MQL4 and MQL5 Programming Articles

A portrait of a trader's behavior on the financial market. Author's own menu from the book "Как играть и выигрывать на бирже" ("How to speculate on stock exchange and win") by A. Elder.

In this article, the author gives an example Expert Advisor meeting the requirements stated in the Rules of the Automated Trading Championship 2008

Script 'Trader's Assistant' helps you to make a decision on opening positions, based on the extended analysis of the MACD status for the last three bars in the real-time trading on any timeframe. It can also be used for back testing.

It is sometimes necessary to perform identical operations with a group of files. If you have a list of files included into a group, then it is no problem. However, if you need to make this list yourself, then a question arises: "How can I do this?" The article proposes doing this using functions FindFirstFile() and FindNextFile() included in kernel32.dll.

The article describes a method of searching the errors in the MQL4 code that is based on commenting. This method is found to be a useful one in case of problems occuring during the compilation caused by the errors in a reasonably large code.

A trading strategy using hedging system created for trading the intra-day style of GBPJPY / EURJPY and for daily trading.

We present to you a selection of these materials that are divided into several parts. The present one contains additional materials about automated trading, Expert Advisors development, etc.

Environment MQL4 is based on the conception of safe "sandbox": reading and saving files using the language are allowed in some predefined folders only. This protects the user of MetaTrader 4 from the potential danger of damaging important data on the HDD. However, it is sometimes necessary to leave that safe area. This article is devoted to the problem of how to do it easily and correctly.

The present article contains Weekly Reports of the ATC 2007. These materials are like snapshots, they are interesting-to-read not only during the Championship, but years later as well.

Forecasting financial time-series is a required element of any investing activity. The concept of investing itself - put up money now to gain profits in future - is based on the concept of predicting the future. Therefore, forecasting financial time-series underlies the activities of the whole investing industry - all organized exchanges and other securities trading systems.

The published interviews of Championship 2007 bear the stamp of the results obtained during the preceding contest. The first Championship evoked a wide response on the internet and in printings. The leading developer of the MetaQuotes Software Corp. tells about changes made to the forthcoming Automated Trading Championship 2007. We put our questions to the developer of a well-known indicating complex ZUP, Eugeni Neumoin (nen) and spoke to an equity trader, Alexander Pozdnishev (AlexSilver).

This article contains Weekly Reports of the ATC 2006. These materials are like snapshots, they are interesting-to-read not only during the Championship, but years later as well.

The indicator shows trend lines displaying the recent events on the market. The indicator is developed considering the recommendations and the approach of Thomas Demark concerning technical analysis. The indicator displays both the last direction of the trend and the next-to-last opposite direction of the trend.

Interviews with the Participants of Automated Trading Championship 2006 demonstrated a great variety of views of automated trading and trading as a whole. You can see yourselves which ideas turned out to work better during the Championship and which of them could not pass the critical verification through a three-month long "test-drive" on a contest account.

Step-by-step instructions of how to organize data transfer from Matlab to MetaTrader 4 using DDE.

Creating a profitable and stable trading system is always related to statistical data processing. In this article, we pout together statistical reports of the Automated Trading Championships 2006-2007. It may well be that the information they provide will help you find new trading ideas or correct the existing ones. Analyze the data and save your time.

This article comprises useful materials that will help you learn more about the procedure of registration for participation in the Automated Trading Championship.

The article describes an algorithm of volume increase of a profit trade. Its implementation using MQL4 means is presented in the article.

Surely, a fey thought to trade closely to extremums visited every apprentice trader when he/she saw "enigmatic" polyline for the first time. It's so simple, indeed. Here is the maximum. And there is the minimum. A beautiful picture on the history. And what is in practice? A ray is drawn. It should seem, that is it, the peak! It is time to sell. And now we go down. But hell no! The price is treacherously moving upwards. Haw! It's a trifle, not an indicator. And you throw it out!

The present article contemplates the wide opportunities of the statistic approach to marketing. Unfortunately, beginner traders deliberately fail to apply the really mighty science of statistics. Meanwhile, it is the only thing they use subconsciously while analyzing the market. Besides, statistics can give answers to many questions.

In the article, an attempt is made to visualize the intensity of specific markets and of their time segments, to detect their regularities and behavior patterns.

Automated Trading Championship based on online trading platform MetaTrader 4 is being conducted for the third time and accepted by many people as a matter-of-course yearly event being waited for with impatience. However, this competition specifies strict requirements to the Participants. This is precisely the topic we're going to discuss in this article.

The two-stage approach allows you to avoid the unnecessary closing and re-opening of positions in situations close to the trend and in cases of possible occurrence of divirgence.

Developers of order modification/closing algorithms suffer from an imperishable woe - how to compare results obtained by different methods? The mechanism of checking is well known - it is Strategy Tester. But how to make an EA to work equally for opening/closing orders? The article describes a tool that provides strong repetition of order openings that allows us to maintain a mathematically correct platform to compare the results of different algorithms for trailing stops and for exiting the market.

The main purpose of the Championship is to popularize automated trading and accumulate practical information in this field of knowledge. As the Organizer of the Championship, we are doing our best to provide a fair competition and suppress all attempts to “play booty”. It is this reasoning that sets the strict Rules of the Championship.

The article gives an example of integrating MetaTrader 4 Client Terminal with MS SQL Server using a dll. Attached are both source codes in С++ and in MQL4, and a ready-made and compiled Visual C++ 6.0 SP5 project.

About an obvious but still substandard method of ZigZag composition, and what it results in: the Multiframe Fractal ZigZag indicator that represents ZigZags built on three larger ons, on a single working timeframe (TF). In their turn, those larger TFs may be non-standard, too, and range from M5 to MN1.

In this article the author offers ways to improve trading systems described in his previous articles. The article will be interesting for traders that already have some experience of writing Expert Advisors.

The article describes the method of creating a tool for comfortable scalping. However, such an approach to trade opening can be applied in any trading.

In this article the author continues to analyze implementation algorithms of simplest trading systems and introduces recording of optimization results in backtesting into one html file in the form of a table. The article will be useful for beginning traders and EA writers.

All indicators can be divided into two groups: static indicators, the displaying of which, once shown, always remains the same in history and does not change with new incoming quotes, and dynamic indicators that display their status for the current moment only and are fully redrawn when a new price comes. The efficiency of a static indicator is directly visible on the chart. But how can we check whether a dynamic indicator works ok? This is the question the article is devoted to.

In this article the author continues to analyze implementation algorithms of simplest trading systems and introduces backtesting automation. The article will be useful for beginning traders and EA writers.

It may be news to many our readers that all preparations for writing an EA can be performed once and then used continuously.

In this article the author continues to analyze implementation algorithms of simplest trading systems and describes some relevant details of using optimization results. The article will be useful for beginning traders and EA writers.

The first demonstration of testing results of a strategy based on 0.1 lot is becoming a standard de facto in the Forum. Having received "not so bad" from professionals, a beginner sees that "0.1" testing brings rather modest results and decides to introduce an aggressive money management thinking that positive mathematic expectation automatically provides positive results. Let's see what results can be achieved. Together with that we will try to construct several artificial balance graphs that are very instructive.

The article describes an Expert Advisor that allows conducting the comparative analysis of 30 indicators and oscillators aiming at the formation of an effective package of indexes for trading.

This article dwells on implementation algorithm of simplest trading systems. The article will be useful for beginning traders and EA writers.

The article describes a simple, accessible language of graphical trading requests compatible with traditional technical analysis. The attached Gterminal is a half-automated Expert Advisor using in trading results of graphical analysis. Better used for self-education and training of beginning traders.

It is usually easier to show, than to explain. We offer a simple and free way to create a video clip using CamStudio for publishing it in MQL.community forums.

Not all traders are programmers. And not all of the programmers are really good ones. So, what should be done, if you need to automate your system by do not have time and desire to study MQL4?