Trading Initial Balances and EA

It's been a while since I've posted on here and it's because I'm trying to stay away from actively trading the markets and have started moving towards just letting my Expert Advisors do the work.

Also, I'm now running the Initial Balances EA on S&P 500 futures, Nasdaq futures and Dow Jones futures. Here's the trades from today, which all hit TP. (Also shown in the profits are DCA positions)

Awesome day for the Initial Balance EA on U.S. markets.

Hello, thanks for uploading the EA, I've a quick question. my EA doesn't draw the rectangular box to specify the high and low of the IB. I will highly appreciate any help, thank you.

hey fortyfive20

Overall the EA is doing good on my demo with the specified pairs and timeframes. One question about entries though. If I'm right, then the buy or sell should be as soon as price breaks out of the initial balance range if the time is within the start time. Sometimes though entry is delayed a bit as you can see from the screenshot - can you let me know what I might be doing wrong? Is it that it fell outside of the start time hour when price broke out, hence entry is delayed?

And sorry for the stupid question, can you confirm for me for the EA inputs, does the server time mean broker time or local machine time? I'm assuming the server time = broker time? Because I've checked my broker time against EDT / EST and the EA time settings are correct if server time means broker time on my end




thanks,

blam

Hey Blam,

First of all, I'm actually honored that you're testing out the EA. Thank you! Second, I'm having the same issue but haven't had the time to see what the problem is. I'm not sure if it's a time frame issue or what. But I will try and get it fixed as soon as I can. The thing would be that I would have to forward test it instead of backtest it to see if the issue is fixed.

not at all, the honour's mine, the EA is very good. Would be great if you could take a look at the bug when you get a chance, because it's preventing it from being profitable overall IMO

blam

Hey everyone,

So I managed to at least fix the issue with the levels and times that the EA takes positions. The rectangle, is something I'm still working on. But okay, back to the levels and times the EA takes positions, no need to download a new EA or reinstall anything, it's an issue of setting the times.

 

1. For starters, the EA works on the server time. So, go to your 30 min chart > identify the candle where the NY session starts (We're going to be trading U.S. indices on U.S. market times for this example) > Set that candle as your "Initial_Balance_Start". In my case, on my server it's the 16:30 candle.
2. Now, we have to set the correct "Initial_Balance_End". Remember that the Initial Balance is the first hour of the trading session (9:30am EST to 10:30am EST). So in theory, according to my server time that would be the 16:30 and the 17:00 candle. Previously, the EA had the "Initial_Balance_End" as 17:30. Which is in theory correct, but what the EA was doing was also counting the high and low of the 17:30 candle, when in reality the 17:30 candle is where we want to start trading.
3. So how do we set the correct "Initial_Balance_End"? Well, it's really simple, set it to one minute before the "Trading_Time_Start". So, in my case, if my trading start time is 17:30, I will set my "Initial_Balance_End"as 17:29. What will this do?

What does this do?
With the above changes what the EA will do is take the high and low of the 16:30 and 17:00 candle, and on candle 17:30 open, it will start trading if price goes above or below the high or low of the 16:30 and 17:00 candle.

I'm attaching an image that I hope will help you guys understand the concept of how the EA will work. I sometimes tend to complicate explanations more than I should.

Lastly, thank you everyone that has downloaded this EA and has backtested it and played around with it. You guys are awesome.

brilliant, thanks for the fix fortyfive20, have amended my settings, let's see what next week brings. Have a great weekend

blam

A lot of volatility in U.S. markets all week and it will probably be like this until after the elections. But managed to make a couple of good trades today with the EA.

1. Nasdaq futures: broke below IB, trailing stop triggered and then hit. Still managed to take a profit.
2. Dow Jones futures: IB breakout to the upside, TP hit.
3. S&P 500 futures: IB breakout to the downside, SL hit.