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Hello,
I am trading since the year of 2000. I do use different strategies and styles, but some years ago I fall in love with grid trading. Yes, I – and hopefully you – know, it is high risk, and when you try like me to gain performance 100% + a year at some point you will always hit the doomsday drawdown and blow your account. Non or less, my heartbeat goes up when thinking of the grid and many nights I swapped my sleep for intense back testing.
Some years ago, I found the EA “Super Money Grid” at the internet. I started testing it and after a while it went live with some real money. After 2 years I had many ideas how to optimize this strategy. A friend of mine is a coder and wanted to learn MQL 4. We teamed up, I explained him my ideas and he put them into the code. After 6 months we had a brand-new version of the EA with many cool features, we called it BlackMamba Ikarus.
So if you wonder about the name, well, the story of Icarus was for me always the perfect picture one should keep in mind when using a grid style trading approach: You will fly, but do not go to high, because the sun will burn your wings and your account will crash down.
When using I highly recommend starting on a demo account, only use with real money when you can handle the EA and are aware of the extreme risks involved in this trading style.
Settings:
magic: Magic Number if you want to run EA on different instruments on in one account
grid_size: Distance between the order of one cycle
gs_progession: Factor to expand grid_size
- 0 = Disabled, all orders will have the same distance
- 1 = Distance between orders will grow 1/2/3/4/5… (D’Alembert)
- 2 = Distance between orders will grow 1/2/4/8/16…(Martingale)
- 3 = Distance between orders will grow 1/1/2/3/5…(Fibonacci)
take_profit: Setting for securing profit of the cycle with a trailing stop.
profit_lock: Percentage of profit secured by trailing stop.
min_lot: Volume to start a new cycle.
equity_warning: Drawdown alert, when active will stop auto opening of orders.
account_risk: Stop Loss on account base, when reached all orders will be closed an EA will stop trading.
progression: Setting for volume progression within one cycle.
- 0 = Disabled, all orders will have the same volume
- 1 = Volume will grow within a cycle 1/2/3/4/5 based on min_lot… (D’Alembert)
- 2 = Volume will grow within a cycle 1/2/4/8/16 based on min_lot …(Martingale)
- 3 = Volume will grow within a cycle 1/1/2/3/5 based on min_lot …(Fibonacci)
max_possitions: Setting for maximal positions per cycle.
unbalance_control: Hedging function
- A new cycle (e.g. buy) will be opened with the 3. Last volume of the unclosed cycle (e.g. sell).
- This will cause EXTREME RISK and can blow your account easily.
max_spread: Setting to avoid big spreads when opening positions. Enter MT4 points here, 1 pip = 10.
show_forecast: Enables graphic elements in the chart.
How it will trade:
The EA is working on FX Pairs, I personally trade it on majors (EURUSD, USDCHF, GBPUSD % USDJPY) and bigger minors (e.g.EURGBP or EURJPY). All orders will be executed as market order, the trailing stop is handled by the EA. Therefore I highly recommend running it on MT4 hosted on a remote server.
Timeframe is not relevant because this version is using no indicators.
When started the EA will open immediately two cycles with one buy and one sell order. If the market goes north, the buy cycle will be locked with a trailing stop while the sell cycle will open the next order to average the sell cycle price. As soon as the trailing stop is hit and a cycle is closed in profits, a new cycle will be started. The EA is including commissions and swaps in the take profit calculation.
Take profit and the next price where orders will be added are shown in the chart as indication. On the right side of the chart, you have an info panel giving you an overview on spread, account and both cycles. On the left side of the chart, you will see information on both cycles and your settings. You can hide this information and the button when clicking “Show/Hide Comments”.
The EA has some hot buttons so you can manage the action with one click:
- Stop Next Cycle: After a cycle is closed in profit the new cycle will not be started.
- Rest & Realize: The EA will not add any new positions, when the take profit is reached it will use the trailing stop to secure and realize the cycle profit
- Stop & Close: All positions will be closed immediately, and the EA will not open new cycles
When a cycle has reached the number of positions you set in max_possition the manual mode hot buttons will be activated (Buttons will show yellow colour, Yellow Alert). The modus is also activated when equity drawdown is higher than the setting under equity_warning (Buttons will show red colour, Red Alert).
Hot buttons while in Alter Yellow or Red:
- Buy / Sell: Open manual the next order, volume will be based on EA setting
- Cl. Last B / Cl. Last S: The last order of the cycle will be closed.
- Cl. All Bs / Cl. All Ss: Close all order of a cycle
When the EA is in Alarm Yellow or Red, it will not automatically open new position to the cycle which is in drawdown, but will close a cycle with the trailing stop function when take profit is reached.
- During alert modus max. equity and current drawdown will be shown on the left side of your screen.
- During alert modus a line indicates, where the new take profit will be, when a position is manual added when using the Buy / Sell button.
- During alert modus a line in the chart indicates where the account will hit margin call.
I am trading with the EA on a live account (1:200). I consider this to be a “fun” account, so it is much smaller than my regular accounts. Therefore, I try to push hard and this year was quite good so far. On the account I am using a beta version of Ikarus which I unfortunately cannot post here, main difference is the opening of a cycle will be done on an indicator base, the rest of the cycle is handled the same way than the EA you can download here. For entries I am using a combination of BollingerBands and Stochastik or RSI indicator.
I have many ideas how to improve the EA further, unfortunately my old coder is to busy nowadays, and I am not a coder but a trader. So, if someone is interested and blessed with MQL4 skills, I would be more than happy to use this thread for improving this EA together with you.
CODERS, PLease check post 213 for my current ideas to improve Icarus, your support is highly appreciated!
For the case you are nor familiar with the story of Icarus and his father Daedalus you can build up your knowledge on greek mythology with this youtube video.
If you have questions on the attached version of the EA or you want to discuss possible improvements you are more than welcome to post here
I like all comments to keep track, thumb up means I have read your post
Green pips to all of us, Cheers