so for some time i have been writing EAs (specifically for MT4). While backtesting was, i must say, very impressive, live trading never seemed profitable and i'm at this point where i'm starting to think i might have to improve something but i'm not sure what. I did want to share a few my own ideas for the bots, but at the same time i was wondering how other people do it.
So here are some habbits i tend to follow when i write my EAs:
- i base my EAs on custom indicators; i use iCustom, where i read the values from the indicator to decide if a trade should happen
- i made a habbit of using the same indicator ( like Super Smoother Average Trend -> viewtopic.php?p=1295391074#p1295391074 ) more times on a different time frame in the same EA
- the EA is then consisted of maybe 4 confirmation indicators and 1 entry indicator ( to a NNFX connoisseur this might ring a bell, but its not EXACTLY the NNFX strategy )
- exit strategy is a stop loss, not an exit indicator
- i implemented a trailing stop to the EA - it would follow the price based on the input
- due to the trailing stop, the EAs would achieve high win rate, but wins can be relatively small compared to losses
- i was thinking that smaller timeframes (1m, 5m, 15m) would prove more profitable than higher timeframes (1h, 4h, 1d) so for the last few months i was relying on this, but i have never seen this theory proved by the EAs
- due to the high win rate, i often allowed the EA to go 50%-in (as in, all-in, but with respect to the required margin, potential stop out and the stop loss)
So these are some habbits that i do when i write my EAs. How about you? Do you do something differently? Did you get any new ideas when reading this post that you didnt think of before? Did you do the same thing, but then changed to something else and seen a big improvement?
Id love to hear your thoughts on the topic.
