ElectricSavant's™ Challenge - page 9
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Hey ES,
Scale down as much as possible until you are really confident in a method. No point in losing your stake before you even start the game. That's my advice to you.
And even though I don't think EA's are all that efficient, I'm willing to try new things and hopefully be proven wrong as well.
I'm putting together my own EA to test and play with. I still don't think it can capture what I can do manually and see with my eyes, but it's getting closer. I'll try to finish it by the end of the month.
I'll be keeping tabs on the results of your challenge and the managed accounts. Hope you find that profitable EA. Good luck in 2008. I'll let you know how my own EA testing is going, I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I've tested a lot of EAs in the past, and none of them performed well either, but I've learned what doesn't work at least.
Well...I agree...
But there is one coder who has accepted the challenge. His cost? nothing...His identity? undisclosed...he gets 6 months of profit and he can tell who he pleases about my live trading report in the blog. I endeavor to be an unbiased third party...
What do I get?...in 6 months assuming the EA survives I get to use it for my personal trading.
May I remind you that I will not become his sales agent...but I promise you the readership in my Blog will knock his door down to get the EA if he takes it commercial...I would only be the messenger and get no enrichment...I would give him their contact info and the business they conduct is THEIR business and has nothing to do with me...It seems like a win win situation...
I am a believer that in anything you do in life comes down to trusting one another...at some point in time if you are to delagate responsibility or capitlaize on others...you have to take the step...I personally have given up on mankind, but there still are people that I have found that I can trust. I have spent a lot of time on this and I have a vision...it may seem silly to some of you, but I have a passion to write (almost as much as my passion for trading) and my Blog has been a great enjoyment...if I ever were to throw it all away by violating someones trust...well I would have much to lose as I want to become a third party that traders can trust...and a resource for them to read unbiased reports ...
ok now folks laugh at me and flame me...I can take it...I am pretty thick skinned...I have been around this internet with the same handle for 5 years...and some of you know of me and I have never betrayed the trust of a trader...I also know I cannot please everybody and there will be naysayers...thats ok too...you have a right to your opinion...after all this is an anonymous character on the internet and none of us know each other...but I disclose my personal information on request to traders if needed...maybe not here in this public display....but privatly...
and may I reitrerate again....I am selling nothing...I make (lose) my money at Trading not Vending
I pay for the Bright Idea's Blog in which there are not any ads and it really is such a small cost for a place where I can go with my friends and report about trading. I greatly enjoy this public restuarant of traders here in tsd, also...and it is a fun place to come to read and contribute....because face it...trading...monitoring EA's and the execution of systems can be very boring and these venues can provide contact with other traders in this solitary quest.
ElectricSoapBoxSavantYes you see thats been done before kind of though.People saying this kind of thing and then saying look im not selling anything etc etc I just give contact info etc etc.Then of course its just them trying to get attention to sell an EA.Although I know your genuinely just trying to find a decent survivable ea to make some extra cash, many others may not believe so.But keep trying anyway.
ElectricSavant
I can teach you how to code an EA from a blank page
But it will be very pricey.
Its very true that no real EA can perform well in the very long term. That is because you need to update your system from time to time. The best way of trading I found so far is following current global (more or less global) trend and sticking with the major moves, entering on retraces. Another good way is using breakout patterns. Third - using price chart patterns but these only work good on H1 or higher timeframe and take a lot of time to form. Fourth - using indicators to trade, like MA, MA channels, RSI, RSI+Stoch+MA+something else. If you know other good methods to trade, let me know.
ElectricSavant if you get interested, PM me. I'll provide as much support in MQL4 programming as I can during your studying (you'll be writing EAs, I'll help in finding and fixing bugs, back- and forward-testing, we'll also write some simple indicators as a part of the course). There is no MQL4 school I know of. I learned using my free time.
This offer is true for anyone who is willing how to program on MQL4.
EA is temptingly simple. just pull up a VERY basic EA thats basic only buys and sells. create an EA from scratch to only do a buy or sell then... (use the example for reference)
add the first condition to close the trade and get the program to close it. youll find that this program is only a few lines long. those are the only lines an EA needs. everything else is conditions to execute those 2 lines. add conditions one at a time.
youll be amazed how much this simple EA will grow as you add conditions. its really addictive since you can start soooo small.
thats how my EA grew. the backtests will spark more development as you see room for improvement. VERY ADDICTIVE!
EA is temptingly simple. just pull up a VERY basic EA thats basic only buys and sells. create an EA from scratch to only do a buy or sell then... (use the example for reference)
add the first condition to close the trade and get the program to close it. youll find that this program is only a few lines long. those are the only lines an EA needs. everything else is conditions to execute those 2 lines. add conditions one at a time.
youll be amazed how much this simple EA will grow as you add conditions. its really addictive since you can start soooo small.
thats how my EA grew. the backtests will spark more development as you see room for improvement. VERY ADDICTIVE!agreed.. Just don't get discouraged if the first 100 or so backtests suck. lol.
I have an addictive personality...I also can get manic at times. Wifey calls me Rainman at times....I am also a creative person, so I just might get lost in EA's...I just need someone to teach me patiently that knows me and speaks my same language so-to-speak...I am sort of an idiot that needs to tighten each nut and each bolt methodically and completley....I do not know trigonometry...don't you need that knowledge for calculations and the more sophisticated points of the EA, if it is to be written efficiently?
Caution: when I was studying for my series 3 the professor at the Arizona State University Extension in California, got very frustrated with me...I got 100% on the rules and regulations at the certified testing center for the NFA on their timed test....as I have an ability to memorize...but the operational part, I had to take over three times..
When I attended community college, which was at the dawning of Introduction to Computers and the revolution our world has experienced, I took a test from MIT institute who visited our Introduction to Computers class and they told me not to pursue programming, but to be system analyst....they said I had a perfect score for that, in which they do not see often...(I am 49 years old and not so nimble minded as I was then) Maybe Universities know more now about how to guide someone in what they are suited for than they did then.
ES
P.S. The test from MIT was very weird...It did not make sense to me...There was a student that they wanted to speak to after the class...and I later tracked him down to see what that was about...they recruited him right out of the class....I asked him about the test and how he answered and he was a natural (he got a 90% profile)...I could never be a programmer I thought to myself and considered my pursuit of sex, drugs and rock and roll...and dropped out...Before that I debated with the professor of that class how evil computers were and how they would effect society and sociological structures...lol...I wrote a paper on it for my midterm...Do you know what he told me? That I should try to be a hacker and a security company would end up hiring me for 300k per year...and at that time that was a lot of money...
EA is temptingly simple. just pull up a VERY basic EA thats basic only buys and sells. create an EA from scratch to only do a buy or sell then... (use the example for reference)
add the first condition to close the trade and get the program to close it. youll find that this program is only a few lines long. those are the only lines an EA needs. everything else is conditions to execute those 2 lines. add conditions one at a time.
youll be amazed how much this simple EA will grow as you add conditions. its really addictive since you can start soooo small.
thats how my EA grew. the backtests will spark more development as you see room for improvement. VERY ADDICTIVE!programming is MUCH easier now than it was then. I learned programming when the languages were still up in the air. so i learned z80, 6502 machine language, pascal, cobol, basic, c,... (most languages have more similarities than differences).
since then most development is now done in C and C++ and everything else is a candycoating to hide the ugly. mt4 is really pretty easy.
its very straightforward. programming now IS NOT like programming then...
I say just keep it simple.
EA's don't have to be complicated if you know how to exploit the inefficiencies of the market, and that can only come from your brain. Most of the time, copy and paste programming can get it done. Also, I would write out what you want to program, like a logic tree before you get into the code. It helps me out tremendously of trying to track everything I need to code.
But you gotta start with the right idea, this comes from thinking outside the box and luck. Sometimes you will be inspired by something others are doing, but you have a different take on it. Other times, people give out ideas, but most give up on the idea after 1 bad loss, then you take it and run with it with some mods.
For example, look at what this guy is doing. He's trying to use futures vs. spot, and get the swap. Lots of people have great ideas but most importantly, workable ideas to exploit the market, now it may or may not work, but that is at least thinking outside of the box. Personally, I'm not into arbitages, I'm more into trading the instrument itself with the consideration of arbitages.
vamist.com - Forex forums and blogs -> TheEconomist's Forex Arbitrage Blog
When you look at deciding factors or indicators, really understand what you are looking at.
Is looking at different variations of price going to make any sense? I don't think so. You gotta get different data and use them to add to your price data. It could be time or volume or MM or fundamentals, etc etc.
A profitable EA ?
I found a very interesting expert advisor called Gods Gift. The back testing I performed (90% modeling quality) points out that this could be a great expert. Less than 15% relative draw down with annual profit of 50%. The strategy tester report is here.
I have started to forward test this expert. Check my blog for the introductory post and subsequent reviews. Tell me what you think !
EA is temptingly simple. just pull up a VERY basic EA thats basic only buys and sells. create an EA from scratch to only do a buy or sell then... (use the example for reference)
add the first condition to close the trade and get the program to close it. youll find that this program is only a few lines long. those are the only lines an EA needs. everything else is conditions to execute those 2 lines. add conditions one at a time.
youll be amazed how much this simple EA will grow as you add conditions. its really addictive since you can start soooo small.
thats how my EA grew. the backtests will spark more development as you see room for improvement. VERY ADDICTIVE!ES-
Fulltime is right. VERY addictive to program EA's. My experts folder has 50+ EA's in it that I have created. It's not that hard to learn. Don't be afraid to try, before you know it you'll be able to write one in 20 min. I knew NOTHING about programming and have NEVER taken a programming class in my life. I did have some help from a teacher though, my 14 year old son, who has self taught himself visual basic, C++, and now mq4. Something tells me you can learn this!
If you want to trade EA's, start by making some of your own. You need to know EXACTLY how an EA operates before you risk your real, hard earned money. What better way than writing it yourself?