jiva43's MA Cross/Fractal Combo. A scalping EA 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 strategies guarantees traders will lose their money.
5. This is not a set-and-forget ea; there is no such thing and anyone who tries to claim there is, is either stupid or lying. This ea requires frequent manual intervention - turning it off at news time, that sort of thing.
6. At best, a trading robot is only 90% as good as the manual strategy it trades. At best. At worst, it can be much less effective. If the strategy is rubbish, so is the robot.
7. To trade this robot, you have to understand:
   1. How to use EA's.
   2. The Moving Averages indi.
   3. The Fractals indi, and what fractals are when used in Forex trading.

DO NOT USE THIS EA ON A LIVE ACCOUNT


Introduction

I came across this thread a couple of days ago: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=312339


Here is my understanding of the system:

 

1. Very short-term scalping
2. M1 EU chart
3. 2 moving averages:
   1. 10 EMA
   2. 40 EMA

4. Fractals indi
5. Buy when:
   1. 10 ema has crossed the 40 ema upwards
   2. a fractal has formed underneath a rising candle

6. Sell when:
   1. 10 ema has crossed the 40 ema downwards
   2. a fractal has formed above a falling candle

7. Stop loss: 10 pips. Enter pip values as 'proper' pips; the bot adjusts to x digit crims.
8. Take profit: 12 pips

The attached MA_Crossover_Signal indi goes in your indi folder; you need it in the folder; you do not need it on your chart. If you use it on your chart to visually confirm the ma cross, remember to set the inputs to 1, 10, 1, 40 respectively so that it shows the information that jiva is working with.

Trading hours
I have included trading hours and suggest that trading during the the European session might be best. These inputs work on you computer's local time, so you need to know what time it is where you live that the European markets get going and close down.

Trading distance controls
A robot cannot use judgement, so I have included two inputs to give you some control over the distance from events that jiva is allowed to trade:

 

1. LookBackForCrossCandles: the default equates to two hours. If the cross occurred earlier than two hours ago, jiva will not trade.
2. LookBackForFractalsCandles: a fractal is definitely set three candles after the hi-lo first forms. The default enforces waiting for this. If you reduce this input, jiva will spot a forming fractal earlier on, but might trade prematurely if the fractal subsequently disappears.

Trading direction
The 'Trading Direction' inputs allow you to control the direction jiva can trade. If you only want it to trade in one direction, then set the other to false and turn off AutomateDirection.

From mysticgenie, I learned this:

 

1. if the market is below yesterday's pivot, it tends to fall
2. if above, it tends to rise.

From Ibuks, I learned this:

 

1. if the market is above the H4 candle open price it tends to rise
2. if below, it tends to fall

I have added two filters that allow you to take advantage of one or both of these ideas. Leave AutomateDirection set to its default of true, then select UseH4 and/or UsePivot to tell jiva to work out the trade direction for itself.

2 stage trades
Set CriminalIsECN to true if your crim insists on 2-stage order sends.

Time frames
A few posts down, jiva suggests monitoring fractals and MA crosses on different time frames. To cater for this, I have added time frame inputs to the fractals and moving average inputs sections. You enter these as minutes.

Conclusion
I have no idea whether this EA will prove to be profitable. On my development demo, it finished today slightly in profit; its performance improved dramatically once I started using the H4/D1 pivot filters. Have a play with it and see.






Useful utilities/EA's/scripts

 

1. MaryJane has posted a fabulous utility to allow us to resize EA input windows: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=299017
2. Multi purpose trade manager: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=89371
3. Account equity analyser: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...16#post4693716 Also at http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...98#post4709098, which includes a template for both USD and the Euro.
4. Past-trades display indi by squalou; shows a graphical display of the success/failure of trades in your History tab. Breathtaking piece of work. http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...10#post3830610

Most promising trading EA's

 

1. BigBob: an implementation of Nanningbob V10. http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=309980. The strategy is fantastic and I am having a ball trading it manually. The EA is the most promising I have coded so far.
2. Trendy: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...82#post4840182, but should be left behind by BigBob.
3. Reversi: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=294255 – I have traded this live.
4. Rip: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...98#post4777998
5. The Beast: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...=1#post4135863

source code for this indi - see attached file

This one looks uber fun to play with.

Steve, is it possible to make those EMA's user defined inputs, so we can play with settings different from the 10/40 jiva suggests? I have some spare demo space that may be put to good use with different tweakings of this EA

Diego

Fantastic. Cheers.

Done. Update in post 1. Have fun. I have named the inputs the same as those in the indi.

Good GOD. Yet another EA. Makes me wonder if you ever sleep. Where do you get the energy and find the time to work on your existing Systems and scanning the ff for new ideas? Oh, I forgot and work!!!

Scalping is very exciting, however, as you keep reminding us the criminals which we use employ every trick to part us with our hard earned cash. Therefore, we need every tool in our arsenal to ensure the criminals do not SL hunt, requote, etc. As you know with lower SL and TP we are more susceptible to their dirty tricks.

I have so many of your goodies on my platforms that I have to think long and hard as to what to take off in order to accommodate this one. Thanks very much for all your hard work and your gifts to us.

kind regards

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...6z2hC6QiM3R9Ug

Sir Hopwood,
Ehup!! Getting closer to a manual method of mine. (Serving as a gentle nudge/nag) Just wait... till MPTM goes caterpillar.

(then) With it, Even the remote-estly Sucessful system can be more sucessful if existing/current winners are stacked/Scaled-In/"Pyramided" (& loosers Killed at SL, winners allowed to run till the market says when) IMHO.

Will add this to the sandbox of toys till the cat(erpillar) crawls in.

Bless!

This had 5 wins but 8 losses for me on demo yesterday (using the tdl and H4 filters).

I think the fractal would do better if it was on a different time frame than the chart being traded.
Like trade the macross signal on the 15min but wait for the appropriate fractal on the 1 min or maybe the 5 min.

Hello jiva34:
Looking form a perspective where the primary signal, is the MA Cross, the fractal then would be the actual(secondary) trade trigger that is, provided the cross has occurred, then when the Fractal is Confirmed, trade away.. If the foregoing is the philosophy behind the Bot, then IMHO they can remain on the same Chart. Only Mod that I would for Sir Hopwood to comment on is: Could we have a way/option to say: trade in a 10 below 40 (Down Trend), say the option to trade all Fractal Highs (Rising or Falling candles) provided there has not been significant retracement since the initially traded cross? The fractal off rising candle in a 10 below 40 (down trend) is excellent, just wondered if we could have another option, to capture some of the other fractal highs while the DT remains in effect.

Some thoughts hope they can add value.

Bless!

Observations from watching this trade last Friday:

1. Losses would be smaller if a trade were closed on a MA cross in opposite direction

2. Best trades are those where fractal trigger was on a candle where high/low was on other side of the MA 40 line eg. for sell - high was >MA40; for buy, low<MA40. It does not seem to matter what type of candle the fractal is on (bull/bear).

3. Entry should be a candle earlier - ie start of 2nd candle after fractal candle rather than third (if this is possible). Ie the moment when fractal appears.

4. Take all trades satisfying criteria in 2 - even if in a trade. This scales into a good trend.

5. And the ultimate wish - to spot flat MAs and not trade at all ... but this is probably reaching for the stars.

Apologies if this is messing about with a tried and trusted trading method - they are just my observations, and I'm throwing them into the ring for discussion.

Thanks to Jiva and Steve of course for making this possible ....

I have added time-frame inputs to the ma and fractals inputs; you now have unfettered choice of time-frames.

Update in post 1. Have fun.

run through the tester.
11/1/10 to 6/10/11 (Data files are missing from 6/10/11 to 8/2/10- the joys of the mt4 tester)
EURUSD
fractal on 1m
chart on 15 min
tp 50
stop 20
good entries
Might stay in with the trend with breakeven and trailing stop.

Doing better today. So far 6 winners & 2 losers (running 24/5 now without direction filters).

Overall: 11 winners, 10 losers since last Friday.

Still think this could be more profitable with some tweaking ....

Thank you Much Erwal & Jiva34,
was having problems with trades not registering on M1 EurUsd, but getting error 130: Inalid stops. Widening stops did not help. Following assitance from Erwal, Changed broker (ECN) Settings from False to True, as well as set Sunday Candle to true. FINALLy registed the trade.

Bless

Interesting cross
8 sma/13 smma
20 tp
20 stop
15 min EURUSD
8/15/11-9/6/11
(forgive me it was in the tester)
will run on live demo....
Am downloading Dukascopy tick data, 99% commercial grade for better back test.
http://eareview.net/tick-data

Waiting for csv files to download
same settings as above, just added pivot..

Thanks Jiva34,
nice work on the scalping sets.

The EA is actually quite versatile and may well be adaptable to other t/f and trade styles. The attached are some findings done on the past weekend using the initial uploaded version. Perhaps others may look along the same lines and see what they find, even as we perfect the Scalper in Jiva34.

Just (remember) : Larger T/F and MA combos need larger everything including Patience, SL & TP. At the end of the day we all need larger balances, Demo or Live, all the same, right?

Bless!

MAs only work when there is a trend. Ranging will make the system kill both long and short.

Only if we can predict that market will trend

Good filter will be to take only one short and long for a particular session and close shop. We should know by then it is ranging