Developing a system #16 (40 pips per trend)

Here are the results of the EA for 2010 for EURUSD

Hi Yantz,

Your method and ea has really got me thinking along your line of trading.
Please check out my additions to your ea.

Here is the latest modifications to the ea. I am not a programmer, I just hack my way thru the code trying to make it do what I want.

TEST ON DEMO ACCOUNT ONLY, this ea is under construction!!!!
Place ea on EURUSD, 30 minute. Use default settings (Broker is Forex.com)
As we all know back testing is not reliable, this ea has to be forward tested.

EA Code changes:

1. Added expert name, pair, and time frame to trade comment field.
2. Added amount of pips to lock in after break even amount reached.
3. Added buylimit and selllimit to orders instead of market orders, with pending amount before entry.
4. Reduced minimum move to 23 pips.

The following problems or things to do exist in this ea.

1. I would prefer to place a pending buystop or sellstop (instead of limit) but with my limited programming knowledge I could not get it to work.

2. When trailing stop is enabled, the break even pips lock does not work. We should be able to lock in pips and then trail from that lock in point.

3. Add option to trade in the direction of the daily open. If price is higher than daily open then only do buys. If price is lower than daily open then only do sells.

4. Be able to select how many trades can be open at any given time.

5. Option to delete trade if it is not activated within X amount of hours.

6. Option to set trading start and stop times in chart GMT format. Could help to keep us out of ranging periods.

I have attached latest version of ea.
yantz_v1.34.mq4

Thanks everyone for the great effort.

Everton

Hi Yantz,

I find your method and ea very interesting. I am testing with demo trading with good very early results. For some reason back testing on 1H did not work as well as 30M with EURUSD. I am therefore testing 30M.

Questions:

1. At what point do you determine your pip movement from? Is it starting from the open or from the low of the current bar?

2. How do you determine your direction (buy or sell)?

3. I think it might be better to go with pending orders instead of market orders. It might help to get you going in the right direction.

4. I have heard on other forums that it is better to take the trade in the direction of the daily open. If current price is above daily open then only look for buy setups, reverse for sells. They say that this helps to keep out of bad trades.

Hi,

I suppose when Yantz invented his strategy markets were moving quite a lot. Just compare how much the markets were moving in 2007-2008 and how much they moved several months ago. You will find out that it was much much less in 2007-2008. So if markets are slowing down a little of course chances for another 40 pips after already 60 pips in the same direction are becoming rather dimm. So you should reduce your profit target and also the minimum amount of pips the currency has to move in one direction bevore entering. But with changing the latter you chances of a profital trade are alse being decreased. So all you've got to do is to observe the markets and find the best values for your setup and hope that the markets do noch change significally after you finished your research waht I think they did some time after Yantz developed and posted his strategy and EA.
Besides, if there are significant changes you will have to adapt almost every strategy to this new market situation, because strategies which do not need to be adjusted according to market conditions are very rare. So you either have to invent a strategy which workes no matter what changes occur in the market you are trading or you have to invest a lot of time to change your strategy in order to be profitable and not to lose a lot when markets change.
I myself tried lots and lots of strategies which most of them worked in earlier times and do not work now if these strategies are not adapted to the new market conditions. As example I name "Capture Market Opening Pips" which I developed and posted here http://forex-strategies-revealed.com/simple/capture-market-opening-pips. As you might see, it does not work that good nowadays, but it worked perfectly in the past.
So what you have to do in order to trade profitably is: find a strategy that works for you (not every strategy works for every trader) and make sure you modify it so it fits the current market situation.
If you have any questions feel free to contact me via email (you will find my adress in one of my earlier comments).

Happy trading,

Philipp

Dear yantz

After testing several EA's I tried urs with live trading for two days and it made a profit on 3 currency pairs., today I lost all those profits I earned through your EA., today it selected a late spotting and trend reversed everytime with every currency pair,gbp/usd,eur/usd,eur/jpy.every one ended in a stop loss of 60., i removed the EA but I used only the old version u provided.
anyway please provide some better means for trading, I got relieved as I thought urs were consistent and sure profitter,might be today markets volatility made it.,
seek ur support
regards for yantz

Hi Yantz,

How long had you been running iton Micro account? I got the impression that it had been producing good results consistently. I know you also did the manual test from January but was this done the same way as the EA?

Just trying to get an idea of how long performance has been measured over and whether the manual test you did represent the EA.

cheers,
Justin

I'm now running both version 1.31 on one demo and the multi symbol one on another so we can compare what they do in the same market action.

Philipp - what have you got enabled on your version that makes it different from version 1.31.

Once I give it 24 hrs I'll post some of the trades. I'm slightly concerned that for whatever reason they are running strangely on my platform. I've run version 1.31 for over 24 hrs already and as you saw yesterdays trades were 80 pips down. So far today I am 200 pips down (4 losers / 1 winner). Considering version 1.31 is same as Yantz has been using all along (just with the bug removed) and from the posts this was making 120,180, 280 pips etc, it just seems odd that suddenly making losses. Admittedly it is only 48 hrs but Yantz to my knowledge didn't have a losing day.

I don't know whether in removing the bug from version 1.3 something else got changed??

(Just so I've got it right in my head - version 1.31 was just same as version 1.3 but with the bug taken out. This bug only effected 1 of Yantz's trades. Version 1.31 takes alternative direction trades except for the reason explained in Yantz's post above? So this version is the one that has been responsible for the wins of 120, 180, 280 pips etc that Yantz posted.

Hi,

the version of the EA I uploaded should do exactly the same thing as the version 1.31 from Yantz, as long as you keep every additional function disabled (I just added what I would like to have in an EA and what I think could be useful (alternating trades)).

@Justin: If there are not too much entry signals, then you are right saying that the EAs will be in line after some time (as long as they did not open in different directions with alternating trades enabled).

Happy trading,

Philipp

Thanks Yantz for the explanation. Any reason you run them at those times?

I guess with any EA on the FX market, it needs to run the entire time otherwise you add the element of luck into it in terms of when the platform is running. Although by the sounds of it your manual checking was over 24hr period rather than certain periods and the win ratio from the 24hr doesn't sound that different from some of the results you have posted from the more limited times. The only time running it 24hrs doesn't apply is if over a period of time there appears to be a statistical factor which indicates a certain period produces a high % of losing trades (i.e a less volatile period like the Asian session). In which case we could adjust the EA to run only between certain times.

I guess when you visually/manually checked it did you operate like the EA is operating (as per your explanation in prior post).

Which EA are we now supposed to be using? There seems to be two latest ones - one from Yantz and one from Philipp. I may try to download more Alpari demo's and run the various EA's at the same time. I'm mindfull of the fact that you seemed to have an EA that was working well and I highlighted a couple of things that were happening/not happening and some things have been changed. It may well be that what it was doing (regardless of my confusion over whether it should be doing that) fits in with how the price action moves. So the fact that it was doing some alternative trades and some back to back - well maybe it was just fitting in with the market movement. As always there is only one way to tell and thats to run them simultaneously.

As a result I'm hesitant to stop using the EA completely that appears to have been working for you. After all its got a 78% hit rate and appears to have been producing results in the Micro account (How long have you had the Micro account running?) Its the reason I asked the question above about whether when you checked manually whether you did it in the same way as the EA has been opertating (i.e ignoring signals if a position is already open and creating back to back trades etc). Obviously if when doing it manually you stuck strictly to alternative trades then the results will not be representative of that version of the EA.

Are you guys running each EA at a time i.e you just replace the last EA with the new one or are you running them alongside each other?

cheers,

Justin

p.s part of me thinks (but without the brain power to fully think it through!!) that if two people ran it 24hrs but started at different times then even if it starts out with different trades it would fall in line with each other at some point.

FROM YANTZ

hi justin! i turn on my pc daily from abt 10 am to 3 pm ET and 7 pm to 4 am ET. from my observations, the ea CAN and WILL give different entry signals depending on when you launch mt4. let me give you an example. you turned on your computer first, and after a while gets a buy signal for eur/usd. a while later, i turn on my computer and after a while i get a sell signal. you will not get this sell signal because your position is still waiting to close. theres 1 discrepency there. but your ea will take it as a valid sell entry as it is indeed a valid sell entry because i receive it too. your ea will then wait for a buy opportunity. after a while, you hit sl/tp. now your ea will not be looking for a sell signal because it has already found a valid sell entry but did not generate the signal because you have an open position. it will now continue to look for a buy signal. that explain the back to back trades happening. same goes for mine. in fact, we could be having different positions all day long!!

when i wrote the new ea for multiple pair, i have consistency in mind. it will not do alternate or do alternate. in fact, your previous trade have no bearing on your future positions. whats important are:
1. it must have moved minimum move
2. it must not have moved beyond the entry zone
3. adx must be above 25
4. +di must be rising and -di dropping for buy entry

now lets go back to our example. lets say, before my sell position is closed, my ea did not find any valid buy signal and my sl/tp is hit. it will now be looking for a buy signal and from now on, our position should match up. if it found a valid buy signal before its closed, it will look for a sell signal next. and if it closed before it found another sell signal, our position will never match up. but with the new rules, we will always be looking for the same entry points no matter when we lauched mt4 and no matter if you've just closed a long trade or short trade, we will always be looking for the same entry points.

before posting it first there, i tested visually/manually using charts from way back in jan to may this year. as i say i dont trust mt4 strategy tester so i do a manual back testing. i will try to show you during that period all the entry points that gives me 78% strike rate for eur/usd alone. give me a few hours/day, i will send you an excel file showing all the entry points from jan, given your pc is on 24/7. the problem with it, as i found out now, with your help is that it gives 78% only if my pc is on 24/7 since jan. when mt4 is launched at different times, then you'll get totally different results. it just goes to show that i've been very lucky since letting it loose on my micro account. now luck will not be there for long, that is why now i'm trying to make the system consistent. it has a good potential and a sound reasoning that after moving a certain number of pips, it should continue on a further number of pips.

Here are my trades from today. I have written the time triggered in London and ET in brackets. I imagine there will be some slight discrepencies in time and price due to different brokers. I'm hoping you guys have the same trades as me otherwise I'm lost. I know nothing about programming (as you may have gathered from my emails Yantz - lol!) but I'm not sure how an EA can do different things. Surely it can only operate in line with its rules? Can something happen to it when downloading or compiling?? Do some MT4 platforms differ depending on which broker???? (I'm with Alpari UK)

08:46(03:46) eur/usd buy 1.41183 -60
08:47(03:47) gbp/usd buy 1.64005 +40
08:50(03:50) gbp/yen buy 160.175 +40
08:54(03:54) eur/yen buy 137.945 -60
10:00(05:00) usd/chf sell 1.07246 -60
11:31(06:31) gbp/usd buy 1.63848 +40
12:40(07:40) usd/cad sell 1.09652 -60
14:00(09:00) gbp/usd buy 1.63839 +40
14:04(09:04) gbp/yen buy 160.735 -60

Current open position 20:23(15:23) gbp/yen buy 160.415

As you can see I have 3 gbp/usd trades - all buys and aslo 2 gbp/yen trades - both buys. This is on the EA that Yantz posted which had the bug removed so should therotically not allow back to back trades.

I can see how some trades may differ in terms of when they are closed out and whether at profit or loss depending on broker. For example my current open gbp/yen came within 2 pips of the target price before falling back to around entry level. I can well imagine that depending on pricing other brokers may have closed this out at a profit. The same probably applies to stops. There will be times when some brokers would close the position out while others may remain in it. However this is not likely to effect actually whether a trade is triggered apart from the occasional instance when it barely makes the minimum move.

What is added confusion is that I seem to have the gbp/usd trade you mentioned Yantz but the time is all out??

Does everyone have the same trades??

Cheers,

Justin

I'll post my trades from today in the next post. I live in London and to confuse matters my platform works 1 hr ahead but I'll work it out. Philipp would be useful to see whether you are getting same trades or different ones as well. Would there be any reason for this??

Hi,

I just had a look at the EA and added a few options.
These are:
-Money Management (you can now enter a number in percent how much of your margin you want to risk on a single trade)
-BreakEven (you can now enter an amount of pips when your StopLoss will be moved to BreakEven)
-Trailing-Stop (you can now enter an amount of pips you want to trail your stop loss)
-alternating trades (if the EA opend a buy order, next will be a sell order)
And the important thing: All of them can be activated or deactivated according to your wishes.

You can download it here:
yantz_swing_v1.32.mq4

Happy trading,

Philipp

Hiya. I have no idea as to whether to not do alternative trades. If you used to get back to back losers I'm not sure to what extent the ADX will filter that out. As it seems to be producing good results part of me thinks if it aint broke then don't fix it!! I guess the only way to see is to have both the EA's running at the same time on seperate demo / micros accounts etc and see what happens. generally speaking I always think its a good idea not to change things all the time otherwise the is never enough of a period to verify whether the performance is consistent. I think, as I mentioned above that running things at the same time gives the greatest comparision.

This aside the current EA which is not supposed to do back to back trades already seems to do them. I have had 3 gbp/usd trades in a row in the same direction and 2 gbp/yen trades doing the same today. Has something happened to the current EA? Has it not done this before today/yesterday? If the current EA allows them then do I need the new one??

cheers,
Justin

P.s Yantz - could you let me know about whether you have this EA running the entire time (or when you have it running)and where you're based timezone so I can sent you some of my trades today. I seem to have had a run of loses and I want to check my system is in line with yours.

thanks

Hi,

It threw me this morning when two gbp/usd trades opened up in a row, both in the same direction. Mind you they both made money so fine by me! Infact I was thinking last night about the logic of having it enter alternative directions. Yantz - was there a reason for this? I don't have enough price action knowledge to know the pro's/cons of having or not having it like that. What got me thinking intially was envisioning a strong move (lets say upward) where price moved 60 pips and triggered a signal. If this move carries on and is profitable the price may then move back 30-40-50 pips etc and then push up triggering another signal - except it can't take it because its in the same direction. I was just thinking that with a big trending move the EA may only pick up the first part of it. However as I mentioned I don't have enough knowledge to think this through fully and to know what the pitfalls may be. It may be that this type of move rarely occurs with the parameters we are using and would just create losing trades, or maybe the fact that the EA currently switches between directions may mean it catches the first / strongest part of a swing and therefore higher win ratio????

Mind you it does appear it can trade in the same direction twice in a row. Yantz - do you think the fact that the EA has traded back to back means that the EA is not alternating directions anyway and back to back trades just happens very rarely or something is making it do it occasionally but not at other times?

cheers,
Justin