Nicotina GJ Breakout strategy: an auto-trader by SteveHopwood

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.
4. Trading this robot without understanding its underlying trading strategy guarantees traders will lose their money.
   

a2xm pm'd me with a summary of this thread, http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=51365, asking me to code an EA for it.

So, welcome to "Nicotina GJ Breakout auto trading robot by Steve Hopwood" - Nico for short. Do not us it on your live accounts just yet. I have had some problems with the logic required to take care of a platform/EA restart. In backtesting using Strategy Tester, trading stops quite quickly, so there have to be some bugs.

We need to ensure that Nico works properly on demo before committing it live. I have no doubts about the durability of the strategy; any strategy/thread that is still going 4 years after it started has to have something going for it.

For an excellent summary of the trading rules, read this post by Gt3rs http://www.forexfactory.com/showpost...9&postcount=78.


Once the bugs are ironed out, Nico will carry out this list of instructions. It also offers the standard cut-down mptm features I include in all my robots these days. To get all mptm's features, go to http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=89371 to download the full version and the user guide.

If the market is already outside the box when it comes time to send the pendings, Nico will instead send an immediate market order provided the current/previous candle opened inside the box (new candle will open at or very close to the previous candle close). If the market is too close to the hi-lo, then Nico will wait; either the price will return to a level at which the trade can be sent as a pending, or it will send an immediate market order when the price leaves the box.

Some of Nico's inputs might need explanation. A couple of points to note first:

1. all time inputs should be in your computer's local time. Nico will draw a box for you, outlining the hi-lo calculation period represented by your inputs, so making changes is easy. Do not question me about this; I shall ignore you.
2. Nico accommodates x-digit criminals, so all pip inputs are in 'proper' pips, not points. When entering these inputs, think 2-4 digit crims.

1. StopTrading: this allows you to use Nico simply to draw the box for you. If set to 'true', the bot will not send trades.
2. RangeCalculationHour is the time you want Nico to calculate the hi-lo of the previous 8 hours. You will have to experiment with this to draw the correct box.
3. PendingExpiryTime is the time at which you want unfilled pending trades to expire and be deleted from the platform.
4. CloseHour is the hour at which you want your filled trades to close whether in profit or loss. Set this to some value > 24 to effectively turn off this feature. Those of us experimenting with using mptm's hedging instead of a stop loss need to remember this.
5. TradeTheRetrace: this is not part of Nicotina's strategy and is my experiment. If set to 'true', Nico will send a pending buy_limit order at the sell pending's take profit, and vice versa for the buy pending. The default is false, so you have to elect to try this out.

So, pop Nico on a spare GJ demo chart, pick a magic number that will not interfere with your other trades and watch to see if he does his job properly. You would not normally mix ea's on the same platform, but you can probably get away with doing so with Nico.

IMPORTANT NOTICE
I am not sure how much of this post is still relevant. Paul (batemap) has taken over Nico's coding and is sorting out the time thingy. This apparently simple bit of coding turned out to be an effing nightmare, so a huge round of applause for Paul.

The version posted here will fill your journal with debug statements; once we are sure the bot is working as intended, we will turn ththis feature off.

subscribed. i believe in breakouts as a valid strategy.

Hehe. I hate them, but longevity is longevity and Nicotina's strategy equates to the life of the pyramids, in forex terms.

i have just finished backtesting with this new toy , and as you said steve there are some bugs in Ea , with opening trades . But i back tested visually , and this bird def has a wings

Cheers.

Count me in, too!

Things to test in order of precedence:

 

1. does Nico draw the box and send the appropriate pendings at the correct time - I am waiting for 1.00 AM here in the UK?
2. when a trade fills, does Nico delete the opposite direction pending and refuse to trade in the opposite direction until tomorrow?
3. if the filled trade hits tp, does Nico shut up shop until 1.00 AM tomorrow
4. if the filled trade hits sl, does Nico send the correct pending in the direction of the original correct trade?
5. if both filled trade hits sl, does Nico shut up shop until 1.00 AM tomorrow
6. do filled trades close correctly at the chosen CloseHour?
7. are unfilled pendings deleted correctly?

Much of this will happen whilst I am asleep, so I will need your help, guys.

It just occurred to me that my previous post belongs in post 1, so I have added it there.

Thanks Steve for another wonderful EA! Will definitely give this one a go!

Will be running it along side saaedb's nicotina b/o EA to notice any differences offhand. Will update. Cheerios!

I didn't realise there was an ea already in place, or I might not have coded this one. Couldn't post a link to saaedb's could you - he musthave solved the problems I have come up against. I am just being lazy and looking for some quick fixes.

Cheers

There we go. The attached word doc contains the EA parameters and explanations which I believe you helped to compile from saaedb's posts some 3 years back in 2008.

Thought perhaps you made some changes or improvements to it and decided to release it. No harm I guess. Since its up already, should give it a shot. Or at least I will.

Thanks very much. The EA is in compiled form, so I can derive nothing from it. Thanks even so. Give it a shot and see if it has something better to offer than this one.

Cheers

At the mo, we are looking good for having a box drawn and some pendings sent in about 50 minutes.

Have been following Nico's thread for a few weeks without committing to trading it - it appears to deliver pips

Subscribed

Nico was out by an hour in drawing the start of the box. I have fixed this - update in post 1.

Having done that, Nico then refused to send the pending trades until I commented out if (!IsTradingAllowed() ) return; in my usual void LookForTradingOpportunities()

IsTradingAllowed() holds all the filters that will stop Nico from sending trades under the wrong circumstances. There is something wrong in the logic of this function. I will look again tomorrow. Sorry guys, but I find the logic of this really hard to work out.

Never mind. At least we have auto box-drawing, which cannot be a bad thingy.

Night all.

Steve,

I just put it on a demo account, set the time to my computer's time and viola.. the lines are there.. good job..
but where are the pending orders?

I also notice the robot calculate the hi and lo not from between the 17.00 and 01.00 GMT. It should not included the hi/lo from the 17.00 bar and 01.00 bar.

I hope you can fix it.. thanks

I agree that the 01.00 GMT bar is out but the 17.00 GMT bar is in - it should look for the hi from 17.00 until 00:59 GMT

Edit: Also shouldn't it close trades at 17:00 GMT

Having said all that Nicotina's original post read

System: Find the maximum and the minimum between 18:00GTM and 2:00GTM and then put a buy stop order with maximum and a sell stop order with the minimum.
TP 100
SL 50
If close in S/L open again the stop orders.
Close the day if close in S/L for the second time.
Close the day if close in TP.
Do not change the SL and the TP
Closes orders manually only at the end of the day (18:00 GTM).

Hi Dixpat,

Please check Nicotina's post #3001 here on April 7th, the low of bar 17.00 GMT was 139.073, but Nico picked 139.20.

Another one is from post #2998

So, it is between 17.00 and 01.00.

Thanks

There does seem to have been some controversy on that original thread about exactly when the box should be drawn with people disputing Nicotina's stated times.

Thanks, a2xm - However do you agree that the 17.00 bar is included?