Caillou's multi-length VQ 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 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.
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. How to use indicators. You need VQ7 in your platform's Indicators folder. Drag two copies onto your charts and set the Length inputs to match those you are using in the EA if you want visual confirmation.
      
   3. Basic MPTM features = follow my signature link to download the user guide.
      

DO NOT USE THIS EA ON A LIVE ACCOUNT. IT IS EXPERIMENTAL.



Introduction
I received this pm from Caillou:
"I think VQ indicator is really powerfull and I'm testing it with these rules:
- TF: M5
- VQ: Length 20
- VQ: Length 35
- Entry: when both VQ match their colors (sometimes 20 then 35 if trend starts, sometimes 35 then 20 if we have a pullback)
- Exit: when VQ 20 changes color
- Breakeven: 20 + 2
- Trailing Stop/Jumping Stop would be great.

This is not a scalping system, last days (I know, trendy days) more than 100 pips would be earned in one trade several times.

Since we have already your Spider's EA, I think this mod would be easy for you to do, for me maybe in 5-6 years "


All I had to do was adapt Spider, this this was indeed easy. To add extra flexibility, the time-frame is an input for both VQ's.


A couple of things to note:

1. VQ7 is a custom indicator and calls to these are notorious for the processor time they consume. I have coded the EA to make these calls once a minute to cut down on the processor use; it also makes trading decisions at the same time - both entry and exit.
2. If backtesting in Strategy Tester at the weekend, remember to widen the MaxSpread to something ridiculous or you will not get any trades.

Filters to help avoid over-trading
You will find all the usual filters to help avoid overtrading.

 

1. UseZeljko: this ensures that a second trade including one of the currencies already being traded is 'balanced. The easiest way to explain this is with an example:
   1. Buy GBPxxx open, so only sell GBPxxx. So, if the buy is GBPUSD, then only sell GBPJPY, GBPCHF etc. The rationale is that forex markets are highly sensitive to big movements caused by international events. If something drastic hits the GBP and you are in two sell positions, then both are heading horribly into drawdown. If one of the trades is a buy and the other a sell, then one is going down the tube but its balancing buy is heading for the stratosphere.

2. OnlyTradeCurrencyTwice: using the balanced pair example, the GBP is now involved in two balanced trades. Another trade involving the pound will unbalance the trades and leave the trader exposed to a horrible counter-movement. This filter prevents the GBP from being involved in any further trading of different pairs. It also operates at pending-trade sending time and will prevent the pending being sent if it would violate this filter.
3. I have included the swap filters for reasons that will become obvious if you trade the high-cost swap pairs in the wrong direction.
4. ScoobsMarginCheck: will stop trading if your account margin > your free margin divided by 100
5. ForexKiwi: will stop trading if your margin percent drops below your selected input in FkMinimumMarginPercent.

All Averages indi and Martingale lot sizing
I received this pm from tex a few days ago:
"Hello Steve,

i posted in the Caillou's multi-length VQ auto-trader thread some time ago.
I am testing this EA and i am having some success with it running it on a 10PIP EU Renko Chart.
However i ve read the improvements that you did to the Spider EA and was wondering if you could take some of your valuable time to add the Martingale and the AA-MA option to Caillou's multi-length VQ auto-always-in trader. That would be great thing to further improve this EA. "

I have added these features. For details of how they work, go to the Spider thread at http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=313680. You need to be there anyhow; I am trading Spider live and it has attracted the attention of one of the best traders at FF.

If any of you want to know about RENKO charts, address your queries to tex. He doesn't know it yet, but he has just volunteered to answer them.

Have fun.







Matters of general interest

EA coding
If I code your EA for free, then I will share it here at FF. If you want me to code your EA without sharing, then my fee is $100 payable into my paypal account.


Read this post:
http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...11#post4923611 Newbie traders, read this for inspiration and warning. Those of you who have suffered losses, read it for inspiration.



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
5. My shell EA – the code I use to produce EA's so quickly. http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...94#post4431794

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. Aurora, a PwR-based EU scalper at http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=312936 has made a brilliant start.
3. Trendy: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...82#post4840182, but should be left behind by BigBob.
4. Reversi: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=294255 – I have traded this live.
5. Rip: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...98#post4777998
6. The Beast: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...=1#post4135863

Thank you very much Steve. You are absolutely fantastic.

Thank you very much too to Spider for this great indicator and for starting your thread.

Cheers

Yes thank You Mr. Steve, i can't wait to begin testing and giving feedback!

Hello Steve,

thanks for your endless efforts from me, too. It's been hard for me to follow all your EA's recently, even if I have lots of time.

I will start analysing this one closely on London opening tomorrow. But it might be a day "off the row" because CNY has a holiday and markets might not behave as usual.

I am using a quite similar way to trade for a while now successfully. I wait for a 3 level ZZ semafor with 30 56 156 settings OR the "channel signal" indicator from shi channel system on m15 to show up and then PA to determine my entries on the lower tfs.

Let's see how this plays out manually in combination with your EA. I will start the EA on m1 if a entry signal froim the 3 level zz semafor on m15 occurs.

Cheers, George

Thanks Steve! You are the force!

London Open

Pairs: EUR/USD, EUR/JPY, EUR/CHF, GBP/USD, GBP/JPY, GBP/CHF, USD/JPY, USD/CHF, USD/CAD, AUD/USD, NZD/USD

BE: 20 + 2

Trailing Stop: 30

Let´s see how it goes.....

Update

EUR/USD: + 40,7 pips floating
EUR/JPY: + 35 pips floating
GBP/USD: + 2 pips (closed BE + 2)
GBP/JPY: + 32,2 pips floating
USD/CHF: + 2 pips (closed BE + 2)
NZD/USD: -0,1 pips floating

All trades are free trades now.......

Steve, could it be possible to make a small mod on the bot ?

When a trade is closed at BE + 2 or by the Traling Stop, another trade is opened inmediately for that pair, even when both VQ match their color a lot of bars ago. Is it possible to open a trade when both colors match but only when in the previous bar they don´t match ? This would be great.

I´m going to test too results without BE and without trailing, just an exit when VQ 20 changes the color.

Thank you Steve. A really good start......

Caillou,
which TF for EA and which for VQ (as I understand there's optional)

M5, 20/35.....

Cheers

Yeah, same here, thanks

Everything I tried with VQ resulted in the death of all trading. Instead, I have added a candle direction filter. I have made this a user input. ConfirmationCandleLookBack tells the bot to look at this number of candles and cancel the trend if any of them have moved in the wrong direction.

Set this filter to 0 to turn it off.

Thank you....

Hi Steve,

I find it only go short, even if you have coded Trend= up /down.

One funny thing if you delete VQ indi then you will have a great testing result...

Hello all. I have written an indicator that integrates 4 different VQ length calls on the same timeframe into a common signal (been testing with lengths of 8, 13, 21 and 34 on a 60m TF). It produces great signals, however, it seems to repaint one bar back. Can anyone confirm that VQ repaints?

I have not seen any repainting from the original VQ indi once the candle prints.

Would you mind posting the indi if it is okay with Steve, he may not want you to do that if so that is fine.

No, no repaiting in my tests.......

Agree, Could you post your indicator if Steve has no problem?

I have dropped down to 5m charts and am not experiencing the repaint issue. The indicator is attached. Some notes as follows:

1. Default parameters that I am using are set;
2. You can select up to 4 VQ lengths. I have defaults set to 8, 13, 21, 34 (got fibo numbers burned into my ass, I guess);
3. If a VQ length is set to "0" it will not be used;
4. You can enable VQ on up to two higher timeframes. I have these set to default "false". Default timeframes are 15 and 30. Default VQ length on the higher timeframes is set to 8. Of course, you can set these to whatever you believe in;
5. If you choose to enable the time windows, you can only enter the start/stop as integer hour. No minutes provided for.
6. Alert and Email provided for.

This was compiled on MT4 Build 402. I requires a version of VQ that I modified to facilatate calling from MQL code. Modified version is attached.

That is it. Good luck.

Thank you very much

Will test it.

A really quick visual backtest, buy on first blue bar, exit and sell on first red bar and so on (always-in strategy) looks really good........

Thanks for sharing