How do you make your decision as to where to place primers and their size? Do you only use main primers or include sub-primers?
Re
D
Give us a brief of how your 8 months have been until now?
How much of initial balance and lot size did you start with and where are you now?
How would the EA have helped you?
Regards
CC
i think this is a vey good idea, i have made a simpel funktion where i get a push notification and a audio alert if there is a certain number of buy or sell trades (to let me know when its time for primers)… im a crappy coder, so its only using a variable that i set manually (for instans, if buy or sell is = or greater than 20, so i have to calculate drawdown manually), but i think that for someone with greater coding skills could make an variable with a % instead, so that the user could say they wanted warning at 40% (or maybe 50%)
In the previous post I threw a lot into the mix. My Greenland trading experience is as follow:
1 - eToro broker (no EA trading), eurusd, manual/order based. Using TP of 40 pips. It’s my first channel, so, a learning one… Running since 20-9-12. Only had to go into primers mode in the Feb high, and still carrying one. My equity is around 68% of my balance. Also have other non-channel trades running, waiting for them to close. To manage this channel I have a excel spreadsheet with all the data and formulas. Current step 179.
2 – AlpariUK (MT4), gbpusd, manual/order based. No predefined TP, trading like the master Viking: price action based. Orders only when I’m not in front of the PC. Started February, current step 27 (very cautious trading), it will be in the near future a partially automated channel.
3 – AlpariUK (demo MT4), gbpusd, EA, TP 35, primer interval 100 pips with TP of 300 and volume of MathAbs(totalShortLots-totalLongLots)/3. Threshold set to 0,05% of balance going against you. Running since February. I still didn’t put this EA into live trading for several reasons. When I stated coding it I had the idea to make it completely autonomous, something that could run for 2 years solo… I ended up with a mammoth EA that tries to do way too much on its own. In another words, a lot of variables to tune and in the end a lot of ways it could go wrong. A Greenland EA could be a very good thing but it will always need human supervision. One approach could be the development of simpler EAs suited for the different modes a channel can be in (with user defined parameters). Also looking at the EA you developed, love the ways you set the orders, a very good job. I used the obvious approach, less friendly to the DD.
I still didn’t find the time to carefully read the two previous Viking posts, to see if they bring some light into an algorithmic approach to primers. Have already used them in real trading and I think I’m getting the hang of it, and that’s why I increasingly think it will be very difficult to code a fully automated approach.
let me see if i understand you correct, you are thinking about a separat “primer EA”, where the user can set something like the gap between trades, and the trade size, so that you still have an EA to place the orders and set SL into the “green zone” with the speed of a computer?
if that is the case, i love the idea… that would give us some of the good tings from an EA, but keep the human thinking along side…
You set the UsePrimers variable to false in order to do primers manually, but the EA should include and check for MagicNumber in order to safely allow for manual trades. No point in placing pending primers on an S/R line if the EA is going to delete it 
You can only use one EA per chart. It’s possible to open a second chart of the symbol of course, but like I said, manually doing the primers are almost ready in the existing code already.
Re
D
Yes, in that line of thought:
- range trading mode
- midterm range trading mode (easily fits into the first)
- primers rescue mode
This ways it will be a lot easier for the trader to control when we go into primers, or when its time to go back to normal trading, making this a traders decision not an automated one.
By the way, the volume formula I wrote in the last post it’s not the one I’ve been using. That one was when I set the primers to 50 pips, but for 100 intervals I’m more violent, ex. sell case: NormalizeDouble((sellLots/countSells)*6,2);
Sorry, still didn’t look to the code where you use the UsePrimers variable. Post number of the link ?
Haven’t looked at CC’s code for awhile as I’ve been trying to figure out calculations by manually changing things up in code based on the “idea of the day”. Last version I have from CC used a bool called “UseAutoPrimer” for this.
Re
D
my thought, was to replace the “normal” EA with the primer EA on the same chart when I decides that its time for primers… as i dont want normal trades when placing primers anyway…
the difference from the primer funktion we got now, is that the user would have [U][B]full control [/B][/U] on when to deploy primers, and when to run normal trades… this would ofcourse also be posible to just add into only 1 combined EA, with a bool to turn primer mode on / normal mode off
Better to keep it in one EA as things could change while you sleep. Adding MagicNumber to the EA will also allow you to make extra trades in “midrange” without messing up the normal regs.
Re
D
I’m looking at “Greenland Strategy 2-4.mq4”, with “UseAutoPrimer”.
I only have up to 2-3, but there Start() checks UseAutoPrimer to decide whether to run CheckEquityDrop() or not (start of all primer activity).
Re
D
[QUOTE=“vmrdc;492049”]I’m looking at “Greenland Strategy 2-4.mq4”, with “UseAutoPrimer”.[/QUOTE]
There is 2 different approaches here on how to deploy The primers, see The 1.4 version in comparaison to The 2.4
CC:
weird…
i have been running the EA without problems for a couple of weeks, and then suddenly today it opened a couple og ekstra sell and buy trades that i had to close manually, to prevent from having 2 Sells within the same range, and 2 buys…
and now, after reactivating the EA, its placing a buy order close to another already open trade… any idea what i could do to get it back on track? modify TP of the open trades so the EA dont think that there is a trade missing?
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5267610/weird.jpg
This is probably “spread creep”. I’ve seen this in my EA as well. You don’t notice it in BT, but when running live you get both changes in spread and slip combining to slowly move orders apart until suddenly you’re outside the +/- open rate test for the other orders. Then you’ll get a bunch of extra orders as the EA thinks this part of the grid is empty. I ended up putting the order open price I wanted as a comment, but then I’m using an array solution. Good and bad parts of all strategies I guess.
Re
D
yes, but the double order was irritating, but easy to fix manually, closing them in green, and removing the extra orders that was made…
it seems that i had removed an buy order that should not have been removed in the process, so just made a replacement for that buy order, removed the weird order it made in my screenshot above, re-activated the EA, and now it seems ok Again…
but would love to avoid the double orders in the first place 
Hi,
Maybe it helps to add +/- 4 pips to the initial open price. This should cover the spread+slip variation.
When the EA checks for open orders it should check on a 7-8 pips range.
i have increased my “slip” variable from 3 pips to 5 pips to try and counter this, but Sgude0 might have a good point, if they drift futher and futher apart, then this will only be a temporary fix…
I there. I use 2*Slippage to check if the order is there, with Slippage=5 (pips).
As a backup, since sometimes even so it fails to find the open order, I keep track of how many orders are opened and compare it with how many should be open at any given time. If something is wrong it goes to find the problema.