Secret Bob. Sometimes trendy, sometimes not.

[SteveHopwood]

SERIOUS WARNING

• Most Forex traders lose all their money.
• Using the robot posted here in trading Forex does not guarantee success.
• Trading this robot could lead to serious financial loss.
• Trading this robot without understanding its underlying trading strategies guarantees traders will lose their money.
• This is not a set-and-forget ea; there is no such thing and anyone who tries to claim there is, is either stupid or lying. This ea requires frequent manual intervention.
• At best, a trading robot is only 90% as good as the manual strategy it trades. At best. At worst, it can be much less effective. If the strategy is rubbish, so is the robot.
• To trade this robot, you have to understand:
  • How to use EA's.

I am trading this on my live account.

Intro
Secret Bob is an attempted automation of of Bob's latest at http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... =38&t=3871. Read his post 1 for the trading method. You need the attached indicators in your Indicators folder, not those from his thread; up to you whether you have them on your charts.

This is an extension of Secret Trendy Bob and trades the trend and counter trend signals generated by the two indicators. He is an always-in EA unless you use any of the trading hours/stop trading controls. He takes the first signal generated by either of the two indicators. From there, he closes trades on an opposite direction signal, then immediately reopens in the direction of the new signal.

I have had a bit of a blast for a couple of hours, watching him on an EU M1 chart. Just have a look at the bottom line of the chart display:

EURUSDM1.png

Do not trade SB on the M1. I was just lucky at the time I was coding/testing him and use the picture for illustration only. Do not trade less than the M15 and read into the thread to find out how successful others have been with different time frames.

Required indis
You will need the attached 240.V.7_BUY.SELL.NOW.ALERT and 240.V.7_CT_BUY.SELL.NOW.ALERT indis in your indicators folder for the EA to work. Read post 2 for a description of how the indi produces its signals.

Inputs

• TradingTimeFrame: 0 defaults to the current chart. Set it to whatever is your preferred tf if you wish to view different tf's without disturbing SB. H4 = 240; D1 = 1440.
• MaxTrades: SB takes a trade with each new signal, up to this maximum.
• EveryTickMode: tells SB to take a trade as soon as the indi generates a signal. Set this to 'false' if you want to trade confirmed signals at the close of the previous candle.
• UseHiLoForStop: tells SB to use the trigger candle hilo to calculate the stop loss.
• HiLoBufferPips: added to the hilo of the trigger candle to calculate the stop loss. If this is too close to the market to allow the stop loss, SB calculates a stop based on the broker's minimum stop level plus the spread. StopLossPips is calculated from the stop loss for risk based trading.

The remaining inputs are the usual suspects. Newcomers, read the details in the attached user guide.

You can force pure trend trading by enabling Bob's H4 240 LWMA Open moving average filter. Do this by setting MaPeriod to > 0; it needs to be 240 to work as intended. SB will close a trade on seeing a CT signal, then wait for a new trend trading opportunity.

Trading hours
How to use this input is described in the user guide. There are extra inputs.

• FridayStopTradingHour. Set this to the local time at which you want SB to stop sending new trades on Friday. He will continue to monitor open trades and close them on an opposite direction signal.
• FridayCloseTradesHour:

Set this to the local time at which you want SB to close all open trades on Friday, so that you can have a restful weekend and not risk your trades being hit by 'the gap'.

There are equivalent inputs for our friends in Upside Down Lands. Disable them with an impossible hour input - 30, for instance.

Mike's individual pair as a basket inputs
magft (Mike) has contributed code to this EA that allows us to treat the pair it is trading as an individual basket. This is different to using mptm to treat all open trades as a basket. Imagine you have 3 GU, 2 EU and 5 GJ trades open. Mikes code allows us to treat each individual pair as a 'basket' and manage each 'basket' individually. The inputs are:

• BasketCashSl: the individual pairs' basket of trades closes when their combined loss hits this cash total.
• BasketCashSlPercent: the individual pairs' basket of trades closes when their combined loss hits this percentage of balance figure.
• BasketCashTp: the individual pairs' basket of trades closes when their combined profit hits this cash total.
• BasketCashTpPercent: the individual pairs' basket of trades closes when their combined profit hits this percentage of balance figure.

Chart screenshots
The EA can take a picture of your chart when it opens or closes a trade. Use this to post pictures here if you suspect that the EA has not behaved as expected. There is a section of inputs just underneath the minimum pips section, with inputs to turn this featureon/ off and to adjust the height and width of the snap. Files are saved with the name "ChartScreenShot" and the ticket number, when the EA opens or closes a trade. Navigate to the files via File/Open Data Folder/MQL4/Files. Remember to delete these files from time to time to avoid clogging up your disk drive.

Setting up your charts
Pay a quick visit to http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... =48&t=3860 and download Art's 'Charts Into Alphabetical Order script'. This script will save you hours of faffing around; instructions for use in the post.

In conclusion
Let's tickle this pussy cat's tummy and listen to it purr.





Matters of general interest
Go here to download and run the script that will fill your platform's missing chart history: http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... f=15&t=254
Read this post:
http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... p?f=6&t=78 Newbie traders, read this for inspiration and warning. Those of you who have suffered losses, read it for inspiration.

Masterly summary of hedging: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread. ... ost4977179

EA coding
I receive may requests to code EA's. Traders, if I code your EA for free, then I will share it here. If you want me to code your EA without sharing, then my fee is $100 payable into my paypal account. I explain why at http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... ?f=15&t=79, at the bottom of the post.

Useful utilities/EA's/scripts

• Multi purpose trade manager: http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... ?f=21&t=64
• Account equity analyser: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread. ... ost4709098, which includes a template for both USD and the Euro.
• Past-trades display indi by squalou; shows a graphical display of the success/failure of trades in your History tab. Breathtaking piece of work. http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread. ... ost3830610
• My shell EA – the code I use to produce EA's so quickly. http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... ?f=15&t=79

-

[SteveHopwood]

I have the privilege of having the source code for Bob's indicators. He sent it to me in the hope that I could use the formula in SB and still keep it hidden. I cannot, and so we must continue to use the indicator. Nor can I give any hint as to what that formula is.

What I can do is reassure you all that it makes this method of trading as safe as can possibly be. It is mind-boggling just how safe it is. Just bear in mind:

• do not overtrade. This is a trading system that will generate trades quickly on the shorter time frames. You will soon have trades in place on all the pairs you trade even on the higher time frames:
  • don't trade lower the M15 time frame.
  • only trade higher than H1 if you have a decent sized account.
  • use the ForexKiwi available margin check. This will be enabled by default in future releases.

I am able to set up a template on my charts that represents the formula used by the indi's. I have spent a happy couple of hours today studying different pairs and time frames, with mounting excitement and pleasure. The way it generates the signals is simplicity itself, yet it takes genius to think of it. Yet again Bob, we applaud you mightily.

So, what do the signals represent? They represent the passing of the peak or trough of the market waves. We buy at the passing of a trough (up arrow) and close the buy and open a sell at the passing of a peak (down arrow). For the purposes of SB for the time being, the trade being a trend or counter trend trade is irrelevant. In future we might opt for different lot sizes; we shall see.

This next bit is for the noobs. You may not fully grasp yet that the markets move in waves. They might be trending up or down, or ranging, but they never move in a straight line. Have a look at this chart:

Bare chart.png

Lovely clear downtrend - cherry picked for that lovely steady march downwards from left to right. Can you see the waves though? There were times when the market rose instead of falling. Here is the chart as a line chart:

Line chart.png

Here is the bar chart with the indicators attached:

Bar chart with indi.png

You might want to open it in a new tab so you can see it more clearly. Can you see where the indi's draw their arrows? The large red trend sell arrows come after a peak; the smaller pink up arrows are counter trend buy arrows and come after a trough. Here is the line chart:

Line chart with indi.png

In a range, marked by the yellow lines and with the 240 lwma open added:

Range.png

Brilliant. Stunning. Pips by the umpteen. Will there be losers? Yes. Look at the highlighted rectangle. The four sells would be closed when the ct buy signal appeared; the first sell would have been a loser, although overall the group would have emerged in profit. I am not at liberty to divulge how the formula spots when the peaks and troughs have passed; it is enough for us that it does.

You can see from all this that I stumbled upon the always-in principle of SB trading by happy accident but the explanation shows why it worked. So, do we need a stop loss? YES, but it must be an emergency sl only and be placed a long way from the trade open price - hence the default of 100 pips. There is an immutable, unavoidable, unbreakable law in trading Forex and it is this: if it can happen and it is bad for you, then it will happen, and sooner rather than later. There will come a time when a trade or group of trades get caught on the wrong side of a 700 pips in 10 minutes movement against you; the stop loss will save your account.

There is a cost to the way SB trades. Every time we trade we pay the spread; those of us lucky enough to be Global Prime clients pay the commission. It might be much more profitable on the higher time frames to hold the trend trades and open/close the ct trades. We shall see.

It could emerge with use that an FB style minimum distance between trades will be helpful. We shall see. My coding is reasonably good these days, so a change to the code is less likely to have LUC inviting his buddies around for a party.

I do not make this next statement lightly. I regard this as the safest trading method I have seen in 8 years of trading. We are all going to make pips, and lots of them. I shall be replacing FB with SB on my live account on Monday; that is how good I think the method is.

Which brings me to the thorny problem of brokers. Those of us fortunate enough to be Global Prime clients are sitting pretty. Anyone reading this who is eligible for an account yet has not yet signed up, do so immediately; go to http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... 762#p35762 and click the link in Jeremy's signature.

If your current so-called 'broker' is a market maker or worse, you will have problems once you start to become profitable. Read http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... =52&t=1475 for definitions of 'market maker' and 'bucket shop' and a description of some of the stuff they get up to. The bad ones will throw every nasty trick in their book at you - and most of the rest are bad. Someone ask Bob whom his broker is; he is a US citizen and so ineligible for a GP account - at least until the next Presidential election. Also have a look at ForexNation http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... 890#p67890

One of the most respected members of SHF is boldtrader. Bill appears to be happily using ATCBrokers in this post here according to my reading of his post at: http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... 90#p101990

The next few months are going to be a blast guys. Have fun.

Another note for the noobs. Trading Forex is much more complicated that it first appears and most people need a few thousand hours peering at charts before it makes sense. If any of the above confuses you, then you need to spend some time at Babypips http://www.babypips.com/school. That is not an insult; there will not be many successful members of SHF who did not spend many hours there when we first started. I did. There you can learn all the basics.

[piet.forex]

This I like

Thanks Steve!!

[bazze]

Thanks,Steve ...But,I wonder if there is a way to stop the buy/sell alerts that pops up all the time on the chart?

[Gertje]

WOW, you're on fire these days!

Jeremy will love you for this one, lots of commission floating his way....
When is the next NFP scheduled?

I will give it a spin on some charts, seems a better view then the telly lately.

[SteveHopwood]

Thanks,Steve ...But,I wonder if there is a way to stop the buy/sell alerts that pops up all the time on the chart?

Take that one up with Bob. I asked him to include the facility to turn the damn things off, to no avail.

[spotdespot]

Hi Steve - you are right - lots of fun.

Just a quick one - perhaps the EA should close all trades if you move outside of trading hours or close on next opposite signal? Guess how I know....

Cheers,
Dave.

[bazze]

Take that one up with Bob. I asked him to include the facility to turn the damn things off, to no avail.

Ok...Thanks

[Gertje]

Mmmmmmm, 30 pips in the last hour, times 24 = 750 pips a day, times 5 = 3.750 pips a week, times $0,10 = $375,- in the first week, then double the lotsizes, and, and, and....

Thanks Steve for this gem.

[hndymann]

Ohhhh Nice one Steve!

Bob, please consider having an external parameter to disable alerts!