There is no best strategy but there is an effective strategy provided you can control your emotion and be satisfied with this strategy; the effective strategy is using the current market volatility to pick stop-losses or trailing stops!!
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The SL and TP are the exit.
You buy at the Ask and sell at the Bid. So for buy orders you pay the spread on open. For sell orders you pay the spread on close.
- Your buy order's TP/SL (or Sell Stop's/Sell Limit's entry) are triggered when the Bid reaches it.
Not the
Ask. SL=Bid-n*pips, TP=Bid+m*pips
- Your sell order's TP/SL (or Buy Stop's/Buy Limit's entry) will be triggered when the Ask reaches
it. To trigger at a specific
Bid price, add the average spread.
MODE_SPREAD (Paul) - MQL4 programming forum - Page 3 #25 - The charts show Bid prices only. Turn on the Ask line to see how big the spread is (Tools → Options (Control-O) → charts → Show ask line.)
- Your buy order's TP/SL (or Sell Stop's/Sell Limit's entry) are triggered when the Bid reaches it.
Not the
Ask. SL=Bid-n*pips, TP=Bid+m*pips
- Never risk more than a small percentage of your account,
certainly less than 2% per trade, 6% total.
- In code (MT4): Risk depends on your initial stop loss,
lot size, and the value of the pair. It does not depend on margin and leverage.
- You place the stop where it needs to be - where the reason for the trade is no longer valid. E.g. trading a support bounce the stop goes below the support.
- AccountBalance * percent/100 = RISK = OrderLots * (|OrderOpenPrice - OrderStopLoss| * DeltaPerLot + CommissionPerLot) (Note OOP-OSL includes the spread, and DeltaPerLot is usually around $10/pip but it takes account of the exchange rates of the pair vs. your account currency.)
- Do NOT use TickValue by itself - DeltaPerLot
and verify that
MODE_TICKVALUE is returning a value in your deposit currency, as promised by the documentation, or whether it is
returning a value in the instrument's base currency.
MODE_TICKVALUE is not reliable on non-fx instruments with many brokers - MQL4 programming forum 2017.10.10
Is there an universal solution for Tick value? - Currency Pairs - General - MQL5 programming forum 2018.02.11
Lot value calculation off by a factor of 100 - MQL5 programming forum 2019.07.19 - You must normalize lots properly and check against min and max.
- You must also check FreeMargin to avoid stop out
Most pairs are worth about $10 per PIP. A $5 risk with a (very small) 5 PIP SL is $5/$10/5 or 0.1 Lots maximum.
- Use a GUI/Trade Assistant EA like mine (for MT 4): 'Money Manager Graphic Tool' indicator by 'takycard' - Risk Management - Articles, Library comments - MQL5 programming forum - Page 6 #55
- In code (MT4): Risk depends on your initial stop loss,
lot size, and the value of the pair. It does not depend on margin and leverage.
- 2019.09.01
- www.mql5.com
Volatility-based stops based on ATR are the most commonly used stop strategies used by the institutions.
And even MORE IMPORTANT is your position sizing.
If your position sizing is wrong, then NO STRATEGY will work (long term).
Hope this helps and best of luck on your journey.
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