to learn mql4

i have a very succesful system i have developed, that is intended to be traded mechanically, so i have been wanting for a while now, to make it an EA, however i know absolutely nothing about programming and would like to learn it.

the basic idea is a box is drawn around the high and low of price from say 12:00-1800 a 10 pip buffer zone is extended up from teh high, and 10 pips down from the low(this is the panca eagle indicator for you guys who know it.), when price breaks out of this buffer zone a have a 12 pip TP and 17 pip stoploss is used.

this is the basic idea of the system. i would like to also implement a rule that when i get to 5 pips of profit set it to B/E.

and i would eventually like to have what some people call a runner where when TP is hit, most of the position is closed and a little is left open incase we get a continuation of the move...but this is not nescessary as of yet.

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what i want to know is how long it will take me to accrue the basic mql4 knowledge to program such an EA?... again i have no programming knowledge at all, except in gr 9 i had this little miniclass where we learned turing for a week and i made a rocketship go to the moon.

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~~~~~~~~~~~SEPARATE QUESTION~~~~~~~~~~~~~

also, once i had a EA someone made, and it was set so that when there is X amount of profit set to break even. but when X was hit, there would often be a lag before the EA would set to B/E and sometimes it would be a fast market and it would go 5 or 10 pips beyond where it was supposed to before the EA set to B/E.

when this would happen with the Stoploss on the same EA instead of getting stopped out at 10 like i was supposed to i would be out at 15 or 20.

is this a normal thing to happen with EA's? or was it this single EA? was there a problem with the code?

is it usually that when the stoploss is at 10 the very second 10 is hit the position is closed?



i know this is a long post, but i appreciate any help i get, and i will be sure to post the EA as soon as it is done.

SINCERLY,
ALEX

start here http://docs.mql4.com/basis

and then here http://book.mql4.com/

good luck !

thank you, i will besure to read those.

any information on my second question or howlong it will take me be be able to program the EA i want to if i am starting from absolutely no programming experience

it depends on your experience with general programming... maybe you can have an EA in 1 month
it's easy to program an EA for demo tests... but it is very difficult to program an EA that can be used with real money and tracks all the errors that could happen... server disconnections... requotings... internet problems... etc...

ur strategie sounding like classical new-york box, or if ur from UK, london-box.

it is a comercial ea = "pipboxer"

about your separate questions... I would not use an EA for scalping... risky... I would use an EA for timeframes from 1 hour and up. with targets of 50 pips and up.

hi thanksfor you comments.

the system i am using is similar in a way, to a newyork or london box, but i did not explain it fully. there are some things that i left out about the buffer and a couple other things including the money management, which is the most important part of this system.

i have been trading this system manually for the last month, and been making about 35-40 pips a day

if i was trading this system mechanically and was able to trade every trade, i would have between 3-7 trades a day, but because i am not home all day, all i can do is set a pending trade, one for long and one for short, then go to work or school.

the way it works is every time the price leaves the box and then the buffer, a trade is made, but since i am at work, i can only made one long trade and one short trade, because i am not at home to place another pending trade, and this is done when the price comes back into the box...then i would add another pending trade and an EA would do this automatically and i would be able to trade every trade.

this week i only trades from tuesday to friday.

i only made 6 trades this week, five 13 pip winners and one 17 pip loss
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=48 pips profit.

and i would have made atleast 13 trades at the very minimum from tuesday to friday and i would have had a substantial amount more pips if i had been trading mechanically through and EA


so this is why i wish to pursure creating an EA for this system...plus being able to write MQL4 is a very handy skill.

also, i would not really call this scalping, the original timeframe i was using was 30minutes, but i found using 5min bars allowed me to better see what the price was doing during the bars. this did not effect the duration of the trades, which often are upto 1 hr long....

i forgot what i was originally going to write when i clicked reply so i guess you guys will have to settle for my explaination of this system, as i am not exactly in my normal state of mind.

if you have anything you thing might help me in my quest, or any other things to add, feel free.

anyone who is interested in helping in one way or another, and has msn or would like to email me. private message me your email through FF.

-Alex