Articles on strategy testing in MQL5

The article examines the EOSA algorithm, which is inspired by the mechanisms of Ebola virus transmission: short-distance transmission through close contact (exploitation) and long-distance transmission through travel (exploration). An analysis of the original publication revealed critical issues in the mathematical formulas and an epidemiological model that was impractical to implement, which required a significant overhaul of the algorithm to produce a workable implementation.

Now we will implement this solution, since MQL5 is based on the same principles as event-driven programmingю Developers often use this model when creating DLLs. I know that at first, the event-driven model will seem confusing and illogical. But in this article, I will explain the principles of event-driven programming in a way that is easier to understand, so that if you are just getting started, you will have a clear grasp of how it works. Understanding what I am about to explain in this article will help you throughout your work as a programmer.

In this article, we will look at how to easily implement an indicator that shows whether a position is generating a profit or a loss. The procedure is simple and effective. Even without in-depth expertise, this indicator will allow you to easily recognize when to close a position. This way, you will avoid unexpected results, since the calculation reflects the actual outcome you would get if you closed the position.

We implement a five-stage MQL5 pipeline that quantifies market structure, liquidity interaction, and price behavior on four timeframes, then resolves them into a 0–100 Market Intent Score. Decision states (WAIT/WATCH/ACTION) are driven by explicit weights plus hard gates. The analytical core feeds a concise dashboard and, when AutoTrade is on, an execution layer with entry zones, invalidation and liquidity‑based targets.

In this article, you will learn how to create a visual signal on your trading platform so you can determine directly on the chart whether a position is long or short, without having to open the Terminal. In addition, the article also explains how to implement a feature that improves the display when moving Take Profit and Stop Loss lines by hiding the horizontal line that follows the mouse cursor while these lines are being moved, to avoid confusion. The article provides practical insight into setting up market simulation systems.

In this article, I will show you, dear reader, how to select the objects we create on the chart and modify the position indicator so that it can perform many more functions than originally intended. We will look at how to implement the ability to move price levels and create price lines directly on the chart. Many people may find this difficult. However, you will see that we'll do this with minimal effort. You just need to give it a little thought.

We need a way to handle the graphical objects we create. The approach presented in the previous article works very well for certain scenarios. In this case, we will need something more complex, given the specific nature of the problem at hand. Therefore, we will not attempt to replace the ZOrder management mechanisms already present in MetaTrader 5, nor, of course, will we check which object is in the foreground or covered by another object. We are going to do something completely different. Here, I will show you what changes need to be made to the code in order to use part of what MetaTrader 5 already does for us.

In this turning-point article, we will begin to explore in greater depth the interaction between the applications we are developing to ensure full support for the replay/simulation system. Here we will analyze a problem that, on the one hand, is quite unpleasant, but on the other hand, is very interesting to explain and solve. The problem is this: how can we restore the take-profit and stop-loss lines after they have been deleted, and do so without using the terminal by performing the operation directly on the chart? At first glance, it seems simple. However, there are several obstacles that must be overcome.

In the previous article, we considered how to implement a position indicator that allows you to close an open position directly from the chart by interacting with an object available on the chart. After completing and testing the first mechanism, we began making changes to ensure that take-profit and stop-loss levels could be removed for an open position. However, since the necessary changes required detailed explanations, in that same article I showed only the changes that needed to be made to the expert advisor; I still needed to show the changes that needed to be made to the position indicator.

In this article, we'll start making some improvements to the position indicator so that we can interact with it and modify price lines or close a position directly through the position indicator. Before we move on to the implementation, there are a few things worth clarifying, especially for those who aren't familiar with this. The indicator cannot be used in any way to change anything on the trading server. This is because MetaTrader 5 has a security system in place that allows only Expert Advisors to modify orders and positions. No application other than an Expert Advisor can manipulate orders or positions.

This article presents a unified news model and a set of reusable MQL5 classes for working with the MetaTrader 5 Economic Calendar. You will retrieve, filter, and cache events by time, currency, country, and importance using a single interface across three providers: built-in calendar, CSV, and SQLite. The framework supports export/import, next/previous event lookup, and reliable strategy‑tester backtesting without changing trading logic.

We extend the supply and demand framework with a strategy layer that converts zone interactions into decisions. Qualified zones pass sequential checks for interaction proximity, approach behavior, higher‑timeframe alignment, and price action before execution is handed to a dedicated trade manager. This architecture improves control, maintainability, and future extensibility without changing the underlying zone engine.

This article presents a reproducible MetaTrader 5 workflow: collect history, engineer nine context features, label simulated EMA crossover trades, train with FLAML, and export to ONNX with fixed opset and plain probabilities. The Expert Advisor loads the model natively, mirrors the Python feature contract, and uses a tunable confidence threshold as a trade filter. Readers can swap signals and features to reuse the same pipeline.

Live performance often drifts from backtests because of execution friction. We introduce an MQL5 diagnostic EA that records entry and exit slippage, asymmetry, observed spread, requotes, and per-leg latency, using a precise probe mode and an approximate passive mode, and writes every sample to CSV. Use the results to distinguish strategy issues from execution effects across your terminal, network, broker, and liquidity.

A market-neutral trading strategy based on the empirical return distribution offers an alternative to traditional technical analysis methods, replacing price direction forecasting with the statistical placement of orders at levels the price is likely to reach. This article provides a detailed analysis of the mathematical framework for calculating percentiles, algorithms for weighting position sizes based on the probability of an order being triggered, and mechanisms for adapting to changing market conditions through grid expiration. A complete implementation in MQL5 is provided.

This article demonstrates a practical approach to researching trading ideas using a range breakout strategy as an example. We will go through the entire process, from formalizing trading rules and building a baseline model to parameter optimization, forward testing, and evaluating the robustness of the results. The main goal of the article is to develop an understanding of how statistics and testing can be used to identify, validate, and evaluate trading hypotheses.

We enhance the manual backtesting EA with real-time lot adjustment, an order module for buy/sell stops and limits, and a Trade Manager to modify TP/SL and close positions individually. The article explains control setup with CButton/CBmpButton/CEdit, logic in OnTick, and workarounds for Strategy Tester input constraints. Readers can reuse these components to speed up testing workflows and implement robust trade management.

A reproducible, read-only Python audit for MetaTrader 5 that verifies history quality before any backtest. It exports M5 data from multiple terminals, detects gaps and synthetic bars by timestamp spacing, and reports coverage per year. The same deterministic strategy then runs on three broker feeds over a common window to quantify result drift and decompose it into spread, data/price, and trade effects.

Despite what was shown in the previous article, all of this may seem simple at first. In reality, several problems remain, along with many tasks that still need to be completed. You, dear reader, may imagine that everything is easy and straightforward. Out of inexperience, you may simply accept whatever is presented to you. And that is a mistake you should try to avoid. Even worse is trying to use something without truly understanding what exactly you are using. Beginners often pass through a copy-and-paste stage. If you do not want to remain stuck at that stage forever, you should learn how to use certain tools. One of the tools most often used by programmers is documentation. The second is testing, supported by log files. Here we will see how to do this.

We extend the stateful supply and demand framework for MetaTrader 5 with a quantitative admission model and a dedicated interaction engine. Candidate zones are scored by structural symmetry, volume participation, and ATR‑normalized displacement, then classified into objective tiers. Admitted zones follow a deterministic lifecycle that tracks first touch, validates bounces, or confirms breakouts, with full telemetry for analysis and reproducibility.

In previous articles, we mentioned that sometimes we need to set a value for the ZOrder property. But why? The reason is that many pieces of code that add objects to a chart simply do not use, or more precisely do not define, a value for this property. The point is that I am not here to say what every programmer should or should not do, or how they should or should not write their code. I am here to show you, dear reader, and everyone who truly wants to understand how these processes work internally, what actually happens behind the scenes.

In this article, I will show how to use an indicator to track open positions on the trading server in the simplest and most practical way possible. I am doing this step by step to show that you do not necessarily have to move all of this into an Expert Advisor. Many of you have probably become used to doing that for one reason or another. In fact, that is not really justified, because as this implementation evolves, it will become clear that you can create or implement different types of indicators for this purpose.

We present a complete workflow for adaptive filtering in MQL5 using the CNlEq Levenberg–Marquardt–like solver. The EA fits a VAMAC model—two EWMAs with an ATR‑based scaling—by supplying residuals and a Jacobian through CNlEq's reverse‑communication loop, with optional numerical or analytical derivatives. Code, setup instructions, and GBPUSD H1 tests show how to replace static thresholds with on‑bar re‑estimation.

This article advances the stateful supply and demand zone framework for MetaTrader 5 by replacing polling with an event-driven model based on OnChartEvent(). We split synchronization into dedicated handlers for creation, modification, and deletion, and separate market logic in OnTick() from user interactions in OnChartEvent(). A persistent, append-only CSV logger records all lifecycle events, improving responsiveness, state consistency, and recoverable history for downstream analysis.

The article presents an MQL5 Expert Advisor that adapts the Ford–Fulkerson max-flow method into a liquidity-capacity filter. Market structures—Swing Highs/Lows, Fair Value Gaps, Order Blocks, and Liquidity Pools—form a directed graph with edge capacities from volume, price reaction, distance, and structure quality. Maximum flow qualifies ICT setups, filters weak paths, and drives dynamic position sizing for a consistent, two-stage decision process.

Multi-core optimization in MetaTrader 5 can silently drop results when parallel agents contend for the same CSV file. A reusable MQL5 export engine applies an iteration-based spin-lock to acquire the file handle reliably and append rows without loss. It persists custom metrics such as the Sortino Ratio, average trade duration, and signal-quality measures (lag and whipsaws) into a consolidated CSV for downstream analysis.

Replace static drawings with automated, stateful zones controlled by a CZone wrapper. The system synchronizes user rectangles, sizes zones by ATR, validates breakouts using consecutive closes, applies ghost/deactivation rules, merges nearby structures by a 1.5×ATR threshold, and projects edges forward. Traders gain durable levels that update themselves and reduce repetitive chart management.

In this article, we will see how to visualize a database and, from that, understand how it is structured. This is done by analyzing the database’s internal structure. Although this may seem unnecessary at first, it is fully justified if we really want to become database administrators. After all, some people make a living maintaining and designing databases.

Before you give up and decide to abandon learning SQL, allow me to remind you, dear readers, that here we are still using only the most basic elements. We have not yet looked at some of SQL's capabilities. Once you understand them, you will see that SQL is far more practical than it seems. Although, most likely, we will eventually change the direction of what we are building, because the creation process is dynamic. We will show a little more about creating different things in SQL, because this is truly important and useful for you. Simply thinking that you are more capable than an entire community of programmers and developers will only lead to wasted time and opportunities. Do not worry, because what comes next will be even more interesting.