- Most Forex traders lose all their money.
- Using the robot posted here in trading Forex does not guarantee success.
- Trading this robot could lead to serious financial loss.
- Trading this robot without understanding its underlying trading strategies guarantees traders will lose their money.
Welcome to Macman's Grid Thingy, a grid-trading auto-trader.
Traders with US criminal accounts may not be able to use this robot because hedging arises occasionally. Sorry, but there is nothing I can do.
This is another of macman's strategies that he asked me to code into an auto-trader. The strategy could hardly be simpler:
- At the start of each new D1 candle, send a grid of buy_limit and sell_limit pending trades on either side of the opening price. It will close any profitable trades left over from the previous day's trading.
- Trades below the D1 open are buy_limit pendings; above are sell_limit pendings.
- The trade levels are set by a Fibonacci sequence derived from an indicator owned by macman. This indi is not in the public domain and so is not available to us. I have subsumed the code within this robot and the levels are shown on the chart. The fib levels are 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610 and their negative equivalents.
- There is a small buffer for each level, in case the price does not quite reach the next level.
- Trades at each new level are subject to a lot multiplier of 1.5, hence the default lotsize of 0.02. You have to check that this is acceptable to your criminal; there is no idiot checking.
- During the day, a position of filled trades will emerge. I have yet to have more than 3, but macman says that the maximum of 6 is reached occasionally.
- At a set time towards the end of the European trading session, mgt will look for an opportunity to close open trades:
- if the upl of the group of trades is positive, it will close them all.
- if the upl of the group of trades is negative, it will close only the profitable ones and leave the dd trades in place.
- At a set time before the start of the new D1 candle, mgt will delete outstanding pending trades in preparation for starting again.
Lot sizes and the lethal potential of lot multiplying
There is a key issue to remember and to understand if you trade this system as macman has designed it. The highest lot size of trades left open from the previous day becomes the base lot size for the new grid. This means that lot sizes can mount alarmingly. To be honest, I think this means traders need deep pockets to use this robot; I cannot see it getting onto my live account for quite a long time to come.
For those of us with smaller pockets who still want to try mgt, I have added an alternative. In the inputs, UseAutoLotMultiplier tells mgt to work as macman designed. Turning this to false and setting UseManualLotMultiplier to true instead, allows us to set the lot size for individual trade levels – L1Lot, L2Lot and so on. Setting a level to zero means the trade will not be sent, so we can use this to limit our grid size if we wish.
Inputs
Other inputs are:
- TakeProfit: allows us to use one if so desired. This is not a part of macman's design.
- StopLoss: the 600 is the default and is part of macman's design.
- PipsBufferFromFib: the distance from each fib level to send the pending trade, in case the market does not quite reach the fib.
- Trading times:
- SendTradeHour: the hour into each D1 candle at which mgt will send the pending trades
- TakeProfitStarts: the precise time at which mgt will start looking for opportunities to close profitable trades. Be precise with this input. It is a string that mgt converts to a time that it can use, and must be in the form 'xx:xx', as in 15:30, 1:25 etc. The ':' is what separates hours from minutes.
- TakeProfitEnds: the precise time at which mgt will stop looking for opportunities to close profitable trades.
- PendingDeletionHour: the hour at which mgt will delete outstanding pending trades in preparation for sending the new ones at the start of the new D1 candle.
Pairs to trade
Here is part of an email macman sent me during mgt's development:
"While I am on, I will explain how to use this Grid Thingy. Rather like The Beast, it works with a balanced set of pairs to trade.
I use CadJ, EJ, GJ, GU, UChf & UJ as this is fairly well balanced.
Also I use MPTM with a global close all, including pendings, if the global profit ever hits 1,5%. This is basically a grid reset.
Lastly if any pair ever gets outside the grid, meaning it has gone to the 11th level - I apply a zero hedge - we are talking Greek crisis here. If that happens, I then just look at the fundamentals behind the unusual movement and manually trade from there. Happens about 2x per year."
Trade management
This is all taken care of by macman's strategy. I include my usual mptm management features so people can play with them if they want; they are not a part of the basic trading method.
Hedging
This can arise when the market moves to fill pending trades in one direction, then reverses to fill them in the opposite direction. If your criminal does not allow hedging, then the opposite-direction trades will not be allowed.
Changing time frames whilst the robot is running
It is never a good idea to do this when an ea is running on a chart. It is a seriously bad idea to do so whilst this bot is running; it mucks up the levels calculation and display stuff. Don't do it, ok?
In conclusion
This appears a little daunting at first sight but is actually simple. The Martingale-style lot multiplying looks terrifying but is working out ok on my demo so far. It is worth bearing in mind my oft-repeated statement of late: macman is one of the cleverest traders contributing to FF. When he offers a trading strategy that he has been using successfully over a period of time, then only the daft ignore him.
Let's see how this baby runs and work out if those of us with smaller accounts can still trade using it.
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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. 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.
