MQL5 Programming Articles

ZigZag is one of the most popular indicators among the MetaTrader 5 users. The article analyzes the possibilities for creating various versions of the ZigZag. The result is a universal indicator with ample opportunities to extend its functionality, which is useful in the development of trading experts and other indicators.

With new version of MQL programming language available not only the approach of dealing with indicators have changed, but there are also new ways of how to create indicators. Furthermore, you have additional flexibility working with indicator's buffers - now you can specify the desired direction of indexing and get exactly as many indicator's values as you want. This article explains the basic methods of calling indicators and retrieving data from the indicator's buffers.

A logically complete market theory that would cover all types and varieties of markets for goods and services, micro and macro markets like Forex, hasn't been available until now. This article covers the essence of a new market theory based on the profit analysis, reveals patterns of the current price change and the principle of the mechanism operation that allows the price to find its most optimal value by forming a chain of virtual prices that can develop the controlling influence on the actual price. Mechanisms of formation and change of market trends are also identified here.

In order to obtain values of a built-in or custom indicator in an Expert Advisor, first its handle should be created using the corresponding function. Examples in the article show how to use this or that technical indicator while creating your own programs. The article describes indicators that are built n the MQL5 language. It is intended for those who don't have much experience in the development of trading strategies and offers simple and clear ways of working with indicators using the offered library of functions.

This article serves to familiarize the reader with the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) method. It is the fundamental part of the Hilbert–Huang transform and is intended for analyzing data from nonstationary and nonlinear processes. This article also features a possible software implementation of this method along with a brief consideration of its peculiarities and gives some simple examples of its use.

Now not so many developers remember how to write a simple DLL, and what are special features of different system binding. Using several examples, I will try to show the entire process of the simple DLL's creation in 10 minutes, as well as to discuss some technical details of our binding implementation. I will show the step-by-step process of DLL creation in Visual Studio with examples of exchanging different types of variables (numbers, arrays, strings, etc.). Besides I will explain how to protect your client terminal from crashes in custom DLLs.

The article presents the indicators, described in the book by William Blau "Momentum, Direction, and Divergence". William Blau's approach allows us to promptly and accurately approximate the fluctuations of the price curve, to determine the trend of the price movements and the turning points, and eliminate the price noise. Meanwhile, we are also able to detect the overbought/oversold states of the market, and signals, indicating the end of a trend and reversal of the price movement.

The article describes the development of tools (indicator and Expert Advisor) for analyzing the '80-20' trading strategy. The trading strategy rules are taken from the work "Street Smarts. High Probability Short-Term Trading Strategies" by Linda Raschke and Laurence Connors. We are going to formalize the strategy rules using the MQL5 language and test the strategy-based indicator and EA on the recent market history.

In this article I presented different methods of interaction between MQL5 code and managed C# code. I also provided several examples on how to marshal MQL5 structures against C# and how to invoke exported DLL functions in MQL5 scripts. I believe that the provided examples may serve as a basis for future research in writing DLLs in managed code. This article also open doors for MetaTrader to use many libraries that are already implemented in C#.

Any new subject seems complicated and hard-to-learn for a newbie. Subjects that we know seem very simple and clear to us. But we simply do not remember, that everyone has to study something from scratch, and even our native language. The same is with the MQL5 programming language that offers wide possibilities of developing one's own trading strategies - you can start learning it from basic notions and simplest examples. Interaction of a technical indicator with the MetaTrader 5 client terminal is consider in this article on the example of the simple custom indicator SMA.

The calculator of signals operates directly from the MetaTrader 5 terminal, which is a serious advantage, since the terminal provides a preliminary selection and sorts out signals. This way, users can see in the terminal only the signals that ensure a maximum compatibility with their trading accounts.

The article examines the possibility of creating an advanced ZigZag indicator. The idea of identifying nodes is based on the use of the Envelopes indicator. We assume that we can find a certain combination of input parameters for a series of Envelopes, whereby all ZigZag nodes lie within the confines of the Envelopes bands. Consequently, we can try to predict the coordinates of the new node.

The article dwells on the development of an application for selecting the best optimization passes using several possible options. The application is able to sort out the optimization results by a variety of factors. Optimization passes are always written to a database, therefore you can always select new robot parameters without re-optimization. Besides, you are able to see all optimization passes on a single chart, calculate parametric VaR ratios and build the graph of the normal distribution of passes and trading results of a certain ratio set. Besides, the graphs of some calculated ratios are built dynamically beginning with the optimization start (or from a selected date to another selected date).

MetaTrader 5 allows us to simulate automatic trading, within an embedded strategy tester, by using Expert Advisors and the MQL5 language. This type of simulation is called testing of Expert Advisors, and can be implemented using multithreaded optimization, as well as simultaneously on a number of instruments. In order to provide a thorough testing, a generation of ticks based on the available minute history, needs to be performed. This article provides a detailed description of the algorithm, by which the ticks are generated for the historical testing in the MetaTrader 5 client terminal.

The article provides an example of how to implement an indicator for drawing support and resistance lines based on formalized conditions. In addition to having a ready-to-use indicator, you will see how simple the indicator creation process is. You will also learn how to formulate conditions for drawing any desired line by changing the indicator code.

The purpose of this article is to create the most simple trading strategy that implements the "All or Nothing" gaming principle. We don't want to create a profitable Expert Advisor - the goal is to increase the initial deposit several times with the highest possible probability. Is it possible to hit the jackpot on ForEx or lose everything without knowing anything about technical analysis and without using any indicators?

It has been over a year since MQL5 started providing native support for OpenCL. However not many users have seen the true value of using parallel computing in their Expert Advisors, indicators or scripts. This article serves to help you install and set up OpenCL on your computer so that you can try to use this technology in the MetaTrader 5 trading terminal.

The article provides a brief overview of ten trend following strategies, as well as their testing results and comparative analysis. Based on the obtained results, we draw a general conclusion about the appropriateness, advantages and disadvantages of trend following trading.

Price trends form price channels that can be observed on financial symbol charts. The breakout of the current channel is one of the strong trend reversal signals. In this article, I suggest a way to automate the process of finding such signals and see if the channel breakout pattern can be used for creating a trading strategy.

This article deals with seven types of moving averages (MA) and a trading strategy to work with them. We also test and compare various MAs at a single trading strategy and evaluate the efficiency of each moving average compared to others.

Members of the official MetaTrader Freelance service have completed more than 50,000 orders as at October 2018. This is the world's largest Freelance site for MQL programmers: more than a thousand developers, dozens of new orders daily and 7 languages localization.

The article describes an example of Renko charting and its implementation in MQL5 as an indicator. Modifications of this indicator distinguish it from a classic chart. It can be constructed both in the indicator window and on the main chart. Moreover, there is the ZigZag indicator. You can find a few examples of the chart implementation.

This article covers the main principles set fourth in evolutionary algorithms, their variety and features. We will conduct an experiment with a simple Expert Advisor used as an example to show how our trading system benefits from optimization. We will consider software programs that implement genetic, evolutionary and other types of optimization, and provide examples of application when optimizing a predictor set and parameters of the trading system.

Everyone who uses trading robots or signal subscriptions sooner or later recognizes the need to rent a reliable 24/7 hosting server for their trading platform. We recommend using MetaTrader VPS for several reasons. You can conveniently pay and manage the subscription through your MQL5.community account.

Fuzzy logic expands our boundaries of mathematical logic and set theory. This article reveals the basic principles of fuzzy logic as well as describes two fuzzy inference systems using Mamdani-type and Sugeno-type models. The examples provided will describe implementation of fuzzy models based on these two systems using the FuzzyNet library for MQL5.

The largest store of ready-made applications for algo-trading now features 13,970 products. This includes 4,800 robots, 6,500 indicators, 2,400 utilities and other solutions. Almost half of the applications (6,000) are available for rent. Also, a quarter of the total number of products (3,800) can be downloaded for free.

Is it possible to develop an Expert Advisor able to optimize position open and close conditions at regular intervals according to the code commands? What happens if we implement a neural network (multilayer perceptron) in the form of a module to analyze history and provide strategy? We can make the EA optimize a neural network monthly (weekly, daily or hourly) and continue its work afterwards. Thus, we can develop a self-optimizing EA.

The article deals with the concept of night trading, as well as trading strategies and their implementation in MQL5. We perform tests and make appropriate conclusions.

This article is the beginning of another series concerning development of graphical interfaces. Currently, there is not a single code library that would allow quick and easy creation of high quality graphical interfaces within MQL applications. By that, I mean the graphical interfaces that we are used to in familiar operating systems.

Subscribers often search for an appropriate signal by analyzing the total growth on the signal provider's account, which is not a bad idea. However, it is also important to analyze potential risks of a particular trading strategy. In this article we will show a simple and efficient way to evaluate a Trading Signal based on its performance values.

In this article, I will share with you one of the most popular and commonly used indicators in the world of trading which is RSI. You will learn how to design a trading system using this indicator.

This article focuses on the object oriented approach to doing what we did in the article "Step-By-Step Guide to writing an Expert Advisor in MQL5 for Beginners" - creating a simple Expert Advisor. Most people think this is difficult, but I want to assure you that by the time you finish reading this article, you will be able to write your own Expert Advisor which is object oriented based.

The MQL5 program usability is determined by both its rich functionality and an elaborate graphical user interface. Visual perception is sometimes more important than fast and stable operation. Here is a step-by-step guide to creating display panels on the basis of the Standard Library classes on your own.

In this article, I would like to give an example of what a trader's program can be like as well as what results can be achieved in 9 months, having started to learn MQL5 from scratch. This example will also show how multi-functional and informative such a program can be for a trader while taking minimum space on the price chart. And we will be able to see just how colorful, bright and intuitively clear to the user trade information panels can get. As well as many other features...

The article features formalized rules of two trading strategies 'Turtle Soup' and 'Turtle Soup Plus One' from Street Smarts: High Probability Short-Term Trading Strategies by Linda Bradford Raschke and Laurence A. Connors. The strategies described in the book are quite popular. But it is important to understand that the authors have developed them based on the 15...20 year old market behavior.

How many cores do you have on your home computer? How many computers can you use to optimize a trading strategy? We show here how to use the MQL5 Cloud Network to accelerate calculations by receiving the computing power across the globe with the click of a mouse. The phrase "Time is money" becomes even more topical with each passing year, and we cannot afford to wait for important computations for tens of hours or even days.

The article discusses how to write your own class of trading signals with the implementation of signals on the crossing of the price and the moving average, and how to include it to the generator of trading strategies of the MQL5 Wizard, as well as describes the structure and format of the description of the generated class for the MQL5 Wizard.

The article is based on 'The Mathematics of Money Management' by Ralph Vince. It provides the description of empirical and parametric methods used for finding the optimal size of a trading lot. Also the article features implementation of trading modules for the MQL5 Wizard based on these methods.