SteveHopwood's scooby-doo Shag'emAll trading robot

If you have stumbled across this thread then read no further. The robot has proven to be unprofitable on demo and I have abandoned its development.

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Welcome to the scooby-doo Shag'emAll trading robot. Go to http://www.forexfactory.com/showpost...postcount=3932 to read about the genesis of this robot and how it came upon its, um, unusual name.

 

1. Download MTF Moving Average to your Indicator folder.
2. Download the robot to your Experts folder.
3. Download the template to your Templates folder.
4. Close down and restart your platform.

Here is the trading system:

 

1. 4H chart. Apply the template or set up the following Moving AVerage indis manually.
   1. Add 2 MovingAverage indicators:
      1. Period 2: Method Simple: Apply to Low: Colour Blue
      2. Period 2: Method Simple: Apply to High: Colour Red

   2. Add a MTF Moving Average indi to the chart. Settings are:
      1. TimeFrame: 15
      2. Period: 200
      3. Method: 0
      4. AppliedPrice: 0
      5. Backtesting: false

2. Enter a Buy trade when:
   1. Blue and red lines are both above the yellow line.
   2. Price falls to touch or pierce the blue line.
   3. There is a decent distance between both lines.

3. Enter a Sell trade when:
   1. Blue and red lines are both below the yellow line.
   2. Price rises to touch or pierce the red line.
   3. There is a decent distance between both lines.

4. Take profit is:
   1. Buy trade: the value of the red line
   2. Sell trade: the value of the blue line

5. Stop loss is:
   1. Buy trade: Entry price minus the mid point between the red and blue lines.
   2. Sell trade: Entry price plus the mid point between the red and blue lines.

There you are. Simplest system in the world. One of my oft-repeated sayings is that you should never trade a robot until you have traded the system manually and that the robot is not a robot for dummies.

This one is a robot for dummies. The biggest idiot in the world can use it. Just set it up and watch it go:

 

1. Create a GBPJPY chart. Time frame doesn't matter because the robot sends appropriate time-frame calls to the moving average indicators. You do not need them on your chart.
2. Set up your PairsToTrade input by deleting pairs your bloodsucking criminal does not offer and adding any others that you fancy.
3. Set CriminalIsEcn to true if your bloodsucking criminal es a 2-stage order sender.
4. Set the FridayClose to the hour on Friday that you want trading to cease.

You only need one instance of the robot on one chart. It is a multi-pair trader and will look at all the pairs in your PairsToTrade input.

In the AJ pic, you can see where the robot took an AUDJPY trade. This took just under an hour to hit tp.

The other pic shows the robot set up and running. The values of all the pairs it is trading are not shown. Only those whose MA values and depth of channel are correct for trading are shown, to avoid clutter on the screen.

Don't use the robot on your live accounts just yet. We need a few days on demo to make sure the system is as profitable as it looks with the value of hindsight.

Possible discussion points are:

 

1. Should trade entry be an immediate market order, or should it be a stop order to allow for those occasions when the markets continue to move in the 'wrong' direction?
2. The stop loss setting of entry price +- half the depth of the channel?
3. Should the tp be slightly in from the extremes of the channel?
4. What should the minimum channel depth be (the MinChannelDepth input)?

There are no news or maximum spread filters. We can add these if necessary but I want to keep this robot as simple as possible.

A few little points to note:

 

1. The robot is not a trading tart, despite its name. It is basically a 4H tf channel trader, so trades are going to be infrequent.
2. The MinChannelDepth default is set for 5 digit bloodsucking criminals. Users with 4 digit accounts need to divide this figure by 10.
3. The robot only works on its own trades, but it counts all open trades when working out when it is allowed to send its own; it will not send new trades if the open trade count exceeds MaxTradesAllowed. This is to help prevent overtrading and blowing the account.
4. About the "symbol name for MarketInfo must be a string" error. Posters about this can expect a visit from a hitman. I neither know nor care what gives rise to this bloody error. I can confirm for anybody stupid enough to post about this that every single damned MarketInfo() call has a string as its first paramater. Trust me, I know. I am the programmer. Changing timeframes whilst the robot is loaded throws up this error. Don't ask me why. I don't bloody well know. Nor do I care. It does not impact on the working of the robot. Contributors daft enough to post this blasted error risk being barred from posting at all. Think twice before posting about it. Then think thrice. Then forget about it. You should never change timeframes whilst running an ea as the results are unpredictable. If you insist on doing so in this case, then drag a fresh instance of the bot onto the chart.

Cheers guys. Thanks to Scoobs for bringing this channel trading method to our attention. Let's see if this robot has legs.

Updates:
19th Dec 2009:

The robot now sends pending trades instead of market orders.

 

1. Depending on trend direction, entry price is the high or low of the channel +- 10% of the channel depth.
2. The tp is offset from the channel extremes by 10%.
3. There is a 1H pending order expiry time.

5th Jan 2010
I have added a TakeWrongDirectionTrades input. When set to 'true', it forces the robot to send a market order in the 'wrong' direction, i.e. buy at the top of the channel, sell at the bottom. The associated stop loss and take profits are purely arbitrary guesses. There is no need to modify these 5 digit wally-dipstick figures for normal 4 digit criminals; the bot does this automatically.

I did this because the robot has slowly drained the demo account by sending consistently trades. Tonight, I noticed I had inadvertently left the robot on a 1H, not 4H chart and so is examining the wrong channel.

I am going to leave the bot running properly on the 4H, and 'wrongly' on the 1H to see what happens.

Steve,

Simple and shagadelic.

Nice work. On Demo as we speak.

Cheers,

Nick

Hey Steve

You just keep churning them out! You have amazing skills.

One wee problem I see is that down here in the southern hemisphere trading doesn't end till Saturday morning. I just got the robot loaded but the latest I can appear to enter is 24 which means I only have another 1 hour and 20 mins to go. Any easy way to extend this for us Kiwis and Aussies, or have I got this wrong??

Cheers
ForexKiwi

Saturday close option added - 'twill be obvious what to do.

Brilliant. Thanks! Will give it a whirl.

Bot on demo, just a quick info for 4 digit broker users, you probably want to change channel width to 40 instead of 400.

Steve,
Did I mention you are my FF person of the year? Thanks, again and again.

Cheers

Thanks you Steve for yet another work of art. I just do not know where you get the energy from! I do not think dummies like me would have too many daft questions regarding this straight forward EA.

Keep up the good work and I wish you joy and happiness.

Kind Regards

Hi there Steve and Scooby-doo,

The two of you make an amazing team.

Am all ready for another exciting profitable journey.

Carry on Shag'emAll!!! May the PIPS be with you.

Trader7

Steve,
I just put it on my demo and it shut off with the message. It is counting trades placed by other bots.

Cheers

Yes, it does. This is to protect against having too many trades open on the same account and blowing it.

Turn up the MaxTradesAllowed setting if you want more.

I did that even before I posted and it came back on. Just wanted to be sure that is what you intended. Cheers.

I have added a couple of comments to post 1 to explain about the maximum trade and channel depth settings. Thanks to watube and awk for comments that showed this is necessary.

I just had a bath. The significance of this is known to those of you who followed the development of the KG robots from an early stage. For the rest of you, it is where I do my most constructive thinking - I designed this robot in my head whilst lolling a couple of days ago. Writing it was a doddle after that.

I am fairly sure I would not take a trade manually if the channel high and low lines were pointing in the wrong direction i.e. down in an uptrend and up in a downtrend.

I will add an extra filter that looks at this. In an uptrend, for instance, I will look at the moving average figures an hour ago, and cancel the trade if they were higher than they are now.

How does an hour sound, guys. Enough? Too much? Not enough?

I will go for letting the bot stew up a few trades at least for three trading days before making any additions. If you like to make additions earlier, maybe the news filter first. Cheers

Looks interesting Steve,

You could always try using a 5 period SMA to the high as a stoploss for sell trades and the 5 period SMA to the low as a stoploss for buy trades. The 5 period SMA's to the high and low are used in DeMark trading on daily and weekly timeframes to indicate bullish and bearish momentum and I believe they are widely used.

They could also be used as trigger points for part of the trade perhaps.

Hope this helps,

Cheers
Foggytrader

Just start this bot on demo.
Set channel width to 40 instead of 400 since my broler is 4 digits.
It shows that it trades 7 pairs, all are xxxJPY. May be there is an error with channel width or something since it doesn't want to trade any others pairs

Thanks Steve for the new ea. I am running this one on IBFX to see how it goes?

I'm getting that old error about the symbol for marketinfo needing to be text. That doesn't interfere with trades right?

Thanks!

Thanks steve and scoob

I got my first buy eurjpy trade using shagem all rebot. Let us see.
Regards