Is it really necessary for an EA to count available bars at every price tick?

[[Deleted]]

Here is some typical code which prevents an EA from trading until enough bars are available.

start()

{

.....

.....

//Are there enough bars to consider a trade?
if (Bars < 25)
{
Print(" Bars < 25. Waiting for more bars.");
return(0);
}

.....

.....

}

Code like this is seen in some examples and not in others.

While I appreciate that an EA cannot work if there are no bars, I don't understand why or when this would happen.

Thank you in advance.

[Russell]

In general it isn't really necessary to use bar counting in your EA. But it can be helpful if you want to make it absolutely sure you won't get a signal until your indicators are giving the correct output. For instance if your using a MA(24), it will return the correct output from bar 25

hth