NEON TRADE & NEON SHADOW (installation and operation guide)

Loading the MetaTrader 4/5 trading platform

• MetaTrader 4
• MetaTrader 5

There, you can download the installation file for both Windows and Linux, for example. After downloading the installation file, run it and follow the steps provided by the installer. If you do everything correctly, the terminal will appear in your list of installed programs, and also the icon for launching the terminal will appear on your desktop.

Connecting your MQL5 account to your terminal

In order to download advisors from the market, you will first need to log in to it, just as you did at "mql5.com", using your login and password. After that, you can download your purchased "Neon Trade 4/5" advisor from the market in the terminal you have chosen as the main one, or in case you are using it as the main one. This is done as follows:

These forms will open when you press the corresponding icon in the top right corner of the terminal. In MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 these buttons are similar and are located in the same place. There are slight differences, but that's not the point. The main thing is that you can't download any advisor until you log in on each terminal using some account. For a paid advisor, an account is needed from which you bought the advisor, and in other terminals, you can log in using any other accounts and download any free advisors that are on the market.

Opening a broker's account and connecting it to your terminal

Here I will assume that you already have an account with a broker. I am not talking about an account, but the account itself. Under the account, you can open multiple accounts, both demo and real. And, of course, your broker should support at least one of the platforms: MetaTrader 4 or MetaTrader 5. Personally I use British brokers "RoboForex" and "FxPro". These two brokers are a good example, which suits us in all parameters. After opening a real account with the type "hedge" you will get the following data of your account:

• account number
• server name
• password
• investor password

This data should be definitely saved. However, the investor password is not required to connect to your trading account. It's only needed to connect the account to monitoring systems such as the "Signals" service at "mql5.com" or "myfxbook.com", if you need this for some reason. Connecting the terminal to your account is quite easy. The actions in the MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 terminals are also similar. Let's see how it's done.

After successful connection, your data is automatically stored inside the terminal. If you've connected successfully, you will start to see real-time price changes in the "Market Watch" window. After all terminals and accounts are successfully connected, you can start automatic trading or the advisor features check on the quote history.

Purchasing and Installing the advisor in the MetaTrader 4/5 Terminal

The advisor can be purchased both through the official website and inside your trading platform. It's very easy to do this on the website. You just need to have enough funds in your account balance and be on the product page, just click on the corresponding button.

The free advisor is available for download. Moreover, if you don’t have the appropriate MetaTrader 4/5 terminal installed, you’ll be prompted to download it from the official website. Alternatively, you can indicate that you already have the terminal. After this, you will be redirected to your terminal. I think it wouldn’t hurt to consider how to do the same within the terminal. At the same time, we'll see how to download the advisor in the terminal and where to find it afterwards.

Everything you need to know here is how to find the "Market" tab. Once it is found, a window will open where you can search for the product you need. In our case, you should search for "Neon Shadow" or "Neon Trade". After searching, click on the corresponding icon. If a free product is selected, it can be downloaded and used without restrictions, for example, "Neon Shadow". If, however, a paid product is selected, it must first be purchased, the buttons for this will be visible.

Only for Neon Trade:

Before launching the advisor, you need to do the following: open the settings and add my domain to the allowed list.

For Neon Trade and Neon Shadow:

Before launching the advisor, you will need a clean chart. Create it. This can be done by right-clicking on any instrument, for example, "EURUSD". And select the following:

After that, find your advisor in the terminal, in the "Navigator" window, which is located in the lower left part of the terminal. Click on it with the left mouse button and hold it, then drag it with the mouse to your chart. If you did everything correctly, the following window will open for you:

After that, you need to enable the "DYNAMIC" mode in the "Inputs" tab. Next, don't forget to activate the checkbox that I highlighted in green, on the "Common" tab. After this, you will also need to allow trading, but now on the main panel of the terminal itself.

If everything is done correctly, you will see the interface and the data in it.

The labels in the purple frame will be in the top right corner of your chart, and will be exactly as they are, no other way. If you forget something, the emoji will be sad or the hat will be gray. If everything is correct, you can relax and wait for trades. 

GUI indication 

Here, I will not reveal the meaning of intuitive indicators. Let's only consider the last two blocks.

"Days remaining":

As we know, several virtual charts can be simultaneously maintained inside an advisor, and each chart (setting) has an end date for optimization. From this date, we calculate how many days we have left to trade, using the variable "Days To Future". But all settings have their own optimization end date, and in my case I choose the setting whose optimization end date is closest to our current moment (roughly speaking, this is the setting that will have the most time available for future trading, assuming we do not update it). Thus, it turns out that the remaining settings either have a smaller reserve of this time or do not have it at all. In extreme cases, there may be other settings that have the same reserve of time, but of course, it will not exceed the maximum that we found.

Settings that have already gone beyond the allowable time interval and were not updated in time or are not updated at all, will work, but only for closing the position, if they have an open position. After closing the position, the advisor will no longer open positions using this setting. If by the time the position is closed the setting has already been updated, then only in this case the advisor will read it and will use the new one (this applies only to the DYNAMIC mode).

"Outdated instruments-timeframes":

Allows understanding how many settings have already gone beyond the acceptable range, in which opening new positions is allowed, if there are any (this is in addition to the previous information). If you are using a custom portfolio, this will help you quickly detect outdated settings and also update them promptly.

"Optimization finished":

This is the end date of optimization for the freshest setting that I spoke about above.

"Will trade until":

If we have a current date and the amount of time that we can trade in the future, then it is easy to calculate the date when we will lose permission to trade for all settings from our list, but, of course, with the caveat that we did not have time to update the settings or did not do it at all (in the case of STATIC mode). This date can be pushed back naturally. To do this, you just need to increase the value of "Days To Future" at your own risk. Neon Trade, by the way, does this automatically (updates settings, shifting the optimization date closer to the present time for each setting), if automatic sync with the server is turned on and a trading signal is selected. This is its advantage. Thus, by connecting to one of the signals, all trading and updating settings will be fully automated.

"Magics":

This is the range of magic numbers that is reserved for all advisor positions. Its magic numbers cannot go outside this range. Thus, all numbers outside of this range can be used for your other advisors.

"Last read":

When the setting was last successfully read from the file. It only works for DYNAMIC mode. It serves a secondary purpose, for file read tracking (mql5 is a very sensitive language and file reading and writing can sometimes fail. When problems are detected, you can restart the terminal. By default, reading occurs once every 5 minutes and only on weekdays, as the market is closed at weekends and there are no ticks).

"Last API sync":

Time of the last server request for files. Only available with the Neon Trade advisor, as only it has sync with my servers.

"Symbols":

How many unique instruments (currency pairs) are there among all our settings. In this case, the instrument period doesn't matter. We just count how many instruments in total we have in trading.

"Instruments-timeframes":

How many settings (virtual charts or advisors) we manage simultaneously.

"Active Instruments-Timeframes":

Not all of these settings may be active. You can read the setting, but it doesn't necessarily mean that your broker has this tool, or that you have correctly set the prefixes and suffixes for your tools. If you have set something incorrectly, you will see zero in this field.

"Active Symbols":

This will help you understand that some tools are not available from your broker. Compare with Symbols, if the number is smaller, you can consider which tool is unnecessary.

"Close Own Orders" - will close all your positions. Be careful.

"Close All Orders" - will close all positions in the terminal. Be careful.

Neon Trade and Neon Shadow Settings 

Individual Neon Trade advisor settings, which are only available to it: 

All settings in both the advisors, in the version for MetaTrader 4 as well as in the version for MetaTrader 5, are identical, as is the operating algorithm. The only difference is that the paid version has two additional settings that are only available to it. They are designed for server communication via API.

• API DOMEN (add in terminal settings!) - I think it's clear that this is the address to my server, via API, and this setting should not be changed in any case. I brought it out so you don't go into the description of the advisor an extra time. 
• Sync with API - Permission to sync with the server (only works if "DYNAMIC" mode is turned on)
• Signal Name - The name of the signal we are syncing with (there are many and you need to know their names, for example "Signal1", "Signal2" and so on), settings are saved in a folder which is created in the directory "%APPDATA%\MetaQuotes\Terminal\Common\Files" and has the name "Subfolder In Files Folder", if you specified it, otherwise the files simply replace in the same root "%APPDATA%\MetaQuotes\Terminal\Common\Files", without creating the folder itself.

Common settings that are in both Neon Trade and Neon Shadow:

• Read From Common Directory - read and write files to the common folder of all terminals or the local folder of the current terminal (defaults to "true" for the ability to synchronize multiple terminals)

The saving of files, as well as their reading by advisors, takes place from a common folder of all terminals only when the variable "Read From Common Directory" has the value "true" for you. In this case you can make several terminals trade on the same settings, which is why Neon Shadow was created as a separate and free product. One paid copy of the advisor can manage multiple terminals with Neon Shadow. If you have set the value to "false", then the advisor stops writing files to a common folder and saves them in its personal one, to which other terminals do not have access.

• Mode (static settings/dynamic settings) - is the advisor's operation mode, which has two options "STATIC" and "DYNAMIC"

If you use "STATIC" mode, you trade on the built-in settings that do not get updated and therefore quickly become outdated (but I will try to update them periodically). This mode is more for demonstration than for trading, but nevertheless, no one prevents you from trading on it, although I do not recommend doing so. With it, you can simply see how everything works.

If you use "DYNAMIC" mode, you can choose a folder from which you will read the settings. In case, we consider Neon Trade with enabled synchronization, the settings files are downloaded from the server and go to the "Subfolder In Files Folder", which is next in the description. The setting (a file like "EURUSD 60 P_FACTOR OPTIMIZED.txt") in our case is a directive to create a certain chart and apply a trading strategy with individual settings specifically for this chart. Using this knowledge, you can, for example, download all sets of settings (signals) from the server and then make your portfolios from them. I will show how to do this later. Or you can simply tune into a signal and entrust 100% of the trading to the signal (for beginners or for those who do not want to delve into and prefer to fully trust the automation).

• Subfolder in Files Folder - is a folder from which the "DYNAMIC" mode takes settings and where the synchronizer module downloads settings in the paid advisor Neon Trade.

When changing the signal in the settings with enabled synchronization with the server, it is good practice to immediately change the name of this folder to the same as in the "Signal Name" variable. Otherwise, the files of the new signal will overwrite the old ones, and the advisor will additionally delete unnecessary files that remained from the previous signal. Well, of course, in all terminals that used Neon Shadow, the adviser should be reconfigured to a new folder. If you enter an empty string instead of the folder name, the adviser will work, but as already mentioned, he will not create a separate folder for your settings, but just dump them into the root directory, regardless of whether it is a common terminals' folder or you are using a local terminal folder.

Adaptation Settings to Instrument Naming Rules:

• To Lower Symbol - naming the instrument in lowercase / uppercase
• Symbol Postfix - the string with which each instrument name begins
• Symbol Prefix = the string with which each instrument name ends

This block is very important, as initially the advisor is set up to work with instruments that use a classic naming scheme, such as the broker "RoboForex". It is such that all instruments are written in capital letters and do not have initial and final special characters in the name (postfix and prefix). Example - "EURUSD". But there are brokers who name, for example, like this - "EURUSD!" or ".eurusd". In the first case, you will need to do this: "Symbol Postfix = '!'", and in the second case:

• To Lower Symbol = true
• Symbol Postfix = ""
• Symbol Prefix  = "."

If you don't do this, your advisor will not open positions. Well, if your broker has the same rules for naming instruments, then you do not need to do anything, and the adviser will immediately work. You will see all this when testing in the strategy tester. If you have set everything up correctly, the advisor will start trading. This implies that before starting trading on a real or demo account, a preliminary check in the strategy tester is of paramount importance.

Time zones:

• UTC Shift Hours - shift of the time window according to the shift of the time zone

The point is that the advisor settings, in the majority of cases, contain a reference to the trading time. My servers use server quote time for optimization and time window search, which are contained in these quotes. This means that we are tied to the Greenwich meridian (London). This means that your broker may be tied to another time zone, and it may have a time shift forward or backward. I would determine this shift empirically, just by taking the time of London and comparing it with the time that is currently in your terminal. I would subtract them and get the difference, and then I would check this shift and several values near it. The shift that will give the best trading indicators will be yours. Or you can just take, for example, the broker "RoboForex" and forget about this problem. Over time, even I sometimes get tired of figuring it out.

Inputs volume and automatic adaptation to the deposit:

• Auto Lot - enables automatic adaptation to the deposit (if disabled, it will be very much like fixed lot mode)
• Middle % of Delta Equity Per M1 Bar (For ONE! Symbol) - a variable controlling risk (used similarly to a lot, the greater it is, the greater the volumes of our trades)
• Deposit (For ONE! Symbol) - the size of the deposit for which risks are adjusted (it is used when automatic adaptation to the deposit is disabled)

Here it is enough to use only the first two variables, and the last one can be left as is. If automatic adaptation is enabled, lots calculated using the last variable will proportionally increase or decrease based on your deposit.

Martingale:

• Lot Mode - has two positions "SIMPLE_LOT", which is set by default and martingale mode "MARTINGALE"
• (Deposit For ONE! Symbol)% Martin Double Multiplier - strengthening of the martingale by reducing the value of this variable (by default, martingale increases the lot, summing the lot of previous losses, but it can also be reinforced using this variable, which symbolises the drawdown of one virtual advisor for an additional doubling of the lot)

Waiting out losses mode:

• Linearization - waiting until a loss-making position closes in the plus
• Minutes Hold For Linearization - how many minutes we wait for a plus in a loss-making position (if time expires then the position is forcibly closed)
• Trade In Plus Swaps Direction - allow trading only on those instruments and in the direction where we are given positive swaps (which means that we earn while waiting for the position to close)

By default, all these options are disabled, but with different signals and portfolios the combined application of these options is possible. This can positively affect the quality of trading and even risks. Everything will depend on the specific signal or your portfolio, which you have collected yourself.

Fighting the obsolescence of settings:

• Days To Future - how many days from the end of the optimization segment are allowed to open positions (this does not affect closing)

The date of the most recent optimization, as well as the number of days you can trade in the future, can be seen in the graphical interface of the advisor. This data is dynamic and therefore constantly recalculated. I would not recommend setting this value above thirty days.

Parallel trading and competition mode:

• Parallel Trading - enabling parallel, diversified trading, when each virtual advisor (setting) trades independently and does not interfere with the others (if turned off, only one position can be opened in the terminal (position only on one of the charts)) 

By default, this option is active, and it provides, the minimization of risks and a smoother profit curve. This approach is called "diversification". It is not recommended to disable this option. Nevertheless, such an opportunity exists, I did not remove it. If this option is turned off, all virtual advisors will compete in who will open a position first. A new position can be opened only after closing the previous one.

Other:

• Stop Loss Points - stop loss for all instruments traded in the current configuration in points (not pips). If you set the value to "0", then trading goes without using a stop loss.
• Take Profit Points - take profit for all instruments traded in the current configuration in points (not pips). If you set the value to "0", then trading goes without using take profit.
• MAX Spread For Open - spread in points (not pips), above which positions are not opened and closed.
• History Days Window - it is better not to touch this variable, it determines the size of the order history used in some calculations, for example, the maximum balance or martingale.

Considering the trading system's style, stop losses are not randomly disabled, and the spread is slightly higher to not miss entries and exits. However, the presence of these settings will not be superfluous, as it could increase the system's versatility.

Testing an advisor on the history of quotes in the MetaTrader 4/5 strategy tester

This sub-item is important from several angles. First, this step is necessary before launching the advisor on a real chart to avoid possible errors or see any details that for various reasons you did not take into account before launching the advisor for real trading. For this, first off, it's important to understand which instruments need to be tested by the adviser and in what mode. This applies to both MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5. But let's start, perhaps, with MetaTrader 4. I will immediately denote some important differences of this terminal tester from the MetaTrader 5 tester.

1. First, you need to manually download the quote history of the instrument you want to test.
2. You will also have to set the spread manually
3. The advisor will trade only on the instrument you have chosen (this is the most important difference from MetaTrader 5)
4. Trades may not be at all if you choose the instrument that is not in that signal (folder) "DYNAMIC" or in the built-in configuration "STATIC".

Nevertheless, at the level of ordinary trading, if you hang an adviser on any chart in any of the terminals, these differences disappear completely, and the advisor works just as well in both versions of the terminal. For this reason, it is much more convenient to test the adviser specifically in MetaTrader 5. This is important, as can be guessed from the previous list, for the following reasons.

1. Loads quotes immediately
2. Tested on all instruments from the list immediately
3. Uses spreads and swaps closer to reality
4. Any instrument from the list can be chosen for testing
5. Multiple tests do not need to be conducted

The main disadvantage of the MetaTrader 4 tester in this context is that each instrument will have to be tested separately. This is not very convenient, but, nevertheless, what is, is. Of course, you can later combine several tests for different instruments into one using some kind of software, but personally, I would not spend time on this and would conduct testing for the MetaTrader 5 version. I have an article in detail examining some interesting nuances of testing advisors. There are examples for both MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5.

It should be added that the "OHLC M1" testing mode will suit our advisors. With it, the testing speed is the maximum without changes in the profit chart. This is possible thanks to the fact that our advisor works on bars, and it turns out that M1 is the lowest timeframe. And this, in turn, means that all timeframes that are higher or equal to M1 will have almost the same entry and exit points. You can try testing on ticks or with delays, but you will see that there is no difference. This, by the way, is one of the significant pluses of the system. Here is how it will look in your terminal:

The testing mode is better to choose either "OHLC M1" or "all ticks". If you don't trust me, the tests will run as quickly as possible, without compromising on quality. In MetaTrader 4, the equivalent of this mode will be "Open prices only". If we are considering an example with MetaTrader 5, then the selected instrument and chart period do not matter. If we consider MetaTrader 4, then testing will only go through those virtual charts that correspond to the selected instrument and have a period greater than or equal to the selected one.

For example, if you select "EURUSD M1" as the chart for testing in MetaTrader 4, say, in the case of settings like "EURUSD M15, EURUSD H1, EURUSD H4", they will all be processed because they all have a higher period than what you have selected for testing (these are just some nuances of the platform which is better to know). Other settings that are associated with other instruments will not be processed in this test, and separate tests will need to be conducted for them. You will need to download the quote history in advance before testing. You can test in both "STATIC" and "DYNAMIC" mode. I will show how to test in "DYNAMIC" mode in the final section.

Some nuances of advisor usage

Only for Neon Trade:

• Be sure to add the "API DOMEN (add in terminal settings!)" to the whitelist, in the terminal settings (see the screenshot at the beginning of the next section)

For Neon Shadow and Neon Trade:

1. Each time you change the settings, you need to restart the terminal so that the advisor starts working correctly. (You will see an empty information panel, and this should tell you that you need to restart the terminal. In case of success, all the necessary indication will appear on the panel)
2. It is recommended to restart the terminal once a week and keep track of its updates
3. In the event of emergency situations, it is better to tell me immediately so that I can localize the problem as soon as possible (feedback helps improve the product)
4. If you don't know what you're doing, it's better not to engage in amateur performances, but better ask me and I will definitely help as soon as I have a free window.
5. Building your own portfolios and posting them to the general group, as well as user communication, is welcome (I will teach you this in the last section, it's not difficult at all)
6. Every weekend, it is recommended to restart all terminals with your advisors to minimize the possibility of any errors.