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Adding Delay to your EA

Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2018 9:21 pm
by Darkdoji
Hi mr. tools, Mntiwana and Mladen,

I am currently having an EA coded but while that is going on (not yet concluded) I have been reading around the web to check the wisdom of going the EA route at all. From everything I have read so far - the chances of coming up with a profitable EA in the live environment tends toward zero due all sorts of issues and especially the difference between the EA testing environment and the live trading environment - which means there is no reliable means of judging the potential of my EA currently in the works. However, I discovered this site with some advice on reconciling the two environments to be close and therefore allow prediction of performance to some extent. My interest is on the question of adding delay to the EA - here is a quote about this on the site: "In the simulator, delay is not importance and serve as a pause while executing in back testing mode. But to live trading is actually waiting for price changes in the live server and serve as a delay task for trade opening at server side. The historical data is stored in smallest data of 1 minute interval and a delay of 1 or 2 minutes will help live data server to execute with similar results as back testing." My questions for help are as follows:

a) Is the above statement correct? Partly correct? or correct with qualifications? - which is it and how and why? (I do not have any coding knowledge)
b) If this will help as suggested how should I describe this to my coder in order to get him to add the required delay?
c) In fact what the hell is this all about and what difference would it make to the prospects of a better EA or at least one that mirrors results live close to test results?

I shall be most grateful for a basic explanation on this topic (bearing in mind I know nothing really about coding) but I want to do whatever I can to improve the chances of my EA once I take delivery or before I do.

Thank you all
8-)