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  • #21
  • Dec 4, 2018 2:31am Dec 4, 2018 2:31am
Quoting profitfarmer
{quote} interesting, thx. but helping the few family members not necessarily translate to posting something online. or do you fear they will do it? it should not even cross the this forum for instance and to help "THAT much" to anyone here you otherwise not intended to. anyway, teaching...without teaching one to in effect interpret your indicator and its signals the way you do, it will be most likely useless. especially without a look into the real key issue, the money management side of your ( profitable) trading. and ultimately that would be where...
Great points. The answer is definitely not. I came to the conclusion with the help of VEE an the other coders here that I should keep things to myself.
If you are good at something, never do it for free--Joker
  • #22
  • Dec 4, 2018 5:42am Dec 4, 2018 5:42am
Quoting robots4me
{quote} What are you talking about? Proof? There are many decompilers to choose from -- give one a try and see for yourself.
If this is so easy, then i show it! Here is a file you can test.
Attached File(s)
File Type: ex4 TM_HTF_Stochastic.ex4   27 KB | 446 downloads


Until there is no proof i tell you that all your posts have no value at all and only steals us time.
  • #23
  • Edited 10:10am Dec 4, 2018 9:50am | Edited 10:10am
Quoting VEEFX
{quote} I have written a lot about MT4 in the past and how I used it's features (or lack there of) to my advantage in trading. What I know about MT4, I doubt anyone would come close except a few hard core long timers and I am NOT talking about MQL coding here. The entire architecture is fabulously designed just for brokers in mind and not for traders. No one will tell you this.... so here it is. Even FIFO implementation in MT4 is rigged in a traditional sense when I compare with what is allowed in Futures and believe me, the list keeps growing....
It is good to be talking to a peer in age and experience in life.

My first languages were BASIC and FORTRAN back in the green screen and 5.25 inch floppy days. One person carried the computer and the other person carried the monitor if we had to move! Back then many engineers were headed toward the defense industry. I became a liberal, and decided to go mop floors.

I am glad of the post because for the longest time I thought I was using a computer that just did not have the power to do what I wanted it to do. So, I bought a tricked out HP Spectre with an gen 8 i7 chip. There, that should do it, right? MT4 still had the same problems of hanging at important times. I thought, well, my code is inefficient. But, my code is basic price action stuff and something a high end computer should not even need it's fans for. Slowly, very slowly, it began to dawn upon me that something is amiss. Since you know, I went back and tried this, maybe it's that, or it could be this or that. Did I miss a semicolon? I am very glad I do not develop as a job!

I began to realize that maybe something else might be wrong. I tried one of Hanover's indicators, I told him of my results. He told me to check my data, I found out that I had HUGE data gaps! Shit.

While I am not a VP, I do have a desk job and I have goal based directives. This means I get to do a lot of stuff at work as long as I am in front of my deadlines. This environment allows me to test in real time. I do not buy into conspiracies at all, but I do have to admit that I get worried about MT4 sometimes. You post was very illuminating and I definitely understand that if I begin to hurt my broker, they will take steps against me.

On the other hand, my broker feels like they want us to win, because they feel that if we win our positions will be larger, which means more money for them.

Give and take maybe?

Quoting JensItzig
{quote} If this is so easy, then i show it! Here is a file you can test. {file} Until there is no proof i tell you that all your posts have no value at all and only steals us time.
So, to be clear, you want a veteran coder to crack someone elses code to prove that they are right? Do I have this correct? Do you know there is a code of conduct among coders?
If you are good at something, never do it for free--Joker
  • #24
  • Dec 4, 2018 10:16am Dec 4, 2018 10:16am
"On the other hand, my broker feels like they want us to win, because they feel that if we win our positions will be larger, which means more money for them.
Give and take maybe?"

i am not the smartest one here, by far, not even a desk job, just a desk to trade...but i would think from all these 'great minds and peers' around here, one would long time start to focus on the directions where the broker's and his goals are closer aligned, and try to work toward those "goal based directives".
sorry for the sarcasm, but some is called for!
indeed there are solutions for this one, too.
just as well as keeping your ex4 file off limit for family but still give them your exact results (trade copier, PAMM, MAM, simple family 'loans' as investments; all without departing a wee bit of intellectual property, really)...
the above part has similar simple solution side.
but then, where the give and take would be if we give out things just freely? yes, it has a little more sarcasm, but i am sure you get it ( from post#1).

happy trading!
there is always, always another trade!!
  • #25
  • Dec 4, 2018 3:29pm Dec 4, 2018 3:29pm
Quoting jmn5611
{quote} It is good to be talking to a peer in age and experience in life. My first languages were BASIC and FORTRAN back in the green screen and 5.25 inch floppy days. One person carried the computer and the other person carried the monitor if we had to move! Back then many engineers were headed toward the defense industry. I became a liberal, and decided to go mop floors. I am glad of the post because for the longest time I thought I was using a computer that just did not have the power to do what I wanted it to do. So, I bought a tricked out HP...
Even I have upgraded my laptops several times in the last 2-3 yrs to help speed up my automation. The fact is, MT4 never freezes up in DEMO lol
It's a single thread client app and does not use any of the multi-threaded processing power that comes with the newer CPUs. Complete waste of money if you only upgraded your hardware for MT4 to run faster. There is an entire book to be written about data gaps, tick simulation in backtester, GMT offsets, spread recording, demo versus live data quality, broker's ability to alter any candle of historical price feeds to trick indicators into generating false signals etc etc. I traded for over a decade with FXCM's TSII platform and every time I moved away from it and over to MT4, I lost money. I moved to ATC Brokers to try out their netting feature, I lost over $10K. When FXCM moved to UK, I tried out mt4 and lost. I lost with Oanda MT4, IBFX MT4, MBTrading MT4 as well. There is consistency and I had to learn coding to fully understand and dissect that MT4 does to our accounts. Apart from the two strategies I mentioned, I am very confident no one will remain profitable in the long run. Even Alphadude uses Java for his multi-strategy reversion to mean intraday strategy. Give it 3+ yrs and failure is gauranteed in any spot FX strategy on a broker-provided platform. The only exception was FXCM TS2 in my experience and I know why... because of large Tick chart size that no other platform (definitely not MT4) offers. That is the only reason why I believe CP to be successful. If he had made claims with MT4, I would have not read his posts or hold him in higher regard. Without continuous run of bid/ask tick chart "detecting" anomalies in Price is very hard and that is the only edge MT4 brokers need. I say it again, everything we see or not see in MT4 is by design. There is a REASON for everything.... including inaccurate sorting of PnL based on $ and not pips or not including commissions or swaps in each trade's Pnl. The list is very long. There is a reason when I said "I will remain a demo trader for life". Demo is more reliable to generate trade signals or write scripts to backtest your strategies if you have the right tools in place to check the real time quality of price feed across multiple brokers.

I am doing similar approach with software packages in the Futures market. I have yet to find any flaws to exploit !

EDIT: I would also not trust a MT4 broker if they force their demo account to expire due to inactivity. There is a specific reason why they do that. I would also not chose a broker who makes it harder to open demo accounts on the fly from within MT4. My strategy involved opening a new demo account every day or atleast every week.
Staying in my lane...
  • #26
  • Dec 4, 2018 3:43pm Dec 4, 2018 3:43pm
Quoting JensItzig
There is still no proof that any of those decompilers is able to decompile ex4 compiled with 600+ builds.
@JensItzig -- I think you are right. *.ex4 files built from version 600+ onward are not as readily decompiled. My apologies...
  • #27
  • Dec 4, 2018 5:36pm Dec 4, 2018 5:36pm
Quoting robots4me
{quote} @JensItzig -- I think you are right. *.ex4 files built from version 600+ onward are not as readily decompiled. My apologies...
Does that mean only a professional can decompile them? My logic that if only a professional can do it, that is fairly reliable. If we are targeted by a member of Anonymous, for example, then we cannot be saved anyway. Are you saying that it takes that level of skill?
If you are good at something, never do it for free--Joker
  • #28
  • Dec 4, 2018 5:44pm Dec 4, 2018 5:44pm
Quoting jmn5611
{quote} So, to be clear, you want a veteran coder to crack someone elses code to prove that they are right? Do I have this correct? Do you know there is a code of conduct among coders?
I bet you can answer it by yourself with a little bit reflection.

Would it make sense to decompile unknown code as proof of concept?!

And i don't know white hats, that don't have some gray shadow on their hat. World is not black and white, it has millions of grayscales between. But most of the time i remember such code of conduct.
  • #29
  • Dec 4, 2018 5:45pm Dec 4, 2018 5:45pm
Quoting robots4me
{quote} @JensItzig -- I think you are right. *.ex4 files built from version 600+ onward are not as readily decompiled. My apologies...
I'm happy to read this (for me and my work and the work of others).
  • #30
  • Dec 4, 2018 5:49pm Dec 4, 2018 5:49pm
Quoting jmn5611
{quote} Does that mean only a professional can decompile them? My logic that if only a professional can do it, that is fairly reliable. If we are targeted by a member of Anonymous, for example, then we cannot be saved anyway. Are you saying that it takes that level of skill?
To be honest. I don't think that they even care abut that community.
And if someone would be able to build the holy grail, we see for sure some people with enough money and time working on a solution to get that decompiled for analysis
  • #31
  • Dec 4, 2018 5:52pm Dec 4, 2018 5:52pm
Quoting VEEFX
{quote} Even I have upgraded my laptops several times in the last 2-3 yrs to help speed up my automation. The fact is, MT4 never freezes up in DEMO lol It's a single thread client app and does not use any of the multi-threaded processing power that comes with the newer CPUs. Complete waste of money if you only upgraded your hardware for MT4 to run faster. There is an entire book to be written about data gaps, tick simulation in backtester, GMT offsets, spread recording, demo versus live data quality, broker's ability to alter any candle of historical...
So you have been with the biggest brokers out there, and you have found your experience to be the same. I do not trade with MT4, but even with demo, on the iterations of the majors it will slow the software down. Thank you for explaining to me why things are still a bit slow. My indicator looks for 36 conditions. Over 28 pairs, this is 1009 conditions per bar. On the laptop that I have this should take no time at all. Now I know that MT4 does not use what this pc can do. The upside is that I got a nice machine out of the deal. The downside is that you are right, I did not need drop that kind of money for what I wanted to do. But you know us Yanks, if there is trouble, what do we do? Throw money at it!

I think you are right about the book being written. My push back is the question of why would MT4 be so ingrained in the minds of so many brokers and traders? MT5 had been out for many years now I found out. But no one will move. Why not TradeStation, or Amibroker, or NinjaTrader? How did MetaQuotes manage to get this done?

Quoting JensItzig
{quote} To be honest. I don't think that they even care abut that community. And if someone would be able to build the holy grail, we see for sure some people with enough money and time working on a solution to get that decompiled for analysis
None of my methods are Holy Grail material, as I do not believe there is such a thing. It is just an effective tool. The traders still has to evaluate the chart and make the decisions that will best impact their account. I only wanted to know how to deliver this tool. I do not want it ripped and sold. That is the entire purpose of the thread. I have gotten some really nice information from it. I am very glad I have the credibility of the community that serious people would come here and address my question.

Quoting profitfarmer
"On the other hand, my broker feels like they want us to win, because they feel that if we win our positions will be larger, which means more money for them. Give and take maybe?" i am not the smartest one here, by far, not even a desk job, just a desk to trade...but i would think from all these 'great minds and peers' around here, one would long time start to focus on the directions where the broker's and his goals are closer aligned, and try to work toward those "goal based directives". sorry for the sarcasm, but some is called for! indeed there...
I am at would I would call the "drop dead" age. I did not want to provide signals, as that would make them dependent on me. This would make me a king. When kings die, their kingdoms do also. I want to give out tools that they will learn from and will benefit from long after I am gone. Thanks for taking the trouble to reply. That takes time you will never get back. It means a lot.
If you are good at something, never do it for free--Joker
  • #32
  • Dec 4, 2018 7:27pm Dec 4, 2018 7:27pm
Quoting jmn5611
{quote} So you have been with the biggest brokers out there, and you have found your experience to be the same. I do not trade with MT4, but even with demo, on the iterations of the majors it will slow the software down. Thank you for explaining to me why things are still a bit slow. My indicator looks for 36 conditions. Over 28 pairs, this is 1009 conditions per bar. On the laptop that I have this should take no time at all. Now I know that MT4 does not use what this pc can do. The upside is that I got a nice machine out of the deal. The downside...
1009 conditions per bar is not a whole lot. You are probably doing repeat execution of similar logic 28 times. I ran into this problem by running my EA on 28 pairs and it would just crash. In my case, we are talking over half a million unfiltered trade signal generation possibilities via 32 recursive loops for each set of currency pairs. It was designed to literally corner the currency strength/weakness in both directions to "straddle" manipulations at session open/close. Under the right conditions, it was a choke hold using some 250-300 positions across 28 pairs resulting in always capturing 100+% gains during a decent volatility episode. Frankly, it all began with a simple research exercise in "With unlimited capital, How many fixed-size positions will it take to corner a 28 pair currency portfolio to explode via brute force"? 2+yrs and running over 100K+ simulations, I found the theoretical answer. Turning that into a practical implementation truly tested some serious computational power to find the "mandlebrot signature" using inception across 32 timeframe combinations i.e. looking at the inside of the inside of the inside of the .... 32 layers deep and then doing the same laterally across the set of USD, EUR, GBP, etc and then match those via 24-hour session time slicing to only trade the matching pairs and timeframes and tracking each 500+K signal "signature" via it's scale in real time. Any 32-bit client software would result in memory leaks when you are recursively processing so many arrays in memory to avoid disk IO. My CPU would churn a constant 25%-32% non stop per instance of terminal and I required 4 instances all running in parallel non-stop from Monday London open thru Thursday London close for everything to work in perfect symphony. Just try and visualize what I was trying to achieve and the enormity of it in computations. No broker plug-in could match my round the clock brute-force. The biggest force in the animal kingdom comes from the tiniest insects collaborating together to attack it's prey. Same concept. And hence, the biggest and ultimate defense by brokers to initiate a "disconnect" of client terminal from their server to mitigate risk. They are not stupid to let the retail trader win via some fancy algo. Sorry about my rant. I will stop here. It's good to keep it as a hobby and use it as an analytical tool. That's all I would use it for.
Staying in my lane...
  • #33
  • Edited Dec 6, 2018 2:14am Dec 5, 2018 11:51am | Edited Dec 6, 2018 2:14am
I know I shouldn't -- but the devil in me can't resist responding to some of this crappola...

Quote
The biggest force in the animal kingdom comes from the tiniest insects collaborating together to attack it's prey.

You mean, of course, a virus. That's the way viruses work. It's also the way DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) and other malicious attacks work.

Quote
biggest and ultimate defense by brokers to initiate a "disconnect" of client terminal from their server to mitigate risk

I'm not so sure it was the "evil" broker that forced a disconnect. It might very well have been MT4 (and not your broker) that terminated the session when this monstrosity was running. As you've pointed out -- correctly, I might add -- MT4 is a single-threaded app. It was designed for manual (mechanical) trading and light-weight algorithmic robots. I don't doubt MT4 favors their customers (i.e. brokers) -- can't blame them for that -- that's what you would do if you were in their shoes. They are a company and companies are in business to make money. However, what you were attempting to perform far exceeded the design of the application, and any disconnect may have been performed to prevent the app from crashing -- which is priority #1 for any application -- that is, whatever you do, never, ever crash. Can you really blame MT4 (or your broker) for that? Oh, right, you're the fellow who blames everyone else -- even the poor guys ("idiots" in your words) that he's responsible for managing and mentoring. I'm pretty old and I've worked for managers like that -- and even though that was many years ago, it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe that's one reason why I couldn't resist pointing out your technical mumbo-jumbo doesn't impress everyone.
  • #34
  • Dec 6, 2018 1:34am Dec 6, 2018 1:34am
Quoting VEEFX
{quote} 1009 conditions per bar is not a whole lot. You are probably doing repeat execution of similar logic 28 times. I ran into this problem by running my EA on 28 pairs and it would just crash. In my case, we are talking over half a million unfiltered trade signal generation possibilities via 32 recursive loops for each set of currency pairs. It was designed to literally corner the currency strength/weakness in both directions to "straddle" manipulations at session open/close. Under the right conditions, it was a choke hold using some 250-300...
Did you outsource this endeavor?
  • #35
  • Dec 6, 2018 2:46am Dec 6, 2018 2:46am
Quoting VEEFX
{quote} 1009 conditions per bar is not a whole lot. You are probably doing repeat execution of similar logic 28 times. I ran into this problem by running my EA on 28 pairs and it would just crash. In my case, we are talking over half a million unfiltered trade signal generation possibilities via 32 recursive loops for each set of currency pairs. It was designed to literally corner the currency strength/weakness in both directions to "straddle" manipulations at session open/close. Under the right conditions, it was a choke hold using some 250-300...

I'm very interested in this type of algos! This is pretty much what I do right now, however I try to dial down the algo to some more "acceptable" levels in order not to upset the brokers too much.

Placing trades in all directions in all pairs can do wonders in some market conditions. The key is to know when to turn the algo off. Or to switch to one direction only.
  • #36
  • Edited 6:31pm Dec 6, 2018 3:31am | Edited 6:31pm
Quoting alphaomega
{quote} I'm very interested in this type of algos! This is pretty much what I do right now, however I try to dial down the algo to some more "acceptable" levels in order not to upset the brokers too much. Placing trades in all directions in all pairs can do wonders in some market conditions. The key is to know when to turn the algo off. Or to switch to one direction only.
Deleted...Sorry/I shared too much of my design :-)
Staying in my lane...
  • #37
  • Dec 6, 2018 3:38am Dec 6, 2018 3:38am
Quoting Nicholishen
{quote} Did you outsource this endeavor?
I have put it on shelf collecting dust for now. I will revisit when I am able to become my own broker or build my own trading platform but most likely I am not coming back to Spot FX if I find success in Futures. This entire brute-force design is completely useless outside of Spot FX but the underlying Universality and Neutrality of "Time Action Analysis" principle could be leveraged in any FRACTAL based series.

Edit: There was a reason why I did a shoutout to pips4life profile last year :-

Edit1: Okay, I will say this one last thing. There is ONE specific time function MISSING in MQL that could NOT be done in MT4 (atleast I could not find how to do it using the available Time() functions). This was crucial for my need to prevent "manipulation of Time" from my design.
Staying in my lane...
  • #38
  • Dec 6, 2018 3:42am Dec 6, 2018 3:42am
Quoting jmn5611
I am hearing that the latest builds of mt4 can prevent thieves from stealing your intellectual property. If I were to post an ex4 file on the web, what is the likely hood that it could be cracked? Now I do not mean members of Anonymous, but just regular thieves.
From build 600+, the EX4 files are being encrypted with a proprietary algorithm that is very complex to break.
Trading is the hardest way to make easy money...
  • #39
  • Dec 6, 2018 4:00am Dec 6, 2018 4:00am
Quoting VEEFX
there was only one terminal at a time being forced "Not Connected" out of 4-6 running in parallel
Okay -- perhaps my comments were too harsh -- I apologize.

Regarding network connectivity -- why didn't you test this first before implementing such a complex system? If your solution was going to bombard the broker's server then why not first create a quick and dirty simulation to get an idea if this was going to be a problem?

With regard to the missing time function -- might be solved by importing one of Win32's time functions. For example:
#import "user32.dll"
int <Win32 time function here>;
#import

It's also fairly straight-forward to create your own DLL (even multi-threaded) that performs all your timing operations and complex calculations. That DLL would then export a handful of APIs that are then imported and used by your MQL code. People do this all the time to circumvent some of the limitations of the MQL language and also the "sandbox" environment that MT4 forces your *.ex4 to run in.

Not sure if this is what you were looking for, but here's a link to some of the timing functions available when you import from a Windows dll:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/win...time-functions
  • #40
  • Dec 6, 2018 11:00am Dec 6, 2018 11:00am
Quoting robots4me
{quote} Okay -- perhaps my comments were too harsh -- I apologize. Regarding network connectivity -- why didn't you test this first before implementing such a complex system? If your solution was going to bombard the broker's server then why not first create a quick and dirty simulation to get an idea if this was going to be a problem? With regard to the missing time function -- might be solved by importing one of Win32's time functions. For example: #import "user32.dll" int <Win32 time function here>; #import It's also fairly straight-forward to...
I did end up with using a dll function but after bearing a long agony of over 6+ months. lso, there is no HFT or "bombardment" involved to overload the server or entering of rapid orders. Depending on my time filters, orders would most often be already open across 4 (or 6 subaccounts). Broker turned right, a left hand sucker lunch.... broker turned left, a right hand sucker punch... broker went up, a kick in his balls... broker bend down and you know what would happen.
there are only two binary outcomes in pretty much everything in trading... if there are more than 2, there is ALWAYS a way to break it down into a binary outcome.

At the end, outcome of any style of trading results in only two alternatives 1)having balance curve follow equity curve (from high RR) or 2) equity curve follow the balance curve (via low RR). You could apply the same principle of 00, 01, 10, 11 to the two curves and have a completely balanced and diversified portfolio
Staying in my lane...
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