MQL4 and MQL5 Programming Articles

This article concludes the series devoted to trading currency pair baskets. Here we test the remaining pattern and discuss applying the entire method in real trading. Market entries and exits, searching for patterns and analyzing them, complex use of combined indicators are considered.

This article provides a small example demonstrating the implementation of an Expert Advisor whose parameters can be controlled from the user panel. When changing the parameters "on the fly", the Expert Advisor writes the values obtained from the info panel to a file to further read them from the file and display accordingly on the panel. This article may be relevant to those who trade manually or in semi-automatic mode.

The article deals with programmed tracking of events in the МetaТrader 4 Client Terminal, such as opening/closing/modifying orders, and is targeted at a user who has basic skills in working with the terminal and in programming in MQL 4.

In this article we are going to show how to explore the Standard Library of Trading Strategy Classes and how to add Custom Strategies and Filters/Signals using the Patterns-and-Models logic of the MQL5 Wizard. In the end you will be able easily add your own strategies using MetaTrader 5 standard indicators, and MQL5 Wizard will create a clean and powerful code and fully functional Expert Advisor.

We continue to build ensembles. This time, the bagging ensemble created earlier will be supplemented with a trainable combiner — a deep neural network. One neural network combines the 7 best ensemble outputs after pruning. The second one takes all 500 outputs of the ensemble as input, prunes and combines them. The neural networks will be built using the keras/TensorFlow package for Python. The features of the package will be briefly considered. Testing will be performed and the classification quality of bagging and stacking ensembles will be compared.

With the introduction of hedging, MetaTrader 5 provides an excellent opportunity to trade several Expert Advisors on a single trading account simultaneously. When one strategy is profitable, while the second one is loss-making, the profit graph may hang around zero. In this case, it is useful to build the Balance and Equity graphs for each trading strategy separately.

In MQL5 you can write an indicator both from a scratch and on the basis of another already existing indicator, in-built in the client terminal or a custom one. And here you also have two ways - to improve an indicator by adding new calculations and graphical styles to it , or to use an indicator in-built in the client terminal or a custom one via the iCustom() or IndicatorCreate() functions.

Most Java coders will be familiar with the auto-generated documentation that can be created with JavaDocs. The idea is to add comments into the code in a semi-structured way that can then be extracted into an easy to navigate help file. The C++ world also has a number of documentation auto-generators, with Microsoft's SandCastle and Doxygen being two leaders. The article describes the use of Doxygen to create HTML help file from structured comments in MQL5 code. The experiment worked very well and I believe the help documentation that Doxygen produces from MQL5 code will add a great deal of value.

The article describes the process of developing and implementing a class for sending signals based on the moving channels. Each of the signal version is followed by a trading strategy with testing results. Classes of the Standard Library are used for creating derived classes.

The article contains descriptions of the new features available in the updated MQL5 Wizard. The modified architecture of signals allow creating trading robots based on the combination of various market patterns. The example contained in the article explains the procedure of interactive creation of an Expert Advisor.

An example of hedge Expert Advisor is just presented in this article. The author will choose its very own favorite hedge pair that is EURJPY & GBPJPY. It always moves the same way, easier to set the hedging order type.

In the following article I am describing a process of implementing Moving Mini-Max indicator based on a paper by Z.G.Silagadze 'Moving Mini-max: a new indicator for technical analysis'. The idea of the indicator is based on simulation of quantum tunneling phenomena, proposed by G. Gamov in the theory of alpha decay.

This is the continuation of Another MQL5 OOP class article which showed you how to build a simple OO EA from scratch and gave you some tips on object-oriented programming. Today I am showing you the technical basics needed to develop an EA able to trade the news. My goal is to keep on giving you ideas about OOP and also cover a new topic in this series of articles, working with the file system.

This article allows to find out more about features and limits of Strategy Tester in MetaTrader 4.

The new version of the MetaTrader 4 terminal features the updated structure of user data storage. In earlier versions all programs, templates, profiles etc. were stored directly in terminal installation folder. Now all necessary data required for a particular user are stored in a separate directory called data folder. Read the article to find answers to frequently asked questions.

In this article, we will create a script that gets all position properties and displays them to the user in a dialog box. Upon running the script, you will be able to select out of two modes available in the drop-down list in the external parameters: to either view position properties only on the current symbol or to view position properties on all symbols.

This article is a continuation of the previous publication related to the creation of a graphical interface for optimization management. The article considers the logic of the add-on. A wrapper for the MetaTrader 5 terminal will be created: it will enable the running of the add-on as a managed process via C#. In addition, operation with configuration files and setup files is considered in this article. The application logic is divided into two parts: the first one describes the methods called after pressing a particular key, while the second part covers optimization launch and management.

Overbought/oversold zones characterize a certain state of the market, differentiating through weaker changes in the prices of securities. This adverse change in the synamics is pronounced most at the final stage in the development of trends of any scales. Since the profit value in trading depends directly on the capability of covering as large trend amplitude as possible, the accuracy of detecting such zones is a key task in trading with any securities whatsoever.

This article discusses the implementation of money management method for a cross-platform expert advisor. The money management classes are responsible for the calculation of the lot size to be used for the next trade to be entered by the expert advisor.

In this article, I offer my set of trading functions in the form of a ready-made EA. This method allows getting multiple trading strategies by simply adding indicators and changing inputs.

The article describes the development and implementation of a class for sending signals based on pivots — reversal levels. This class is used to form a strategy applying the Standard Library. Improving the pivot strategy by adding filters is considered.

In this article we will consider in detail the martingale system. We will review whether this system can be applied in trading and how to use it in order to minimize risks. The main disadvantage of this simple system is the probability of losing the entire deposit. This fact must be taken into account, if you decide to trade using the martingale technique.

Automate the collection of interest rate data to improve the performance of an Expert Advisor.

Knowing the direction of the price movement is sufficient for getting positive results from trading operations. Some information on the possible direction of the price can be obtained from the Japanese candlesticks. This article deals with a few simple approaches to forecasting the direction of the Japanese candlesticks.

When developing trading algorithms, we often encounter a problem: how to determine where a trend/flat begins and ends? In this article, we try to create a universal indicator, in which we try to combine signals for different types of strategies. We will try to simplify the process of obtaining trade signals in an expert as much as possible. An example of combining several indicators in one will be given.

A Twitter client implemented as MQL class to allow you to send tweets with photos. All you need is to include a single self contained include file and off you go to tweet all your wonderful charts and signals.

This article considers the questions of information coding, using the magic-identification, as well as the division, assembly, and synchronization of automatic trading of different Expert Advisors. This article will be interesting to beginners, as well as to more experienced traders, because it tackles the question of virtual positions, which can be useful in the implementation of complex systems of synchronization of Expert Advisors and various strategies.

The article describes the rules of the trading system by Bill Williams, the procedure of application for a developed MQL5 module to search and mark patterns of this system on the chart, automated trading with found patterns, and also presents the results of testing on various trading instruments.

Starting with this article, we are going to develop a functionality allowing users to trade using pending requests under certain conditions, for example, when reaching a certain time limit, exceeding a specified profit or closing a position by stop loss.

The article describes the application of text files for storing dynamic objects, arrays and other variables used as properties of Expert Advisors, indicators and scripts. The files serve as a convenient addition to the functionality of standard tools offered by MQL languages.

In this article, we will learn how to create Expert Advisors (EAs) working both in MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5. To do this, we are going to develop an EA constructing order grids. Griders are EAs that place several limit orders above the current price and the same number of limit orders below it simultaneously.

Creation of Custom Indicators in the MetaTrader trading system has a number of features.

Have you ever wondered how quickly your order is delivered to the exchange, how fast it is executed, and how much time your terminal needs in order to receive the operation result? We have prepared a comparison of trading operation execution speed, because no one has ever measured these values using applications in MQL5 and QLUA.

Following up our previous article on the currency baskets trading principles, here we are going to analyze the patterns traders can detect. We will also consider the advantages and the drawbacks of each pattern and provide some recommendations on their use. The indicators based on Williams' oscillator will be used as analysis tools.

In the upcoming series of articles, I will demonstrate the development of self-adapting algorithms considering most market factors, as well as show how to systematize these situations, describe them in logic and take them into account in your trading activity. I will start with a very simple algorithm that will gradually acquire theory and evolve into a very complex project.

In this article, we consider yet another custom trading strategy optimization criterion based on the balance graph analysis. The linear regression is calculated using the function from the ALGLIB library.

When writing an indicator that uses the short form of the OnCalculate() function call, you might miss the fact that an indicator can be calculated not only by price data, but also by data of some other indicator (no matter whether it is a built-in or custom one). Do you want to improve an indicator for its correct application to the other indicator's data? In this article we'll review all the steps required for such modification.

In this article, we will discuss how to develop a trading robot with minimum programming. Of course, MetaTrader 5 provides a high level of control over trading positions. However, using only the manual ability to place orders can be quite difficult and risky for less experienced users.

This article will describe an implementation of a simple approach suitable for a multi-currency Expert Advisor. This means that you will be able to set up the Expert Advisor for testing/trading under identical conditions but with different parameters for each symbol. As an example, we will create a pattern for two symbols but in such a way so as to be able to add additional symbols, if necessary, by making small changes to the code.