RJo

Well said. This principle is highly analogous to trading. Any human can easily click buy or sell when they "feel" that price is about to go up or down. The problem with feeling, commonly referred to as "instinctive" trading, is that it cannot be quantified. And because it cannot be quantified, it cannot be empirically tested. Instinctive trading has the lowest barrier to entry and therefore returns the lowest reward. As this is true for most things in life, this comes as no surprise. Unfortunately, the lowest barrier to entry is attractive to new traders for obvious reasons. This actually applied to me decades ago.🤭 It's only human nature to seek the highest amount of reward in exchange for the lowest amount of work. In fact, I often say that there is massive gray area between efficiency and laziness. Fortunately, losing for a living inspired me to investigate the work of Wall Street quants who refer to us as "fishfood" or "cannonfodder." Although I knew that we as retail traders cannot exploit execution rebates or queues like quants do, I learned that we can engage in automated scalp, swing, and trend trading. The thermonuclear caveat here, is that I had no idea how to write code (or program) trading algorithms. So I gravitated toward interface-based algorithm builders that required no coding knowledge (see human nature, aforementioned). In retrospect, I should never have traded code written by builder software because it's buggy and inefficient. However, my paid subscription to the builder software allowed me to view the underlying source code of the generated trading algo--which was written in MQL language. Due to a lack of customization in the builder software, I inevitably found myself editing the code. This led me to coding research which, in turn, led me to abandoning the builder software and coding custom algo's from scratch. Fast forward to the present, I can now code several trading strategies per day across 2 different platforms. Considering how inefficient manual backtesting is, coding is a huge advantage. When a new trading concept hits me, I can write the algo, backtest it, and optimize it within an hour or so--across multiple exchanges and symbols, and cycle through hundreds of different settings for each input. And then I get pages upon pages of performance metrics with the best settings pre-highlighted. Having said all of this, I am by no means an advanced programmer. IMHO, advanced programmers write API gateways, construct their own custom trading platforms, use high end computers with field programmable gateway array chips, and set up shop in close proximity to the exchanges. In any event, a considerable amount of work is required just to get toward the top of the "fishfood"/"cannonfodder" pool. Another advantage of coding is that it forces me to write trade entry and exit conditions (triggers) in black & white, thereby causing me to think microscopically about my precise trade trigger conditions. For example, I have to decide whether the algo should track the slope, angle, and level of each bar price and indicator to be used. Typing a hard number like 50 degrees of angle into code is a lot different than merely looking at a chart myself and saying, that's close enough. Code doesn't acknowledge "maybe" nor "feelings." Either the math (code) works (is profitable) or doesn't work (is a loser). It doesn't get angry, sad, nor overly optimistic. And it can trade virtually 24 hours per day, 5 days per week. If you learn to code, you'll eventually reach a point where coding an algo that trades as you intended provides its own sense of accomplishment. Soon after, making money in the market merely becomes a side effect of your new job--coding. This is how I compete, at least for now, in this wide world of trading. I highly recommend it.

@sxiqxx, Well done on making your first post a promising strategy. @everyone, post up if you want this coded into an EA. Although I switched to TradeStation, I still have an active MT5 demo with MetaEditor. I can code it without referencing object oriented programming which should be retroactively compatible with MT4. Let me know...

Please allow me to retort (in jest): RESPONSE 1 : Get a job supervising others where you're in control of performance reports and ride those others 100%. This makes your performance 100% with little to no effort. RESPONSE 2: Feel free to piss off your boss but stay nonviolent. When the side effects of his viagra and testosterone boosters cause him to physically assault you, you have the legal upper hand. This can result in a boatload of trading capital. RESPONSE 3: Feel free to have intimate relations with your boss if she finds you attractive. Rest assured that mum's the word because once again, you have the legal upper hand. This can also result in a boatload of trading capital. RESPONSE 4: Don't be fake friends with any enemies... unless you need information from them. Being fake friends with everyone will cause you to become an empty shell of a person with no direction in life. REPONSE 5: Get your boss to become reliant on your performance (really, just the performance of your subordinates), and then plan an "overheard" conversation wherein you fake an interview with another potential employer. You'll probably get a pay increase or a promotion. RESPONSE 6: If you can give your 75% percent to a project, give 50% and rely on your legal upper hand(s). Learn to write trading algo's during your other 50%. RESPONSE 7: Take all of the office boys out to nightclub where you merely sip soft drinks on a weeknight. Upon your return to the office in the morning, inform the security guards that all of the office boys are intoxicated. Your boss will love you for it. RESPONSE 8: Never try to prove your client wrong or find faults in their processes, but do secretly collect their information in case you jump ship or "someone you know" decides to start his own company. RESPONSE 9: Never stay in a firm for too long. Instead, use your ill-gotten capital to exit the rat-race and start trading. RESPONSE 10: Trading pays more than your career. Interpersonal skills are now irrelevant. Use your technical skills for trading. Never stop learning and keep updating your technical skills.😁

IMHO, the best feature of the Double Seven entry strategy is that buys and does not sell in equity-based markets. Large scale selling short in the primary stock markets requires a financed loan of shares from a broker, so it's less common than buying. Therefore, selling in a stock-tracking market generally isn't profitable--even where derivative instruments provide cheaper access to selling.

Another chart type... Footprint.

I would forget about tinkering with lot sizes in the short-term. I only increase my lot size when it's justified by my growing capital (closed profit). Adjusting lot size on the fly would imply that I somehow know the specific probability of each individual trade succeeding--which I don't. So, I focus on the overall statistical performance of my strategy over every 6 months. This doesn't require anything clever. As an example, choose a chart structure (15 minute, 1 hour, Renko, range bar, etc.) where price swings are identifiable to your eye. Load a MACD oscillator onto the chart. Note that there are two MACD's floating around online. The "old" MACD uses a weighted EMA in its calculations while the "new" MACD uses a regular MACD in its calculations. If you're using the old one, focus on the main line crossing the signal line and ignore the zero level. If you're using the new one, focus on the main line crossing the zero level and ignore the signal line. These are your entries. Your dynamic exit target is the opposite crossover of whichever MACD lines you're using. Now for the most challenging part... stopouts. You need to determine the number of pips/points/ticks at which price traveled against your entry and did not return in favor of your entry for all trades. These stopout statistics can be collected with pen and paper, which I have arduously done in the past. This is much easier if you can code, backtest, and auto-optimize the stop level. The idea is that your dynamic takeprofit is theoretically infinite, and your stop is fixed at a level that is statistically favorable to you. Although this isn't really "money managment," it certainly manages your money.

I have recently switched from trading forex to trading futures due to the futures market's unbiased order execution and superior price movement. And yes, I trade commodities in the COMEX exchange. Years ago, hefty initial capital requirements were a burden for retail traders. Then Mini futures were created, but they were still somewhat burdensome. Then Micro futures were created. Now, you can daytrade with only a few hundred dollars (generally 9:30 a.m. E.T. to 4:00 p.m. E.T.). Even so, I recommend starting with a couple thousand in order to sustain statistical losses and/or hold positions overnight. If you have access to U.S. CME products (you're not in a U.S. sanctioned country), I suggest trading in the actual centralized commodity futures exchange because: Orders are required to be executed in the sequence of arrival to the COMEX exchange. In contrast, CFD's (contracts for difference) are in-house contracts between you and your CFD dealer. In CFD trading, your execution is reliant upon the size of your individual dealer's liquidity pool, and its institutional liquidity providers if it has any. Retail CFD orders, and retail forex orders, generally get prioritized by the dealer depending on order quantity. This is why retail CFD orders get hit or miss execution. In this way, the COMEX exchange is much fairer to retail traders. COMEX provides centralized pricing. In contrast, CFD dealers have no centralized exchange providing objective pricing. This is why CFD's tend to spike randomly. Unless your goal is to somehow exploit these random CFD spikes, they're likely to take out your stops where the alleged "underlying asset" (there isn't one) wouldn't have done so. To me, a CFD dealer follows an in-house casino model, whereas COMEX is an actual market. U.S. futures are not subject to the pattern-day-trader rule which states that anyone placing more than 3 equities, equities ETF's, or equities options trades per week is a pattern-day-trader. This means that you need at least $25,000 of initial capital, and SEC reporting is required. If you have formed your own single funded private company (LLC, etc.) specifically for speculative trading purposes, the SEC deems you a professional but the CME and its COMEX subsidiary do not. If you sign an attestation regarding your own single-funding, you get non-professional discounts on data and commissions. While CFD, equity, ETF, and options third-party liquidity providers (banks and hedge funds) get paid every time they take the other side of your trade, futures traders are generally dealing directly with a greater centralized exchange. In short, the real futures market ain't as burdensome as it used to be and is more of a level playing field for retail traders. And oh yeah... my broker is TradeStation Securities. No complaints.

"[F]ull-service investment banks usually provide both advisory and financing banking services, as well as sales, market making, and research on a broad array of financial products, including equities, credit, rates, currency, commodities, and their derivatives" (List of investment banks - Wikipedia). IMHO, there's nothing super special about "professional" traders except for the fact that they have access to boatloads of trading capital. Although this gives them access to pattern-day-trading and hedging, their annual percentage returns on investment are not very impressive. Put another way, it's easy to generate a billion dollars in profit per year if you have 50 billion on hand. Just imagine a retail trader having $5000 and earning $100 per year which is the same 2% proportional equivalent. An investments bank's number 1 goal is to avoid risk. That goes for all of Wall Street as a whole. Whether they hedge six ways from Sunday or hire quants for high frequency trading, they're trying to turn trading into a sure thing rather than a risk-benefit. The underlying principle is that free money is free money no matter the annual rate of return. For example, an investment bank trader might hedge GBPJPY against S&P 500 index stocks because she/he knows that 401k/pension funds dump money into the S&P 500 index stocks every 2 weeks regardless of its price level. On a related note, Warren Buffet dumped money into the S&P 500 index and earned a higher return than an army of hedge funds over the course of 10 years. They paid Buffet a million dollars because he won the bet. As for quants, they algorithmically exploit volume-based order execution rebates and the exchange queue. This would earn pennies with small capital, but again they're using tens of billions. As a side note, if you're retail trading forex, CFD's, equities, EFT's, or options, one or more of the big investment banks are likely getting a piece of every order executed as market makers or liquidity providers. "Professional" traders are basically professional salespeople. There's nothing in a Series 7 Exam that ensures that these people have any special market analysis knowledge. It's essentially a great big business ethics law exam. In fact, given the pretentiousness and pressures of professional trading/sales, I often wonder whether retail traders are more likely to stick with trading in the long run.

👍

It can be done. IMHO, it ain't about any single trade nor even any bad day nor week. It's a long-run game of statistics. Micro Gold futures. 2 months. No hedging. No pyramiding, stacking, scaling, nor martingale... (This is my company's proprietary algo, so please understand that I can't disclose it).

This thread is a good blast from the past. I needed some extra levels to show, so I added them. Code is attached as a text file. TS_Reg_Chan_Extra_Levels.txt

I never claimed to be an SEO expert, but my MS Edge browser is showing TL's url as unsecure. For me, it doesn't affect use of this site but doesn't it reduce web traffic?

Update to the above Post... Re-optimize your strategy periodically (as appropriate for your strategy's given trading frequency) to make sure that you're always applying the strategy in the most profitable manner as it continues to trade, e.g., re-optimize weekly, monthly, yearly, etc.

This may be the toughest way forward, but it may lead to the biggest reward... Reduce your trading plan to automated code. My process goes something like this: Choose an instrument, e.g., MES futures, GBPJPY, etc. Determine the best chart structure (by eyeballing the price runs) for that instrument, e.g., 10 tick Renko bars, 10,000 trades volume bars, 12 minute time bars, etc. (I formerly auto-traded naked 55 pip Renko bars 24/5 on the GBPJPY at IG brokers... 2 reverse bars in the same direction = in, and 1 opposite reverse bar = out. It traded standard lots well enough that they terminated my live account. The nice thing about Renko bars is that you can simply count the bars in each run and take notes using pen and paper, and then multiply one bar's cash value by each win/loss bar count--minus spread, and +/- swap.) Determine whether indicators are needed to improve identification of the price runs, e.g., linear regression lines, a 13 x 50 period EMA cross, etc. (It doesn't have to be perfect. Even if the strategy appears to be a breakeven or a slight loser, it might be worth further refinement. See step #5.) Reduce your strategy to code. IMHO, the easiest languages to code are probably EasyLanguage, Pine script, and MQL4 (in that order). MQL5 isn't too tough if you're already an advanced MQL4 coder. Backtest and auto-optimize the strategy that you've coded, across its inputs/settings, the chart structure/timeframe to which it's applied, and/or other instruments. (An unprofitable strategy applied in one manner can be profitable when applied in a different manner within the greater universe of your trading platform.) Depending on your given platform, commissions, swap, and/or spreads may or may not be included in backtests. Demo test your automated strategy, forward. Again, commissions, swap, and/or spreads may or may not be included. If your results are undeniably profitable (taking into account the differences between demo versus live trading), go live.

Update to the above Post... TradeStation appears to support OTC forex CFD's outside of the US. To the extent that CFD's are not cleared in the interbank (prime) forex market, CFD's are arguably not forex instruments.

For forex, MT5. It's exponentially faster (including trade execution) than MT4. As a caveat, MQL4 is a simple skeletal version of C while MQL5 is really more like C++ (object-oriented programming) which is tough to learn. MT5 also natively supports Python which can bridge to API's. Neither natively support direct connection to centralized exchanges. For futures, TradeStation. Connects directly to the CME. Supports options and ETF's as well. Its EasyLanguage is for the most part, plain English language. The built-in strategy optimizer is obscenely detailed and fast too. Supports forex futures, but not OTC forex.

Hello, everyone. I'm here to reintroduce myself. My last post was in 2012, so thank you to TL for preserving my login credentials. Although I have decades of forex Metatrader experience, I recently moved on to futures with TradeStation and found that its EasyLanguage is indeed much easier than MQL4 and MQL5. This is the best forum for futures, so I'm back! My automated trading leaves me with free time, so I'll be browsing this forum in an effort to help others. Happy trading.

You're welcome, E.W. At the risk of oversimplifying the issue... The easiest interface(s) will allow you to do minimal coding or avoid it altogether. This is generally achieved via some other user friendly programming like Java. IMHO, a major step up is the inclusion of custom indicator import button in the interface. Standard MT4 indicators are usually embedded right into the interface for quick incorporation into the Expert Advisor. More difficult interfaces require that you have detailed knowledge of the mql4 iCustom command. You will find yourself manually coding iCustom calls into a text box--in order to incorporate custom indicators. Essentially, the easy interface handles iCustom for you while the difficult one does not. Also, keep in mind that there are different types interfaces, Some are simpjy set up as text boxes, menus, and buttons--much like this forum we're in now. Others are almost 100% graphic--flow charts resembling something more like PowerPoint. Although it would be inappropriate for me to endorse any single EA builder, I would advise you to visit the software publisher's website first. View the publisher's user manual and their support forum. If these don't exist, then I would move on to the next one. Many TP's, Ryan

I've created a comprehensive list of EA builders over at mqlautocoder.com. Some indicator, signal, and script utilities are also included in the list. Please post your reviews and recommend additions as appropriate. A few notes: Some of the EA builders on the list are free, partially free, or paid (see descriptions). Copyrights are respected--keep this in mind while in the Indicator Depot, which is continually updated with new indicators. Last but not least... I will code some EA's for free--just make a request. I do NOT code for money. Happy hunting.

FlexiChart_2.0.ex4 won't upload so you'll have to Google it. This forum does not support ex4 attachments. Also, for anyone not familiar with expert advisors the EA's in post#24 go in your experts folder, not your experts\indicators folder. 2 requests to the admin: Please allow ex4 file types in attachements, and Please allow users to edit their own previous posts.

Here are some more range bar, renko bar, and flexible time chart generation EA's. Apply any one of these to a live M1 chart, and either an on-chart comment or an alert comment will tell you which offline chart to open (in MT4, File, Open Offline). Indis and EA's will function on the offline charts if coded to run on the current chart or, in the case of MTF indis, on other standard MT4 time frames. Good trading to you. RenkoRangeBarsEA v1.2.mq4 RenkoLiveChart_v3.2.mq4 FlexiChart.pdf

Here are some more indis as requested in the newbie thread, Mysticforex. I see you already have the Schaff Trend for market cycle identification, so I attached a mod Bressert which you may like better for the same purpose. Fibocalc will give you dynamic fibo expansion levels based on whether the bid is trading > or < yesterday's open. It also prints automatic entry, stop, and 3 take profit target levels. Candletime counts down time left to close within the current price bar (in text format right next to the candle). RSI-TL is just that--an automatic trendline on RSI that runs in a separate indi window. Great for exiting, and not so great for entering. Current bar tends to jump around a bit. Tanganjiwa is the old factory MT4 ZigZag indi, using hand-dots in lieu of lines to identify extremes. This is an improvement as the original ZigZag shows a line up for sell and a line down for buy. CAUTION: Heavily repaints! Play with inputs to slow it a bit. Try 20, 2, 3 on a 1 hour chart. Do not use as a lone indi without confirmation. And finally, Mouteki, elsewhere known as _TDTL. It's an automatic on-chart trendline. Alerts, immediate horizontal support and resistance, and target (projection) levels can be toggled on/off. Good trading to you. DSS Bressert_TRO_MODIFIED_VERSION.mq4 fibocalc_V31.mq4 CandleTime THV.mq4 RSI-TL.mq4 TanganJiwa.mq4 Mouteki.mq4

Mysticforex, you are indeed correct. I meant Gain. Bain is well outside the scope of this thread. Is there any way to edit that post? Maybe I'll add some paragraph breaks as well. I will certainly post some indis to that section.

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