@ghamm, @enickma, Yes, great discussion… I have been coding Bots and Indicators for the last 4 years and anyone looking to comence programing trading algo’s should read and comprehend this thread… It’s the most accurate discusion on building an Algo in Babypips to date…
Would I purchase an EA just on the backtest history provided… No chance!.. Athough I tend to agree with Enickma’s arguement to backtest… Especially in visual mode… You can see the way price action defeats Indicators, Strategies instantly… Change a few parameters and run a backtest again… you can solve one issue and create another…
The Ctrader Platform has a resonably good optimisation feature where it can run hundreds of settings (parameters) in a few hours on a particular Algo and at least get you a better starting point with where to begin Visual Backtesting…
Here is a great example of Coding and Backtesting in Visual Mode
Very acurate… Most of my development goes into using common indicators, but not the way they are intended to be by FX Educators… Example, RSI, smooth it and trade the 50 crossover… Overbought and Oversold only works sometimes…
Another was a variation on the Fibonaci Extension as I displayed in this thread a few weeks back… Unfortunetly it was wasted on most of the get rich quick crew that permiate the threads these days…
The hybrid approch is also my most successful application when developing and using Algo’s… Bot’s can watch 28 pairs+ and alert me to favourable conditions while I can be doing other things… Or, open a position, close a position using it’s predetemined logic without an ounce of procrastination from me…
Once again, informative thread for those that are contemplating the “Black Art” of coding for the Financial Markets… Good Luck.