"FollowMe" EA

**updated**

I'm gonna stop offering this EA because it looks like (a) there is hardly anyone using it or interested in it, and (b) someone appears to have started to download my trade signals using some unauthorized program, probably to try to sell my trade signals or something. Anyway, sorry to anyone who was legitimately using this EA. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions.

Hello, could you explain you idea in this EA and also it will be nice to see the code (not a blackbox). Thank you.

Thanks for the question...

The EA will only buy when the 1min stochastic is low. Likewise, it will only sell when the stochastic is high. That's for entering new trades.

On trade exits, it will only exit the buy when the 1min sto is high, and vise versa. On all my backtests on every strategy I've ever backtested, almost always, doing just this one simple thing almost always helps. Because it squeezes out a few extra pips most of the time, on both entry and exits.

It's dangerous though, because, it also can cause you to get "stuck" in a trade, if the market keeps moving against you, because it is waiting for the stochastic.

So to help reduce the risk, if it is actually trying to exit multiple lots, it will NOT wait on multiple lots for the stochastic to give a favorable exit spot. Instead, it will exit all but 1 of the lots. Then, it can ride a loss of 1 lot size, but not multiple lots. Otherwise on "minor" lot changes, such as changing from 3 lots to 2, it will assume that a minor change like that in lot size probably means nothing too exciting is happening, so it will wait for the stochastic to give a good exit spot.

But if, for example, the lots changed from 3 buys to 2 sell, well, that's a lot size change of 5! So it will figure that something crazy must be happening for such a big lot change in the other direction. So it'll exit all the buys, instantly, till it's flat. Then, it'll open the sells when the stochastic gives a good entry spot. It always uses the stochastic therefore, on entries, even if it's just 1 new lot.

Okay anyway that's the stochastic. But that's just one indicator out of quite a few it uses hehe. The stochastic actually isn't being used as a major indicator to determine if a buy or a sell SHOULD be made. It already figures out if it should buy or sell, and then, the stochastic is more of an after-thought, to help grab a couple extra pips on entry and exit.

As for the news releases, that was a tough one to make work.

Because MT4 really doesn't have the option to "download" data, which would be necessary to trade news.

So it would require either an external program to be running, which would download the data. Or, it would require the use of external DLL files.

Both of which involve somewhat of a security risk. Because there would be no telling what the DLL might do to your computer, etc.

So I found a way to use the Publisher to do it. Basically, I take the news reports from a variety of places, and compile them together on my computer, and create a buy or sell signal. I save that signal to some folders, and share those folders via FTP.

Then with your computer, you attempt to upload files to those folders. Only one folder will exist, so it will fail to upload the file to any of the other folders. So if the folder "3" exists, it knows to buy 3. But if only the folder "-2" exists, it knows to sell 2. Because, even though it can't download anything with the publisher, it CAN see whether or not the upload was successful. Thus, I can use that true or false to "download" the news lol.

I can share the code with you, but actually most all you're gonna see is the stochastic and the code that downloads through the Publisher. It's not thhhaaaat exciting. But if you wanna see it, I'd be happy to post the source here.

How many trades a week?

What TF?

What pair?

It's going to make trades throughout the day. Average trade time probably a few hours long. The target profit varies. Stop losses set at 300, but it pretty much always closes stops way before that. Works on EUR/USD only for now. Maximum open trades at any time is 3. It does not vary the lot size though, unless you set it to trade by percentage (which, by the way, I haven't tested that part of the code lol). Timeframe it trades is irrelevant, since it trades news. So you can use whatever chart looks pretty to your eyes, it doesn't care. Internally, all its indicators are hard-coded to 1min, so changing the chart TF after it's running won't mess it up.

please let us know when you get the first trade to know if there is a problem at our side

It's been trading most of the day, mostly selling, 1 or 2 lots most of today so far. So if you have been running it today and haven't seen a sell, then check the Experts tab to verify that you aren't getting the error #130, and if so, download the update I posted above.

Here's what it did today. Like I said, mostly sells. The red dots are where the trades exited. The red arrows are where the trades were entered. Overall loss of around 40 pips today on my end, for the closed trades.

I put the ip 168.144.99.115 for the server, followme for the account, username and password
put the file followme.txt in expert/files

I found multiple of the following message in the expert tab
"FollowMe EURUSD,M1: FTP change path to /0 failed"

That's normal behavior. You'll see lots of messages like that in the experts tab. If it has an error related to the server, it will pop up an alert window letting you know it is failing to connect to the server. I programmed it that way. Unfortunately, I am not the one who posts those errors to the experts tab, and there is no way for me to make them go away. So, sorry for the spam in your experts tab, lol.

To anyone who is following this strategy...

At the moment I've turned off the stochastic on my end. The sto seems to be making it do worse, rather than better, the last 2 days. If you want to be in sync with me, just send both the "sto" variables to false, in the strategy properties.

Yay nice day so far today, it made 130 pips on the two drops the EUR/USD has done. For the first time since launch the account is positive now, by 30 pips hehe.

I'm getting a really strong signal for BUY on the euro the last few hours. It maxes out at 3 trades with this strategy, so it's just buying three lots now. But the actual signal is at "buy 6" for the euro at the moment, which is the strongest I've seen of a signal in any direction for a while. So it'll be interesting to see if it does go up or not... hmm...

Oh and I just discovered the market sentiment thing, so neat. I added my sentiment. :-)

This last week has been lousy for this strategy. Hopefully next week will be better. I plan to keep testing it for at least two months to see how it performs. Hope everyone has a nice weekend!

... and then the EUR/USD immediately went up 100 pips after I said that.

But it didn't make 100 pips profit, even though it had 3 trades to buy, because then the EUR crashed. So it only made 20 pips on those buys on my end.

But it sold 3 on the crash as well, and now it's got 300 pips profit in open trades on my end. We'll have to see if they end up closing profitably or not. But if so, then those three trades could put the strategy well into the profit zone. Currently it's still -44 pips.

I added my account balance and pips gained/lost to the screenshot in the first post. That screenshot does update continually, as I explained above it, so anyone who is interested in keeping an eye on the profitability of this EA can see how it is doing by looking at that screenshot.

But today was a good day for this EA.

Since 05/07/2011 it's up 406.2 pips, for now. It's never opened more than 3 lots at a time, and never will, because it's set to only 3 lots maximum.

Summary:
Deposit/Withdrawal: 50 000.00 Credit Facility: 0.00
Closed Trade P/L: 40.62 Floating P/L: 11.91 Margin: 20.00
Balance: 50 040.62 Equity: 50 052.53 Free Margin: 50 032.53

Details:
Gross Profit: 197.99 Gross Loss: 157.37 Total Net Profit: 40.62
Profit Factor: 1.26 Expected Payoff: 0.33
Absolute Drawdown: 26.72 Maximal Drawdown: 33.31 (0.07%) Relative Drawdown: 0.07% (33.31)

Total Trades: 122 Short Positions (won %): 69 (52.17%) Long Positions (won %): 53 (43.40%)
Profit Trades (% of total): 59 (48.36%) Loss trades (% of total): 63 (51.64%)
Largest profit trade: 21.27 loss trade: -15.20
Average profit trade: 3.36 loss trade: -2.50
Maximum consecutive wins ($): 7 (46.00) consecutive losses ($): 9 (-20.88)
Maximal consecutive profit (count): 46.00 (7) consecutive loss (count): -20.88 (9)
Average consecutive wins: 2 consecutive losses: 3

Hi,
I am a lttle confused in what you are controlling? If you are controlling everything, why shouldn't I run your EA?
Ron

Not sure what you mean by this? I never said you shouldn't run the EA, in fact, I uploaded it on the first post.

Hi,
I will try to explain it better. When I attach the EA to the chart, are you then running the Buy and Sell? Are you controlling my buy and sell?
Ron

Yup. Guess that's why I called it, "Follow Me".