Hi everyone. First post here, newb, trading 6 months or so. Got my start right here in the Babypips School! Mixed results thus far, went through the whole “I’m smarter than forex phase”. You can all imagine how that turned out. I did have a very “successful” period for a couple of months scalping (actually went a whole month without a losing day) but was leaving my exposure way too big and got my head torn off in a really bad trade that I didn’t know when to get out of. That’s a psychological scar I’ll not soon forget. Lol. I’ve since struggled to reproduce the same winning results with a smaller exposure. Doing some more reading, learning, stepping back to get a different perspective and learn better trade management and money management. Just read “Trading in the Zone”, currently reading “Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets”.
Anyway, I digress. My question is, in my effort to try to look at things differently, I have opened a demo account on the MT5 platform to get a look at the different tools/perspective of another platform. My live account is with Oanda, for reference. I have noticed that when I am looking at a MACD on each of the screens side by side, the indicators are showing me different things. I’m going to try to attach a couple of shots to illustrate. If you can see the images, you will notice via my pretty blue arrows that on the recent look at the daily chart of the EUR/USD, the MACD is showing higher lows indicating an upward divergence on Oanda, but showing lower lows on the MT5 platform. The settings for the MACD’s are the defaults, (12,26,9). MT5 platform allows you to go into settings and apply them to the close, open, low, etc., all of which I have tried and still can not duplicate the upward divergence that I see in Oanda.
Also, I’ve noticed that a lot of the candlesticks look different, an example of which I have circled in purple. You can imagine my confusion in wondering what to make of these two discrepencies as I suppose it could have a disasterous effect on one’s trading, provided of course that they can’t both be correct. Any help greatly appreciated!
There is nothing wrong! The data-stream for MT5 is different from the data-stream for OANDA. There are very subtle differences in the information(s) you are receiving from those two sources. For example, 1.3213(oanda) vs 1.3211(mt5) at the same time. No two distinct sources will give you the same data-stream!
Then how would anyone reasonable expect to effectively trade technicals if everyone in the world could potentially be trying to interpret different information? I’m not trying to be argumentative, but that doesn’t seem to make much sense.
I know that oanda java platform calculates price as the average of bid and ask. While mt4 and I assume mt5 but never used it just use the bid price. So the difference in price should be approximate 50% of the spread. This is just the effect of how your platform calculates. Now for candle formations the timezone the mt server is in will affect the look of the candles. This you can not control. I think oanda is in EST which is fine as I like ny candle closes
He should also note that the price he sees on the chart is the price the broker wants him to see! As for the indicators, is he sure they are exactly, the same? Maybe, there may be some difference in the codes.
The difference there is when each candle period opened, and closed.
Those are dailies for the E/U I do believe, and they could have opened a few hours apart, which would lead to them being slightly different in size.
Watch them side by side, and see when the new day starts. You should be able to pinpoint it.
As for how to decipher it, even though they are different, often a sell signal on one candlestick setup is a sell on another.
With the time differences in candles, but the same price movement, one could be tweezer tops, and the other would display an evening star, bearish engulfing, or dark cloud cover, all depending on the difference between them in time.
As for the MACD, the MT4/MT5 one is a bit odd. You can download a more standard version. Just google it. It’s out there.
Well the time zone difference certainly would explain the candlestick difference, which would in turn also support the fact that the pivot points are different between the two platforms. Again, something that would greatly affect someone’s trading were they trying to set entry points or take profits at these levels. I attached a screenshot of the current price level on a 10 min chart (8:47am EST). Anyone familiar with Oanda’s layout will know that their pivot tool automatically places the pivots on the chart for you. Someone trying to scalp a quick 10 pip bounce off the Oanda pivot would have gotten run over as price blew right threw it and went straight down to the GMT pivot and stopped on a dime.
The candlestick/pivot point difference makes sense to me with the time zone difference, but the difference in the MACD’s is nagging the hell out of me. Anyone have any more insight into why the indicators would be so different? I would think that everyone would want to have the same information available to them so as to increase the odds of successcul trading. That is a pretty nice divergence that ended up playing out nicely on the daily charts from the OP. I would have been annoyed to maybe not have taken that trade if I had been using the MT5 MACD and not seen the divergence as a tool for me to use in determining wether or not to take the trade.
I’m really suprised that these difference are not more common knowledge or at least talked about as they certainly could create a lot of confusion and frustration for anyone trying to learn Forex (like me :33:) I know it would have helped me greatly if it had even just been a footnote in the Babypips School.
I did have a very “successful” period for a couple of months scalping (actually went a whole month without a losing day) but was leaving my exposure way too big and got my head torn off in a really bad trade that I didn’t know when to get out of. That’s a psychological scar I’ll not soon forget. Lol. I’ve since struggled to reproduce the same winning results with a smaller exposure. Doing some more reading, learning, stepping back to get a different perspective and learn better trade management and money management. Just read “Trading in the Zone”, currently reading “Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets”.
