Friday, February 13, 2009

Metatrader 4 Expert Advisor Programming

Well, many of you may know about me being an avid forex software reviewer but few of you know that I actually do program expert advisors using the mql4 language. In my actual career, as a chemist, I had to develop some serious programming skills in c++ and Fortran to develop highly efficient computational chemistry algorithms for quantum mechanical calculations. Since mql4 is so similar to c it is pretty straightforward to go from my regular programming habits to programming expert advisors for Metatrader 4 and the forex market.

I have never thought about selling my skills or selling expert advisors I program as I mostly use metatrader 4 programming as a way to learn more about the forex market and the ways to be profitable in it.

However, I have noticed that many people out there who do not know how to program may have some interesting ideas to create automated trading systems which they have not developed due to the lack of a programmer, money, etc. This is why I am offering this post as a way for people to post their ideas (so that I can program those that I consider most likely).

Please beware that there are certain prerequisites about any system :

- Must have been forward tested manually for at least 2 months, it does not matter if it wasn't tested 24/7, I just want to know that there are some results.
- Must not be based on Martingale, Hedges or Grids (these do not work, I promise)
- Must not be a scalping system. I am not interested in programming this type of systems as I know that they don't work universally and that most of them cannot be backtested accurately and are very sensitive to broker data, spread changes, slippage, etc.
- Systems with risk to reward ratios over 2:1. This type of systems have a much harder time being profitable than systems with better risk to reward ratios.

If your system meets the above criteria then you should also provide :

- Clear entry rules
- Clear exit rules (particularly important)
- Other important rules for the system
- Profit on your manual trading period and draw downs experienced

It is important that you explain your system in a crystal clear way so that it can be programmed accurately. If you would like to learn about more expert advisors, both commercial and free I have reviewed please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed the article !

No comments:

Daniel Fernandez's Expert Author Email Alerts
Sign up to receive email alerts of Daniel Fernandez’s latest articles from EzineArticles.com!

Email Address: