Hear the Market

A great way to study the market with the Market Pace indi.

This indicator was posted on FF and I've used it occasionally to "hear" the ticks. It's sort of like watching the level 2 screen but easier. Since SHF is where I usually go for forex related info, I thought I would post it there.
Set it up on a 1 minute chart and listen as price goes into supply and demand areas, or tests new highs and lows. It will sit there for a while then a big pop can be heard, the bigger the pop, the more points it just travelled.
As I don't tend to scalp very often I don't use this much but I do listen as I do other things sometimes. It sort of tells you when things are heating up....
If you scalp, you might want to try it out.
rooicol wrote this gem.  I you have issues installing there are a few posts on FF that might help. Some users have had difficulties getting the correct sounds to play. Read the instructions and the posts on FF if you have issues. Feel free to post questions here as there are many brains willing to help.
It's attached here so you don't have to go get it.

Drawing Levels on MT4

This is a new script I wrote and have been using.
TT2P_DrawLevels
Drag and drop the script to the top part of the level you want to identify and it will draw two horizontal lines from that point to the right of the chart. If you drop it above current price it's red, below is green. So post on page 18 for a picture. If you turn on "show object descriptions" in the chart properties, the level will also show the timeframe where you found the level.

Money Management idea for MT4 EA’s

Lots of EA’s out there don’t place stops and the idea or risking a percentage of the balance isn’t really accurate.  So you leave yourself open to more risk.

Here’s an idea that might help assuming your EA is profitable.

When an account grows and the lot size is determined by the risk value, the lots can get too big. Then the account gets hammered.
I know when I would kick this in for a demo but for a real account, would you really let it trade 1 lot? Maybe, but this way you can adjust it to your own appetite. This also lets you not worry to much about making withdrawals on time to gain back your initial investment or monthly withdrawals.

If you want to see the system performance and not colour the results with MM, use a constant lot size. The equity curve should be a relatively straight line. Then you use MM to curve it upwards. BUT, don;'t use MT4 to do this, it's not of ANY use.
To test this, start a demo and use a low lot size that would be lower than if your set the risk to 10. I would do this but I don't have any space for more demos. I might, however, try this add on to one of my existing experiments....

Then add your max lot size code and do another test.

The Spread in Forex (MT4)

I’m testing an EA called Crossfader (CF), this post discussed the spread as it impacts that EA.

Spreads are more on the exotics, less on the majors.  This gets amplified in low liquidity  So, my thoughts on exotics and the spread.....

Firstly, the CF biotch works great with EURUSD, the most proven and reliable pair.  Hooking her up to an exotic?  Why would you do this (other than a demo as an experiment), are you looking for a hidden treasure, are you subconsciously trying to ruin your account?  That's purposely making your growth task much harder. 

Slapping this EA on exotics and trying to then fix it with filters is a waste of time and increases your risk, not to mention work load and stress level (if live, not sure anyone is doing this yet...)

If you're trading live or planning to trade live at some time,
I recommend slapping it on the 6 majors, on a demo account.  For analysing pairs.
Here's what I do, and consider I have a small nugget on a live test account with CF running;
Have 1 demo running 6 majors on all the time;

• Risk 10
• 100% DD
• check each week and month for each pairs performance.  This will tell you what pairs to run live.  [*]On MyFxBook you can analyse by pair.
  Even put some additional pairs on it as you wish
• The only purpose of this is to track pairs, not to see if the EA works or test DD or risk level, although you can glean some of this info from this demo

Spead Filters

• Let's say you are running biotch CF on EURUSD only. 
  Do you need a spread filter?
  What number should it be set for?
  Should it stop entries or entries AND exits?
  Should it stop trading when spread is over or under your number (strange question right?)

When price is moving fast, like after a news event, is spread big or small?  small, sometime there is no spread as there are so many trades going on.

When it's off hours and price is standing still, no bidders want to hit the ask, no sellers want to pay the bid, what happens?  Large spread, price doesn't move, stalemate. 

How about just before a news release?  Wide spread, nobody wants to trade, they are waiting for the news.  The market is open, lots of participants right?  Nobody wants to trade. 

wide spread = nobody wants to trade

What happens during market hours when price runs into daily support / resistance level?  I bet most of you never watched a chart real time to see this....  As price approaches the level, you see many ticks, it slows as you arrive at the level, then you see nothing.... you check your internet connection, wtf?  I lost my feed... then you see TICK....  the spread widens.  This is where you want to enter or exit, a turning point possibly, or a breakout. 
Don't believe me? 
Run a spread recorder, install the market pace indicator so you can "hear" the market, and watch price on a 1 minute chart.  Mark off area where price stalls. 

Market pace is a nice piece - when price is moving slowly you hear a low volume tick pop sound.  when price is at a level and stall, let's say price is rising, hits a level and stops.  After about 30 seconds price will go down by the value of the wide spread, this larger movement makes a louder sound POP!!!  It really is neat to watch this, it may help you understand the auction process.

Back to the questions above -

• Do you need a spread filter?  entries, probably not if you turn the EA on for liquid session and use one of the majors. 
  What number should it be set for?  use the spread recorder to find the right number.
  Should it stop entries or entries AND exits? Probably both - apart from off market hours increasing spread, there are S/R areas and news events that increase spreads and I don't want to trade at that time, BUT - to get out of a trade at  the profit level and worry about another pip, that doesn't concern me.
  Should it stop trading when spread is over or under your number (strange question right?)  This was the point of this post, now your thinking maybe I should enter when the spread is big during market hours?  You must figure this one out on your own. 

What am I doing?  I'm adding a spread filter that just takes out the really stupid spreads, for example, EURUSD would not allow entry or exit on a spread of more than 4 pips.  (that's actual pips, not fractional pips).  Exotics, not trading them, those pairs are there for companies that do business in other countries, not for traders.)

Tipster SR

So I made a system a while back for MT4, based on support and resistance.  I backtested it and studied it to learn the strenghts and weakness.  I've been demo testing it for about 4 months with good results, its not the grail but it trades without causing platform errors and long term produces some gains. 

On MTI Live, it was running on Anotherbriandemo, you can see it in the comments of the published statement on the MTI site.  It's now running on my real account.  I've adjusted the published statement start date of the Anotherbrian MTI Live account to be the same time I started using it.  I also use two other trading strategies on this account.  ForexMorningTrade and dicretionary trading based on Sam Seiden. 

FMT - I use this as more of a scalper with small lot size - this is like a real account test - I didnt back test it.  I watch it the day it trades to see if I should close it or not. 

Sam Seiden - I usually use a 1 or 4 hour chart for this.  This strategy requires patience.  In order to help me with that, I found having a robot running kills most of the urge to trade, so I can wait as long as it takes.

So, time will tell.

See the right side bar for performance or visit these links
Demo MTI Account
Live MTI Account

For the longest time I've been breakeven or losing slowly.  For the past severla months I've been working on EA's and watching them, and trading myself.  I think I found what works for me, as overtrading is a problem.  Let's see what happens!!  Join the MTI competition for some fun.... it's outlined in the post below.

UPDATE (July3, 2011):  The MTI Live website doesn't seem to show things as they really are unless you include ALL history.  I haven't figure it out yet (how to correctly show stats from a certain day forward).
The Tipster SR EA is LIVE.  It's one of the 3 EA's running on my live account.

Calling All Robots v2

This is a re-post.  The first competition had some technical issues with the rules I set up so I stopped it and created another one.  Join in!!

If you use MT4 (or MT5) and trade forex I invite you to join this free contest. The winner gets bragging rights.

I use MTi to track my performance of both live and demo account. My demo account is running a robot and MTi allows me to see the trade stats. They recently added a new feature called "Competitions". I've started a new competition and I invite you to participate. It's called "Calling All Robots"

To enter you need MT4, and an account with MTi. It's easy to sign up. Once you've signed up you download this and install, it installs automatically. You disable the FTP feature in MT4 options as this new file will upload all the trades to MTi. It's pretty slick.

The competition is scheduled to run from Fri, 27 May 2011 14:08 GMT to Wed, 1 Jan 2020 16:00 GMT
Basically, forever!


Rules The competition is open to both live and demo accounts.

• All accounts must be in USD.
• The maximum size of any individual order is 5.00 lots. Competitors will be disqualified if they place an order larger than this during the competition.
• The maximum volume traded during the competition is 10.00 lots. Competitors will be disqualified if the total volume on trades during the competition is larger than this.
• Competitors must not make deposits or withdrawals during the competition.
• Performance is measured from the first equity figure published by your trading software after the competition starts to the last equity figure published before the competition ends.
• Competitors must publish from the same broker account throughout the competition.

ENTER HERE

Leader Board

AnotherBrian is my real account.
AnotherBriandemo runs a robots, or robots, on test.  Most robots are of my own making.

I also have started another competition, "Perpetual Trading", its for real accounts only and runs for a long, long time.

Tipster Trendlines for MT4

I use Amibroker and IB to trade, I place trades right off the charts.  Over the years I've developed AFL code (that's Amibroker language) to allow me to trade off the charts. Now that I'm also using MT4 for some of my trading, I was looking for something similar but haven't found it. So I've begun to code my own. Here are some of the EA's I've considered using on the MT4 platform, but just don't suit me;

• TrendMeLeaveMe (TMLM)
• iDRAW
• Graphic Expert Advisor: AutoGraf
• EASY

The AFL code for Tipster Trendlines is for sale up at the top right of the blog.  The code for MT4 is free.

 
Here is an overview of the Expert Advisor (EA) called Tipster Trendlines;

• The EA draws the lines automatically, place the 3 lines for the trade, press F7, select Order type, set Live to true.  Review other options for EA and close the EA Properties. Adjust lines as required, EA will update prices.   
• When trade is closed, EA locks out. Press F7 and reset, then delete all objects or one of the trendlines.
• Turn EA OFF before closing a trade or deleteing an order manually.
• When order is closed by the EA, a screenshot is saved in experts/files"
• Set up email in the MT4 Options, to receive updates of EA actions 
• When an order is placed or live trade, it doesnt matter what Ordertype is set to in EA properties 
• OK to use for multiple charts. To trade same symbol on two charts, use different MagicNumbers.

Here's an overview video

Go here for latest post

Tipster Trendlines for MT4

I've written Tipster Trendlines for MT4 that attempts to model the original version for Amibroker. MT4 doesn't allow many of the features I've implemented in Amibroker but it's a lot less coding too, so that offsets the pain of coding. For example, it is very difficult to place buttons on the chart, so I tried using hot keys, and that didn't work.

I had a hot key to re-draw the lines and enable the lines for trading but that impacted every open chart. So I've adapted a different approach. You can follow my progress on Forex Factory forum, and here.

Some different features are available though;

Close of trade triggers a screenshot and saves it to your hard disk.

Sloping trendlines can be used, the prices are updated with each new bar. This means you can trade breakouts of sloped lines, or touches (stop and limit orders).

If you know how to program MT4, I welcome your comments here or on the forum.

... and I've been using Tipster Trendlines for MT4, the results of my trades are shown on the right side of the blog.

Metatrader Forex Data and back testing

I finally found a source for free forex data that is complete, and FREE!

Here is the link to the file - Metatrader Free Forex Data

And the recommended set-up to back test your EA on MT4, follow this link

Set up for back test

There are other helpfull articles on that website also. I took a look at the two systems they are offering for sale and they don't fit my style. I like smooth equity curves. One of the systems has a 30% win rate, I like small gains with high win rates.