MQL5 Programming Articles
Study the MQL5 language for programming trading strategies in numerous published articles mostly written by you - the community members. The articles are grouped into categories to help you quicker find answers to any questions related to programming: Integration, Tester, Trading Strategies, etc.
Follow our new publications and discuss them on the Forum!
Add a new article
You are missing trading opportunities:
- Free trading apps
- Over 8,000 signals for copying
- Economic news for exploring financial markets
Registration
Log in
You agree to website policy and terms of use
If you do not have an account, please register
Other classes in DoEasy library (Part 71): Chart object collection events
In this article, I will create the functionality for tracking some chart object events — adding/removing symbol charts and chart subwindows, as well as adding/removing/changing indicators in chart windows.
Better Programmer (Part 04): How to become a faster developer
Every developer wants to be able to write code faster, and being able to code faster and effective is not some kind of special ability that only a few people are born with. It's a skill that can be learned by every coder, regardless of years of experience on the keyboard.
MQL5 Wizard techniques you should know (Part 06): Fourier Transform
The Fourier transform introduced by Joseph Fourier is a means of deconstructing complex data wave points into simple constituent waves. This feature could be resourceful to traders and this article takes a look at that.
How to choose an Expert Advisor: Twenty strong criteria to reject a trading bot
This article tries to answer the question: how can we choose the right expert advisors? Which are the best for our portfolio, and how can we filter the large trading bots list available on the market? This article will present twenty clear and strong criteria to reject an expert advisor. Each criterion will be presented and well explained to help you make a more sustained decision and build a more profitable expert advisor collection for your profits.
Tales of Trading Robots: Is Less More?
Two years ago in "The Last Crusade" we reviewed quite an interesting yet currently not widely used method for displaying market information - point and figure charts. Now I suggest you try to write a trading robot based on the patterns detected on the point and figure chart.
Connection of Expert Advisor with ICQ in MQL5
This article describes the method of information exchange between the Expert Advisor and ICQ users, several examples are presented. The provided material will be interesting for those, who wish to receive trading information remotely from a client terminal, through an ICQ client in their mobile phone or PDA.
MQL5 Cookbook: Reducing the Effect of Overfitting and Handling the Lack of Quotes
Whatever trading strategy you use, there will always be a question of what parameters to choose to ensure future profits. This article gives an example of an Expert Advisor with a possibility to optimize multiple symbol parameters at the same time. This method is intended to reduce the effect of overfitting parameters and handle situations where data from a single symbol are not enough for the study.
Using cryptography with external applications
In this article, we consider encryption/decryption of objects in MetaTrader and in external applications. Our purpose is to determine the conditions under which the same results will be obtained with the same initial data.
Neural networks made easy (Part 14): Data clustering
It has been more than a year since I published my last article. This is quite a lot time to revise ideas and to develop new approaches. In the new article, I would like to divert from the previously used supervised learning method. This time we will dip into unsupervised learning algorithms. In particular, we will consider one of the clustering algorithms—k-means.
Deep Learning Forecast and ordering with Python and MetaTrader5 python package and ONNX model file
The project involves using Python for deep learning-based forecasting in financial markets. We will explore the intricacies of testing the model's performance using key metrics such as Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Mean Squared Error (MSE), and R-squared (R2) and we will learn how to wrap everything into an executable. We will also make a ONNX model file with its EA.
Learn how to design a trading system by DeMarker
Here is a new article in our series about how to design a trading system by the most popular technical indicators. In this article, we will present how to create a trading system by the DeMarker indicator.
Learn how to deal with date and time in MQL5
A new article about a new important topic which is dealing with date and time. As traders or programmers of trading tools, it is very crucial to understand how to deal with these two aspects date and time very well and effectively. So, I will share some important information about how we can deal with date and time to create effective trading tools smoothly and simply without any complicity as much as I can.
Working with GSM Modem from an MQL5 Expert Advisor
There is currently a fair number of means for a comfortable remote monitoring of a trading account: mobile terminals, push notifications, working with ICQ. But it all requires Internet connection. This article describes the process of creating an Expert Advisor that will allow you to stay in touch with your trading terminal even when mobile Internet is not available, through calls and text messaging.
Cycle analysis using the Goertzel algorithm
In this article we present code utilities that implement the goertzel algorithm in Mql5 and explore two ways in which the technique can be used in the analysis of price quotes for possible strategy development.
Learn how to design a trading system by Accumulation/Distribution (AD)
Welcome to the new article from our series about learning how to design trading systems based on the most popular technical indicators. In this article, we will learn about a new technical indicator called Accumulation/Distribution indicator and find out how to design an MQL5 trading system based on simple AD trading strategies.
Visual evaluation of optimization results
In this article, we will consider how to build graphs of all optimization passes and to select the optimal custom criterion. We will also see how to create a desired solution with little MQL5 knowledge, using the articles published on the website and forum comments.
Graphics in DoEasy library (Part 91): Standard graphical object events. Object name change history
In this article, I will refine the basic functionality for providing control over graphical object events from a library-based program. I will start from implementing the functionality for storing the graphical object change history using the "Object name" property as an example.
Developing a trading Expert Advisor from scratch (Part 15): Accessing data on the web (I)
How to access online data via MetaTrader 5? There are a lot of websites and places on the web, featuring a huge amount information. What you need to know is where to look and how best to use this information.
Continuous futures contracts in MetaTrader 5
A short life span of futures contracts complicates their technical analysis. It is difficult to technically analyze short charts. For example, number of bars on the day chart of the UX-9.13 Ukrainian Stock index future is more than 100. Therefore, trader creates synthetic long futures contracts. This article explains how to splice futures contracts with different dates in the MetaTrader 5 terminal.
Calculating mathematical expressions (Part 2). Pratt and shunting yard parsers
In this article, we consider the principles of mathematical expression parsing and evaluation using parsers based on operator precedence. We will implement Pratt and shunting-yard parser, byte-code generation and calculations by this code, as well as view how to use indicators as functions in expressions and how to set up trading signals in Expert Advisors based on these indicators.
Other classes in DoEasy library (Part 69): Chart object collection class
With this article, I start the development of the chart object collection class. The class will store the collection list of chart objects with their subwindows and indicators providing the ability to work with any selected charts and their subwindows or with a list of several charts at once.
Arranging a mailing campaign by means of Google services
A trader may want to arrange a mailing campaign to maintain business relationships with other traders, subscribers, clients or friends. Besides, there may be a necessity to send screenshotas, logs or reports. These may not be the most frequently arising tasks but having such a feature is clearly an advantage. The article deals with using several Google services simultaneously, developing an appropriate assembly on C# and integrating it with MQL tools.
Data Science and Machine Learning (Part 05): Decision Trees
Decision trees imitate the way humans think to classify data. Let's see how to build trees and use them to classify and predict some data. The main goal of the decision trees algorithm is to separate the data with impurity and into pure or close to nodes.
Developing a trading Expert Advisor from scratch (Part 12): Times and Trade (I)
Today we will create Times & Trade with fast interpretation to read the order flow. It is the first part in which we will build the system. In the next article, we will complete the system with the missing information. To implement this new functionality, we will need to add several new things to the code of our Expert Advisor.
Developing a trading Expert Advisor from scratch (Part 16): Accessing data on the web (II)
Knowing how to input data from the Web into an Expert Advisor is not so obvious. It is not so easy to do without understanding all the possibilities offered by MetaTrader 5.
DoEasy. Controls (Part 15): TabControl WinForms object — several rows of tab headers, tab handling methods
In this article, I will continue working on the TabControl WinForm object — I will create a tab field object class, make it possible to arrange tab headers in several rows and add methods for handling object tabs.
Metamodels in machine learning and trading: Original timing of trading orders
Metamodels in machine learning: Auto creation of trading systems with little or no human intervention — The model decides when and how to trade on its own.
Prices in DoEasy library (part 61): Collection of symbol tick series
Since a program may use different symbols in its work, a separate list should be created for each of them. In this article, I will combine such lists into a tick data collection. In fact, this will be a regular list based on the class of dynamic array of pointers to instances of CObject class and its descendants of the Standard library.
Interview with Leonid Velichkovsky: "The Biggest Myth about Neural Networks is Super-Profitability" (ATC 2010)
The hero of our interview Leonid Velichkovski (LeoV) has already participated in Automated Trading Championships. In 2008, his multicurrency neural network was like a bright flash in the sky, earning $110,000 in a certain moment, but eventually fell victim to its own aggressive money management. Two years ago, in his interview Leonid share his own trading experience and told us about the features of his Expert Advisor. On the eve of the ATC 2010, Leonid talks about the most common myths and misconceptions associated with neural networks.
Creating Graphical Panels Became Easy in MQL5
In this article, we will provide a simple and easy guide to anyone who needs to create one of the most valuable and helpful tools in trading which is the graphical panel to simplify and ease doing tasks around trading which helps to save time and focus more on your trading process itself without any distractions.
DirectX Tutorial (Part I): Drawing the first triangle
It is an introductory article on DirectX, which describes specifics of operation with the API. It should help to understand the order in which its components are initialized. The article contains an example of how to write an MQL5 script which renders a triangle using DirectX.
Creating an EA that works automatically (Part 14): Automation (VI)
In this article, we will put into practice all the knowledge from this series. We will finally build a 100% automated and functional system. But before that, we still have to learn one last detail.
How to create a custom Donchian Channel indicator using MQL5
There are many technical tools that can be used to visualize a channel surrounding prices, One of these tools is the Donchian Channel indicator. In this article, we will learn how to create the Donchian Channel indicator and how we can trade it as a custom indicator using EA.
MQL5 — You too can become a master of this language
This article will be a kind of interview with myself, in which I will tell you how I took my first steps in the MQL5 language. I will show you how you can become a great MQL5 programmer. I will explain the necessary bases for you to achieve this feat. The only prerequisite is a willingness to learn.
MQL5 Wizard techniques you should know (Part 01): Regression Analysis
Todays trader is a philomath who is almost always (either consciously or not...) looking up new ideas, trying them out, choosing to modify them or discard them; an exploratory process that should cost a fair amount of diligence. This clearly places a premium on the trader's time and the need to avoid mistakes. These series of articles will proposition that the MQL5 wizard should be a mainstay for traders. Why? Because not only does the trader save time by assembling his new ideas with the MQL5 wizard, and greatly reduce mistakes from duplicate coding; he is ultimately set-up to channel his energy on the few critical areas of his trading philosophy.
Developing a trading Expert Advisor from scratch (Part 29): The talking platform
In this article, we will learn how to make the MetaTrader 5 platform talk. What if we make the EA more fun? Financial market trading is often too boring and monotonous, but we can make this job less tiring. Please note that this project can be dangerous for those who experience problems such as addiction. However, in a general case, it just makes things less boring.
Interview with Anton Nel (ATC 2012)
Today we talk to Anton Nel (ROMAN5) from South Africa, a professional developer of automated trading systems. Obviously, his Expert Advisor just could not go unnoticed. Breaking into the top ten from the very start of the Championship, it has been holding the first place for more than a week.
Timeseries in DoEasy library (part 44): Collection class of indicator buffer objects
The article deals with creating a collection class of indicator buffer objects. I am going to test the ability to create and work with any number of buffers for indicators (the maximum number of buffers that can be created in MQL indicators is 512).
Non-linear indicators
In this article, I will make an attempt to consider some ways of building non-linear indicators and their use in trading. There are quite a few indicators in the MetaTrader trading platform that use non-linear approaches.
Graphics in DoEasy library (Part 82): Library objects refactoring and collection of graphical objects
In this article, I will improve all library objects by assigning a unique type to each object and continue the development of the library graphical objects collection class.