I’d like to buil an EA that uses info from multiple time frames. For example, the trade should open when moving averages cross on 60 minute chart, and closes when they cross back on 15 minute chart. I haven’t even started to delve deep into coding, but before I go too deep into learning I’d like to know if something like that is even possible. I don’t want to master coding just to find out that it can’t be done. Other features I’d like to know are:
Can you make an EA based off of support/resistance lines?
Can an EA use fibonacci? Pivots?
Last buut not least, can a trailing stop loss be applied for fixed levels of pips. I.e., rather than just having a stop loss that trails by x pips the entire trade, can it be ste to move to BE after 15, then 15 after 30, then 30 after 45 and so on? Please let me know!
Yes you can reference multiple timeframes. Each of the standard indicators used in the EA are implimented as functions, and one of the parameters that needs to be passed is the timeframe.
Your EA can calculate pivots, fib levels, S/R etc but you’ll need to specify exactly how these should be determined, for example, swing points that are easily identified visually are not always so easy to determine from an algorithm. Alternatively you could pass in the levels manually.
The trailing stop is simple enough to impliment, and there are dozens of EA’s in the public domain that already do pretty much what you want
That’s great to know, thanks for the answer! One last thing, about how long would you say it takes to become truly comfortable with programming? Guestimate/average you know? I plan on working very very hard and learning as much as possible daily if that info helps…
Thats a difficult question to answer, some people a couple of weeks, whilst some never really get it.
I’m definately in the minority when I suggest that if you dont have any programming experience that you spend a couple of weeks getting to grips with a simple language, either visual basic or ruby, just to get an understanding of variables, conditional statements, loops, using functions etc.
Most other people suggest diving right into MQL, but I generally find that new programmers find debugging their applictions extremely difficult because a) there’s no debugger !, and b) the real time aspects of working with a constantly changing almost random time series makes testing so much more difficult.
The standard MACD sample that ships with MT is a good starting point, and I think there’s probably a line by line analysis of how it works over on the metaquotes site.