Expert Advisor Builder for Metatrader 4.
Expert Advisor Builder for MetaTrader 4 is what I will talk about in this trading lecture. The lecture is part of the How to Trade Forex with 100 GBPUSD Strategies in the Account course.
Hello, dear traders, this is Petko Alexandrov from Forex Academy. So how is it possible to create and trade many strategies into one portfolio Expert Advisor? It is possible with the Expert Advisor builder for MetaTrader 4 that we have on our website.
If I drag one more browser with our website at eaforexacademy.com, on the top menu you will see that we have this Software with a drop-down menu. And we have two Strategy Builders. One is called Expert Advisor Studio, the other one is called Forex Strategy Builder – both are Expert Advisor builders for MetaTrader 4.
Now with the Forex Strategy Builder, it is possible as well to have a portfolio Expert Advisor backtest. But you cannot export actual portfolio Expert Advisors. Basically, you can put many Expert Advisors in the Forex Strategy Builder and see what is their total or their summarized performance.
The Expert Advisor Builder for MetaTrader 4 EA Studio is web-based.
The tool to export portfolio experts is with Expert Advisor Studio. So the Expert Advisor Studio is web-based, it works on our website, it is integrated into our website so it’s easier for our students and traders. But this is an external product.
It is developed by Forex Software Ltd and we are using it to improve our algorithmic trading. So the portfolio function is available only for MetaTrader 4. As well this Expert Advisors Studio has 15 days free trial that you can register for.
Also, keep in mind that the only difference between the trial account and the license is that with the trial account you cannot export portfolio Expert Advisors. But you can export an unlimited number of strategies or an unlimited number of single Expert Advisors, alright? So let me just login back and I will explain to you in simple words what is this Expert Advisor Builder for Metatrader 4, how we are using it, and how it makes our algorithmic trading easier.
With the Expert Advisor builder you can automate in MetaTrader 4 any trading strategy you want.
Now if I go to strategy, you will see that here I can build a strategy. I have some market information, indicator chart, backtest output, and balance chart. Now here I can build any Expert Advisor, any trading strategy.
I can put the Stop Loss, the Take Profit and the entry lot. So let’s quickly build one strategy and you will see how it changes. For example, I will keep Stop Loss of 100 and I will use fixed Stop Loss.
Take Profit, let’s make it, for example, 70 pips and it will be fixed. I click on Accept and then as Entry rule let’s select randomly some indicator. What we have, for example, the first one, Accelerator oscillator.
The indicator comes with various rules.
And then we have different rules for this indicator. We have Accelerator Oscillator rises, falls, is higher than the level line, is lower, crosses the level line upward, crosses the level line downward. Let’s take any of those randomly and I click on Accept.
And immediately I have a result here on the balance chart. I have some backtest output and this is for H1. OK? On EURUSD.
And this is from the 16th of October 2017 till today, 5th of April 2019. If I change, for example, the asset to GBPUSD, I immediately see the new result. But of course, this is not yet a strategy.
I just took it randomly to show you that immediately I see the backtest. Now let me put some exit condition as well. So we will have some kind of strategy to use as an example.
Expert Advisor Builder for Metatrader 4 EA Studio only works with MetaTrader indicators.
You can see we have many indicators. Actually, Expert Advisor Studio works only with MetaTrader indicators, let’s take the Envelopes. And you see I have different conditions, the bar opens above the upper band, the bar opens below the lower band, the bar opens below upper band after opening above it, and then we have the bar opens above upper band after opening below it.
Let’s take, for example, this one and I will use the parameters that come by default. And I click on Accept and you see that I have to change on my balance chart. On the top, I have a count of trades which is 458 which is a good number.
We want to see strategies with minimum 300 count of trades. Maximum stagnation is 77.94 which is horrible. OK? We don’t trade such strategies with such stagnation but I took these indicators randomly.
Let me try quickly to improve this strategy. For example, with Envelopes, let me change the period to a higher number. Let’s make it 16, what we will have is still negative.
We’re focusing on GBPUSD in this course.
Let me increase it up to 20, still negative. Let me increase it to 21, what we have as a result is negative. I will actually increase the deviation of 0.2.
I see there is a little bit of a change here. Let me decrease the Stop Loss to 90, still losing. And let’s change now, for example, again the assets.
I will go to NZDUSD, you can see still a losing strategy. I will go to EURJPY. You see here we have a drawdown, then the strategy makes a profit, then loses.
Now let’s go back to the GBPUSD because this is what we are focusing on in this course. And let’s change the time frame. I will go to M1, you can see on M1 actually we have a profitable strategy.
It goes up then sideways, for some times there is no new profit but no losses, and then it goes to a profit. And let’s change it to M5. What we will have, you can see we have a totally different balance chart.
Expert Advisor Builder for Metatrader 4 is extremely quick in Backtesting.
I will change it to M15. Here we have a fantastic strategy. You can see what a balance line we have.
We have a maximum stagnation of 23.84% which is not bad, an R-squared of 83, Profit factor of 1.4, which is really great results. So these parameters and these indicators that I took here randomly, actually work very well on the GBPUSD on the M15 chart and as well we saw it on M1, but on M15 is much better. Now guys what is the benefit of having this?
The benefit is that we don’t lose time to test any manual strategies on the platform. It will take us months to do the simple tests that I just did. Imagine you want to test this strategy, and again this is a random strategy.
Imagine you want to test any strategy on GBPUSD on M1. You will test it for a couple of months until you find whether it is profitable or whether it is losing. Then you will need to do it on the other time frames.
For MetaTrader 4 and for MetaTrader 5, we can export the strategy as Expert Advisor.
And then you will lose more time, and then you will test it on M15 and you will need a couple of more months of testing to see that this is actually a profitable strategy on M15. But the thing here is that we can export this strategy as Expert Advisor for MetaTrader 4 and for MetaTrader 5, and here it is. So with one click, we export the strategy as Expert Advisor and we can place it on MetaTrader for trading.
When we trade with Expert Advisors, the huge advantage that we have in front of manual trading is that the Expert Advisor will trade all the time on the MetaTrader. And when you are trading manually, obviously you need to place the indicators, you need to stay in front of the computer and the monitor, you need to look when the entry condition will happen and when will the exit be. And when we sleep we cannot follow the strategy.
So even if you test any strategy manually, it will be very hard to get precise results like what we have here because you will not be able to trade 24 hours from Monday to Friday. OK? And here we have very detailed statistics about the balance chart, the journal. Here are all trades opened, the indicator chart.
You can generate strategies if you don’t have a profitable strategy.
So you can see exactly where the trades were open, where they were closed and so on. As well with the Expert Advisor Builder for MetaTrader 4, you have some statistical information like very detailed backtest output, balance chart, count of entries, profit and losses in currency by weekdays, a lot of statistics here which again in manual trading will be nearly impossible to be done. Alright?
So this is from where you can build a strategy, you can play around with the parameters and the indicators and you can export it if you like, as an Expert Advisor. Now if you don’t have a profitable strategy what you can do is you can generate strategies.
We have the Generator in the Expert Advisor Builder for Metatrader 4 EA Studio
This is a unique thing with Expert Advisor Studio that I’m using all the time on a couple of computers. I run generators constantly, all day long, all night long. OK? So here we have the possibility to generate strategies over the historical data of our broker which I will show you how to export in the next lecture.
You can select the trading lot you wish to trade with. And you can select a symbol, you can select period or time frame and below you have different options like strategy properties. So you can select what trading lot you want to trade if you want to use Stop Loss or Take Profit. For example, you can choose always use, may use or do not use, so this way you will not be using Stop Loss.
I prefer to use Stop Loss. And here, for example, I have a range between 10 to 100 pips and the very same thing for the Take Profit. And in generator settings, I have working minutes.
So this is how much time I want the generator to be working. and below I have Search best which could be a net balance, return to drawdown, system quality number. If I keep it on net balance, it means that it will show me first in Collection, the strategies that are having the highest balance. Alright? And below I have Out of Sample which I will explain a little bit later in the course.
You don’t need any trading experience because the generator creates strategies for you.
And we have some common Acceptance criteria which I will explain as well. Now let me remove it and I will just run the generator, and I will show you how it works. You can see very quickly it calculates different strategies and they go to the collection.
Already hundreds of strategies are into my collection and these are actual strategies that you can choose from. OK? This is the first strategy that I have built I think with Accelerator Oscillator, yes and Envelopes. And below we have some other strategies that are being generated.
And of course, we need to filter these strategies which I will show you how to do. But the idea here is that you really don’t need to have any trading experience to use that because the generator creates strategies for you. And it shows you what the result is for the last 1 year or for a longer period of time, depends on the historical data. Alright?
In this course, I will show you how I use portfolio Expert Advisors.
Now from the collection, we have the possibility to export these strategies as Expert Advisors and we have the possibility to add to the portfolio. This means that if I add a couple of strategies, you will see I will do it just very quickly for the first 5 strategies. I even don’t look at what they are and I go to portfolio.
You will see this is the result that these 5 strategies give me combined together. And you can see that the balance chart is much smoother than the first single strategy. But I will show you how I am using the portfolio experts in the Expert Advisor Builder for Metatrader 4, how I select which strategies to use and how actually I generate strategies in order to have only strategies that are according to my Acceptance criteria.
And not to have just hundreds and hundreds of strategies generated. So this is the Strategy Builder EA Studio that I will demonstrate to you in this course. And as a Bonus, I will include the portfolio Expert Advisors that I will create in the course.
So if you don’t want to do the whole thing it is just fine. You can watch the lectures just for information so you know how these portfolio experts are created. And of course, every knowledge that you gain in Forex trading is very important and it might help you at any moment. Alright?
So I will include the portfolio Expert Advisors later in the course guys. And in the next lecture, I will show you how to export the historical data from the broker, and how I generate strategies by myself daily.
Thank you for reading and I always wish you to enjoy the trading. If you have questions about the Expert Advisor Builder for MetaTrader 4, please write in our trading Forum.
Cheers.