Simple Renko System

Hey folks

I have recently had a very peculiar experience related to this and thought I will add it here for information.

I was testing an EA that used Constant Range Bars (using a commercial script).

Now I never rely on mt4 strategy tester back tests if an EA places market or limit orders as this would be different under live market conditions.
Since this particular EA placed only buy and sell stops at several pips gap, I thought the strategy tester should yield some reliable stats.

I ran the backtests and got excellent results - v excited to try it out live using micro lots on a live account.

Initially, it ran a winning streak, but eventually started loosing, which was totally against what backtests had shown.

I was mystified, to say the least. I was seeing the CRB candles form in front of my eyes during back test visual mode - and except for the odd loosing positions, the ea mostly came out the winner. It seemed as if somehow by some strange anomally the live trading candles were not forming as these were in the strategy tester.

After one of my loosing nights, (NY session) I decided to play back exactly the same data of the previous (loosing) night to try and see what the hell was going on. I took the same 1M file and put it in the offline folder to run the strategy tester. Guess what? All winners!! Where as in real trading, it had all been losses. Total of six trades, no room for coincidence here.

Suspecting an anomaly with the range bar script, I contacted the vendor of the script. He mentioned something that seemed to make sense:

Now you all know, when we test CRB based EAs in strategy tester we have to create an offline file with the range we want but name as m5 or m15 etc so strategy tester can access this... - the script vendor told me to save the offline crb file as a higher timeframe (such as h4 or daily). The reason he said was that mt4 used some kind of averaging of ticks within each candle (apparently hard coded), and that the strategy tester used these averages to rebuild candles - these averages were based on the standard mt4 timeframes, so - the larger the time frame, the more ticks would be recorded, etc.

So instead of running the strategy tester on 50 range bars saved as m5 offline chart, I did this as a 50 range bar saved as daily time frame, hoping that this would give me the real life scenario with ALL of the ticks as recorded in live data.

Result => more ticks in each candle, but still the same scenario - all winners in the back test compared with all loosers for the same period live trading.

So I called up mt4 support to try and find an answer. They cooly told me they did not support end clients, and that I should route my support request through my broker.

I have since done that (about 4 days back) with all supporting screen dumps etc. - and awaiting an explanation.

This is really a weird one. Facts:

1. We know that mt4 records live ticks (all of them) in m1 timeframe.

2. We construct crb candles from this m1 timeframe from a live trading account.

3. The candles build up differently during live trading vs playback through strategy tester even though the OHLC of the crb candles are exactly the same - so they look the same after the playback, but have been built (recorded) differently (i.e. the sequence of the ticks is misrepresented).

What do you all think? Deliberate conspiracy by metaquotes by having mt4 behave in such a way so as to lull us all into a false sense of security by having strategy tester present a rosy picture while the real life deal is not so sweet? Or perhaps, the brokers throwing in extra ticks into each bar which do not get recorded into the m1 timeframe some how?

Anyone here know inner workings of mt4 tick recording to throw further light on this?

btw: I have started a thread for this so we can get some insight into this behavior from experienced mt4 users

http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...76#post4379276

Hi folks!

I'm an Italian guy, so excuse me for my... pizza&spaghetti english!!

So, i used the Renko Pure Candle EA by Steve. It's cool, really. Very good work!
But I have some major problems.
Basically i've identified 2 possible changes to the EA...

First, the possibility to open a position per candle's close.
If i set a >10 pips TP the EA make only 1 operation every 2 candle's, due to the Close[0]</>Close[1]

Actually

[] 1,40000
..[] 1,39990 <--- Sell Order
....[] 1,39980 <--- TP
......[] 1,39970 <--- Sell Order
........[] 1,39960 <--- TP

Modified

[] 1,40000
..[] 1,39990 <--- Sell Order
....[] 1,39980 <--- TP/New Sell Order
......[] 1,39980 <--- TP/New Sell Order
........[] 1,39970 <--- TP/New Sell Order

Secondly, a semi martingale.

[1]
...[2] ......[6]
......[3]. [5]
.........[4]

In a Renko...(LOL) 6 candles chart, the EA place a sell order (0,1 lot) in n.4 candle.
Then, the prices pullback and we lost 20 pips.
At the close of 5th candle, the modified EA have to place a Buy order, but with 0,2 lot, with TP.
Semi, because if we have the following situation :

[]
..[] [] [] []
....[] [] [] []
...............[]

The risk is too high. Then, for example, at the 3rd loss, the EA waits n bars before re-entering the trade.

You think that is possible applies these changes to the EA??

I have some other ideas, but these are the more important!

Thank you very much guys!

And Happy Pipping to all

Hi All,

I would like to forward test "Renko pure candle auto-trading2 EA by Steve Hopwood" on Go Markets demo account, but when EA open a new position, TP will be 0 pip (instaed of 25 pip). What could be the problem ?

My setting is:

Lot=0.50000000
TakeProfit=25
MagicNumber=36204
TradeComment=RPCT
BarCount=50
RenkoBoxSize=10
CriminalIsECN=1
mis=----Odds and ends----
DisplayGapSize=30


Thanks,

viatoris

I use renko and that's what attracted me to this thread. the gold lines with the 6th indicator are almost exactly on my daily pivot and support 1 level on my charts on the both the euro and cable pairs, the two pairs i trade with. I use the renko at 5 pip bricks and i use it with divergence and break outs of "M" and W"" patterns the first 3 hours of NY session. Renko makes this so much clearer than time based charts. Paris

Hi All,

This is modified version from original Renko pure candle auto-trading EA by Steve Hopwood

Added MM & Trading Time..

There is a very nice EA too from this thread here (Renko SWHP v1.0) but uncompleted EA. I hope someone would improved it (perhaps it'll be one of the best EA for Renko Chart ever exist)

Regards

Hi to everyone!

I started a new thread with my renko system.

Feel free to join us!

http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=322817

Hi everybody,


I am a brand new member here. Why I registered because I am facing with critical issues on the MT4 platform. I wonder if it is only my observation or others experienced same problems.
I am pretty good in programming (wrote excel macros before) and prepared couple of EAs. Unfortunately, they do not work. What does it mean? Simply, usually they do not trade (do not open buy or sell position) when they are supposed to do so. Explaining exactly, some of them sometimes do trade actually, but far from that frequency they should do. Missed openings, and missed closings as well, of course. Some EAs do not trade at all. There is no any reliability in the working.
First I thought that I made mistakes because I was on the learning curve in MQL4. So I started to show the value of key variables on the chart through the Comment() function. In this way I can see and check the working of the EA in real time. And the surprise came.............
Unbelievably, it looks like that lines in the EA script skipped randomly. For example I built in a counter ( x = x+1; ) into a indicator using subfunction to check that this subfunction did run each time when a tick came. Surprisingly, the value of the x still remained 2 after ~40-100 ticks. Another example of misery, I made a simple structure to decide on whether it is buy or sell position should be opened:
if (MA1<MA2) BuySignal = True;
if (MA1>MA2) SellSignal = True;
MA1 and MA2 are two moving averages. I can see on the chart that they have value, but both BuySignal and SellSignal remains default False through many candles in spite one of them should change to True, obviously.
I can exclude hardware issues. My system has an AMD Athlon II X2 250 3MHz + 2GB memory, which is more than enough. I do not run many indicators and other applications, the system monitor does not show excessive memory and processor usage when these EAs are running (below 50% both). The problem is broker indipendent. I encountered the same on Alpari, Roboforex, AdmiralMarkets MT4 platforms. Also, a friend of mine complains about the same problems on his machine.
I cannot see any other reason than that the platform itself is totally unreliable................ I cannot be sure that commands in EAs are performed every time when they should be, not just randomly.

I hope so there are people who could share experiences.

Thank you very much

It takes a lot more than writing excel macros and a couple of EA's to become pretty good at programming.

Yes, MT4 has its quirks and bugs. However, the problem is most likely with your EA. If you provide an example of code that you claim is not working, you are more likely to get help. A complete example, not a couple of code snippets.

I've found that sometimes fails any instruction.
For a time the instruction fault: AAA *= CCCC;
Now it works fine.
But I'm declaring a variable more and write code bbb= AAA * CCCC.
I have found that my EA instruction Mathfloor stopped working, and I had to replace MathCeil
I advise you to study function by function. And make sure you have not committed any error in the code.
That will be the most likely.
I enter all the code of the indicators you use. within its EA.
Never use external functions (mqh), or call iCustom indicators.
If the EA is able to represent them well in the graph, then and only then, will have the correct calculation.
Think that an EA that is for sale, never a winner EA.
An EA with 1000 lines of code can never be a winner.
All part of a scam planned to be scam.
And you know many EAs who are for sale with 20000 lines of code?
Having an EA with many lines of code without errors, it requires a great effort.
And a lot of programming.
The solution of minor code, which programmers use is not always the best solution.

well, regarding macros, I prepared few ones for a well-known worldwide multinational company (I am sure you know it but I don't want to reveal the name). Some of them are used every day for a complex job and they are proven to be working and good.

In overall, am not happy what I experienced. It happens with not only my own EAs but with other downloaded ones too. That's why I started to prepare small simple own EAs. I wanted to explore the case, what can be the source. A simple EA should work surely, that was my assumption. But the answer, based on real life, is not. Maybe skipped commands is not best diagnosis, could be unexplainable delays (means hours or never sometimes) in execution or something like this. But from the output point of view it does not matter.

Anyway, "I enter all the code of the indicators you use within its EA.
Never use external functions (mqh), or call iCustom indicators." - this sounds interesting. I believe you, but please explain why do you say this. Is it based on deeper platform knowledge or real life experience?

As the EA is written in a language I do not understand, I am unable to help. It should not be too difficult for a good programmer to isolate the part of an EA that there is a problem with and find out if the problem is the result of a bug in MT4, and identify the offending mql4 commands. Anyway, there are other trading platforms you can use if MT4 does not satisfy you. NinjaTrader for example.

rnwd

Can you please tell me how to set the timer correctly. For instance if I want it to start at the London open and end at the US close what values do I set? Are they GMT on my brokers platform or real time?

Thank you

Thanks for the great system. I want to add a little to it. I have rewritten a B-clock indi for Renko candle, so it shows the pips until to close the next long or short Renko candle.

The sense of it, that easier to calculate the stop level, at case of different Renko candle lengths, if somebody forgot which chart which Renko length.

Looks good! Are you getting this EA to perform on live demo as it did on the backtests? May I ask what broker and vps service this is? My backtests look great too, but when I put the EA on demo, it gets errors and it will only open a position but not close it. I've checked my settings and everything seems ok. I'm a new junior member, so please contact me via email at abundeo@ymail.com. Thanks!!!

Just crying out for more charts and update from ESTRADER,
I would like to know if you still trade this strategy and also if you are still having success.

cheers

Can you share the strategy tester details and what tools you used to do Renko backtest pleas i need this if you don`t mind .

This EA has a little logical error therefore its showing these results on back test. On live markets you will not get these results. But you will still make some profits. I am updating and will share the correct one if I can remember.

Im pretty sure i am dumb or something. I cant attach the renko live chart to the m1 chart... and im getting frustrated

1. Open the M1 chart.
2. Scroll back the chart so that you have 2 months history data.
3. Now drag the "RankoLiveChart_v3.3" EA on M1 chart.
4. Enter the RankoBoxSize you want on the inputs tab.
5. Click OK. Make sure Expert Advisors is ON, on MT4.
6. Now click File menu and select Open Offline.
7. From the list search M2 for the pair and double click on it.
8. This will open Ranko Chart for you.