. Also, a quarter of the total number of products (3,800) can be downloaded for free.

Trading account monitoring provides a detailed report on all completed deals. All trading statistics are collected automatically and provided to you as easy-to-understand diagrams and graphs.

This is the second part of the article showing the development of a multi-symbol signal Expert Advisor for manual trading. We have already created the graphical interface. It is now time to connect it with the program's functionality.

The article describes how to add the ability to work with Microsoft SQL Server database server to MQL5-based Expert Advisors. Import of functions from a DLL is used. The DLL is created using the Microsoft .NET platform and the C# language. The methods used in the article are also suitable for experts written in MQL4, with minor adjustments.

In the article, we continue to develop the MQL application for working with optimization results. This time, we will show how to form the table of the best results after optimizing the parameters by specifying another criterion via the graphical interface.

This article concludes the series devoted to trading currency pair baskets. Here we test the remaining pattern and discuss applying the entire method in real trading. Market entries and exits, searching for patterns and analyzing them, complex use of combined indicators are considered.

We continue to build ensembles. This time, the bagging ensemble created earlier will be supplemented with a trainable combiner — a deep neural network. One neural network combines the 7 best ensemble outputs after pruning. The second one takes all 500 outputs of the ensemble as input, prunes and combines them. The neural networks will be built using the keras/TensorFlow package for Python. The features of the package will be briefly considered. Testing will be performed and the classification quality of bagging and stacking ensembles will be compared.

Are you trading using your own strategy? If your system rules can be formally described as software algorithms, it is better to entrust trading to an automated Expert Advisor. A robot does not need sleep or food and is not subject to human weaknesses. In this article, we show how to create Requirements Specification when ordering a trading robot in the Freelance service.

The reasons for moving an indicator code to an Expert Advisor may vary. How to assess the pros and cons of this approach? The article describes implementing an indicator code into an EA. Several experiments are conducted to assess the speed of the EA's operation.

The article explores the advantages and disadvantages of trading in flat periods. The ten strategies created and tested within this article are based on the tracking of price movements inside a channel. Each strategy is provided with a filtering mechanism, which is aimed at avoiding false market entry signals.

Before launching a robot on a trading account, we usually test and optimize it on quotes history. However, a reasonable question arises: how can past results help us in the future? The article describes applying the Monte Carlo method to construct custom criteria for trading strategy optimization. In addition, the EA stability criteria are considered.

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.

Despite the fact that many traders still prefer manual trading, it is hardly possible to completely avoid the automation of routine operations. The article shows an example of developing a multi-symbol signal Expert Advisor for manual trading.

The trade Signals service develops in leaps and bounds. Trusting our funds to a signal provider, we would like to minimize the risk of losing our deposit. So how to puzzle out in this forest of trade signals? How to find the one that would produce profits? This paper proposes to create a tool for visually analyzing the history of trades on trade signals in a symbol chart.

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.

Most subscribers choose a trade signal by the beauty of the balance curve and by the number of subscribers. This is why many today's providers care of beautiful statistics rather than of real signal quality, often playing with lot sizes and artificially reducing the balance curve to an ideal appearance. This paper deals with the reliability criteria and the methods a provider may use to enhance its signal quality. An exemplary analysis of a specific signal history is presented, as well as methods that would help a provider to make it more profitable and less risky.

This article presents a visual strategy builder. It is shown how any user can create trading robots and utilities without programming. Created Expert Advisors are fully functional and can be tested in the strategy tester, optimized in the cloud or executed live on real time charts.

The article demonstrates the development of the ZigZag indicator in accordance with one of the sample specifications described in the article "How to prepare Requirements Specification when ordering an indicator". The indicator is built by extreme values defined using an oscillator. There is an ability to use one of five oscillators: WPR, CCI, Chaikin, RSI or Stochastic Oscillator.