Sapphire Strat Maker - How to create your own strategy (part. II)

1. Introduction

This is the continuation on Sapphire Strat Maker and Sapphire Strat Maker Alt (Free) expert advisor - an EA which allows you to create your own strategy without coding. This is the beauty of this Expert Advisor: create your own strategies - be creative - and don't be locked to a single strategy anymore. Optimize the parameters you want to find the best sets and you're ready to go!

2. Blog posts

2. Creating your own strategy

This is designed to be of a simple use: insert the indicators you want, define the series/bars you want to retrieve the price. Customize your risk management settings and go.

Let's create a simple strategy with a Volume Weighted Moving Average and RSI (Relative Strength Index). This strategy will not be optimized. The intention now is not to create a profitable strategy, just to show how to create one.

The strategy will open a new buy position when RSI crosses to a level under 30 and the close price is above the VWMA; a new sell position is opened when RSI crosses to a level above 70 and the close price is below the VWMA.

First things first, READ the Documentation - General, the Documentation - Indicators and the Documentation - ENUMs in the linked blog posts.

Then, load the reset preset linked here to the input parameters (right click anywhere in the strategy tester area → Load → choose the reset preset). This will erase all parameters and set them to 0/None. This will allow us to work with the EA more safely.

We'll not change the parameters from the section [1] Trading Settings, so leave them as it is:

Since we're not optimizing our EA, the same is applied to [2] Tester Settings group.

In the [3] Indicators, we set the indicator of index 0 as the VWMA (Volume Weighted Moving Average) and define its parameters. As per the documentation (attached), Param 1 is the period, Param 2 is the shift, Param3 is the applied price and Param4 is the applied volume (tick volume, since we're dealing with forex). I chose the following values:

We do the same for indicator of index 1. We set it as the RSI and set its parameters (Param 1 is the period and Param 2 is the applied price):

In the section [4] Entry signals, we will allow both buy and sell signals, so leave as it is.

The group [4.1] Buy signals goes like this:

The group [4.2] Sell signals is defined like this:

We're not using common signals (signals that are checked before opening both buy and sell positions). So we must leave the input [Entry] Common signals filling mode at the group [4] Entry Signals as Fill any conditions.

At [5.2] Take Profit and [5.3] Stop loss, we set [TP-Buy/Sell] Take profit reference on both buy/sell and [SL-Buy/Sell] Stop loss  reference on both buy/sell to Price % (check the other possible parameters in the documentation), indicating we'll use a certain percentage from the entry price as tp and sl. In the Fixed take profit/bars and Fixed stop loss/bars, we set the percentage we want - i'll set it to 1. So both tp and sl will be placed at 1% distance from the current price.

At [5.5.1] Volume, set the [Volume] Calculation type to Balance % to calculate the volume so the stop loss is defined as certain % of your balance and default lot size to a number that suits your balance (U$ 1,000.00 == 0.1, in my opinion).

Now you're ready to deploy your strategy and start!

Just out of curiosity, this is how this simple strategy would've performed in the last 2 years in the 20 minutes timeframe on a U$ 1,000.00 account:

Optimize any parameters, like the moving average period, the tp/sl levels or use customs timeframes and find the best settings that works for you! 

In the attached files there's a preset strategy using a Moving Average, ADX and ATR. This strategy is profitable in the last 2 years in the M5 timeframe - but BE AWARE that different brokers may provide slightly different data (from different market data providers), so the results may vary. Optimize the parameters to your broker.