MQL5 Programming Articles

Studies related to search for the fractal behavior of financial data suggest that behind the seemingly chaotic behavior of economic time series there are hidden stable mechanisms of participants' collective behavior. These mechanisms can lead to the emergence of price dynamics on the exchange, which can define and describe specific properties of price series. When applied to trading, one could benefit from the indicators which can efficiently and reliably estimate the fractal parameters in the scale and time frame, which are relevant in practice.

The problem of calculation of the total position volume of the specified symbol and magic number is considered in this article. The proposed method requests only the minimum necessary part of the history of deals, finds the closest time when the total position was equal to zero, and performs the calculations with the recent deals. Working with global variables of the client terminal is also considered.

The article offers a simple emulator of the MetaTrader 5 trading environment for MetaTrader 4. The emulator implements migration and adjustment of trade classes of the Standard Library. As a result, Expert Advisors generated in the MetaTrader 5 Wizard can be compiled and executed in MetaTrader 4 without changes.

In previous articles, we used stochastic gradient descent to train a neural network using the same learning rate for all neurons within the network. In this article, I propose to look towards adaptive learning methods which enable changing of the learning rate for each neuron. We will also consider the pros and cons of this approach.

The article describes an example of creating a class for working with the trade server return codes and all the errors that occur during the MQL-program run. Read the article, and you will learn how to work with classes and objects in MQL5. At the same time, this is a convenient tool for handling errors; and you can further change this tool according to your specific needs.

Since the publication of the previous article in the series, Easy And Fast library has received some new features. The library structure and code have been partially optimized slightly reducing CPU load. Some recurring methods in many control classes have been moved to the CElement base class.

Today it is difficult to find a computer that does not have an installed web-browser. For a long time browsers have been evolving and improving. This article discusses the simple and safe way to create of charts and diagrams, based on the the information, obtained from MetaTrader 5 client terminal for displaying them in the browser.

This is the last article within the series devoted to the Reversing trading strategy. Here we will try to solve the problem, which caused the testing results instability in previous articles. We will also develop and test our own algorithm for manual trading in any market using the reversing strategy.

The article is a follow-up of the previous publication "Developing graphical interfaces for Expert Advisors and indicators based on .Net Framework and C#". It introduces new graphical elements for creating graphical interfaces.

In this article, we will have a look at the handler of invalid trading order parameters and improve the trading event class. Now all trading events (both single ones and the ones occurred simultaneously within one tick) will be defined in programs correctly.

It's not always all about writing the code that leads to effective coding. There are certain habits that I have found in my experience that lead to effective coding. We are going to discuss some of them in detail in this article. This is a must-read article for every programmer who wants to improve their ability to write complex algorithms with less hassle.

This is the next article within the series, in which I show how I created a convenient library for manual application of chart graphics by utilizing keyboard shortcuts. The tools used include straight lines and their combinations. In this part, we will view how the drawing tools are applied using the functions described in the first part. The library can be connected to any Expert Advisor or indicator which will greatly simplify the charting tasks. This solution DOES NOT use external dlls, while all the commands are implemented using built-in MQL tools.

In this article, we will continue our series about designing a trading system using the most popular indicators and we will talk about the average directional index (ADX) indicator. We will learn this indicator in detail to understand it well and we will learn how we to use it through a simple strategy. By learning something deeply we can get more insights and we can use it better.

The ring buffer is the simplest and the most efficient way to arrange data when performing calculations in a sliding window. The article describes the algorithm and shows how it simplifies calculations in a sliding window and makes them more efficient.

In the previous article, we analyzed 14 patterns selected from a large variety of existing candlestick formations. It is impossible to analyze all the patterns one by one, therefore another solution was found. The new system searches and tests new candlestick patterns based on known candlestick types.

I continue filling the algorithm with the minimum necessary functionality and testing the results. The profitability is quite low but the articles demonstrate the model of the fully automated profitable trading on completely different instruments traded on fundamentally different markets.

We continue studying the world of neural networks. In this article, we will consider another type of neural networks, recurrent networks. This type is proposed for use with time series, which are represented in the MetaTrader 5 trading platform by price charts.

This article will consider new controls: Text Edit box, Picture Slider, as well as additional simple controls: Text label and Picture. The library continues to grow, and in addition to introduction of new controls, the previously created ones are also being improved.

The article provides an overview of the terminal's capabilities for creating and working with custom symbols, offers options for simulating a trading history using custom symbols, trend and various chart patterns.

In the fifth article related to the creation of a trading signal monitor, we will consider composite signals and will implement the necessary functionality. In earlier versions, we used simple signals, such as RSI, WPR and CCI, and we also introduced the possibility to use custom indicators.

Trading is always about making decisions in the face of uncertainty. This means that the results of the decisions are not quite obvious at the time these decisions are made. This entails the importance of theoretical approaches to the construction of mathematical models allowing us to describe such cases in meaningful manner.

In this article we will continue dealing with the OLAP technology applied to trading. We will expand the functionality presented in the first two articles. This time we will consider the operational analysis of quotes. We will put forward and test the hypotheses on trading strategies based on aggregated historical data. The article presents Expert Advisors for studying bar patterns and adaptive trading.

In the first part, we started creating a large cross-platform library simplifying the development of programs for MetaTrader 5 and MetaTrader 4 platforms. We created the COrder abstract object which is a base object for storing data on history orders and deals, as well as on market orders and positions. Now we will develop all the necessary objects for storing account history data in collections.

This article starts a new series about the creation of the DoEasy library for easy and fast program development. In the current article, we will implement the library functionality for accessing and working with symbol timeseries data. We are going to create the Bar object storing the main and extended timeseries bar data, and place bar objects to the timeseries list for convenient search and sorting of the objects.

In this article, I will create the collection class of Depths of Market of all symbols and start developing the functionality for working with the MQL5.com Signals service by creating the signal object class.

In this article, we will further develop the idea of drawing graphical objects on charts using keyboard shortcuts. New tools have been added to the library, including a straight line plotted through arbitrary vertices, and a set of rectangles that enable the evaluation of the reversal time and level. Also, the article shows the possibility to optimize code for improved performance. The implementation example has been rewritten, allowing the use of Shortcuts alongside other trading programs. Required code knowledge level: slightly higher than a beginner.

In my previous article, I mentioned the importance of identifying the trend which is the direction of prices. In this article I will share one of the most important concepts and indicators which is the Momentum indicator. I will share how to design a trading system based on this Momentum indicator.

This article describes MQL5-RPC framework that enables Remote Procedure Calls from MQL5. It starts with XML-RPC basics, MQL5 implementation and follows with two real usage examples. First example is using external web service and the second one is a client to simple XML-RPC ATC 2011 Analyzer service. If you are interested on how to implement and analyze different statistics from ATC 2011 in real time, this article is just for you.

This article discusses how custom stop levels can be set up in a cross-platform expert advisor. It also discusses a closely-related method by which the evolution of a stop level over time can be defined.

Recently MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 user received an opportunity to become a Signals Provider and earn additional profit. Now, you can display your trading success on your web site, blog or social network page using the new widgets. The benefits of using widgets are obvious: they increase the Signals Providers' popularity, establish their reputation as successful traders, as well as attract new Subscribers. All traders placing widgets on other web sites can enjoy these benefits.

This article details a method by which cross-platform expert advisors can be developed faster and easier. The proposed method consolidates the features shared by both versions into a single class, and splits the implementation on derived classes for incompatible features.

This article continues the series of publications on a universal Expert Advisor model. This part describes in detail the original event model based on centralized data processing, and considers the structure of the CStrategy base class of the engine.

We continue the series of articles on MQL5 programming. This time we will see how to get results of each optimization pass right during the Expert Advisor parameter optimization. The implementation will be done so as to ensure that if the conditions specified in the external parameters are met, the corresponding pass values will be written to a file. In addition to test values, we will also save the parameters that brought about such results.

In continuation of our work on the Expert Advisor from the previous article of the series called "MQL5 Cookbook: Analyzing Position Properties in the MetaTrader 5 Strategy Tester", we will enhance it with a whole lot of useful functions, as well as improve and optimize the existing ones. The Expert Advisor will this time have external parameters that can be optimized in the MetaTrader 5 Strategy Tester and will in some ways resemble a simple trading system.

This article shows you how to build an Object-Oriented Expert Advisor from scratch, from conceiving a theoretical trading idea to programming a MQL5 EA that makes that idea real in the empirical world. Learning by doing is IMHO a solid approach to succeed, so I am showing a practical example in order for you to see how you can order your ideas to finally code your Forex robots. My goal is also to invite you to adhere the OO principles.