Smart Builder

Smart Builder is a visual builder of trading strategies for MetaTrader 5. This Expert Advisor is for those who do not trust sweet promises and prefer to do the work themselves.A lack of programming knowledge will no longer stand in your way, and you will be able to put your ideas into practice by building any trading system from a large number of indicators and their endless combinations. You define the conditions that trigger the Expert Advisor and assign trading parameters to each signal without writing program code. You can follow the work of your Expert Advisor both in the Strategy Tester and in real time.

Trade automation frees you from having to watch the indicator readings closely. The Expert Advisor does this for you and notifies you (icons, messages, sound alerts and phone notifications) when the indicators trigger according to the algorithm you set, or it places the trades itself.

Smart Builder is a working Expert Advisor with a panel interface. Setting the conditions for opening trades and the trading parameters has never been easier: a few button clicks right on the chart, with the result shown at once. Right there in the tester you immediately see the financial result of the strategy you have built. If it suits you, you can move on to a live account. The Expert Advisor does not guarantee a profit. Everything depends on you, on the strategy you assembled, on the state of the market and on your broker’s conditions. The sample strategy Test2 shows that even a single popular indicator, RSI, can produce decent trading results once its settings are chosen.

What the program does

After Smart Builder is started, a header, a tray and a strategy monitor appear on the chart. From the header you open the strategy monitor and the strategy library, the logic builder and the logic library, the list of indicators on the chart, the trading parameters with the order monitor and the template library, and the interface settings.

The tray in the lower-left corner consists of eleven buttons and gives direct access to the main panels. A button in the neutral state opens a panel; an active button hides it. The header and the tray can be collapsed so that the panels do not cover the chart while you work.

How a strategy is built

A strategy is a named set of logics. Each logic contains conditions. A condition compares two elements: an indicator buffer with a chosen timeframe, shift and parameters, or a fixed numeric level. The comparison signs include greater than, less than, equal, cross and direction.

When the conditions of a logic are met on a bar, the logic issues a buy or a sell signal. Each signal is linked to a trade command: a market entry, a pending order of the Limit, Stop or Stop Limit type, a close, a modification, or a close together with a modification. Each logic has its own magic number, so the Expert Advisor can distinguish its own positions and orders.

A strategy can contain up to 32 logics, and a logic up to 32 conditions. Logics of the same strategy can be made mirrored, so that the trading parameters of the second logic repeat the first one in the opposite direction.

Indicators

The builder works with all 38 technical indicators of MetaTrader 5. In addition, 14 indicators from the Indicators/Examples folder are included in the Expert Advisor as resources and do not need to be installed separately: ZigZag, ZigZag Color, Ultimate Oscillator, Rate of Change, Volume Rate of Change, Price and Volume Trend, Price Channel, Detrended Price Oscillator, Mass Index, Chaikin Volatility, Accumulation Swing Index, Heiken Ashi, Williams Accumulation/Distribution and Bill Williams ZoneTrade.

Arbitrary custom indicators from the Indicators folder are not used as logic elements. The program compares the short name and the full name of an indicator on the chart with the names in the supplied set. If an indicator is not in the set, it is marked in the list and is not offered for a logic.

Indicators on the chart

The indicator panel does not place indicators itself. It scans all chart windows and shows what is already there: the row number, the window, the short name, the Navigator name, the inputs and the buffers. From a row you open a parameter card or a card of buffers and levels, and from there the condition is returned to the logic builder.

A separate panel adds trend indicators to a subwindow and places the enabled Examples indicators on the chart. For some indicators the applied price can be the handle of another indicator in the same subwindow, which makes it possible to build chains of calculations.

Important!

The Strategy Tester and the MT5 terminal use different conditions for placing, reading and removing indicators from the chart! Full work with indicators is possible only in the terminal! Build and save the working strategy in the terminal window; it will then run correctly both in the tester and in the terminal.

Sample strategies

On the first launch the program places two tutorial strategies in the library. Test1 is a crossover of two moving averages with periods 14 and 50. Test2 is an RSI cross of the levels 30 and 70. The examples show how the interface works. They are not trading recommendations, and they are not fitted to a particular symbol or timeframe. The tutorial strategies are restored on every load and cannot be overwritten.

Trading parameters

For each logic you can set the volume and the additional volume, the risk in percent, the maximum volume and the maximum number of orders, the pause between entries, Take Profit and Stop Loss, a trailing stop, breakeven, group breakeven and group profit, the magic number, the working hours, the slippage and the colors of the trade marks.

For pending orders you set the price in points, the Stop Limit price, the filling type FOK, IOC or Return, the expiration, the order comment and the rules for cancelling a pending order on its own signal or on the opposite signal. Trade templates are saved to the library and applied to other logics.

Settings and files

The interface is translated into eleven languages: English, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Italian, Turkish, Japanese and Arabic. In the settings you choose the language, the pop-up tooltips, the panel scale, icon drawing, the color scheme and the font, and the place where the test report is written.

Working files are stored in the terminal common folder, in the Smart Builder directory. It contains the strategies, the logic library, saved indicator parameter sets, test reports and saved interface settings. The folder is created on the first launch.

Tester

The same Expert Advisor runs on a live chart and in the Strategy Tester. In visual mode the chart and the panels are shown. In non-visual mode only the strategy is calculated, and the panels are not built. After a pass, if the report is enabled, a CSV file is created with the pass details, the logics, all trading parameters and the standard tester statistics.

While the trade values are taken from the strategy files, the inputs in the properties window do not replace them. To let the optimizer change the trade settings, turn off the “Trade from strategy” input.

How to get started

Attach Smart Builder to the chart of the required symbol and timeframe and allow algorithmic trading. The tutorial strategy Test1 is loaded automatically. In edit mode, build the logics, read the indicators from the chart and set the trading parameters, then save the strategy under your own name. Before trading on a live account, check the system in the Strategy Tester.

Inputs

The inputs set the starting values. While “Trade from strategy” is set to “Yes”, volume, stops and the pending-order fields are taken from the strategy files, not from the inputs. The English names of the inputs are given in the English section of the description.

Risk notice

The sample strategies Test1 and Test2 are not trading recommendations and are not a promise of profit. Trading on the financial markets involves the risk of loss. The results of any example, screenshot or tester report do not predict future results. Neither this description nor a successful automatic Market validation guarantees a profit or error-free operation. Use only funds whose loss you can afford.

Support

Send questions and bug reports through the comments on the product page or through the mql5.com messaging system. State the symbol, the timeframe, the mode — tester or chart — and the steps that lead to the problem.