Steve Hopwood's auto-trader for David486's H4 trendline scalping system

SERIOUS WARNING

1. Most Forex traders lose all their money.
2. Using the robots posted here in trading Forex does not guarantee success.
3. Trading these robots could lead to serious financial loss.
4. Trading these robots without understanding their underlying trading strategies guarantees traders will lose their money.
5. A trading robot is a maximum of 90% as good as the manual strategy it trades:
   1. just because the manual strategy is profitable does not guarantee the robot will replicate this success.
      

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The purpose of this thread is to develop the robot to the stage where David can offer it in his thread. I have opened a separate thread to avoid cluttering up David's thread with discussion about the robot.

Traders new to David's trading system cannot learn about it from this robot or this thread. You must go to http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=244741 to learn to trade the system manually.

This robot is under development and must not be used on live accounts.


Please read the user guide for details about how the robot works.


Have fun. I have enjoyed trading David's strategy manually this week.



A note to coders: I use Zig-Zag to find the most recent leg 1 and leg 2. Having found them, the robot checks that the resulting trend line has not been pierced in between leg 1 and the current candle. If hte line has been pierced, the robot makes leg 1 the new leg 2 and goes back further in time to find the new leg 1. This process is supposed to continue until an unpierced trendline emerges. The code is in void CalculateTrendLine(), so I invite you to:

 

1. check the code for mistakes
2. suggest a better way of achieving the trendline

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Traders familiar with my work need read no further.

Posting restrictions
I have restricted the ability to post in this thread to: traders with at least 1 voucher; and traders on my 'buddy' list. I have done this because I do not want the thread cluttered with 'newbie' questions about the basics. New/inexperienced traders, this is not intended as a direct insult. What I want here is discussion with traders who fully understand what it is they are doing; when you newbs have been around a while, you will come to understand what a difference experience makes to the posts a member writes and shudder at the recollection of some of the questions you asked. I do. http://cdn.forexfactory.com/images/s..._the_floor.gif Go to your profile page; there is a link to the FF page that describes the voucher process.

Do not attempt to get around this by sending me pm's asking for help with your basic problems. Doing so will earn you an automatic ban from all of my threads.

I have set up a partner thread to this one and Nanningbob's at http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...66#post3948666
Here, you can post the questions that you cannot post here, about anything you need to know. Someone with the knowledge and experience you need will answer. I opened it for Nanningbob traders, but feel free to ask about this robot as well.

Traders/coders with experience who have not yet been vouched for, can get around this restriction be being added to my 'buddy' list; all you have to do is pm me to ask me to do this.

steve, once again great work. im sure everyone here at ff that uses my method is greaful, hopfully you dont get mass p'md by 'thickies' haha.

Hehe. No, this never happens. Not sure why not.

Must be something I am reputed to have said.

Hi Steve,

Amazing energy, yet another EA. Lets hope it helps idiots like me who have trend line dyslexia. Will stick it on demo and let you know of any problems.

kind regards

Evening Steve,
The bot is looking for Zig-Zag.........I loaded a copy of it and it started right up

whip

Just took a USDCAD trade.......a good one

Steve,

Testing the EA, looks like fun.

Always enjoy reading your programming.

It never occurred to me that people might not have ZZ, so I have put it in the indi zip for just in case.

Coders, would you read my note to coders in post 1, please?

Nice work again Steve.

Do you actually sleep at all, or just fuel up, have your tyres changed and take off again.

I'm getting sleepy just thinking about your prolific production rate.

As usual thanks Steve for this bot.

I found that when I put the robot on multiple charts, it:

1: Drew a trend line on the first chart but none of the others

2: On the subsequent charts, it repeats the first charts information, i.e. I will sell @ xxxx

I tried reinstalling the robot, and changing the magic number, but this has no effect.

So I closed the charts, and opened them as new ( I had a previous bot on them) and now all is fine.

Thanks.

Hi

Had same problem here as well, however, I think it is just a display problem since the EA too couple of correct trades. Moreover, with my IBFX error code 130 false SL was showing. Changed the Criminal ECN setting to true and all is fine now.

Kind Regards

It appears that it is a function of the template, i.e, it copies the template that it was made from. MT4 screw up i think.

Hi Astral,

I just loaded a completely new chart and put the template on it, and it immediately took a buy and then showed the display as per the chart the template was made from. Very strange indeed.

Tks

Hmmm. I gave each one its own magic number and it seems to be OK, although some charts have no trend lines at all. No action on the H4 in last 10 hours, but the display is telling me where it would take trades, and what it is telling me seems right considering the trend line, so it looks good.

I know this is an H4 strategy, but just for fun I am going to run it on M15 on another demo to see if we can spice up the action a bit.

Just finished work and had a quick look and noticed that the line is drawn on one chart only. Will investigate further in few hours.

Moreover, the rules are that the timming between trend line touch points should not be less than 8 hours, I am not sure the EA is adhering to this. please see this post:

You do not need separate magic numbers for each instance of the robot. This makes no difference to whether the trend line displays or not.

The bot calculates the trend line by going back in time until it identifies a continuous run from leg 1 until now that is not pierced by the high/low. This is a rough-and-ready method that will sometimes lead to trend lines being drawn that are not visible on the chart because they are too far away from the market.

Lines, arrows, labels etc drawn on a chart are known to programmers as 'objects'. To see which objects you have on your chart, call up the Objects window (Ctrl + B). If there are no objects on your chart, the window will not open. If the trend line is there but not visible, then it will be listed.

When the line is too far from the market to be visible, then we can delete and re-draw it manually; change the name to that in the bot's input and the bot will recognise and work with it.

Using Zig-Zag to find recent highs and lows is a decidedly blunt instrument that leads to the sort of situation I have just described. As all non-professional coders quickly discover, mql4 coding is a doddle and all traders should learn to do it. Knowing what to code ('the algorithm') can be an absolute piss-pot to discover.

So, if anyone has a decent algorithm, or even better a code snippet, to find the previous two highs and lows, I would appreciate it. At some point, I will work this out for myself, but heaven only knows how long it will take me. Bit fik, you see.

I know about the 8 hour gap in between the second leg and the trade trigger. This is easy enough to code but I want to see if it is actually necessary yet.

I am testing live your EA and till now it going great on 4H TM ( 10 pairs, 5 trades, 3 wins 2 still on), but have tried on 1H and even lower 15 M , but the EA "loosing " trendy line ??? and said going to sleep for 2 min., but that last hours ????....maybe you know why is that ??? is that a bug ?>?>.... and have change on 15 M RSI on 60 trend filter, and on 1H ,4h RSI....

cheers

Forex is "trendiest" in higher time frames. Dave486's originally posted system is for H4 for a reason.

steve said in his manuals ,that can be used in lower time frames... setting RSI 60 M and using EA on 15 M...that was an exsample...
any way EA works great 4 now....
great work of Steve and Davide486
cheers

I have attached a screen shot of AUDUSD. The yellow line is the trend line drawn by the EA but surely as it has now identified the trend as up the red trendlien which I have drawn would be the better one. Should the EA not have redrawn to this? I ask this as i am also running this the USDCHF where the EA has drawn a down trend from 12:00 on the 24th August and this has led to successful trades this morning.

Paul

It appears that the trendlines aren;t being redrawn by the EA in the display but they are being taken into account. See attached screenshots of trades taken . On the GU graph the trendline which is drawn is upwards yet the trend is identified as downwards and the trade entered was a sell.

On the USDCAD shot the trendline which is drawn is down (slightly) yet the trend is up and the trade is a buy.

Paul