Trying to code for setting beginning daily balance

I am learning to code MQL4 (about 3/4 through course on Udemy) and am editing an EA that I use, bit by bit, to add things to it that I do manually now. But I've hit a snag, one that I can't seem to wrap my brain around (though I suspect it's something easy).

I start each day at 6:00 am by changing the "beginning daily balance" in my EA, as I have a daily profit target and my EA closes all trades when it hits that. But I don't want to manually go to 20 charts and put in my daily starting balance. I thought I learned how to get the daily balance by using:

if(Hour() > 6 && Minute() <1)
{
double dailyStartingBalance = AccountBalance();
double GlobalVariableSet(DailyStartingBalance, dailyStartingBalance);
}

You can imagine that this gets me an error about only setting global variables globally.

is there any way to define a global variable within an IF statement?

Thanks,

Pepper...

Can't you just declare the variable globally, and then reference it in the if statement rather than declaring it from within the if statement ?

I need to declare it at a certain time of the day, before I start trading. Can I do that outside of an IF statement?

a couple of issues:
1. declare your variable outside your if statement
2. you can use this variable anywhere in your EA if declared as being global
3. if the EA is added to each chart it will set the vaiable for that chart
4. because of this you wont need to use the GlobalVaiableSet - just call up dailyStartingBalance
5. your current if statement will reset the starting balance every hour after 6 - so you need to modify this also - suggest you use if(Hour()==7 ... rather than greater than 6

I don't think I understand, or perhaps I'm not explaining my goal properly. The reason I wasn't declaring the variable globally is that I need the EA to assign a value to it at a certain time of day, and then use that globally. If I have to type in the value in the morning for each of my 20 charts, that would defeat the purpose of what I was going for.

Is there a simpler way to get the EA to grab my account value at 6 am and keep that number as a variable that it can use all day long?

seems you dont fully understand the use of variables.

suggest you read:
https://book.mql4.com/variables/types

where they advise:
Global variable s a variable declared beyond all functions. The scope of global variables is the entire program. A global variable can be initialized only by a constant corresponding to its type (and not expression). Global variables are initialized only once before stating the execution of special functions.

the EA can then reset this variable every morning without the need for you to intervene

I think you should read https://docs.mql4.com/globals

You are confusing the issue in trying to store your account balance in a variable declared in the EA as no other instances of the EA (e.g. the other 19 on the other charts) can access such variables.

If you store the value in a client terminal global variable (described in the link), then all instances of any EA can read/write the value(s) you need.

In the MT4 terminal you can choose the menu Tools | Global Variables to see the list and either update it manually yourself once each morning or get your EA to update it at a set time. Each instance of the EA will then read/check this single value to decide whether to close trades, etc...

Regards, Paul.

It is perfectly fine to set a global variable within an if-statement:

You can use another global variable to track the date the balance has been updated:

I know it's because I'm new at this, but I cannot for the life of me get this to work. Here's the what I inserted into my code:

I set the variable globally first:

double dailyStartingBalance = 1000;

Then in the code, I inserted:

if (Hour() == 6 && Minute() <= 1)
{
GlobalVariableSet(dailyStartingBalance, AccountBalance());
}

It's supposed to take the previously set variable "dailyStartingBalance" and reset the value from 1000 to whatever the current account balance is. But when I have it print it out, I still get 1000. What am I doing wrong? Why is it not setting the global variable to the account balance? I'm not getting any errors. I tried taking out that original variable setting statement, but when I did, I got an error code on my GlobalSetValue line that said undeclared variable.

When I check my global variables from the tools menu I see this:


This makes it look like I've set a variable with the name 1000 to the value of my account balance...???!!!!

Clearly reading the instructions isn't getting me anywhere...

I tried that. I created the variable in the tools menu "dailyStartingBalance", and set it to a value. When I put in my code:

GlobalVariableGet(dailyStartingBalance);

I got an "dailyStartingBalance - undeclared identifier" error.

You need to read the documentation more carefully.

The call to the GlobalVariableSet() function takes two parameters, first is a STRING which is the NAME of the variable, second is a double holding the VALUE.


First param enclosed in quotes is a string naming the variable you want to modify, second is the value.

In the case where you showed the global variables with the name "1000" and the value of your account balance: you have passed a double type variable (dailyStartingBalance ) as the first parameter which has evaluated to a string "1000" and has been updated with your balance.

Regards, Paul.

finally got it working. Set it with this, as per the suggestion:

if(Hour()==14 && Minute()==00)
{GlobalVariableSet("dailyStartingBalance", AccountBalance());}

then used it with this:

Comment("Daily Starting Balance = $" + GlobalVariableGet("dailyStartingBalance");

Thanks to everyone for their help, and their patience!