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Simple Breakout/Straddle EA required

  • #21
  • Oct 22, 2009 2:35am Oct 22, 2009 2:35am
Quoting CodeMeister
Clocksey, sorry but I don't remember reading your comments before. Thanks for the interest and encouragement. Eyeballing this strategy will give you some idea about its potential but you have to run it in backtesting to understand the real challenge. I will PM you the executable and test results.

We are at breakeven and I would like to think that there is one thing missing that will tip this into profitable results. In reality, it will probably be a bunch of little things. I really like your idea about trading with the trend. Could you expound...
I use the 3 level ZZ Semafor indicators manually to show trends, not sure if it is possible to take some of the code from the indicator and give you the trend direction. I know there are a few indicators doing the rounds that give you a daily trend. It would give a margin of safety for sure if the overall direction or a reversal was taking place.
I think a built in moving SL might be a good idea too, to catch any available profit, then if the price falls back to mid-candle another pending order can be opened. Just a thought.
  • #22
  • Oct 23, 2009 9:47am Oct 23, 2009 9:47am
Thanks for pointing them out Ronald. I'll check them out.

Quoting Ronald Raygun
What's wrong with any of the Generic Breakout EAs?

http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...=155239&page=9

Kore also coded a generic breakout EA

http://www.forexfactory.com/showpost...&postcount=113
  • #23
  • Oct 23, 2009 9:59am Oct 23, 2009 9:59am
Ok these are my current thoughts - I'm just throwing them out - they might all be rubbish.

What about only placing the trades based on the 22hr london time candle just before the London open? Say at 7am London time? Sometimes the market breaks out during the Asian session, but a quick eyeball tells me that the most of the major breakouts occur through the London session. Doing this will cut out false breakouts from the Asian session and would help in sideways consolidation.

My second idea is to only trade Thursdays and Fridays. This is when most of the moves seem to occur.

If you're looking at the market situation to try to take trades in sync with what's going on, perhaps you could look at correlated pairs? If the JPY/USD is breaking out and the GBP/JPY or GBP/CHF aren't, maybe that could give you an indication of a false breakout.


Quoting CodeMeister
Peter, I have been working on something else. I did have time to look at the adjustable box idea. Out of the 40 or so trades, it would have turned one small loser into a nice win and with 2 others it might have been effective, but they were too close to call. Most trades would not have been affected. I haven't looked real close at your idea of using the closing price, but I think it would gain more pips in some of the winning trades and save a few pips on some losers rather than turning losers into winners.

One idea I had in working on the other...
  • #24
  • Edited 8:36pm Oct 23, 2009 8:32pm | Edited 8:36pm
Quoting TheMaxx
Ok these are my current thoughts - I'm just throwing them out - they might all be rubbish.

What about only placing the trades based on the 22hr london time candle just before the London open? Say at 7am London time? Sometimes the market breaks out during the Asian session, but a quick eyeball tells me that the most of the major breakouts occur through the London session. Doing this will cut out false breakouts from the Asian session and would help in sideways consolidation.

My second idea is to only trade Thursdays and Fridays. This is when...

Peter, there may be merit in your ideas, but they all take time to evaluate and there is no promise of success. My EA will handle the situations you are talking about with the London session - it just requires finding the right combination of settings. I used to trade the London session opening and the one thing I remember about it was that there was often a "head fake" which meant you had to be quick to react. For this reason, I never considered it suitable for automation. But if you want to give it a try, go ahead.

I don't want to give correlation a try at the present as I still learning about it and don't have enough confidence in it yet. Thats something I might consider in a few months.
  • #25
  • Oct 26, 2009 7:48am Oct 26, 2009 7:48am
This might sound odd, but I have been testing a totally opposite strategy. One that takes the previous candle but scalps inwards towards the centre rather than looking for breaks away... I find this happens more often than the opposite, but maybe you can combine both into one EA...

I have noticed that a lot of the 15 minute candles (especially on the EUR/USD) have a lot of overlap, that is, the length of the previous candle covers a lot of the movement in the following one. This isn't always the case, but most of the time there is considerable overlap.
I have been using a manually operated EA which puts in an buy or sell once I hit the top or bottom of the candle with a very quick take profit margin. If the movement goes away from the desired direction then I simply add another order - so if at the top of the candle it goes higher I activate another sell (or buy if it falls below the bottom of the candle.
90% of the time the movement comes back through the trades and completes the take profit.
I have been doing this with 0.05 lots on the M15 timeframe and during times of medium to long candles I have been taking £60 per hour!

The reason for posting this here is to find code for the previous candles highs and lows and somehow automate the whole thing. The stop losses are set quite tight, so it never runs horribly out of control, but by adding more and more trades each time the level reaches the top or bottom it is possible to make some serious scalped pips.

...It may be however that your broker won't allow it, but mine in the UK does at the moment...
  • #26
  • Oct 26, 2009 10:23am Oct 26, 2009 10:23am
I have not had any success moving the box breakout EA forward since my last update. I made the coding changes and they produced no noticeable improvements (or worsening). After looking at my test results more closely, I am convinced that this strategy does great in trending markets and terrible in ranging markets. However, a caveat may be that with a different combination of settings, it may work acceptedly for ranging markets, but right now I am out of ideas.

Your idea sounds promising. I assume that it works fine in ranging markets such as the EURUSD has been in lately and not so well in trending markets. That is preferable to the other way around as I am discovering.

It seems to me that somebody already has coded something like this but I can't be sure. Finding something on this forum is sometimes more work than its worth. I might be persuaded to code this. I like the idea of it being based on price action and being such a simple concept. Perhaps you could post the EA you are referring to or send an email to me. I probably can't do much with it this week, perhaps next week is better and that will give you more time to evaluate and test your idea and search for code.
  • #27
  • Oct 26, 2009 11:13am Oct 26, 2009 11:13am
Quoting clocksley
...It may be however that your broker won't allow it, but mine in the UK does at the moment...
Who is your broker Clocksley? Alpari?
  • #28
  • Oct 26, 2009 11:20am Oct 26, 2009 11:20am
Well as far as I can see marrying the two concepts should work really well.

In testing (which I am having to do manually) I fire in the buys and sells with an assigned key with one of two profits - either a tight one of just a few pips or a trailing stop set to about 20 and moving one pip at a time to follow. Sometimes this works better as bigger movements are profitable.

I'd like to construct an EA that takes the top and bottom of the last candle, then places a sell at the top or a buy at the bottom, with the ability to replace orders once the pips have been taken and the price moves back to the top. It would also place a buy or sell stop if the trend breaks out (as this thread started out). That way both bases are covered. As Forex hardly ever moves smoothly in one direction, but zig zags up and down, I think catching the movement inwards in the candle would always bag some profit, whereas the buy or sell limit on a breakout would catch the other way. If there is a false start on a breakout and it moves back in towards the candle then more automated orders would kick in and catch some short stopped pips there, minimizing the loss on the breakout order.
One hotkey I programmed placed five very small orders, each with the take profit one pip apart, so it would at least take some profit if it missed the biggest profit level.

At the moment I am noticing the ideal time for short inward pips is at the top or bottom of the candle and NOT the wick, and the place to put breakout orders is at the wick ends - not sure how to code the candle and not wicks though?!


I hope that makes some sense! It does in my head even if I have not explained too well!

I will code something as post it as soon as I have chance - hopefully in a few days...
  • #29
  • Oct 26, 2009 11:21am Oct 26, 2009 11:21am
Quoting TheMaxx
Who is your broker Clocksley? Alpari?

Alpari UK, yes.

They are sometimes slow on order placing however, which is annoying, as is the 16 pip spread...
  • #30
  • Last Post: Oct 26, 2009 11:53am Oct 26, 2009 11:53am
Quoting clocksley
Alpari UK, yes.

They are sometimes slow on order placing however, which is annoying, as is the 16 pip spread...
Cool thanks. At the moment I'm just using metatrader for testing/reviewing charts and using IG Index to trade.
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