The7 (probably rubbish) MA channel EA.

[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.
  • Moving Averages.
  • Slope helps, but it is not a part of The7's system.

I am not yet trading this EA on my live account. I do not anticipate ever doing so

Introduction and conclusion

I received this pm from Marlene:

Hi Steve,

At the end of last week a friend referred me to a thread in FF which has a very simple (ha ha I bet you hate it when non coders use that word "simple") system for trading the daily charts using a price channel.

The idea seems to have merit and I think an EA would be great for traders here in your forum who like to trade multiple daily charts.

Here is the thread - it is not long and the content not heavy to get through
http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=386701

Briefly the system uses a channel of 2 ema's 5, one on high, the other on low. When a daily candle opens outside of the channel, and price takes it to close inside the channel, it is a valid entry to trade. In the pic attached, using coloured candles, blue would be a buy, red a sell.

The thread is yet untouched by adding lots of variables etc., the only addition seems to be some traders like to filter trades using the strength of the TMA, good old slope indy.

If you do have time and think there is merit in this system maybe an EA could be a help to members of your happy home here.

Cheers - Marlene (sandybeach)

What I have coded:

• trades my understanding of The7's post 1, so note that:
  • I have not read the rest of the thread.
  • I may have misunderstood the odd thingy or 50
• all the usual stuff is here, including Slope - thrown into the mix but disabled.
• a quick and dirty open prices only backtest in Crapergy Tester shows the market often hurtles through the channel. I have only coded the ea to trade when it closes within the channel, as per my understanding of The7's post 1.

The moving average is reasonably configurable. Note that this is a system that makes decisions at the open of a new candle, based on the close of the previous one, so MA displays are for the close of the previous candle. The attached template save the bone-idle (like me) from having to load up the MA's for themselves - don't you just hate having to do that?

The rest is familiar to many of you. Those of you going, "Uh? Whut?" do some investigation in this forum. Ask here if you are stuck. I will not answer, but some kindly soul might be happy to help you out.

Have fun. Let's see if this raindrop has a bit of a splash in it. Doubt it, frankly; can't help thinking that if a simple MA channel system like this worked, then we would all be rich already. We shall see.



Matters of general interest

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

Useful utilities/EA's/scripts
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/showthre...16#post4693716 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

[garyfritz]

That's pretty easy to test in Tradestation:

The7.gif

Looks like I've implemented it right. He was a little unclear on the stop definition so I arbitrarily decided to make it the lowest-low / highest-high of the last 5 bars before the entry bar.

If you look at the right symbols at the right time, it looks promising. But overall it loses big. USDJPY made 570 pips in 2012 but lost 3500 in 2008-2010. EURUSD made 1100 pips in 2012 but lost 2200 before that. AUDJPY made 3000 in 2011-2012 but tanked before that. Etc.

CHFJPY was fairly consistent over 5 years, NZDUSD was about the only one that one consistently (but even it has faded for the last year).

Result of trading all non-NZD pairs:

The7eq.gif

So it makes money sometimes, but not very reliably. I couldn't trade it unless I worked out a way to figure out which pairs to trade.

[charvert]

it is pretty clear if u read the thread

the signal bar's High/Low as the SL for short/long. that's it.

and TP is the "SKY".

so ur test result is way off, though i'm not saying his system is profitable, but at least you may try the correct way first.

That's pretty easy to test in Tradestation:

The7.gif

Looks like I've implemented it right. He was a little unclear on the stop definition so I arbitrarily decided to make it the lowest-low / highest-high of the last 5 bars before the entry bar.

The7eq.gif

So it makes money sometimes, but not very reliably. I couldn't trade it unless I worked out a way to figure out which pairs to trade.

[sandybeach]

Thanks Steve,

Appreciate you doing this, I will give it a try anyway and see what comes of it.

Cheers,
Marlene

[garyfritz]

it is pretty clear if u read the thread
the signal bar's High/Low as the SL for short/long. that's it.

And that's what my "high/low of last 5 bars" will end up using if the market turns on the signal bar. If not, it gives a bit more wiggle room for the trade.

I tried it with the high/low of the signal bar, and it wasn't significantly different.

The7.gif

and TP is the "SKY".

...and that's exactly what I used. No TP, just hit the SL or hold the trade until a reversing signal.

As I said, if you cherry-pick the symbols to use, you might do better. I don't know if "what works now" and "what works next month" are correlated at all and I'm not going to bother testing it right now.

[firesword]

EA's opening positions at wrong places.

The system is:
Go short when candle opens above the channel and closes inside the channel.
Go long when candle opens below the channel and closes inside the channel.
If the entry signal candle touches both sides of the channel it is no go.

The EA goes short when candle opens inside the channel and closes below the channel.
For longs, it opens positions when candle opens inside the channel and closes above the channel.
It's completely out of whack...

[SteveHopwood]

EA's opening positions at wrong places.

Not on my machine it isn't, either in visual backtesting or on demo.

V 1a is in post 1. I coded it late last night because I was bored and wanted something uncomplicated to do, so there were a few whiskey-inspired bloops. I have fixed them.

[maudur]

EA's opening positions at wrong places.

Not on my machine it isn't, either in visual backtesting or on demo.

V 1a is in post 1. I coded it late last night because I was bored and wanted something uncomplicated to do, so there were a few whiskey-inspired bloops. I have fixed them.

Steve,

Thank you very much by this EA.

I read all the thread of The7 in FF.

I've 2 comments about your EA:
1- Slope indicator is not used by The7. In my opinion, is not a good filter for this strategy. I suggest that you leave it as an option in the EA.

2- The7 says, "If the signal candle has a wick towards the direction of the trade, try to avoid the entry. If there are long wicks on both sides the candle, avoid the entry.It shows uncertainty. The only wick we want to see is a pinbar"

Thank you very much.

Maudur

[firesword]

I ran it trough craptester and it didn't look like its opening trades at right places.
I know that one should not trust craptester, but I like watching craptester when it goes ballistic on full speed.
The strategy itself doesn't promise much anyways...

[sandybeach]

The EA is working correctly here on a demo.... it has entered 3 trades today, & for this demo the option to use Slope is not being used.

Cheers
Marlene