Articles on manual and algorithmic trading in MetaTrader 5

Mini Market Emulator is an indicator designed for partial emulation of work in the terminal. Presumably, it can be used to test "manual" strategies of market analysis and trading.

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.

This is the first article in a series, in which I am going to describe a toolkit which enables manual application of chart graphics by utilizing keyboard shortcuts. It is very convenient: you press one key and a trendline appears, you press another key — this will create a Fibonacci fan with the necessary parameters. It will also be possible to switch timeframes, to rearrange layers or to delete all objects from the chart.

In the previous article, we created the application framework, which we will use as the basis for all further work. In this part, we will proceed with the development: we will create the visual part of the application and will configure basic interaction of interface elements.

Many researchers do not pay enough attention to determining the price behavior. At the same time, complex methods are used, which very often are simply “black boxes”, such as machine learning or neural networks. The most important question arising in that case is what data to submit for training a particular model.

It is possible to start making money on MQL5.com right now without having to be a seller of Market applications or a profitable signals provider. Select the products you like and post links to them on various web resources. Attract potential customers and the profit is yours!

In this article, we develop a Nick Rypock Trailing Reverse (NRTR) trading system in MQL5 that uses channel indicators for reversal signals, enabling trend-following entries with hedging support for buys and sells. We incorporate risk management features like auto lot sizing based on equity or balance, fixed or dynamic stop-loss and take-profit levels using ATR multipliers, and position limits.

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.

The article considers one of the variants for Expert Advisor practical realization to trade DiNapoli levels using MQL5 standard tools. Its performance is tested and conclusions are made.

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.

We continue our discussion of the patterns traders can come across while trading currency baskets. In this part, we will consider the patterns formed when using combined trend indicators. Indicators based on a currency index are to be used as the analytical tool.

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 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.

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.

The article will help a beginning trader to develop trading tactics on FOREX.

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.

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 deals with the automatic system for analyzing any trading account in MetaTrader 4 terminal. Technical aspects of a generated report and interpretation of the obtained results are considered. Conclusions on improving trading factors are drawn after the detailed review of the report. MQLab™ Graphic Report script is used for analysis.

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.

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.

In this article, we will fiddle around ChatGPT from OpenAI in order to understand its capabilities in terms of reducing the time and labor intensity of developing Expert Advisors, indicators and scripts. I will quickly navigate you through this technology and try to show you how to use it correctly for programming in MQL4 and MQL5.

Analysis of the trade history and plotting distribution charts of trading results in HTML depending on position entry time. The charts are displayed in three sections - by hours, by days of the week and by months.

In this article, we continue our learning series — this time we will learn how to design a trading system using one of the most popular and useful indicators, which is the Stochastic Oscillator indicator, to build a new block in our knowledge of basics.

In this article, we will expand the capabilities of the toolkit: we will add the ability to close trade positions upon specific conditions and will create tables for controlling market and pending orders, with the ability to edit these orders.

The article proposes Kagi chart indicator with various charting options and additional functions. Also, indicator charting principle and its MQL5 implementation features are considered. The most popular cases of its implementation in trading are displayed - Yin/Yang exchange strategy, pushing away from the trend line and consistently increasing "shoulders"/decreasing "waists".

Surfing the Internet, it is easy to find many strategies, which will give you a number of various recommendations. Let’s take an insider’s approach and look into the process of strategy creation, based on the differences in timezones on different continents.

In this article, we will learn how to create an indicator that detects, draws, and alerts on the mitigation of order blocks. We will also take a detailed look at how to identify these blocks on the chart, set accurate alerts, and visualize their position using rectangles to better understand the price action. This indicator will serve as a key tool for traders who follow the Smart Money Concepts and the Inner Circle Trader methodology.

This article explores how to build an Opening Range Breakout (ORB) Expert Advisor in MQL5. It explains how the EA identifies breakouts from the market’s initial range and opens trades accordingly. You’ll also learn how to control the number of positions opened and set a specific cutoff time to stop trading automatically.

The article is devoted to the practical application of the fuzzy logic concept for financial markets analysis. We propose the example of the indicator generating signals based on two fuzzy rules based on Envelopes indicator. The developed indicator uses several indicator buffers: 7 buffers for calculations, 5 buffers for the charts display and 2 color buffers.

The article describes how to create a framework for the online analysis of multidimensional data (OLAP), as well as how to implement this in MQL and to apply such analysis in the MetaTrader environment using the example of trading account history processing.

In this article, we create a Breaker Block Trading System in MQL5 that identifies consolidation ranges, detects breakouts, and validates breaker blocks with swing points to trade retests with defined risk parameters. The system visualizes order and breaker blocks with dynamic labels and arrows, supporting automated trading and trailing stops.

In this article, we build a Liquidity Sweep on Break of Structure (BoS) system in MQL5 that detects swing highs/lows over a user-defined length, labels them as HH/HL/LH/LL to identify BOS (HH in uptrend or LL in downtrend), and spots liquidity sweeps when price wicks beyond the swing but closes back inside on a bullish/bearish candle.

It is impossible to get a truly stable algorithm if we use optimization based on historical data to select parameters. A stable algorithm should be aware of what parameters are needed when working on any trading instrument at any time. It should not forecast or guess, it should know for sure.