Indicators development for T101's not very simple method

@Don

can you reset the justkos EA back to default?

My mission on this thread is this:
I have a strategy I have been doing well with for sometimes, and I see it as APPLICABLE to BTS strategy, and I took some times to demonstrate it on this thread, and many of us see the workability, simplicity and profitabilty - since I have been doing this I only hit SL twice and it was as a result of me not obeying my own rules and impatience.

As I expected it caught the attention of coders on this forum and other forums and even some forum lurkers and they simply did it. some removed the profit locker, others reviewed the figures and some based it on macd exit and one other macd rule, that gives fewer trades but good ones. So my MISSION IS ACCOMPLISHED. So If you abandon it halfway like other EAs, thats too bad.

I have looked at your code - remember I told you I am a coder too- YOU ARE CORRECT. lets look at it closely and eliminate some bugs and if you want to invite other coders, do so but let it come in thru you not every post another version. that is why I went silent. I wont blame you for posting the .mq4 file but that is why some do not post .mq4 just to centralise and control the versions. I have worked with some respectable coders in this FF better than me in coding but they write and give me and I deliver to the thread they never posted any version. but here everybody picks everybody's code, amend and posts.

Now this is my prayer, let us get this one bug free, then we can now look at other imputs, this I said b4.

kos

PS: pls I want to respect the coders wish not to post or share the EA. If anybody wants to do his own am around to give charts and assistance, but honestly Don has given us a very good framework for the EA

Don

Now you know why I went silent,

my broker is alpari UK

the latest EA I never tested, cos I no longer understand it.

I like things very simple, once its other than that, I no longer understand it


Where were the 2 failed buys in 4hrs TF last week ????????????

throughout last week we had only one valid buy basket on GJ 4hrs TF as per how I trade it.

If the EA sends any trade below the green line with arrow, that trade is not as per rules, check that again cos that is the only bar that closed above TM

So how come you entered and hit SL 2 times. Look at the pix closely no candle closed above TM until the blue circle NOW HAHA!!!!

kos

How about a detailed list of the criteria for your strategy: entries, exits, re-entries, MM, indicators used, SL, TP, timeframes, trading hours, news impact, broker used, etc.

if zznbrm chip in, I will chip in. we can fix it.
here is the rule

Hi zz, finimej!

am elated you are all interested, pls could you look at the EA posted by Don so that we fix that, or you want to start yours from the scratch??

if you want to start afresh then may be I will do a post of the rules not just pictures alone but with the ordered list b4 the week runs out, if its not too late for you.

I want a simple EA that will work on this thread,

that phrase "we can fix it" gladdens my heart

kos

this might be a very simple issue.

i'm not a english native speaker, so maybe something i said was wrong, lost in translation.

Don, could you please be NOT so upset? everyone is hoping to solve the problem. that's the core.

what's been argued about is that "all 4 conditions not necessarily on same bar", or "a BI cross has a life of a few hours."...... ok, i try again here.

let me pick my words very carefully this time:

Kos mentioned, when (all 4 conditions lined up, enter). the EA does that. But we should understand what he implies.

for example:

case 1: 4 conditions good, enter, 2 hours later, stupid profit-lock stopout;

case 2: 4 conditions good, but i was sleeping, 2 hours later, i woke up;

now, it is same situation: the so-called 4 conditions are still there, but NOT NEW, NOT FRESH!

So if you trade with your money instead of experimenting an EA, will you enter then?

Or say, didn't Kos in fact means (all 4 conditions lined up, enter INSTANTLY?) or he's saying (all 4 conditions lined up, enter even it has been formed many hours ago after i somehow woke up a few hours later?)

To me, the problem is very simple: one BI cross, one trade, profit-locking is not reasonable, too tight. This EA has no problem entering, but exiting

We should deal with Re-Entry later.

I stop demoing the EA because it has been shown repeatedly re-entry, won, re-entry, won, then a final re-entry----stoploss. the version D will do same, because i saw nothing done for this issue. and this is the thing that I feel like feedbacking, but produce unhappiness.

i edited the EA, stop it from re-entering. 2 WINS, NO LOSS today, it is that simple.

ok, I will join in. mostly will code during the weekend.

offline charts are made from M1, both Zz and I have offline charts script. so we can backtest the code.

now, you guys need to collect in your MT4. M1 data for all the 14 pairs.

we just want to have the M1 data for check the rules, and for indication, hence, no need 99% quality data.


here is instruction on how to give 130 pip spread to your offline charts for 14 pairs. so our test will be more realistic, because you will have lots of slippage with 14 orders.

This is a quick instruction, on how to use the real account data and change spread for your backtesting.

Step one: retrieve the real account history data as back as you can.

1) install a fresh copy of Metatrader from your broker where you have the real account, name the metatrader such as
"Alpari UK backtest", or "ATCbacktest" ..., and you login with your real account.

2) Select from metatrader manual, Tools->Options-> charts, then put 512000 as number in the "max bars in history" and "max bars in charts".

3) open a EURUSD M1 charts, and click on anywhere in the chart, now, press down the "Home" botton on your keyboard, so that the charts is back to the begining or 2009.
you only release your "home" botton when the chart can not be backed to earlier data anymore.

Click on the timeframe M1, do the same, press down the Home button, until it is can not back to ealier data any more.
After you have done all this for all your trading pairs, now, delete the account. so you next time does not connect to the server.
close down the metatrader.

Step two: change spread to the spread you want when backtesting.

1) download the script from
or original
to your /expert/script folder, because this is a script

2) start metatrader, because you have already deleted your account from this metatrader, now you shall be disconnected from server and do not login

3) make sure you have enabled expert in the Tools -> options-> expert, and allow import dll.

3) open a EURUSD chart, and drag the spread script to the chart, you shall then be able to give the "spread" you want to for backtesting.
this is working for both 5 digits, you put 56 for 5.6 pips spread. you put 10 for 1.0 pip spread.
for 4 digits broker, you put spread 5 for 5 pips spread, and put 1 for 1.0 pip spread.
this means you have changed the spread for just EURUSD. do this for your pair that you want to backtest each time.

Close metatrader now.

4) checking you shall have a newly created file /experts/files/symbols.sel

5) now, go to the folder /history/ATCBrokers-Server (like me, have ATC account, this is my ATC live data folder), there are serveral folders, if you can not find the live account folder, do this for every folder. you rename the old symbols.sel to symbols.sel.1

and copy /experts/files/symbols.sel ====>>>> to /history/ATCBrokers-Server

6) restart the metatrader, and go to backtest window by pressing CTRL-R, and click on the "symbol properties", you shall see the spread for your pair is now that one you want for backtesting.

you can change the spread to any spread you want for backtesting.

above is collect the data for all pairs in M1 data.
here is my script to make the the offline charts.
WARNing, maybe my script containts many bugs as always, you'd better use zznbrms offline charts script. I checked it, seems zznbrms offline charts and mine agree to each other.

download the expert from

and save it into your /expert directry

after that, you drag the ea to your EURUSD M1 charts, (you do not need to have all the pairs charts open) hence you can open the offline charts. Every time you restart the MT4, the script will first regenerate the offline charts from history data, and there after do the offline charts update in real time.

for backtest coming instruction later.
Backtest,
your metatrader shall be offline
the offline charts shall be saved into /script folder
and generate the charts called EURUSDM30 or stardard period charts, then you can enlarge the spread as instructed above, hence do the backtest.

Please, you guys work on the ea as much as you can, I can only chip in during the weekend.

I'd like to see all rules of the strategy before getting involved. The pictures are nice...but they do not provided adequate detail to enable accurate EA development.

If an EA is based upon a trading strategy, then it makes sense that we would need all aspects of the strategy to be clearly defined.

Hi Don and Kos,

Its been a good journey so far and we have crossed half the well ...... lets cross the balance to complete this journey......

Hats off to your patience Don for doing this EA.

Lets put back what has happened over the last few days ..

Lets start afresh from the EA you developed .....

Lets only test Don's EA from hereon and finish it without any bugs ...... Don post your latest EA on T101 !!

Hope everybody comes together to accomplish it.....

Cheers

@ KOS here's what your strategy looks like on finimej's charts

you no longer need the BTR crossover indicator because it's nothing more than the 5/10 MA's crossing over each other. looks a little cleaner.

play around with the chart combinations and see what you come up with

I went short on demo to see what really going on. not a big fan of crossovers but I'll try it out.

My reason for joining this thread was to help in removing bugs to the original EA and adding possible fixes to problems mentioned.
It appears I have done too much.

I took out almost all the additional code that I added.
I only left the saving of global variables.
It now only uses TrendMagic and BI_T101_OTR_V1_6 as custom indicators.

I left the structure because I believe it makes the EA more readable.
If you want to change it back more to your original that is your choice.

Good luck in getting this to be profitable as I am done with this project.

Robert

[quote=hazelj80;3802061
you no longer need the BTR crossover indicator because it's nothing more than the 5/10 MA's crossing over each other. looks a little cleaner.
[/quote]

Not true. The BTR is the sum of the MA's from all 14 pairs with the yen crosses normalized by dividing by 100 to single digit values and 4 decimal places.

Robert

zznbrm understands what I mean. Things that a trader takes for granted cannot be taken for granted in an EA. The EA must trade like the trader does, or it will fail. Then the trader wonders why he/she can trade manually and be successful with the strategy, but the EA fails. It was not given proper and full instructions.

For instance, not a dang person here except me and one other person maybe, seems to have tested Robert's latest EA version. I admittedly, like Kos, must have the code simple, neat, and simplified. I don't understand why Robert moved something just because it didn't seem right to him. It makes the EA not the same EA when you do that. A slight change to make it work was ALL I was after. Now, I can't understand it as well as the last one I posted. Having said that though, the latest EA POSTED BY ROBERT FRIGGIN WORKS, YET NOT EVEN KOS HAS TESTED IT OR HE WOULD SEE THE BAD TRADES!

Last week, IBFX demo:
1. BuyAll trades put on 2010.06.10 16:01, and closed a couple hours later with profit-locking at 2010.06.10 18:08. So my MM, entry, and profit-locking exit worked on this basket trade.
2. BuyAll trades put on again immediately at 2010.06.10 18:08 when other trades closed, because all 4 conditions still aligned/in agreement, and closed a about 50 minutes later with profit-locking at 2010.06.10 18:57. So my MM, entry, and profit-locking exit worked again on this basket trade.
3. BuyAll trades put on again immediately at 2010.06.10 18:57 when other trades closed, because all 4 conditions still aligned/in agreement, and closed a about 40 minutes later with profit-locking at 2010.06.10 19:38. So my MM, entry, and profit-locking exit worked yet again on this basket trade.
4. BuyAll trades put on again immediately at 2010.06.10 19:38 when other trades closed, because all 4 conditions still aligned/in agreement, and closed a about 25 minutes later with profit-locking at 2010.06.10 20:04. So my MM, entry, and profit-locking exit worked yet again on this basket trade.
5. BuyAll trades put on again immediately at 2010.06.10 20:04 when other trades closed, because all 4 conditions still aligned/in agreement, and closed a about 4 hours later on GMT new day with profit-locking at 2010.06.11 00:01. So my MM, entry, and profit-locking exit worked yet again on this basket trade.

Now I posted about these 5 above last week as they happened. And distinctly remember saying that it wouldn't be cool to have a trade come along and take the small profit from the last 5 trades. Well, that's exactly what happened.

6. BuyAll trades put on again immediately at 2010.06.11 00:01 when other trades closed, because all 4 conditions still aligned/in agreement, and closed a about 12 and a half hours later with StopLoss at 2010.06.11 12:30. So my MM, entry, and StopLoss exit worked on this basket trade. If we closed the bar at a lower low, this trade wouldn't have went on so long, or lost so much.

7. BuyAll trades put on again immediately at 2010.06.11 12:31 when other trades closed, because all 4 conditions still aligned/in agreement, and closed a about an hour and 45 minutes later with profit-locking at 2010.06.11 14:17. So my MM, entry, and profit-locking exit worked again on this basket trade. If we didn't get in if this bar's high is not higher than last bar's high, this trade would have been avoided. Trend was going down at the time on H4 even if price was still above TM, so trade should have been avoided. The small profit-locking wasn't worth the bad entry and possible bad outcome.

8. BuyAll trades put on again immediately at 2010.06.11 14:17 when other trades closed, because all 4 conditions still aligned/in agreement, and closed a about 15 minutes later with profit-locking at 2010.06.11 14:33. So my MM, entry, and profit-locking exit worked again on this basket trade. If we didn't get in if this bar's high is not higher than last bar's high, or if we didn't get in if this bar is not above TM (we just look at price and TM on last bar for entry, where this bar should be considered too), this trade would have been avoided. Trend was going down at the time on H4 even if price was still above TM, so trade should have been avoided. The small profit-locking wasn't worth the bad entry and possible bad outcome.

9. BuyAll trades put on again immediately at 2010.06.11 14:33 when other trades closed, because all 4 conditions still aligned/in agreement, and closed a about 15 minutes later manually at 2010.06.11 14:48 because I had seen what I needed to see, and was done testing for the week. So my MM, entry worked again on this basket trade. If we didn't get in if this bar's high is not higher than last bar's high, or if we didn't get in if this bar is not above TM (we just look at price and TM on last bar for entry, where this bar should be considered too), this trade would have been avoided. Trend was going down at the time on H4 even if price was still above TM, so trade should have been avoided. The small profit-locking (don't even know if it was in profit when I closed these last trades because I considered the entry was bad on these last 3 trades) wasn't worth the bad entry and possible bad outcome.

So we have 5 profitable basket trades (small profit because of ultra-tight profit-locking when considering H4 timeframe), the 6th one ran for much longer than rest of trades and hit stoploss (trend was clearly down WAY before it hit stoploss), trades 7,8, and 9 were all entries I doubt Kos would take, and I surely wouldn't. And even with the profit-locking on those trades, I was still down over 5% in my demo account for the week. So 9 trades gains more than 5 percent, and 1 trade loses 10 percent. It don't matter if I risked 1% instead of 10%. The numbers would be the same, except smaller. It would have been 9 trades gaining 0.5% and 1 trade losing 1%. Either way, the EA does not do what I think it should, and Kos thinks he's given enough information, guess he doesn't see the need in testing the latest EA, and why can't I just "fix it"?

Also, why did it not take short trades during this time? Trend nor anything else aligned for shorting.

Kos, if you quit testing the updates, me, nor Robert, nor anyone else, is obliged to help you finish this EA. Yes it could be better, but you ain't even testing it!? How do you know what it does? You don't.

Regards,

Don

Robert,

When you came to this thread, you said that you had done this before, and had left the other thread because people kept wanting to do other things besides what you had in mind. Then you came here and did the same thing you accused the other people of. Instead of sticking with what was going on, you implemented stuff that was not asked for or needed at this point. I just hope you realize you did that. It's like stepping in and taking over. I can't read your code like you can. Just like when you said you have:
// The following is needed to save as global variable
#define NONE 0
#define BUY_ALL 1
#define SELL_ALL 2

I honestly am lost on why this is needed. This may be what was needed to fix the EA, but since I'm not familiar with it, it might as well be another language to me and not English, you see?

Then you changed my code to this in start():
DefineStrategyVariables();
GetBuySellConditions();

// Modified to only get orders placed by this EA
myTotalOrders = GetOrdersTotal();
if(myTotalOrders > 0) {
// CheckTradeType code added to GetOrdersTotal function
// CheckTradeType();
CheckProfit();
StrategyExitRules();
} else if(myTotalOrders == 0) {
Trade = NONE;
SaveTrade(Trade);
Reset();
StrategyEntryRules();
}

GetBuySellConditions() is the conditions for buying or selling, which were in StrategyEntryRules(), and now StrategyEntryRules() is just the alerts, emails, and the actual call to buying or selling functions. And now, before even counting how many trades are open, you go through buy and sell conditions, then go find out how many trades are open. This just is backwards to me. Then you have checking profit on open orders, then strategy exit rules (these are correct to me). Then if no open orders, you now have "SaveTrade" which was not in my code, reset (my original code), and then give the alerts/alarms, and calls to buy or sell functions that were figured out way earlier. To me, this doesn't seem like improvement to the code to make it more understandable. IMHO it would have been better for you to maybe try and understand what I was doing and why I was doing it before just changing it. All the other stuff added that has now been removed shouldn't have been added in the first place at this time. Do you put all that in to every EA you help out on? I hope not. And if it's not wanted, please try to understand that there is a time and place for adding your personal wanted code, and this was not the time for it.

How would you like your code changed and added to, when all the while the problems remained? I doubt you'd like it either. Maybe it's just that I'm not as good a coder as you are, and have a hard time understanding why you did certain things the way you did. I had the exit code where I did with the entry code (that you changed too) because I was wanting to make sure all SellAll trades were closed before putting on BuyAll trades, or vice versa. That's understandable, right? Yet you moved it, and did it fix something that was broken by doing that?

I guess I'm just a bully for picking on someone trying to help, but I really don't feel that way. I am short-tempered for sure. But I think I've tried my best to be understanding, and sometimes I just don't understand. Was my code not nice and neat, clean? Did it not make sense? If you could go back to the last EA I posted, and could make ONLY the changes you needed to, what would have changed? One line, two lines, five lines? I'm just asking, because I've written a lot of EAs for single-pair trading, and used the sbux EA shell to do it. Maybe the #define at teh beginning is one of the two things I did wrong here by not implementing them because of my lack of understanding #define. I thought global variables would be kept the same until they were changed. Do they lose their value every tick, so that #define is necessary?

Regards,

Don

Robert,

If you look at BI and compare it to BuyAll indi (or offline chart) with 5 and 10 MA, there is very little visual difference. I think that is what hazelj was getting at, not that they were calculated the exact same, or that they are the exact same thing. But for practical purposes, the signals should be the same. At least I would think so.

Regards,

Don

Gang,

I think Kos already identified the problem - after a stoploss, if the conditions are still "on" for the trade, the EA needs to wait for the retrace to the TrendMagic line before re-entering.

As far as I can tell, this is all that is missing from MrPip's "c" EA. I hope he comes back and adds it.

Robert Hill is an A+ coder and his work with LSMA has been back and forward tested and it works. If he thinks an option to use LSMA instead of TrendMagic is helpful, why is that a problem? Again, Kos as said that the only thing missing is the re-entry logic.

I see some personal attacks, some mis-interpretation by people who use English as a second language, and some extraneous discussion that is not related to developing this EA. Everyone needs to take a deep breath and say "This system works. Let's just fix the re-entry issue."

Robert, please fix that one problem and post a version "d." After that we can talk about profit locking options and other filters.

.....

hey dr zeus..... it's difficult for coders with differing styles to work on the same project under these conditions....

code that makes perfect sense for me can burn some other coders mind.... that's common.....

we all write different......h

I so much appreciate Dons efferts, and Don's efferts even get Robert to come to the thread and get it fixed.

Please Robert, can you please come back?
Don, patience and stuborness allways pay.