Another new student

Hi everyone,

I've also decided to finally seriously begin my education in trading. I've been curious about online trading and technical analysis for a few years but it hasn't really gone anywhere. I don't have much prior knowledge of trading, aside from a few long positions in common stocks.

I'm a software engineer and am very curious about the ability to use trading systems to automate trades. Is this something most people are doing? I work full-time, often long hours, so I'm looking for something that can be setup to run autonomously while I am away. Is this a recipie for disaster or is it a viable strategy to setup a software trading robot?

My hope is to eventually possess a set of trading rules that I've tweaked, and treat as a complex software application that I can let run in the background. As long as it is operating within parameters, I can let it run mostly unattended during the day. It should generate a steady series of small, but steadily accumulating wins managed by intelligent application of trend analysis, and rules gathered by my own and other's personal experience.

The real goal here is to leverage the time I have to spend maintaining it into more profits per hour than I could make through some other form, such as selling my programming services for $50 an hour a few hours a week.

I realize I may lost a $1000 bux learning to trade, and I'll have to trade manually to really learn the system, but is this type of automated system a feasible idea or am I wasting my time?

The community here has a great feel and is friendly and informed. Thanks everyone for the willingess to share your knowledge.

Thanks,
Infonaut

Yes, it is possible. These are called Expert Advisors (EA) in MT4. There are many of them out there just as there are many trading strategies. The trick is just having a good strategy that has defined parameters, then coding it is just knowing the programming language. The reason many people say EA's don't work is more because of the foundational principle that they EA's don't have defined paramters that result in winning tradinig results - not the program itself.

EA's are written in MLQ4 (uses a lot of C++). If you can program in C++, then you can code it yourself. You can learn the additions to C++ at various places; one place I found is http://www.forex-tsd.com/metatrader-....html#post3746

If you google, MT4 EA, you will see many "free" ones out there. There are also people who specialize in writing them after you give them the parameters. If you are an enginerr, I would suggest downloading a free one and then looking at the code in MT4's native editor MetaEditor (just right-click and Modify to open that EA/Indicator in MetaEditor).

Good luck!

You can visit site: http://www.babypips.com to learn forex trading. It's very useful

I apologize if I came across that MT4 was the only platform or even the best platform. I only meant, yes the concept exists and in MetaTrader platform it is called Expert Adviser. I only point that out because other platforms call it differently. Sorry if caused any confusion.

Have a good adventure!

Stearno

lol rekindling threads from 2006 I see

Oh, wow, I did not even notice the date :o)

I was just sorting by posts that got no reply.

Thanks for pointing that out; now I will look at dates.

-Stearno

I've done it before as well :/