Shelley's multi-pair basket trader

[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 tells you there is, is either a liar or an idiot. This EA will need 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.
    Trend trading and retracement, Range trading and Counter Trend trading. You will get all of this from http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread. ... ost4846473
    The concept of basket trading.

My apologies for what is about to happen, but the ridiculous, lazy and stupid here make it essential that I batter you over the head with what seems to me like a really simple point.

Ready?

Here goes:
Listen, you pathetic, pea-brained, dim-witted cretin: even begin to consider using this robot without understanding 10.2 and you will lose all your money.

Sorry about that, but I needed to make a point. Are you a pathetic, pea-brained, dim-witted cretin? No? Then do the reading required to trade successfully.

DO NOT USE THIS EA ON A LIVE ACCOUNT. IT IS EXPERIMENTAL.

Shelley does not need any of the indicators from 10.2. Thanks to Paul (Baluda), the code for them is subsumed within the EA. Paul's contribution here is monumental.

Trading
Shelley had a blast last week by entering a basket of trades just before going out to work, and leaving mptm to do a global close of the entire basket once it hit +400 pips. She took buys when the D1 Slope was >= 0.8 and D1 Woh > 0, and sells when <= -0.8 and D1 Woh < 0.

This EA sends the basket at the hour and minute of your choice. I reckon this should be the open of the Frankfurt or London sessions, as there tends to be a big market movement during early trading.

BasketSendHour and BasketSendMinute are the inputs that tell S when to send the basket.

• - these are in 24 hour format.
  - enter the hour/minute as it is shown on your clock at home. So, if using the start of the London session, when the session opens, look at your clock and enter that hour/minute into these inputs.
  - do not ask questions here about how to tell the time. I shall delete them and any responses to them.

Trade confirmation filters
There are two of these, both disabled by default:

• 1) Lower time frame Slope:
  • - set SlopeConfirmationTimeFrame to a chart timeframe.
    - set SlopeConfirmationTimeFrame to zero to disable this filter.
    - if enabled, both the higher time frame Slope and the confirmation tf Slope must agree - >=0.8 for a buy, <=-0.8 for a sell.
  2) 10.2 TMA True:
  • - this filter checks that a sufficient retrace has occurred to allow trading:
    • - buy: market must be <= Tma lower line.
      - sell: market must be >= Tma upper line.
    - TmaTrueTimeFrame is the chart time frame to check, defaulting to the H1. A zero value disables this filter.

Basket closure
There are PipsTakeProfit and PipsStopStopLoss inputs. Also a breakeven function. All of this is adaptive, so look for these inputs:

• - AdaptivePipsTakeProfit: multiplies the number of open trades by this input to create a take profit that grows and shrinks with the size of the basket.
  - AdaptivePipsStopLoss: multiplies the number of open trades by this input to create a stop loss that grows and shrinks with the size of the basket.
  - AdaptiveBreakEvenProfitPips: creates a breakeven point by multiplying the number of open trades by this input.
  - AdaptiveBreakEvenProfitPipsLock: the profit to lock in at breakeven. Number of trades multiplied by this input creates the profit.
  - AdaptiveJumpingStopPips: multiplies the number of open trades by this input to create a jumping stop that grows and shrinks with the size of the basket.

Once a basket closes, S will sleep for (user choice) 90 minutes to ensure that an opened basket that hits tp within a few minutes will not open again until the next BasketSendHour.

Basket close hours
I picked up this little gem from http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread. ... ost5661628

"I found this out. The best time to TP was 2-3 hours into the jpy session. 1-2 hours before the usd session, 3-4 hours into the usd session and then if there is anything left a couple of hours before the jpy session. These seem to be the peak times for price movement and then afterwards a holding pattern or retracement."

There are six basket close hour inputs:

• - LondonCloseHour, NewYorkCloseHour and TokyoCloseHour. Setting each one to >23 turns them off.
  - ComeWhatMayCloseHour overrides OnlyCloseProfitableBasket and closes the basket at this time whether it is profitable or not. Set this to any value >23 to disable.
  - KeepAliveHours closes a trade if it is still open. Set this to zero to disable the function. This function is also governed by OnlyCloseProfitableBasket and OnlyCloseLosingBasket .
  - OnlyCloseProfitableBasket forces Shelley to wait until the basket is in (cash) profit before closing it.
  - OnlyCloseLosingBasket tells Shelley to keep winning baskets open and only close them when they are losers.

Editing your inputs
The trading method is as simple as can be. The EA is not, and the inputs are complicated; getting them wrong is disastrous.

• - assume nothing. Check everything. OOTB may well not work. Here in post 1, I sometimes write that xxx is the default, forgetting that I changed the default during coding and forgot to change it back.
  - go through every input and make sure it reflects what you want to do.
  - save your edited inputs as set files. I have three, for London, New York and Asia.

Chart display
If pairs do not have 'Buy and hold' or 'Sell and hold', they should not have traded as their D1 Slope was within the 0.399 to - 0.399 range. You can turn off the display by setting DisplayPairsInfo to false. You might like to download Mop's brilliantly adapted Slope display indi from the manual tools forum, to confirm the pairs are behaving correctly.

The chart display is only updated when needed. This means that the display becomes increasingly out of date as the day wears on, if you are only trading OriginalShelley. To force an up-to-date display, change chart timeframe.

Trading styles
You will find two boolean (true or false) inputs in this section:

• - OriginalShelley: tells S to trade entirely as described above.
  - ShelleyPlusGary. Gary wrote this in one of his posts: "Along those lines, I've wondered -- instead of saying "open a basket at XX:YY time and see how that fixed basket works" -- how would it work if we say "run 24x5, open pairs when they get > 0.8, close pairs when they fall below 0.8" ?". This input allows S to trade in this way.
  • - ShelleyPlusGaryTimeFrame cuts down processor use. By default, S will look for these trades at the start of each M5 candle on the host chart.
    - all the 'usual' S criteria have to be met.
    - extra criteria:
    • - Slope yesterday must be < 0.8 for a buy, and > -0.8 for a sell
    - all the basket/close hours, breakeven, jumping stop etc apply to S&G trading.

It might be possible to leave both styles enabled; the results are unpredictable.

Using Shelley as a manual trade manager
Turn the StopTrading input to 'false' to stop Shelley trading. She will still indicate which pairs are ripe for trading but you are able to decide for yourself whether to pull the trigger on individual trades.

You can use Shelley purely as a trade-indicator without her managing open trades by using a magic number in the EA, then no or different magic numbers when you trade. Shelley recognises her own trades by the magic number, so if this is different to that of the trade then she will ignore it.

NB 10.2 TMA Slope Display
This is a fabulous tool adapted by Mop from Lawgirl's trend indi; it displays the Slope direction of your chosen pairs over your chosen timeframes. Set ShowCurrentPairOnly to 'false' to display the whole table. Do not worry if nothing appears to happen. The indi makes high demands on your cpu; there is a lot happening under the hood when the indi is first loaded. It can be up to a minute before the table appears on your chart.

• - EveryTickMode: this indi will have a heavy footfall if the indi's are read at every tick - custom indis are processor killers. Set this to 'true' only if your machine will withstand this assault.
  - IndiReadTimeFrame: this tells the EA to read the indi's at the start of each new candle represented by this, which is the candle time frame in minutes. The default is every minute. EveryTickMode must be 'false'.
  
  Amen has set up a template that shows the output in two columns so they all the pairs fit on your chart. Download this from http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... 481#p14481
  
  Legend:
  • - Blue Up arrow: Slope is >= 0.8: buy and hold
    - DeepSkyBlue Angling-Up arrow: Slope is >= 0.4 and < 0.8: buy
    - Red Down arrow: Slope is <= -0.8: sell and hold
    - Magenta AnglingDown arrow: Slope is <= -0.4 and > -0.8: sell
    - Gold horizontal arrow: Slope is < 0.4 and > -0.4: ranging

In conclusion
We all had a blast last week with the markets trending so hard - perfect for this bot. It will be interesting to see how it performs as more pairs drop out of the trading zone. It could be that we need an adaptable TP, but we shall see.

Have fun.



Simple Shelley
All the above is quite complicated. By June 1st, a demand for a simplified version was beginning to emerge. Simplified Shelley pretty much trades as Shelley initially described. There are few inputs; their use is included in all the above post/ Please note: this version will not be 'improved'.


Matters of general interest

Read this post:
http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread. ... ost4923611 Newbie traders, read this for inspiration and warning. Those of you who have suffered losses, read it for inspiration. There is a thread devoted to Sam's trading method at http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...25#post5118825

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.forexfactory.com/showthread. ... ost4431794, at the bottom of the post.

Useful utilities/EA's/scripts
Matt's chart-population script at http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... 5733#p5733. Use this every time you start a fresh platform.
MaryJane has posted a fabulous utility to allow us to resize EA input windows: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=299017
Multi purpose trade manager: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=89371
Account equity analyser: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread. ... ost4693716 Also at 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 ... p?f=5&t=15

[spotdespot]

Steve - I think you attached the wrong EA

[fxarun]

Is this the Correct version of "Shelley's multi-pair basket trader" EA Steve ?
I couldnt find any difference betweeen EA posted in this page http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... f=37&t=552 with this.

[SteveHopwood]

Steve - I think you attached the wrong EA

No I didn't. Ridiculous idea.

[fxarun]

Thanks Steve !

[verb]

One request, can you have an option to set TP's to the Weekly R1/S1 or if not available the next Weekly Pivot Level in direction of trade and then let the basket TP do it's thing as normal?

Brilliant, Steve. Thank you.

[fxozgirl]

BasketSendHour is the input that tells S when to send the basket.

• - this is in 24 hour format.
  - enter the hour as it is shown on your clock at home. So, if using the start of the London session, when the session opens, look at your clock and enter that hour into this input.
  - do not ask questions here about how to tell the time. I shall delete them and any responses to them.

[SWG123]

Shelley, didn't you use H4?

http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... 545#p12680

Of course, no reason why daily won't work just as well or better.

[fxozgirl]

Shelley, didn't you use H4?

http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... 545#p12680

Of course, no reason why daily won't work just as well or better.

Yes, I did that first couple of days and then settled onto D1

[SteveHopwood]

One request, can you have an option to set TP's to the Weekly R1/S1 or if not available the next Weekly Pivot Level in direction of trade and then let the basket TP do it's thing as normal?

Brilliant, Steve. Thank you.

Which one? There are potentially 21 open trades, so it would be a bit difficult to chose.