Metatrader and repainting indicators

Hello,
Does anyone know the reason why Metaquotes created Metatrader knowing it repaints?
I think they've created one of the most useful programs for trading, ever. And I love it.
However I don't understand the reason for allowing repainting issues.
I think everyone of us has, at some point, seen an indicator and go crazy. You can't believe your eyes, you're about to quit your job to become a full time trader, you pick up the phone to call your boss, when you see the candle change... and the green arrow just goes away, evaporated in thin air. Two seconds later, a RED arrow appears one bar behind. You close your trade with -10 pips while hanging the phone while your boss is still saying "Hello? Hello?".

Truth is I'm trying to see it as a funny thing. But I'm one of the persons who has thrown away dozens of hours when trying to deal with repainting indicators. Dozens of hours just wasted, that would have been better used in any other thing.

And if there's a reason, do you think it's better than having the problem?

MT4 was not built with any consideration to the repainting issues. Its is simply a trading platform that has a very flexible programming language. The problem with the programming language having this much flexibility is that it can be missused by mistake or intentionally to create indicators that repaint. The only solution to this is to learn MQL and read the code of any indicator before spending any time on it. Or at least know exactly how the indicator works. The bottom line to this: blaming the delevopers for this problem does not make any sense. It is not a problem related to the platform but ruther the users. HTH

if you spend so much time looking at bad indicators, maybe you shouldnt look at indicators at all. you dont seem to be good judge of what indicators are good and what aren't. plus, your approach to indicators is all wrong. you arent supposed to use indicators for signals, they sre supposed to INDICATE changes in the market. if you see an indicator that is supposed to give signals, STAY AWAY. you cant generate a current signal that is supposed to predict future movement using past data. it doesnt work.

Riiiight... So... "Does anyone know the reason why Metaquotes created Metatrader knowing it repaints?"

Metatrader Does not repaint.

You as a programmer can write code that can repaint by setting the shift field in any address of a bar to a future date.

Thus by using a for loop, as the indicator is built, it will look into the known future that has already happened on the history file, however, in real time there is no future date. So, the indicator waits until there is a bar that would look like the future to it and then changes a past bar to match it.

This is allowed in most programming, because it allows you to create arrays that you look forward and backward though to use for back testing.

To say that Metatrader has done this is very neive.

It is also extremely useful in writing code for auto trading.

But just like everything in life, it can be abused by idiots who do not know what they are doing.

You need to blame the idiot who wrote the code, not the tool that built it.

Would you blame your saw and hammer for a bad building design?

Or

The delivery truck manufacturer for delivering bricks instead of the lumber you wanted?

Should a saw be designed to never allow a board to be cut to short?

I dare anyone to say that they don't IMPLICITLY, in a deep and abiding way, think or want to believe an indicator cross is a signal.

To me all indis, including nonrepainting ones, present "optical" illusions tied 1:1 with our chronic problem of greed/impulsiveness vs. fear/overanalysis. We bounce between these poles, and overshoot dramatically on either side, just like all the economists and Soros say about exchange rates.

Hey, who's complaining? If they didn't, no one would be making a living at this for long. (Let's just hope we don't go to a single world currency one day). Anyone miss the Deutsche Mark?

But the problem remains: we see what we want and not what is there, and this issue is multiplied many times over by indis, the PC, and, yes, certainly the trading applications/languages that facilitate certain kinds of programming and not others. It's yin and yang, risk and reward, gain and lose.

So, on the one side, we have repainting and a profusion of indis, some reliable, some not ("instrumentation" problems, if you will, in the quantum sense, but that's in the eye of the beholder), and on the other side, chronic perceptual problems WHATEVER the reliability of the instruments.

The way to go probably is the older "Newtonian" macro linear/MA way of thinking, if you will, not the micro quantum/measurement/accuracy one predicated on indis. As you say, it's a trap.

Also, I see your interest in Fibonacci.

I think of it this way: levels (qua "position", including Fibonacci ones) can be determined in trading, but not momentum in the face of ever-changing cycles/phases (that is, "momentum" in the quantum sense). The latter cycles seems to be what destroy EA's, the one solution to the perceptual problem above.

There's an uncertainty principle of sorts: chase momentum and you're chasing a veritable eel, an infinite regress.... Nail down "position", and you don't have to worry about "momentum" indis and the reliability of the instrumentation/"signals" that go along with them, etc. But there are some short-term traders who successfully trade "pure" momentum based on the price line/action ALONE with no indis, such as "ShakesFX" (but with some focus on levels too).

The people here who are trading levels and price alone seem to do this well, and they have a lot of the required patience. There seem to be two sorts of traders: patient ones, who gravitate to levels-trading and long-term trends and the math of expectancy, and the more impatient who use momentum (but the risks of failure here are much, much higher IF you're not trading price alone, and multiply indicators and "instrumentation" problems).

I think the PC has multiplied the latter problem many times over; hence your comments about MT4 and, in fact, any trading app with a profusion of indis, "reliable" or not.

"Truth is I'm trying to see it as a funny thing. "

have a rest, man
come back (to mt4) when you feel better

Hey, XXX, here's an "indi" vid of a little R&R repainting. "Debbie Does EA's".

http://slopeofhope.com/2009/01/30/ch..._like_this.htm

Enjoy

oh... sh....t
exactly