I looked around on the forums and couldn’t really find a FAQ section on MT4 issues, so if one exists (or if I looked right at it) then I apologize for posting this in the incorrect spot.
I demo traded and have been manually trading live for 6 months now. So far so good as I was up about 60% at one point (40% currently) on my initial investment. I have been trying several trading strategies to trade manually and some work better than others. Some require watching the market A LOT of the time…which isn’t something I have a lot of. A friend of a friend peeked my interested in auto trading on the MT4 platform and I have been finding a lot of info on babypips on different strategies. Using OandA, I set up an MT4 demo account, downloaded all of the MT4 software and I seem to be up and running. Here is where it is strange…
I moved several mql files into my experts folder and they show up in my MT4 platform. When I select them in my backtester and run them, I am not getting the same results (using the same timeframes and settings) as a lot of others who are showing their test results. Furthermore, I implemented my test strategies on several pairs and I am not getting any triggers. Am I missing something? The friend of a friend I referred to early said that most trading platforms aren’t eager to collect ultra intricate data on the past and therefore the backtesting won’t be as accurate… but then why have a backtester if this is true? I load a chart, say the daily EUR/USD and then I drag the EA over to the chart and it shows up as being set up on that chart. I click on the chart and it brings up a window that displays the strategy/EA settings. I have to toggle the “live trading” box, but all of the other settings (that are specified on the strategy info) are already there. I have left the MT4 platform open for two weeks and still have the $1000 demo balance with no activity. Anyone else here using OandA with MT4? Please help as I would love to be able to use this tool and try out some of these EAs on demo before I plop it on a real money account, only to lose it because some setting was wrong.
Thanks in advance for you help. And thank you babypips for a wonderful Forex source. The school of pipology was fantastic and I have gained so much info from this site and from the wonderful users that use it!
Nope…that wasn’t it. Everything seems to be loaded properly…smiley faces all around on my testing charts. I have numerous charts open with various EAs loaded (one on each). From 5 minute scalping systems to daily crossovers…still, no triggered trades yet. I guess I’ll be patient and give it a day or two…but I find it hard to believe a 5 minute scalping EA hasn’t pulled the trigger on something yet.
as i have not looked at the code, it is a bit difficult to tell, but let’s give it a try…
for starters, different brokers put different extensions onto the currency pair names, sometimes, perhaps they call their EURUSD as EURUSDFXF or EURUSDpro…
are the currency pair names hard coded into your ea’s code, and if so are they named to run on a different broker?
fwiw, it sounds like it is something really simple, code has a way of not running if some little tiny detail is not right.
if the code runs for somebody else, it should run for you.
also, a small suggestion, regarding the comment that you made about your having numerous charts with various ea’s running…
considering that your ea or ea’s are not running properly, nix that mess and just open up a single chart and load a single ea onto it and then when you manage to get that single ea running properly then maybe you can try juggling multiple ea’s.
Thanks for the response! I put on multiple charts/EAs to hope for some sort of trigger or action. I’ll close all charts, pick one that I know worked for someone else, look at the code and paste it here this evening. I’ll also take some screen shots of the chart to verify that everything looks good on the front end as well.
one of my numerous trades triggered on EUR/USD but I am not sure which one…and it said, under the trade history that it picked up $9 worth of pips. However the profit showed $0 on the main screen. Also there seemed to be a trade waiting for me to hit buy or sell… so maybe my settings for requiring approval was set or something. Sorry. I’m a complete noob on robot trading…so some
Anyways, since I am not sure which one triggered, here is the one I’ll test first:
Title: BreakdownLevelDay_EurUsd
Code: I’ll shoot it to you in an email since I’m not sure if code sharing on this is acceptable.
2nd if your ea is not working. Just wait. Not all ea’s trade every 5 minutes.
3rd Look in the experts and journal tab. This will tell you if there are any errors. If you get errors you can see what they are or post them here we can probably tell you the problem.
I will second that.
I was running some backtests last night and noticed that if i run the same EA two or three times in a row without changing settings I will get different results each time.
So if you find your results a bit dissapointing, just run it again they might get better.