Steve Hopwood's T101 basket trading auto-trader

SERIOUS WARNING

1. Most Forex traders lose all their money.
2. Using the robot posted here in trading Forex does not guarantee success.
3. Trading this robot could lead to serious financial loss.

Welcome to my latest experimental robot, Basket With Bigger Balls. Please remember that it is experimental and is not to be used on live accounts yet. We have vinesh to thank for the memorable name.

Not many of you will remember, but a couple of years ago a trader called trader101 posited a basket trading method that some of us adopted for a while. I did not use his method for long; it demanded a lot of screen time and my own understanding was limited at the time; T101 was inclined to hissy-fits and frequently closed his thread; there was far too much rubbish along Star Wars lines; it all became a little tiresome. I was at the start of my coding career and was not able to automate the method as I can now.

I thought about it again a couple of days ago and this inspired the basket trading robot to be found at http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...25#post4141225. We are having some fun with that one.

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, basket trading involves this:

 

1. take out a number of trades on a variety of pairs - a 'basket' of trades.
2. the fate of an individual trade does not matter. What matters is the profit of the overall basket.
3. when the upl of the whole basket reaches a pre-determined point, the basket is closed and we start again.

We need to decide on the direction of each individual trade; T101 has a neat method of doing this. Contributors to the first thread have been reminding me about this:

 

1. on demo, take out 7 buy and 7 sell trades on 14 different pairs - you can see the pairs in question in the attached pdf.
2. click the Profit column twice, so the platform displays the trades in descending order of profitability.
3. leave these trades alone for a few hours whilst the markets sort out the direction in which they are going to move.
4. after a few hours have elapsed, if the buys are all at the top, then buy the entire basket on your live account. If the sells are all at the top, then sell the basket.
5. close the basket when you are happy with the upl.

That is what this robot does. Truth to tell, we have Orest to thank for the guts of the bot. The fantastic screen display is all his, so our heartfelt thanks and a warm round of applause for a fantastic coder. Pick up more of his tools from http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=112522. His ea/indicator take the place of the 'phantom' basket.

For full details of the manual trading method, read the attached pdf and visit T101's thread at http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=107119. Ignore all the stuff about 'jumpers'; BWBB is all about trading the basket.

Setting up the robot

 

1. download Basket With Better Balls to your Expert's folder.
2. download the template to your Template folder.
3. close down and restart the trading platform.
4. drag the robot onto a chart. Any chart. Time frame does not matter. Only one chart. Loading the template instead of dragging the robot onto a chart has the same effect, except that it blanks out the candles that otherwise get in the way of the display.

Inputs: these are pretty straight-forward:

 

1. Lot is your order size. Make sure this is acceptable to your criminal; there is no idiot-checking.
2. PipsTakeProfitTargetPerTradeis a profit target per individual trades. BWBB multiplies this figure by the number of open trades to arrive at a basket tp. To make baskets close more frequently, lower the default; to hold them longer, increase it. BWBB automatically compensates for 5 digit criminals, so enter 'proper' pips.
3. PipsStopLossTargetPerTrade is the stop loss.
4. Colums to trigger trades: this is where you have some deciding to do. Each of the inputs represents a column in the screen display. By default, BWBB looks back at the previous 24 hours trading and only sends buy basket when all three of the rightmost columns have "LONG (Strong)" as their blue label, and sell baskets when these contain "SHORT (Strong)". The fewer columns you need to confirm the trigger, the more baskets you will trade but the riskier they will be. The more columns you require as confirmation, the fewer baskets there will be but the safer they will be. In theory, anyhow.
5. Hedging: non-US traders can use this to hedge those loosing trades at the bottom of the basket:
   1. UseHedging: turn hedging on/off. Defaults to on.
   2. HedgeAtLossPips: the number of pips you will allow a trade to go wrong before hedging it. The default is pure guesswork. BWBB automatically accommodates this input to different digit quotes.
   3. HedgeLotsMiltiplier: the multiplier for the Lot input.
   4. BreakEvenProfit: once the basket contains a hedge trade, BWBB starts looking for an opportunity to close it at break even, by looking at the upl. BreakEvenProfit allows you to add some extra cash to the breakeven; it is a currency input, so enter a figure in your account's currency.

Pair suffixes
BWBB should detect these and add them automatically.

Immediate action labels
These are the 'Close all trades' and the stop/start the expert labels. To activate them, you double-click the label and move it somewhere else. Take care with the 'Close all trades' lable; this is intended for use when you want instant basket closure and BWB does not ask for confirmation.

Once started and has received its first tick, BWBB will not stop unless your system crashes or you become disconnected from your criminal. Using the Expert Advisors button at the top of your platform has no effect. To temporarily stop BWBB trading, use the 'Stop the robot label'; the bot will continue to monitor the basket for tp/sl closure.

YOU MUST ONLY TRADE THIS ROBOT ON THE ACCOUNT. You cannot trade other methods/systems at the same time. The robot has no way of recognising that there are trades it does not own, and will regard any open trade as belonging to its basket.

Once the bot has opened its first basket, click the Profit column in the trades window; it is fascinating to see the winners lining up at the top and the losers at the bottom.


In conclusion
I think that is everything. Pop BWBB onto a demo and watch it trade for a couple of days to see if it has anything to offer. T101's is a method that he was trading successfully and profitably a couple of years ago. I assume he still is doing so, and expect this BWBB to be able to go live quite soon. We shall see.

Have fun.



_______________________________________________________________
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.

The name of this robot . I must say that the original basket trader picked me up 50 pips last night. Can't wait to test this side by side.

Steve,

All loaded on demo, 2 baskets closed for profit and 3rd now open, only loaded it at 1200 GMT!

http://www.mt4i.com/users/bwbb_demo

what pip stops are you guys using? im trying 30 and 30

default settings for me at the moment, 3rd basket just hit sl

Steve,
as per our PM, I upload here my code I made 2 years back based on T101's strategy but I never made it profitable since entry and exit conditions were a bit fuzzy. I like basket systems so I provide my code here and maybe you can make your code better with some ideas I have here.

In my code you can see some small things that I find useful and are based on years of experiences I have with MQ4 and various "criminals"

For example, automatic currency suffix identification, basket trailing stop, automatic 4/5 digit criminal calculations, infinite looping for constant market/basket watch etc. You are free to re-use anything you find useful in my code.

Thanks. I am most grateful.

Most of you will have seen my post in the BWB thread about squalou's intervention.

Until he is able to come up with the display enhancements, I have copied his tp/sl calculations into BWBB and put the latest in post 1.

This should help the demo baskets.

Hi Steve,

Thanks again for coming up with a new EA with huge potential.

I put the latest BWBB in my demo account and it seems that BWBB is still starting new trades right after closing the previous one. There seems to be no wait and see time.
edit: I think I confused BWB with BWBB here. I don't know if BWBB is supposed to wait at all. BWB is working fine, sleeping as it is supposed to after the last update.

You can inspect opening and closing times here =>
https://www.myfxbook.com/portfolio/ibfx-bwbb/61493

last closed trades are at 05.39 and new open trades are at 05.39 as well.

Secondly, I am using BWBB with default settings, thus looking at "this day" results to open new trades. Right now "this day" is showing strong short, but BWBB is opening all buys, than hitting S/L, and opening another all buys whereas it is supposed wait and open all shorts.

The trades in the picture I am attaching are all buys and taken while this day was showing strong short. As you can see, the red sell pairs are moving up and replacing green buys (compared to "this week", which is the main indicator according to Trader101). From Trader101's post, as far as I understand, it is a strong signal for all short.

best regards to all...

In one of those classic bloomers of which only someone as dim as me can manage, I had left BWBB capable of taking only long trades.

Mind, this is some achievement. Not many would manage it.

There is a clear demand for the robot to take a break after a basket closure, so I have added the sleep function. This will also kick in after a sl closure, which we probably do not want. We shall see; it is easy enough to change this if required.

Fix and update in post 1.

Today is NFP day, so the markets should slow to a crawl for a few hours, then go nuts later on. It should be fun watching how BWBB copes with this.

Can someone help me try to figure out why my chart will not populate with data? Thanks.

Forgot the chart.

Pair suffixes
If your criminal has a suffix to the pairs offered for trading you will have to add this to each of the pairs in the inputs screen - IBFX mini accounts for example, have 'm' appended to each pair. Make these additions and save the inputs as a setfile to load up when you download future updates.

Thanks jm2110. I overlooked that. Working like a champ now.

Misterpipster

Frankly, it is a miracle that this blasted ea is working at all.

lionamra pm'd me tonight to point out that I had removed (commented out) the code that actually closes baskets at tp. What a pillock. Me, I mean, not l.

sq has added a few enhancements. These are 'behind the scenes' thingy's but are needed nonetheless.

So, if by any remote chance you are still daft enough to be demoing this robot, then a download of the trillion fixes before Monday is essential.

Have a lovely weekend.

I've been reading back and forth between this thread and the original basket ea thread based on your memory of this t101 method. What I don't understand is why this one is bigger balls? Is it because for this one we're taking both buy and sell positions and the other one is just 1 direction trade only for the whole basket?

The first one, BWB it's a slots trader witch open order in right direction of a trend for a currency pair.
The second one, BWBB is more a standard T101 basket trader witch open all currency pairs in one direction.
I like BWB. For me that one has Bigger B… Its because I have tested a Basket EA made on Orest indicator before and the feeling is that I step back to old time when I use BWBB.

I was just going through Trader101's original thread and I realized that he is suggesting an optimization for 14 buy or 14 sell method.

Trader101 says that if we are going for LONG, than
12 LONG + EURUSD short + CHFJPY short

and

if we are going for SHORT, than
12 SHORT + EURUSD LONG + CHFJPY LONG

Trader101's post =>
http://www.forexfactory.com/showpost...&postcount=224
(by IBFX, he means the pairs that we are using right now, you can check it in here => http://www.forexfactory.com/showpost...3&postcount=51 or in the first post, the new pairs)


I am still reading through his thread and I am not finished, but this kind of optimization might improve the results.

Can someone confirm this, if it is still the preferred method over opening trades the same way for 14 pairs? I am still learning his method so that I can provide some insight for BWBB, but perhaps someone more qualified than me can confirm or correct me here.

This rings a bell with me as well, but the details are so hazy - I think I have already proven this.

Can you stick with this, please, and let me know what conclusion you come to? I can easily add contra-basket trades to the robot if t101 continues to send eu and gc in the opposite direction to the rest of the basket.

The more I think about this, the more bells are ringing.

You could be making a great contribution here. Thanks very much.

Cheers

EURUSD stands for 28% of the Forex market volume. When it’s a real trend the USDCHF always go opposite direction to EURUSD. So there is something to think about. There must be more currency pairs that behaves like them two.