Articles on the MQL5 programming and use of technical indicators

A few weeks ago we published the infographic on Freelance service. We also promised to reveal some statistics of the MetaTrader Market. Now, we invite you to examine the data we have gathered.

On the occasion of the MQL5 Freelance Service fourth birthday, we have prepared an info-graphic demonstrating the service results for the entire time of its existence. The figures speak for themselves: more than 10 000 orders worth about $600,000 in total have been executed to date, while 3 000 customers and 300 developers have already used the service.

Algorithmic trading becomes more popular and needed, which naturally led to a demand for exotic algorithms and unusual tasks. To some extent, such complex applications are available in the Code Base or in the Market. Although traders have simple access to those apps in a couple of clicks, these apps may not satisfy all needs in full. In this case, traders look for developers who can write a desired application in the MQL5 Freelance section and assign an order.

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.

In this article, we will consider the development of a multi-symbol indicator to analyze price divergence in a specified period of time. The core topics have been already discussed in the previous article on the programming of multi-currency indicators "MQL5 Cookbook: Developing a Multi-Symbol Volatility Indicator in MQL5". So this time we will dwell only on those new features and functions that have been changed dramatically. If you are new to the programming of multi-currency indicators, I recommend you to first read the previous article.

The article describes one of the approaches to determining a useful signal (trend) in stream data. Small filtering (smoothing) tests applied to market quotes demonstrate the potential for creating non-lagging digital filters (indicators) that are not redrawn on the last bars.

In this article, we will consider the development of a multi-symbol volatility indicator. The development of multi-symbol indicators may present some difficulties for novice MQL5 developers which this article helps to clarify. The major issues arising in the course of development of a multi-symbol indicator have to do with the synchronization of other symbols' data with respect to the current symbol, the lack of some indicator data and the identification of the beginning of 'true' bars of a given time frame. All of these issues will be closely considered in the article.

In this article, technical indicators are treated as digital filters. Operation principles and basic characteristics of digital filters are explained. Also, some practical ways of receiving the filter kernel in MetaTrader 5 terminal and integration with a ready-made spectrum analyzer proposed in the article "Building a Spectrum Analyzer" are considered. Pulse and spectrum characteristics of the typical digital filters are used as examples.

MQL5 Standard Library makes your life as a developer easier. Nevertheless, it does not implement all the needs of all developers in the world, so if you feel that you need some more custom stuff you can take a step further and extend. This article walks you through integrating MetaQuotes' Zig-Zag technical indicator into the Standard Library. We get inspired by MetaQuotes' design philosophy to achieve our goal.

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 describes the method of fast visual testing of trading ideas. The method is based on the combination of a price chart, a signal indicator and a balance calculation indicator. I would like to share my method of searching for trading ideas, as well as the method I use for fast testing of these ideas.

Support Vector Machines have long been used in fields such as bioinformatics and applied mathematics to assess complex data sets and extract useful patterns that can be used to classify data. This article looks at what a support vector machine is, how they work and why they can be so useful in extracting complex patterns. We then investigate how they can be applied to the market and potentially used to advise on trades. Using the Support Vector Machine Learning Tool, the article provides worked examples that allow readers to experiment with their own trading.

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.

A product from the MetaTrader Market can be purchased on the MQL5.com website or straight from the MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 trading platforms. Choose a desired product that suits your trading style, pay for it using your preferred payment method, and activate the product.

MQL5.community Market provides Expert Advisors developers with the already formed market consisting of thousands of potential customers. This is the best place for selling trading robots and technical indicators!

A proverbial wisdom often attributed to various famous people says: "He who makes no mistakes never makes anything." Unless you consider idleness itself a mistake, this statement is hard to argue with. But you can always analyze the past mistakes (your own and of others) to minimize the number of your future mistakes. We are going to attempt to review possible situations arising when executing jobs in the same-name service.

This article seeks to upgrade the indicator created earlier on and briefly deals with a method for estimating forecast confidence intervals using bootstrapping and quantiles. As a result, we will get the forecast indicator and scripts to be used for estimation of the forecast accuracy.

This article describes how object-oriented programming can be used for creating multi-timeframe and multi-currency panels for MetaTrader 5. The main goal is to build a universal panel, which can be used for displaying many different kinds of data, such as prices, price changes, indicator values or custom buy/sell conditions without the need to modify the code of the panel itself.

The article deals with the methods of indicators computational algorithms optimization. Everyone will find a method that suits his/her needs best. Three methods are described here.One of them is quite simple, the next one requires solid knowledge of Math and the last one requires some wit. Indicators or MetaTrader5 terminal design features are used to realize most of the described methods. The methods are quite universal and can be used not only for acceleration of the linear regression calculation, but also for many other indicators.

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.

This article will describe advanced adaptive indicators and their implementation in MQL5: Adaptive Cyber Cycle, Adaptive Center of Gravity and Adaptive RVI. All indicators were originally presented in "Cybernetic Analysis for Stocks and Futures" by John F. Ehlers.

This article presents connecting MetaTrader 5 to ENCOG - Advanced Neural Network and Machine Learning Framework. It contains description and implementation of a simple neural network indicator based on a standard technical indicators and an Expert Advisor based on a neural indicator. All source code, compiled binaries, DLLs and an exemplary trained network are attached to the article.

How to write correctly the Requirement Specifications? What should and should not be expected from a programmer when ordering an Expert Advisor or an indicator? How to keep a dialog, what moments to pay special attention to? This article gives the answers to these, as well as to many other questions, which often don't seem obvious to many people.

One of the most popular methods of market analysis is the Elliott Wave Principle. However, this process is quite complicated, which leads us to the use of additional tools. One of such instruments is the automatic marker. This article describes the creation of an automatic analyzer of Elliott Waves in MQL5 language.

Random Walk looks very similar to the real market data, but it has some significant features. In this article we will consider the properties of Random Walk, simulated using the coin-tossing game. To study the properties of the data, the trendiness indicator is developed.

This article describes the econometric methods of analysis, the autocorrelation analysis and the analysis of conditional variance in particular. What is the benefit of the approach described here? Use of the non-linear GARCH models allows representing the analyzed series formally from the mathematical point of view and creating a forecast for a specified number of steps.

Debate about an optimal way of calculating indicators is endless. Where should we calculate the indicator values - in the indicator itself or embed the entire logic in a Expert Advisor that uses it? The article describes one of the variants of moving the source code of a custom indicator iCustom right in the code of an Expert Advisor or script with optimization of calculations and modeling the prev_calculated value.

This article is about traditional and unusual algorithms of averaging packed in simplest and single-type classes. They are intended for universal usage in almost all developments of indicators. I hope that the suggested classes will be a good alternative to 'bulky' calls of custom and technical indicators.

For a long time multi-currency analysis and multi-currency trading has been of interest to people. The opportunity to implement a full fledged multi-currency regime became possible only with the public release of MetaTrader 5 and the MQL5 programming language. In this article we propose a way to analyze and process all incoming ticks for several symbols. As an illustration, let's consider a multi-currency RSI indicator of the USDx dollar index.

I guess it won't be an exaggeration, if I say the channels are the most popular tool for the analysis of market and making trade decisions after the moving averages. Without diving deeply into the mass of trade strategies that use channels and their components, we are going to discuss the mathematical basis and the practical implementation of an indicator, which draws a channel determined by three extremums on the screen of the client terminal.

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.

After I wrote a previous article on semi-automatic Expert Advisor with GUI interface it turned out that it would be desirable to enhance interface with some new functionalities for more complex indicators and Expert Advisors. After getting acquainted with MQL5 standard library classes I implemented new widgets. This article describes a process of designing and implementing new MQL5 GUI widgets that can be used in indicators and Expert Advisors. The widgets presented in the article are CChartObjectSpinner, CChartObjectProgressBar and CChartObjectEditTable.

MQL5 programming language is capable of solving problems on a brand new level. Even those tasks, that already have such solutions, thanks to object oriented programming can rise to a higher level. In this article we take a specially simple example of checking new bar on a chart, that was transformed into rather powerful and versatile tool. What tool? Find out in this article.

Any trader would give a lot for opportunity to accurately detect a trend at any given time. Perhaps, this is the Holy Grail that everyone is looking for. In this article we will consider several ways to detect a trend. To be more precise - how to program several classical ways to detect a trend by means of MQL5.

This article will teach you how to receive trade signals that are necessary for a trade system to work. The examples of forming 20 trade signals are given here as separate custom functions that can be used while developing Expert Advisors. For your convenience, all the functions used in the article are combined in a single mqh include file that can be easily connected to a future Expert Advisor.

The basic rule of trader - let profit to grow, cut off losses! This article considers one of the basic techniques, allowing to follow this rule - moving the protective stop level (Stop loss level) after increasing position profit, i.e. - Trailing Stop level. You'll find the step by step procedure to create a class for trailing stop on SAR and NRTR indicators. Everyone will be able to insert this trailing stop into their experts or use it independently to control positions in their accounts.

In this article, we will consider how to create multi-colored indicators or convert the existing ones to multi-color. MQL5 allows to represent the information in the convenient form. Now it isn't necessary to look at a dozen of charts with indicators and perform analyses of the RSI or Stochastic levels, it's better just to paint the candles with different colors depending on the values of the indicators.

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.

A number of indicators have appeared since the time of first Moving Average indicator creation. Many of them use the similar smoothing methods, but the performances of different moving averages algorithms have not been studied. In this article, we will consider possible ways of use the Moving Averages in MQL5 and compare their performance.