My Trading Fiend

[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.
  • johnf's trading system at http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... =16&t=3746

THIS IS AN EXPERIMENTAL EA NOT YET BEING USED ON OUR LIVE ACCOUNTS

MTF is a first attempt at automating some aspects of johnf's trading system posted at http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... =16&t=3746. Read his thread, download his indi and template and familiarise yourself with the manual trading system. I like it. Systems do not come much simpler than this and John has been using it for a few months, so give it a go.

You do not need any of the indi's in John's thread for this EA to work. All the indi's do is read the standard Moving Average indi that ships with Empty4/5; MTF has this subsumed within its own code. Use the Crap Custom Abortions that John supplies in his .rar file merely to confirm that the readings MTF makes are correct.

MTF makes trade entries thus:

• all htf dots are the same colour.
• all trading time frame dots are the same colour, and those at the close of the previous candle were not.

Trade exits are at stop loss, take profit, or a cross in the wrong direction by the 3/8 smma. I am open to suggestions to make this more sophisticated.

Some of the usual stuff is included. Those of you unfamiliar with my work and my 'usual stuff', download the shell user guide and look for MTF inputs there. Inputs described in the UG but not shown in the MTF inputs window are not included.

MTF specific inputs. Leave these alone unless you know what you are doing:

• TradingTimeFrame: the trigger time frame. All the dots have to line up for the first time to trigger the trade.
• TrendTimeFrame: the htf trend detection time frame. By default, all H4 dots must line up before the TradingTimeFrame can trigger a trade.
• Moving average inputs: these align with the MTF MA indi in John's thread.
  *]SMMA Crossover Inputs: Leave CloseTradeOnOppositeCross set to its default of 'true' if you want MTF to close a trade on a cross of SMMA in the wrong direction.

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

• MaryJane has posted a fabulous utility to allow us to resize EA input windows: http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... f=5&t=3427
• 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

[/list]

[currymonster]

Thanks for this Steve. With the EA open with 10 charts, the EA has been using about 60-70% of my cpu and causing crashes, don't know if anyone else has seen this. I've discontinued testing as a result,

just reporting,

cheers

[Solarwind]

I have 6 charts only open, but not seeing any problems with CPU at this stage.

[SteveHopwood]

Thanks for this Steve. With the EA open with 10 charts, the EA has been using about 60-70% of my cpu and causing crashes, don't know if anyone else has seen this. I've discontinued testing as a result,

just reporting,

cheers

Don't run it with the Crap Custom Abortions on your chart.

The biggest problem with Crap Custom Abortions (known by the uninitiated as 'custom indicators) is one that lies at the heart of CrapTx. When an EA consults an indicator, the platform loads it into memory, then unloads it again once it has responded to the EA call. This takes time.

An indi has to do a lot of work up front when loaded onto a chart. Most of them are based on some sort of moving average, and the calculation has to be done over every bar on the chart. On subsequent ticks, the indi only has to update its calculation by updating the last x bars actually involved – the reason that, say, a moving average indi does not make your cpu emit blue smoke.

Custom indis typically consist of a number of calls to the regular indicators that ship with Empty4, and manipulate the information thus gleaned according to what the coder requires. An indicator such as AllAverages will make a number of calls to standard indicators. At each tick; each standard indi called by the custom indi is loaded, does all the up-front stuff, used, then unloaded. This takes a long time. Ridiculous, but that is how it works, and is the reason that CCA's such as AA and VQ slow your machine.

And then, we put the EA/Crap Custom Abortion on multiple charts.................................

So, run the EA without using John's template; it has the cca code subsumed within its innards and does not need them. Also, the code ensures that calls to the Moving Averages are only made when actually needed i.e. the close of a candle for the H4 and sma cross moving averages, and once every 5 minutes for the M30 MA's to show our cpu's some mercy.

I am running the demo on 18 charts on a two year old machine hosting three live accounts all running EA's, and 5 more ea-testing demos, my coding window and Firefox - all seamlessly apart from the occasional Firefox crash. So, unless your machine is geriatric then the crashes are not being caused by the EA using up your cpu power.

You might still want to hang on for the next update. The upl of open trades is nearly always positive but the balance is dropping as trades are closed at a loss. I will load John's template onto charts with losing trades at some stage, to see what is causing the closures. I assume if is the SMMA Crossover signal and that I need to code in a filter to stop it being used prematurely, but I do not actually know. Watch this space.

[xilef]

after loading the EA to 6 charts i cant change the timeframe in the charts anymore, also it causes 50% load on my almost new I5-Processor Computer. I dont use any Indicators...

[currymonster]

No indicators loaded onto the screen. PiXXed me right off as I restored my computer to an earlier timepoint before sussing the EA was causing the problem . Computer had been on for 3 months no turnoffs prior to that. Every day for the past few days since using the EA get home to a crashed comp. Removed EA this morning and Computer working fine now! Not to worry, happens with some EAs. Really enjoying watching OAM doing it's thing. Keep on Trucking Mr H

Thanks for this Steve. With the EA open with 10 charts, the EA has been using about 60-70% of my cpu and causing crashes, don't know if anyone else has seen this. I've discontinued testing as a result,

just reporting,

cheers

Don't run it with the Crap Custom Abortions on your chart.

The biggest problem with Crap Custom Abortions (known by the uninitiated as 'custom indicators) is one that lies at the heart of CrapTx. When an EA consults an indicator, the platform loads it into memory, then unloads it again once it has responded to the EA call. This takes time.

An indi has to do a lot of work up front when loaded onto a chart. Most of them are based on some sort of moving average, and the calculation has to be done over every bar on the chart. On subsequent ticks, the indi only has to update its calculation by updating the last x bars actually involved – the reason that, say, a moving average indi does not make your cpu emit blue smoke.

Custom indis typically consist of a number of calls to the regular indicators that ship with Empty4, and manipulate the information thus gleaned according to what the coder requires. An indicator such as AllAverages will make a number of calls to standard indicators. At each tick; each standard indi called by the custom indi is loaded, does all the up-front stuff, used, then unloaded. This takes a long time. Ridiculous, but that is how it works, and is the reason that CCA's such as AA and VQ slow your machine.

And then, we put the EA/Crap Custom Abortion on multiple charts.................................

So, run the EA without using John's template; it has the cca code subsumed within its innards and does not need them. Also, the code ensures that calls to the Moving Averages are only made when actually needed i.e. the close of a candle for the H4 and sma cross moving averages, and once every 5 minutes for the M30 MA's to show our cpu's some mercy.

I am running the demo on 18 charts on a two year old machine hosting three live accounts all running EA's, and 5 more ea-testing demos, my coding window and Firefox - all seamlessly apart from the occasional Firefox crash. So, unless your machine is geriatric then the crashes are not being caused by the EA using up your cpu power.

You might still want to hang on for the next update. The upl of open trades is nearly always positive but the balance is dropping as trades are closed at a loss. I will load John's template onto charts with losing trades at some stage, to see what is causing the closures. I assume if is the SMMA Crossover signal and that I need to code in a filter to stop it being used prematurely, but I do not actually know. Watch this space.