Discussing the article: "Automating Classic Market Methods in MQL5 (Part 5): The Original Turtle Trading Rules"
You are missing trading opportunities:
- Free trading apps
- Over 8,000 signals for copying
- Economic news for exploring financial markets
Registration
Log in
You agree to website policy and terms of use
If you do not have an account, please register
Check out the new article: Automating Classic Market Methods in MQL5 (Part 5): The Original Turtle Trading Rules.
This article builds a complete MQL5 Expert Advisor that implements the original Turtle Trading rules from Curtis Faith. It covers both systems: 20/55-day breakouts, the System 1 skip rule, N (Wilder ATR) for volatility-adjusted sizing, a four‑unit pyramid with N/2 adds, a unified 2N stop, and 10/20-day exits. You will get compilable code, implementation details, and a backtesting procedure on EURUSD.
The Turtle Trading experiment is one of the most famous tests of systematic trading ever conducted. Dennis and Eckhardt did not teach the Turtles to use judgment or intuition. They taught them a set of mechanical rules that could be written down, followed precisely, and applied to any liquid market. The rules were designed to be trend-following, to risk a fixed and consistent percentage of equity on every trade, and to scale into winning positions while cutting losses quickly.
The original rules were kept secret for over a decade. In 2003, former Turtle Curtis Faith published them in full. They have since been studied, debated, and referenced widely—but rarely implemented correctly in MQL5 code. The reason is not complexity. The individual rules are straightforward. Correct implementation requires understanding why each rule exists and what fails when it is applied carelessly.
This article presents a self-contained Expert Advisor, "TurtleEA," that implements both original Turtle systems as described by Curtis Faith in “Way of the Turtle.” Every design decision maps directly to a specific original rule. The EA is tested on EURUSD across a multi-year period to verify that the implementation behaves as the rules intend.
Author: Tola Moses Hector