Plot News indicator (version 3.0)

Dear Hanover,
First, Thank you for this essential indicator!
I have loaded and installed your last release (V 3.01) on my MT4 platform.
All is working fine, except the downloading of the last news.
I cannot download the last week (this week, beginning on August 15), I have only news until Aug. 13.
By changing Autoplaymode to false in the configuration of the "Download News" script, I could see in the configuration window "Build News.CSV from FF calendar" that this last week beginning on Aug 15 is actually asked.
Can you help me?
Big thanks.

This means that news from the week Aug 15 to Aug 21 should be downloaded.

Try viewing the file ..../experts/files/news.csv - if you double click, it should load into Excel. Or you could view it using Notepad if you prefer. Does this file show news events for the week Aug 15 to Aug 21? If, so the download process has worked correctly.

Every time you download news, you need to refresh the Recent News indicator on your chart. This causes the indy to re-read the data in the ..../experts/files/news.csv file, and re-plot accordingly. The quickest way to refresh is to switch to a different time frame, and then back again (e.g. from M15 to M30, then back to M15).

The only other thing I can think of is the FromDate and ThruDate parameter settings in the Recent News indy. Only news events scheduled between these dates/times will be plotted. Hence you may need to change these.

Does this help?

Hi mate.
First of all, a big thanks for your efforts and work.... it's a great indicator.
But I have some issues: the indicator works properly once set, but when I close and turn on again MT4, very often the indi doesn't work. If I click on indicators on the chart, the indi is present but it seems not to work. I must cancel it and then attach it again... boh?
and when I try to use the preset .txt file (I previously amended), the indi does not display what I am expecting...only some preset is working, the others are always on standard preset...so I have to manually change every time the indi for each chart I open...
Also the alert 1 min before event doesn't work....
any ideas?

thanks in advance...

"I must cancel it and then attach it again... boh?"
Switching between timeframes will refresh the indy - it works for me. It needs refreshing every time you run the Download News script, to re-read and re-plot the updated data. Shouldn't need to re-attach it, even if you restart MT4. As long as the news.csv file exists in ..../experts/files, and you force a refresh, the updated symbols should display.

"and when I try to use the preset .txt file (I previously amended), the indi does not display what I am expecting...only some preset is working, the others are always on standard preset...so I have to manually change every time the indi for each chart I open..."
If ParameterFile = TXT then ALL presets will be loaded from ...../experts/files/Presets----Recent News.TXT file.

Exception: Supposing (for example) you'd then rather set VertSpacingPips via the MT4 dialog, there are two ways of doing this: either

1. Insert two slashes at the front of the line in the presets file:
// VertSpacingPips = 5.0;

OR

2. Set the value in the presets file to an asterisk:
VertSpacingPips = *;

Either way, you can then control the vertical spacing without changing the presets file. Perhaps you have slashes or asterisks in your presets file, that are causing confusion?

Don't forget to save any changes to the presets file, and then refresh the indy by toggling timeframes.
Alternatively, it will refresh automatically (and re-read the presets file) according to the RefreshEveryXMins setting, i.e. if this is set to 1 (minute), then an auto refresh occurs immediately a new M1 candle starts to form for the pair on whose chart the indy is attached. Any new values in the presets file will henceforth take effect.

"Also the alert 1 min before event doesn't work...."
I will try this - I've never tested a setting of less than 5 mins. It could be a rounding problem, given that the rolling window and alerts operate from your computer's local time (reason: allows values to be calculated even if market is closed), and the MT4 time and local time get out of synch by enough seconds to cause a problem. Anyway, I'm not sure, I'll have a look at it.

Perhaps I should explain the operational rules more clearly:

1. Every time there are changes to the data in the FF calendar, these changes will not be plotted until you run the Download News script, and then the Recent News indy is refreshed (either manually or automatically).

2. Refreshing causes both a re-read of the presets file, causing any saved changes to become effective; and also a re-read of the ..../experts/files/news.csv file, which contains the news data from the last time Download News was run. Then it deletes and re-plots all of the numbered symbols with the updated news data.

3. A refresh can be either auto or manual. Either one will achieve the same results described in point 2.

A MANUAL refresh can be performed in ANY one of the following ways:
--- switching between timeframes
--- switching between currency pairs (drag them from the Navigator panel onto your chart)
--- editing the Recent News indy (press Ctrl-I, then double click on the recent News indy, and click OK to accept the 'dummy' non-change)
--- removing and reattaching the Recent News indy

NOTE: This is a standard MT4 operation and applies to any indy.

An AUTO refresh occurs, according to the RefreshEveryXMins setting. For example, if this is set to 15, then a refresh will take place every time a new candle starts to form on the M15 chart of the pair to which the Recent News indy is attached (even if it's attached to a non-M15 chart).

If you set RefreshEveryXMins = 0, then an auto refresh will occur on every new price tick. WARNING: this could slow computer performance quite dramatically.

I prefer to use a MANUAL refresh as it's a forcible, guaranteed refresh.

thx for the reply.
I know about the refreshing of timeframe on chart... simply it doesn't work all the times...
Anyway the issue is random.
I will try to reinstall mt4 or doing some maintenance... I tricked it a lot recently... :-)
regarding the alert, it doesn't work definitely on 1 min... But I never tried on 5 min (as you wrote).
So I will set the time on 5 min alert and I will report to you.
Thx again.

I just tried a 1 minute alert, and it worked OK, however with the following proviso:

The countdown timer (in the rolling window of upcoming events) and alerts show only the hours and minutes, but not the seconds. Assuming AlertXMinsBeforeNews = 1, the alert sounds when the first tick occurs after there's one minute to go before the scheduled event. However, since the time will be less than 1 minute (e.g. 58 seconds), the countdown timer will show 0:00 instead of 0:00:58, and the alert text is displayed something like:
News event "USD FOMC meeting" due in 0 min(s)
when in reality it's
News event "USD FOMC meeting" due in 0 min(s) 58 sec(s)
I will change the alert to display the seconds, in the next release.

If there is no price tick on your MT4 chart in the 1 minute immediately before the event, the alert will not occur. Indys are only updated whenever there's a new price tick - that's a MT4 restriction which is outside of the programmer's control. So what I suggest is that you set AlertXMinsBeforeNews to something like 5, allowing plenty of time for a tick to occur (and it will give you more time to take whatever action you wish - possibly helpful if the response time between MT4 and your br0ker is very slow, which can happen at news time ).

Dear Hanover,
Thank you for you reply. In fact I have beforehand verified these points.
Then I tried with the same computer on a different network and all worked perfectly. So I think it's a problem with the global firewall of the first network which probably blocks some port used by ffcal.exe or wget.exe.
There is no way of checking that there is a real connection with the server of ForexFactory, and if there is no connection, the news.csv file is automatically rebuilt from backup and Calendar.dat files. That explains the fact that the file news.csv ends at friday 13.
Once again many thanks for this great indicator and for sharing the results of your work.

Instead of having multiple files, could you not put them into one zip?

Thanks

OK, thanks, I'll try this in the next release. The zip file will contain the relevant sub-folders, and the relevant files within these. Let's just hope that people don't mess up the unzipping process.

thx for the tip...I will try for sure...
Best regards.

hanover,
You have not decide to publish the source of scripts?

Neither the MQL4 nor Clarion source code is available.

awesome!! The calc timeshifts was just what I was looking for!!

hanover, we are not worthy

hanover,

thanks for making such a great piece of work available. It is very simple to set up with your excellent documentation and a fantastic enhancement to my MT4 trading station.

Hi hanover,
many thanks for your wonderful software!

I have the following problem with the ffcal.exe program:

- For a little indicator I need only the exported .csv file with date, time, currency and event. Until now I have entered manually the data in a .csv file, and now I tried the use the ffcall.exe.
- You can see my settings: what I need is a shift of 6 hours for the time output, and I setted for export for test pourposis only USD and EUR.
- In the second picture you see that the shift of 6 hours is applied only for the last week, and they are also exported other currencies as USD and EUR.

I tried to change the settings (e.g. number of weeks), but I don't get what I need, maybe have you a short explanation for me! Many thanks.
.

Hi SM,

Not sure if this is your problem, but the software processes the 'raw' FF calendar which is New York time based, regardless of any settings you might have entered into the 'Time & Date Options' on the FF website. So your entry of '6' will timestamp all events output as being 6 hours ahead of New York time. So if, for example, the news event is scheduled at 02:00 New York time, it would be output as 08:00. An entry of '-1' would result in a timestamp of 01:00, and so on.

To have only USD and EUR output, you need to change the settings shown in the screenshot below. Click the '0' button to zero all of the fields, and then the '140' and '142' buttons to re-enable output of USD and EUR related news events only. The area that you've circled near the bottom is for generating an Effect Analysis report, a completely different function of the software.

Re the number of weeks parameter. This is set to 1 by default, assuming that you want to download only one week's worth of news, starting from the Sunday that you specified in the field just above it. That means that the WGET.EXE app (which causes a black background screen with a number of moving white dots to appear momentarily, as it downloads the data) gets called once. If you set number of weeks to 2,3, etc then WGET.EXE is called multiple times, as each week comes from a separate web page, and hence must be downloaded separately.

All this assumes that FF have loaded up a webpage with the required data (if you choose some date way into the future, it might not be loaded - of course you can check this by viewing the FF calendar).

If, for example, you enter Sunday 8/8/2010 as the start download date (red box in the screenshot), and 4 as the number of weeks to load, then WGET.EXE will get called 4 times, downloading news for the weeks starting 8/8/2010, 8/15/2010, 8/22/2010 and 8/29/2010.

Hope I've understood what you're asking.

David

There are also two other approaches that you might like to try.

Method 1

Set up the parameters as shown in the red box of the attached screenshot. Notice how only the Date, Time, Currency and Description boxes are checked on, hence only these fields will be output. Also I've selected Tab as the output type, to make importing into Excel easier. Output will be sent to the file name that you specify in the Path/filename field.

You can further adjust the date/time that will be output by typing a value into the field in the blue box (positive value shifts forward N hours, negative value shifts backward).

Set the currencies you want output by typing the entries as explained in my previous post (green box).

Adjust the date range of the events you want output by changing the date values (violet box).

You can click the 'Preview' button (red arrow in screenshot) to see which news events will be output.

Then click the 'OK' button to proceed.

Note that the news events must have already been downloaded from the FF calendar, in order to be output.


Method 2

For this approach to work, you will first need to have downloaded all news events that you will require, using FFcal.EXE

Then drag the Recent News indy onto your MT4 chart, and set the parameters as follows:

ParameterFile = NONE
NewsInputFile = news.csv
SourceTimeIsGMTplus = -4
MT4TimeIsGMTplus = 0
LocalTimeIsGMTplus = 0
FromDate = 2010.08.01 00:00:00
ThruDate = 2019.12.31 23:59:59
VertSpacingPips = 0
ClearanceFactor = 1
SymbolSize = -1
TimeFrames = M1,M5,M15,M30,H1,H4,D1,W1,MN
PlotTheseImpacts = High=Red,Medium=Orange,Low=Yellow
PlotTheseCurrencies = USD=140,EUR=142
RelevantCcyChartsOnly = false
ShowUpcomingXEvents = 0
EventScreenCorner = 3
EventFont = Comic Sans MS
EventFontSize = 12
RefreshEveryXMins = 1
AlertXMinsBeforeNews = -1
EmailAlertSubject =
OutputFile = Recent News.csv
Delimiter = ^
EncloseInQuotes = false
Date_Source_MT4_Local = S+6
Mask_SerialNo =
Mask_DateTime = Y/M/D^H:I
Mask_Currency = T3
Mask_Descr = T65
Mask_Impact =
Mask_Actual =
Mask_Forecast =
Mask_Previous =
Mask_RevisedFrom =

1. Adjust the FromDate and ThruDate to the date range of events you want to be output.
2. The caret (^) is a special character that will cause a tab character to be output.
3. The Date_Source_MT4_Local parameter will further adjust the date/time stamped on your output. S+6 means 6 hours ahead of the source time (source is FF calendar, i.e. New York time). Typing G-3 would mean GMT-3 hours. And so on.
4. Setting VertSpacingPips to 0 will stop the numbered symbols from appearing on your MT4 chart.
5. Setting ShowUpcomingXEvents to 0 will stop the 'rolling window' of upcoming events from appearing.
6. Output will be sent to the filename you specify in the OutputFile parameter, in the ..../experts/files folder.

Alternatively, to save you all of the typing, unzip the attached parameter file into your ..../experts/files folder, and set ParameterFile = SM

Many thanks hanover for your explanations! I give tomorrow a try. What I need is only the .csv file, because now I examine possibilitys to apply the Shockwave theory. It's very interesting...

See post #1 to download, and for more info.