Trading on tick charts with MT4 ! - page 14

 

I debug a little bit the code, but i'm not familiar with the mq4 language.

But it appear that the file handle always return -1 (means it cannot open or create the file) at the line 51 of the LogTickData.

handle = FileOpen(sFileName, FILE_READ|FILE_WRITE|FILE_CSV, ";");

I tried by creating the file manually without success. It still cannot open the file. I tried by changing the permission of the Metatrader 4 platform and the permission of the metaEditor.

Still not working.

Anyone already encounter this error ?

P.S. My broker is ExcelMarkets. The MT4 is from them.

 

I must say the above is very informative and one is surely liable to get along with the various aspects of the Trading on tick charts with MT4. This have got some really very informative stuff along.

 
TurnTheTide:
I debug a little bit the code, but i'm not familiar with the mq4 language.But it appear that the file handle always return -1 (means it cannot open or create the file) at the line 51 of the LogTickData.
handle = FileOpen(sFileName, FILE_READ|FILE_WRITE|FILE_CSV, ";");
I tried by creating the file manually without success. It still cannot open the file. I tried by changing the permission of the Metatrader 4 platform and the permission of the metaEditor.Still not working. Anyone already encounter this error ? P.S. My broker is ExcelMarkets. The MT4 is from them.

A couple leads on what it could be...

If your running Windows, and MT4 is installed to your Program Files folder or Program Files (x86) folder, you might try reinstalling MT4 directly to your hard drive's root folder--probably C:\. I had trouble writing to MT4 folders from another app, and this cured it. Maybe you're having a similar issue.

Go into MT4==>Help==>About, and find your MT4 Build#. MetaQuotes made Some significant changes starting with Build 600. These included mql4 language changes, and folder/file location changes. Not all files transer to the new locations automatically during updates, and not all indicators/EA's are compatible with or recompilable in the new Builds.

Hope this helps.

 

Using tick charts exclusively or in combination with the classic intraday time-based view could enrich your chart analysis and provide you with some additional information.One of these additional information is the correlation between market volume and price development. As tick charts are transaction based and make new bars only when there have been enough trades, they adjust to the market and draw more bars in case of high activity. This helps to notice momentum and increasing volatility. The same way during low activity periods (like noon or after-hours) tick charts only display a few bars as opposed to time based charts where you'll usually see a row of smaller less important candles. Without this accumulation of small candles tick charts make it easier to spot trends and properly identify real support and resistance levels.

 

Well said, Carl. Tick volume is the best proxy for contract volume that a retail forex trader can have. The caveat is that we can never know the precise amount of contract volume required to move a given pair up or down one tick, due to ever changing liquidity, etc. So if the market was "thinner" several bars ago than it is now, it necessarily took less traded contracts to print a tick then than it does now.

Fortunately, the larger each sample is, the more uniform all of the samples will be. So 133 tick sized bars should be more representative of each other in terms of contract volume than say, a 5 tick sized bars, and so on. I remember playing with Fib Numbers as tick volumes, and some proved to be smoother substitutes for standard timeframes when compared. One thing is for certain... A tick volume chart is much easier on the eyes than a time based chart with a tick volume indicator attached.

 
RJo:
Well said, Carl. Tick volume is the best proxy for contract volume that a retail forex trader can have. The caveat is that we can never know the precise amount of contract volume required to move a given pair up or down one tick, due to ever changing liquidity, etc. So if the market was "thinner" several bars ago than it is now, it necessarily took less traded contracts to print a tick then than it does now. Fortunately, the larger each sample is, the more uniform all of the samples will be. So 133 tick sized bars should be more representative of each other in terms of contract volume than say, a 5 tick sized bars, and so on. I remember playing with Fib Numbers as tick volumes, and some proved to be smoother substitutes for standard timeframes when compared. One thing is for certain... A tick volume chart is much easier on the eyes than a time based chart with a tick volume indicator attached.

OK except there is no tick volumes bcoz volumes on MT4 are only the sum of price changes during a bar, so the tick volumes does not work on the current bar.

so, again , explain me in such directions

a 5 tick sized bars is still an interesting idea. The modelisation question would be :

- WHich is the best number of ticks to use ?

- How to calculate it

regards

 
jaguar1637:
OK except there is no tick volumes bcoz volumes on MT4 are only the sum of price changes during a bar, so the tick volumes does not work on the current bar.

Maybe you mean that there are no contract volumes in MT4. Tick volume is all we have in MT4. What was saying is...

I agree with Carl's premise that a tick can't register (price simply can't move) without substantial contract volume to drive it. Accepting that premise, we can use the Law of Averages to infer that the amount of contract volume required to drive a tick probably gravitates around a mean figure over time. I'm merely saying that larger tick interval bars, requiring more time to form by definition, will better exploit the Law of Averages. As a result, those larger tick sized bars likely contain similar contract volumes.

The similarity between contract volumes of smaller tick interval bars are tougher to infer due to the smaller sample size of each smaller bar. The Law of Averages is less applicable here. Timed based bars are even worse for this purpose, because time based bars print even when there is very little trading going on. In short, larger tick sized bars allow us to infer substantial contract volume within every bar on the chart. I believe this makes the chart more meaningful without having to use a tick volume indicator. That's all.

Regarding the current bar, attach the standard MT4 Volumes indicator to a chart, and watch the current bar's tick volume update as each tick arrives. MT4 adds to the sum continually until each bar is done printing. Current tick volume is there. It merely hasn't finished printing, along with High, Low, and Close prices.

jaguar1637:
so, again , explain me in such directions a 5 tick sized bars is still an interesting idea. The modelisation question would be : - WHich is the best number of ticks to use ?- How to calculate it

144, 233, and 610 are popular tick chart intervals. These are just a few Fibonacci Numbers, which seem to be a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more we mention Fib's, the more we use Fib's, the more influential Fib's become on the market, the more we mention Fib's, and so on.

 

In my humble opinion, entropy should be used to calculate such Fibo numbers

 
jaguar1637:
In my humble opinion, entropy should be used to calculate such Fibo numbers

Very interesting. Higher M1 disorder = higher Fibo tick interval?

 

yep

I got the true density and the mutal information as indi

also, entropy (not the russian one, just mine)

Reason: