Bob's Biggest Balls Ever

[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. Remember to set CriminalIsECN to 'true' if your crim insists on two-stage order sending.
  • Bob's 10.2A and 10.3 trading systems. Details at http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... f=38&t=919.
  • The Slope indi

I am not yet trading this EA on my live account. Be warned that there could well be bugs in the code.

Intro
Bob's Biggest Balls Ever is a multi-pair auto-trader for Nanningbob's 10.2A and 10.3 trading systems. I had already started to code a single-pair trader when I realised that Baluda (Paul) had already done most of the hard work for me in his MultiTenPointThree v1.1.1 indi, creating the arrays to store all the relevant values. I have hacked his code and subsumed it within the EA, so that part of thingies is impeccable. Many thanks Paul. This is breathtaking stuff and we are all deeply grateful to you for what you do here.

(Note to fledgling coders: study Paul's code; you will learn much from it - I have).

The inputs are in two parts: EA inputs at the top because they are the ones we are likely to change; Paul's indi inputs after that.

Screen display
You have two options:

• ShowIndiTable: this displays the values calculated by Paul's indi. Run BBBE at least once with this enabled. Any pairs with blank values are not offered for trading by your criminal and so need removing from the symbolsToTrade input at the start of Paul's indi inputs.
• ShowUsualChartFeedback: this displays my usual user feedback - lot sizes etc.

Lifesys helped me tidy up the display so that you can have both the usual feedback and the table on your chart, so set both the inputs to true for this.

10.2A
I think of this as a trend trader, so most of the inputs begin with 'Trend'. The meaning of them should be fairly obvious. Ambiguous points are:

• BBBE allows for 'scaling in' at the rate of one new trade a day up to the maximum set in MaxTrades.
• EnforceTriplePivotIntegrity forces the bot to wait until MP, WP, & DP all line up. If disabled, then DP can be out of alignment with the other two.
• The basic mptm features included only apply to trend trades - the reason scalp and trend trades have different magic numbers.
• The swap filters only apply to trend trades; scalps are going to be in and out quickly.
• Turn off Slope by setting the time frame to zero. TrendBuyLevel and TrendSellLevel default to the usual Buy/Sell Only settings.

10.3
I think of this as a scalp trader, so most of the inputs begin with 'Scalp'. The intent of the inputs should be pretty obvious.

I have included Slope so that we do not have to fight an adverse trend whilst scalping. Disable it by setting the time frame to zero.

I have included the 10.3 TM JUmp code - inputs straight after the 10.3 inputs. The JumpTrendTrades input allows you to apply this to the trend trades as well, if you wish.

Slope indi
You do not need the indi. The code is subsumed within BBBE's code - Paul again.

DO and DP cross
BBBE uses the M15 time frame to detect a cross of these lines.

Trading times
This is another piece of stunning programming by Paul and offers complete control over BBBE's trading times. Instructions for entering your trading times is in the inputs - just remember not to leave any spaces, or BBBE defaults to 24 hour trading. Note that questions about this are not allowed here and will be gently removed, along with answers that members are kind enough to write. I do not allow my threads to become bogged down with discussion by people unable to tell the time.

A central tenet of Bob's trading is to trade pairs appropriate to their market, so:

• Trade the AUD, JPY and NZD crosses during the Tokyo session.
• Trade the European crosses during the London session.
• Trade anything non - AUD/NZD during the New York session.

Trading tends to die back 3-4 hours into a session, so calculate your stop-trading times by adding this to your start.

I suggest running three instances of BBBE, one for each session, with your trading times and symbolsToTrade inputs edited accordingly - save them as set files so you do not lose your inputs when an update comes along. Once started, BBBE goes into an endless loop, looping around the code twice a second. The only way to access the inputs window via the F7 key is by using the Expert Advisors button to temporarily disable experts. The SetFileName input allows you to display the name of the setfile that the instance of BBBE is using, on the chart feedback.

When BBBE is outside its trading hours, it will display a message informing you. The chart time display will only update once a minute instead of every second, unless there are open trades.

Assigning an instance 'master' status
We discovered that having multiple instances of BBBE running caused problems when they all tried to modify trades at the same time. To avoid this, you need to make one of the the 'master', so that it alone carries out trade management. Do this by setting ThisInstanceIsMaster to 'true' on one of the instances you drag onto your charts. The screen feedback will tell you whether the chart you are looking at holds the master instance or not.

The GMT offset
The two inputs relevant here are in Paul's indi inputs section - shiftDayChange and hoursFromGMT. Paul has posted an explanation at http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... 120#p35120; it is well worthwhile taking time to understand it.

Optional filters
There are three filters that will help you to avoid trading unless the pair is actually trending:

• 10.2 TMA Slope as described earlier.
• ADX (Average Directional Movement Index indi that comes with Empty4). Lifesys provided the code for this, so many thanks, Paul:
  • the market is trending upwards if +DI > -DI.
  • the market is trending downwards if +DI < -DI.
  • the first value in the indi window gives you the strength of the trend, so the higher this number, the stronger the trend. The inputs are:
    • UseFilter_ADX turns the filter on or off.
    • ADXThreshold: the first value you see in the indi inputs window must be >= this input to allow the cross pair to trade.
    • ADXAvPeriod: the number of periods over which ADX makes the calculates. The default is the standard use.
    • UseH1ADX etc: the time frames that must be showing a trend in the right direction to allow the trade.
    • FilterReversals: this looks at current ADX values for the H1 and M15 timeframes to ensure ADX value has not fallen so far beneath crossover that it is below '-ADXThreshold'. This could signal that a strong reversal is happening that could make the nominated trade direction unprofitable.
  • Doji (or 'pinbar') filter This code also supplied by Lifesys.
  • UseFilter_Doji to turn this filter on or off.
  • DojiFractPercent is the maximum allowable candle wick before the candle is considered a Doji.

For those of you unfamiliar with Doji, they are candles that travelled a long way in one direction but then reversed, leaving a candle with a short body and a long wick. On the H4 and D1 candles, Doji's indicate strong resistance to further travel in that direction. Here is a pic with a couple of lovely Doji's, marked by the green candles:

pic.gif

See what happened? In both cases the market had fallen for several days, then reversed direction after the Doji. So, if BBBE was looking to sell during the candle that followed each Doji, the trade was unlikely to succeed.

So, with the Doji filter enabled, BBBE will look at the previous H4 and D1 candles and not send a trade in the teeth of an opposite direction Doji.

Bugs
This was a monumental piece of coding and it will be a miracle along the lines of the Fourth Coming were it to be bug-free. Sing out if you notice any.

In conclusion
Have fun. This Giraffe should find lots of leaves to munch.




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.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=299017
• 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

[cuzgeorge]

Thanks Bob and Steve, Loading up shortly.
cuz

EDIT;
heres the link,


Steve, your code is getting very neat and easier to understand. Really like how the shell is coming on.
No errors loading up, all smooth and ready to trade.
Thank you again.

EDIT EDIT, 3 scalp trades in the first few minutes, Nice multitrader again, Chart used is a 1M EURUSD.

Cuz

[Jemook]

Bahahaha! What a name! Let's see how this one goes

[FreddyFX]

WHAUW, I need to speedup my learning curve !!!

[mobthehop]

Cool - thanks to everybody who made this "monster" possible

[SWG123]

Thanks Steve, Paul and of course, Bob.

BTW Steve, did I miss the 2nd and 3rd comings?

[bourgenot]

best forum, big t. you

[bazze]

A big thank you from Norway

[bourgenot]

hello, what i have too do with : " EURNZD BOB01 OP_SELL order send failed with error(130): invalid stops", thank you a lot for your help, and "bravo" for you !

[morgb]

Steve...........I'm loving this one both manual + this little beauty, something that actually has pulled me away from the beloved beast!!!

Happy New Year BTW