There are now several trading robots available in this confusing thread. They are all to be found in the trading robots' zip file. Read the thread to find out what they are all about.
Your chances of getting an answer about any of the trading robots, from me.
Zilch. Forget it. It isn't going to happen. I shall simply ignore them. At the time of writing this, there are 11 robots, or versions of robots, in the robots' zip file. There is only one of me. I can spend my time coding, or I can spend it answering questions. I choose to do the former. If you can't sort out your problem for yourself, then abandon the robot in question. There are loads of others to try instead.
Moving swiftly on: start here by reading about the
scooby-doo BOJ basket robot Original. Everything has followed on from this.
Here goes. This is the start of the thread before it grew into such a monster:
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Those of us following my KG relative strength trading robots have been benefiting from scooby-doo's priceless advice.
Early on, scooby-doo came up with this pearl:
"One thing people should realise with the XXXJPY pairs...
One well known trading method with JPY currencies is that the BOJ intervene on a daily basis with them. So, if they are oversold prior to Tokyo open, then SELL them all. Likewise if they are overbought prior to Tokyo close, then BUY them all."
The above is most likely the reason why people end up with these trades going against them.
You should look for where it is OS/OB in 2 different timeframes, this will help stop whipsaw. Also, you need to be careful on the timeframes you use.
Use M15 and 1H or 1H and 4H. There is no point using M15 and M30 combined as they are basically telling you the same thing!
The rule of thumb is to use at least 3 x your lowest time frame. So M5 and M15 are ok too. BUT, do not use M1 and M5 as you will get too many false breakouts.
Hope this makes sense.
Also, if you are using Stoch or RSI then set the period to 2. It should actually be 1 but i dont think MT4 allows this ?"
ikdenk's contribution from
http://www.forexfactory.com/showpost...postcount=3569 will help clarify this:
"BOJ sells XJ at Tokyo open, start of business day. Selling XJ is the same as buying Yen, thereby increasing its value, making it stronger.
This is good for importers buying during their business day, getting more oil for their Yen.
BOJ buys XJ at Tokyo close, end of business day. Buying XJ is the same as
selling Yen, thereby decreasing its value, making it weaker.
This is good for exporters being paid during their clients' business day in London and New York e.g., getting more Yen for their Euros and Green backs.
And it doesn't even have to cost the BOJ much as long as the sums expended at the open and close are similar!"
From this sprung three xxxJPY basket trading robots
- scooby-doo BOJ basket robot Original: this is a successful live-trading robot based entirely on the principles described above. Read octomanoak's brilliant user guide, "Scooby-Doo Original BOJ Trading Robot User Guide v2.2.pdf". This is included with the trading robots zip file; this should help new users clarify in their minds, what is going on.
- scooby-doo BOJ basket trading robot 24H: this is an experimental robot that attempts to trade 24/5, apart from the 'dead hours'.
- scooby-doo BOJ basket trading robot opposite positions: maintains nearly-always-open contra baskets, relying on hedging to close the losing basket eventually. Highly experimental. Does not use news of max spread filters.
Bots 1 & 2 use internal code to measure the relative strength of the Yen against other currencies in the basket, to trigger an entire basket of all the pairs in the PairsToTrade input. The readings the code gives are identical to those shown by the RS_GROUP_JPY_Strength_Index indicator.
SERIOUS WARNING TO NEW POSTERS
You are welcome here but MUST do the basic reading and research to allow you to understand what is going on here. Recently, the legions of the lazy, stupid, or both asked so many infantile questions that scooby-doo got pissed off and left. Happily, he has returned and I am not going to risk losing him again. If new posters ask questions that make it obvious that they have not done the basic reading (and it
will be obvious), I will bar them from posting at all. This is my thread, so I have that ability. On average, I exercise this once a day, so think twice before you ask a silly question; I am ruthless about this.
I have set up a thread where new, confused or unsure traders can ask their basic questions. Please go to
http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=207090 and post there if you have any such queries. Scoobs is banned from it, on pain of being forced to listen to the weekend Archers omnibus on BBC Radio 4. I ask other, experienced contributors here to keep an eye on this thread and help out whenever they can.
Moving on:
There are two
really important documents that you need to read if you are to have any real understanding of what is happening here. They are both in the attachments:
- BOJS.pdf explains the basic system.
- BOJ Intervention Policy.pdf - the title says it all if you have read BOJS.pdf.
After that, and
really do read the docs, here is what to do:
- Download scooby-doo robot indicators;
- Extract the RS_GROUP_JPY_Strength_Index indicator to your Indicators folderDrag it onto a GJ chart, so you can see it in action. You do not need the indi on the chart for the robot to trade.
- Extract the 'FFCal Scoobs' indicator to your Indicators folder. You do not need to have it on the chart.
- Extract matrixebiz's 'Forex market hours GMT' to your indi folder. Drag it onto a chart to help you work out your buy/sell start hour.
- Download the robot, put it into your Experts folder. Drag it onto the chart. Use a 15M chart.
- Download ReconnectEA and put it on to another chart. This will take care of broker disconnects and force the platform to reconnect to the broker.
- Close your trading platform then restart it.
Inputs list:
Note that the inputs for maximum spread, emergency stop, tp and the hedge trailing stop are 5 digit criminal settings. The robot automatically adjusts for 4 digit criminals, so read the on-screen feedback with care to make sure you have the correct settings. If yours is a 4 digit crim and you want to adjust these settings, then you have to multiply your normal inputs by 10 to arrive at the correct setting.
- PairsToTrade="GBPJPY,EURJPY":as you can see, the pairs are entered in a list, with each pair separated by a comma. Users of accounts with a pair suffix (IBFX GBPJPYm for example) can ignore this as the robot adds it automatically. Any pair in the list you do not want to trade can simply be deleted.
- SellHourStarts: the hour in which you want the robot looking for short trades. This should be Tokyo opening time minus 2 hours IN YOUR OWN LOCAL TIME.
- BuyHourStarts: the hour in which you want the robot looking for long trades. This should be Tokyo closing time minus 2 hours IN YOUR OWN LOCAL TIME.
- MaxSpreadAllowed: the robot will cancel the trade if the spread has widened beyond this figure. This helps to avoid trading during a dramatic news period.
- BaseLot: the minimum lot size used by the robot to calculate differential lot sizes. Read the thread to understand this.
- RobotCalculatesLotSize: allows the robot to calculate your BaseLot size for you. The function uses scooby-doos formula of (Account balance / 20000).
- TpMultiplicationFactor: multiplies BaseLot by this setting to reach a basket take profit. Leave it set to default until you understand. TP is set to 200. This is on the low side for safety as we have no proper way of ascertaining correct support/resistence etc. Sometimes the TP will be too low and sometimes the TP will actually be too high depending on different market conditions. You can ofcourse set this higher but dont be surprised if your baskets never hit TP or take hours, days, weeks to do so.
- BasketStopLossPercentage: the maximum percentage of account balance you can stomach having a basket go into drawdown. This has to be set to a high figure. Trading basket's upl's change with terrifying rapidity, and a stop of 2% or 3% will get hit more often than not. The default setting takes both this factor and the overall safety of the Original trading strategy into account.
- EmergencyStopLoss & EmergencyTakeProfit: settings in case your robot loses contact with your criminal's server. Hence the use of, 'Emergency'.The default is coded for a 5 digit wally-plonker-dipstick criminal.
- CriminalIsECN: Those of you familiar with my work know what I think of the bucketshop brokers, and so will recognise the input. Set it to true if your crim is a 2 stage order crim. If you have no idea what I am talking about, ignore this.
- LowerTfOverBought: etc. Leave these set to defaults until you understand what is going on.
- MinsBeforeNews & MinsAfterNews: the time to cease trading before (60 mins) and after (30 mins) a news release.
- NewsImpact: allows you to set the impact of news you want to stop trading:
- 3 = stops trading during high impact news period
- 2 = stops trading during high and medium impact news period
- 1 = stops trading during all news periods
- NextPublicHoliday: date of the next Tokyo public holiday, during which we should not trade.
- AllowHedging: sends hedge trades if the basket is in drawdown equivalent to 5% of your account balance. It works by hedging 10% (adjustable) of the lot size of the worst performing pair every 15 minutes, so long as the dd continues to deepen. Hedging is not available to traders with US criminals determined to be "NFA-compliant". They only way to make these idiots see sense (crims I mean, not traders
) is for everybody to move their trading accounts elsewhere. SS IBFX have already re-introduced intraday hedging as a result of people moving their trading accounts, so keep up the pressure on these US morons.
- TrailingStopPips: the distance to trail the stop when hedge trades kick in.
A note about trading hours: the defaults are my computer's local times. To find out what time Tokyo opens in your part of the world, use the clock in the indicator zip, provided by matrixebiz. If still confused, go to
http://fxtrade.oanda.com/resources/fxmarkethours/. Sahars has posted an indicator that displays these on screen in post no 3. Also go to page 49, post no 729; smjones has put up a script that will help you work out the difference between your comuter's local time and GMT. hohgch sent me this link in a pm -
http://www.symmetricom.com/resources...oads/symmtime/ - that allows you to download a free computer clock synchroniser that will keep your clock accurate. I haven't used it because I already have one.
Please note this point: despite the simplicity of working out trading hours, legions of the lazy and stupid have continued to post stupid questions about this.
Questions about trading hours earn the poster an automatic bar from further postings.
A note about trading waves and the Original robot. What follows can take place before Tokyo opens, so reverse all the directions at Tokyo close.
- Traders look at the markets and find xxxJPY pairs to be fairly strong. We would see this on our screens as rising candles and low RS indi readings. Said traders short the xxxJPY pairs. The robot does not look at this wave.
- The selling in wave 1 results in the Yen strengthening. On our screens, we see the candles falling and the RS indi rising. The robot leaps in at an appropriate stage and buys the crosses. Traders liquidate their shorts and go long.
- The buying forces the YEN downwards. BOJ might intervene, it might not; in my limited experience it appears to do so more often than not. It is this that creates waves 1 & 2.
The code for trading waves 2 & 3 is in the robot and working smoothly.
Immediate action labels
You will see three of these on the chart. 'Immediate Buy Basket' forces an immediate buy xxxJPY. 'Immediate Sell Basket' forces an immediate sell xxxJPY. 'Immediate Close Basket' will close an open basket. To use a label, double click so it has a rectangle drawn around it, then drag it to a different part of the chart. The robot will do the rest. Experiment with these on demo so you know what you are doing; once started, the activated code cannot be aborted. You will see inputs associated with the label display in the inputs.
A note about hedging:
- this is not available to account holders with USA so-called NFA-compliant criminals. Get a different broker.
- The robots send hedge trades if the basket is in drawdown equivalent to 5% (adjustable) of your account balance. It works by hedging 10% (adjustable) of the lot size of the worst performing pair every 15 minutes, so long as the dd continues to deepen.
- Hedge trades close when:
- They hit their trailing stop or
- BOJ intervenes to reverse the direction in which the Yen is moving and the whole basket of original + hedge trades can hit breakeven or
- The whole basket is overwhelmed by events and hits stop loss.
BIG, BIG POINT. TURN OFF THE ROBOT DURING JAPANESE PUBLIC HOLIDAYS. It will quickly become obvious why, as you read the thread. There is a list of Japanese hols at
http://www.worldtravelguide.net/coun...sia/Japan.html
A note about the pairs being traded:
Taking scoobs's advice, we have gradually refined the trading pairs down to those in the default input. Dryclean posted a great indi that shows the movement of both pairs as lines on the chart. Get it from
http://www.forexfactory.com/showpost...postcount=3431
A few notes to newbies both here and to Forex trading:
- This is not a, "You must read all of the thread to understand what is going on." thread.
- Imbibe the contents of this first post. Read it, mark it and inwardly digest it; it may change your life.
- After that, speed skim through it. Stop and read in detail any post by scooby-doo. The guy has my vote as the worldly personification of God. I would pay big bucks to learn what he has forgotten about trading. And if 'he' turns out to be a 'she', then many apologies to all she-kind. Linger also over anything posted by smjones - God no 2. My posts usually describe my latest updates to the robot; ignore them at your peril. The rest of this thread is just a sort of chat room, where we describe to one another what is going on and how our trades are faring, and poke some fun at those dim enough to ignore my earlier warning about asking daft questions.
- Having done this, you should be in full touch with what has gone on. If you are too dim or lazy to keep in touch and ask a daft question, here is what will happen:
- The tolerant minority will answer it. Once. Possibly. If they are in a good mood.
- The intolerant majority will savage you.
- I shall bar you from posting here.
Have fun. Learn. Make profits. Have a few laughs. The rest of us are.
Some big, BIG appreciations:
- scooby-doo: the biggest ever. Without you, none of this would have happened.
- Kang Gun: without your indis, the robot that trades here would be nothing like so effective as it is.
- smjones: for your fantastic enhancements to KG's indis and for the code that allows encapsulation of the indis within the robot, and his JPY candlestick indicators.
- zznbrm: for spotting the most glaring of my coding mistakes that was sending trades in the wrong direction. Without this, the robot might have died an ignominious death.
- matrixebiz: for your magnificent Forex trading hours clock and some invaluable coding contributions; the label thingy is fantastic.
- challenger88: for coding the ReconnectEA and adapting the FFCal indi.
- fxjedi: for coming up with an accurate method of working out when new candles have formed on charts accessed by the robot.
- DxTrade: for his fantastic dashboard.
- octomanoak: for his brilliant user guide to the Original robot. "Scooby-Doo Original BOJ Trading Robot User Guide v2.2.pdf" is included with the trading robots' zip.
Colossal round of applause to all of the above.
There are a couple of brilliant indi's that are superb for manual traders:
DxTrade's Dashboard: latest version
http://www.forexfactory.com/showpost.php?p=3275406&postcount=37 34
smjones: JPY Candles: latest version at
http://www.forexfactory.com/showpost...postcount=3696
Download a utility to keep your platform ticking:
http://www.forexfactory.com/showpost...postcount=3801
ALL TRADING ROBOTS ARE TO BE FOUND IN scooby-doo trading robots.zip
Updates
30th Dec:
Original robot: added Scoob's correlation code to the wave 2 decision-making process. This leaves the pure BOJ intervention code untouched.
OP robot:
there are a few changes here. They make the robot far less of a trading trollop than it was, but maybe has a chance of being profitable. We shall see. There is nothing in this that cannot be easily altered or removed.
- I have tightened the 'trading zone' to an RS strength of 48 - 52, so the first sets of baskets get sent as close to the mid-point as possible.
- Sell baskets are only closed when upl exceeds tp and RS >= 90.
- They are only re-opened when RS falls to <= 10.
- Buy baskets are only closed when upl exceeds tp and RS <= 10.
- They are only re-opened when RS risess to >= 90.
- I have added Scoob's correlation code to all trading decision making. Trading is only allowed if the correlation value is > 0.7
- I have made the emergency tp the same as the sl, in case the robot should lose touch with the criminal's server during a big move.
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scooby-doo BOJ basket robot Original latest version is: V2.2
My opinion of this robot: a clear winner. Trade it live as soon as you know what you are doing.
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Basket robot trading robot 24H
Latest version is: V3.7
Inputs specific to this bot:
- Trade suspension hours: StartSuspend and EndSuspend: these should correspond with the close of London (StartSuspend) and 5 hours after that (EndSuspend). Enter these hours in your computer's local time.
- FridayClose: should correspond with midday GMT. Computer local time again.
- UseSma: use 15m and 1H 200 moving average to ascertain the trend.
This is a version of the robot that trades 24 hours a day, apart from the dead time described above. The robot is experimental and cannot yet be used on a live account. Unless/until we can be sure that hedging works properly, it never will be.
In the meantime, bung it on a demo and enjoy the profits until a basket goes bad.
My opinion of this robot: no future.
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Here is the third trading robot inspired by scoob's contributions here.
Welcome to
scooby-doo BOJ trading robot opposite positions. It cannot be used on accounts held with bloodsucking criminals that do not allow hedging.
Here is what it is supposed to do:
- The robot treats the RS box between the values of BoxHigh and BoxLow as the 'trading zone'.
- On loading onto a chart for the first time, it will wait until the RS value enters the trading zone, then take immediate simultaneous buy and sell baskets based on the PairsToTrade input.
- From here, it will manage those baskets as per the earlier versions:
- The successful basket will hit tp.
- The unsuccessful will either return to profitability or become hedged. Theoretically, it will eventually be closed.
- A note about the tp. If there are no hedge trades associated with the initial basket, the robot will only close the trades if the RS value is <= 10 (buy) or >= 90 (sell) - an attempt to ride a little further along the wave.
- When one of the baskets is closed, it will be re-opened once the RS value moves into the +90 or -10 zones.
This is an idea I had this morning whilst lying in the bath. I am not sure where it leads. Hopefully, the unsuccessful baskets will eventually close at a profit through hedging. Perhaps they will eventually hit their stop loss; the hope there is that the loss will be sufficiently offset by the successful contra-direction baskets.
Adapting a single-basket robot to trade two baskets is harder to do than it sounds. There
will be bugs.
This robot must not be used live. Report bugs in the usual way.
Note there are none of the usual filters - news, max spread etc. The robot cares nothing about these things. All it wants is to have two baskets opened. This one is the ultimate trading trollop.
There are two versions:
- scooby-doo BOJ trading robot opposite positions: hedges as described above
- scooby-doo BOJ trading robot opposite positions V1: much more aggressive hedging. Hedges 50% of all trades in the basket as soon as hedging kicks in.
My opinion of this robot: looking promising but I am not yet ready to go live with this.
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AI trading robot
Scoobs has donated a trading robot that looks highly promising; it trades another method used by commercial traders. Read about it from
http://www.forexfactory.com/showpost...postcount=4201
My opinion of this robot: hopeless, but then I hate breakout systems.
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Scoobs RS crosspairs trading robot V1
Read here to find out about the trading strategy.
http://www.forexfactory.com/showpost...postcount=4269
I am not going to explain the inputs - I can't be bothered. Work them out for yourselves.
The robot goes on the TradePair chart - tf doesn't matter as the robot takes care of all that.
My opinion of this robot: only seems to be profitable when lucky.
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Scoobs RS Simple Entry Method trading robot V1
Read about the method at
http://www.forexfactory.com/showpost...postcount=4496
My opinion of this robot: only seems to be profitable when lucky.
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Scooby-doo Dog's Bollocks trading robot
Read about the method at
http://www.forexfactory.com/showpost...postcount=4561
The robot goes on any char; I suggest GJ as this tends to see the most action. Time frame does not matter; the robot takes care of this.
My opinion of this robot: hedging stops losing trades draining the account. I have this on one of my live accounts but the max 7 trades are all losers and are kept from closing by partial hedge trades. Doesn't appear to have a future.
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Scoobs TCF
I leave it to you to work out what TCF stands for. Those of you familiar with mine and Scoobs' sense of humour will not take long.
Read
http://www.forexfactory.com/showpost...postcount=4386 to see how trades are triggered.
This method leaves the potential for a basket of 3 open trades. Whether the basket is in profit or loss, closure happens like this:
- Buy baskets are closed when Rsi reaches the sell area of 70 (you can change this with the BuyClose input).
- Sell baskets are closed when Rsi reaches the buy area of30 (you can change this with the BuyClose input).
Avoid firing the robot up when Rsi is already >70 or <30. Drag an Rsi indi onto your chart and set the period to 2 to read the Rsi value.
This robot generates constant trades once it is into its stride. The big question is whether the occasional blockbuster loser will wipe out the gains of the constant stream of winners. We shall see.
The robot works on any time frame. We do not yet know which one is best.
The inputs are:
- SendImmediateMarketOrder: tells the robot to send an immediate trade as soon as trading conditions are met.
- SendPendingOrder: tells the robot to send a pending trade rather than an immediate market trade. This is an attempt to avoid taking trades when a move against them continues to gather energy. Its parter input is PendingOrderPips, the number of pips away from the market to set the pending trade. This must be at least the spread, so some pairs will need a bigger setting than others.
- Trading levels should be pretty obvious.
There are three versions of this robot available:
- Scoobs TCF: works as described above.
- Scoobs TCF V1: will not close a basket until it is in profit. Will allow both buy and sell baskets to be open at the same time. Not suitable for criminals that do not allow unrestricted hedging. The extra input is:
- AllowClosureInLoss: when false (the default) turns off the robot's ability to close losing baskets at the appropriate Rsi level.
- Scoobs TCF V2: includes all of V1. Adds a shed-load of extra flexibility, and therefore complication. Not suitable for criminals that do not allow unrestricted hedging.
- Higher time frame Rsi. Use will be obvious if you know how to use the Rsi indicator supplied with mt4. If you don't, then learn.
- 200 SMA. SmaPeriod (0) means the current chart tf. You can set it to any of the acceptable tf's; use minutes as the input.
- Linear Regression. This is an indi given to me by getdown71 when I was adding some sauce to an EA he had come across, that measures the slope of the pair. I have included it in the indi zip file so you can see how it works (#LinReg_TrendChannel no feedback.mq4). Leave the default settings in place until you have played with the indi for a bit, and understand how it works. MinLrVal is the minimum setting at which you consider the pair to be trending. LR.length is the number of candles to look back.
- V2 is about as far away from the first incarnation of TCF as it is possible to get. Theoretically, extra trend filters should lower the frequency of trades but increase their accuracy. In fact, all that often happens is that the robot turns into an unusable monster that nobody understands. V2 is backtestable in mt4's strategy tester, so play with the settings and see what happens.
- The default inputs represent the settings for a backtest on a 4H chart.
I have added partial hedging to the robot. I am not certain the code is bug-free, so watch out for insects. The relevant inputs should be obvious.
My opinion of this robot: V2 looks promising. This is profitable on my demos and I am hoping it might go live one day.
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Scooby-doo KG RS extremes trading robot
This robot uses the "KG RS GROUP V1.1" indicator. It is included in the indicators zipfile attached to this post. You do not need the indi on a chart; drag it only to confirm that the figures you see on screen are correct. This indi presents two problems for users:
- Dragging it onto a chart slows some computers to a crawl - it is a major resource hogger.
- Leaving it off the chart fills your Experts tab with endless "Unknown subwindow" errors. Don't even consider posting about this bloody error. It makes not a jot of difference to the running of the robot, yet people too thick to do a bit of reading continue to bring it up in the KG thread. Mention it and I will ban you from posting for ever; not even a hint of a reprieve. Forget it, ok? Really. Truly. Just forget it.
Here is the theory behind the robot:
- The KG indi looks at individual currencies and calculates the relative strength of that currency against that of the others in the robot's Currencies input.
- The robot takes these figures and looks at the two currencies at the extremes of the range. When one is overbought and the other is oversold (usual inputs here) the robot takes the appropriate trade.
- Long trade exit is at the LongTradesCloseRS input.
- Short trade exit is at the ShortTradesCloseRS input.
The idea is that losing trades have a 'natural' stop loss because the RS of the first currency in the pair will eventually pass one of the exit points and close, even if it is a losing trade. Those of us who have been trading the KG Range robot are familiar with the fact that a currency's strength can be increasing against other currencies, yet the individual trade can still be a loser. There is also an emergency stop loss. This is a 5 digit wally-plonker-criminal setting; the robot automatically adjusts for normal 4 digit crims.
'Twould be a miracle if there were no bugs in the system. Sing out as they arise.
My opinion of this robot: too early to say. Encouraging start.
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scooby-doo BOJ JPY pairs trading robot
scooby-doo BOJ JPY pairs trading robot
. Guys..you may use this indicator at your chart if you need to know exactly the Tokyo and others trade time.
