Seems like a good easy system to follow…
Only using this on the higher time frames?
Hi Franxesca29,
Your Walking Zombie system seemed so simple, so I put together a EA so I could backtest it.
However I could not make any profits on EURUSD, but made £2,608.65 trading USDJPY with a £1,000.00 account with a lot size of 0.10 using H4 data Jan 2013 – June 2014. Testing was by using the strategy tester on Open prices only which is quick and dirty.
Settings I used were SL=60, TP=120, TS=5 and MinimumProfit=50. A trailing stop (TS) of 5 was very strange as the EA seemed to like waiting until the MinimumProfit was 50 pips and then trail the stop at 5 pips. This resulted in a trade that was quickly stopped out at 50 pips or a little better.
EURJPY was also profitable no other pairs were tested.
Try trading this in the strategy tester using visual mode to see if it performs as you expect. Any problems get back to me.
Place the Walking Zombie file in your Experts folder and the Includes file in your Includes folder. Open your MetaEditor and select Walking Zombie from the Experts folder and compile it. Then do the same with the includes file in the includes folder. The EA uses the functions in the includes file to place the trades and trail the stops etc.
The basic structure of the EA comes from a book by Andrew R Young and is called Expert Advisor Programming.
If you don’t compile it, you won’t be able to see it in the strategy tester or attach it to a chart for trading. Check out the MT4 site for better details on adding EA’s if you are unsure.
The EA will allow you to use a percentage of your account or a fixed lot size by setting DynamicLotSize to true or false.
You can set SL, TP, TS and MP. You can also select Open prices only or not, and change the amount of slippage. If you are going to trade this EA then the EA’s magic number will need to be different for each chart you use so it knows which trade it is controlling. All the above are external values you can easily change.
Walking Zombie.mq4.zip (2.11 KB)
IncludeExample.mqh.zip (2.85 KB)
Regards, Trader9
Hi Franxesca29,
I have spotted a problem with your Walking Zombie system.
Ignoring the RSI and Stochastic as they are ok. In fact the Stochastic is good as it stops you getting into a second trade after the first trade hit the TP but the market is now overbought or oversold.
It trades better long than short because your rules say for long 5EMA>10EMA and Price>20EMA and for short 5EMA<10EMA and price<20EMA. However, this means that in a long trade the 5EMA>10EMA and both are normally >20EMA which trails them. When the market peaks and turns down the 5EMA crosses below the 10EMA and the price moves below the 20EMA and you would get a short signal, but the 20EMA is still below the 5 & 10EMA and it should really be above them, so you get a few short trades most of which fail. Waiting for the 20EMA to get above the 5 & 10EMA and then trail them as it does going long would be better.
Using the EA I posted in the strategy tester in visual mode you can see this happen. The chart shows two failed shorts (red dots) and then a long trade cut short as a new short tries again and throughout the market is clearly trending higher.
Regards, Trader9.
Noticed something interesting here
Hi Trader9
You applied this strategy at open prices only, but the signal are not only at open prices.
Were the result better at open prices or you set it at Open just because the EA didn’t give you another choice?
Also in ranging market there are many fake signals. How can you filter them?
If you’ll wait until 20 EMA for short/long to be above/below 5 and 10 EMA, isn’t Stoch already in Oversold/bought?
Thanks Trader9 for sharing …
This is the problem with lagging indi’s, do not get me wrong Moving Averages are good indicators but pair them with Stoch you find the move might of started a while before you get the signal to get in a trade, and then you are in the overbought oversold areas…
I think if you can find a way to overcome this this could be an interesting way to trade.
I also think maybe to add an extra MA to the chart, maybe a 200 to make sure of the trend you are trading in…
ie, you have a 200MA and this confirms a trend, now once 5EMA moves below 10EMA and these 2 move below 20, we might think there is a chance trend is going to reverse, now this way we could use 200MA as a support area, by the time this move has happened the rest of the MA’s would have followed price… so then we could wait for bounce of 200MA and wait for EMA’s to cross and go long…
hope this makes sense, this is what I have been doing sofar with it.
On the one hand you get more confirmation although your charts start looking messy though… you do not want too many things on your chart.
Hi Icequebe, utalk.
Remember this is not my system. I only created an EA so that others that were interested could backtest it and try it on other pairs. I figured that most people cant make a EA but if they had one then they could learn to use it and make small mods to the code to get what they want.
Actually I was attracted by the name.
All my comments were based on a some simple testing I did to make sure it was working as expected.
When coding an EA you have to make some assumptions and this was the case here.
Rsi=iRSI(NULL,0,9,0,BarShift); Here I assumed the close was used.
StocMain = iStochastic(NULL,0,10,3,3,MODE_SMA,0,MODE_MAIN,BarShift);
StocSignal= iStochastic(NULL,0,10,3,3,MODE_SMA,0,MODE_SIGNAL,BarShift);
So here I assumed the close and SMA.
Only being Long or short. (Not what I would do, as this is prone to whipsaws and can cut off trades which haven’t matured yet at market turning points)
Long entry code: 5EMA>10EMA && Close>20EMA && StocMain>StocSignal && StocMain<80 && Rsi>50
Short entry code: 5EMA<10EMA && Close<20EMA && StocMain<StocSignal && StocMain>20 && Rsi<50
Actually this worked quite well, as at the beginning of a new trend the stochastic was ok and allowed a trade. However, if your take profit had been hit, then you couldn’t re-enter because the market was now overbought.
I was not looking to trade this EA only to help others and to be honest this Walking Zombie system shows good results on USDJPY H4.
Remember EMA 5, 10 and 20 could all be changed to find a better fit.
I did create a Walking Zombie 2 in which I modified Close>20EMA to 10EMA>20EMA for long trades and Close<20EMA to 10EMA<20EMA for shorts.
I also added an AntiWhipsawFilter so it could be long and short at the same time, but I can’t remember what effect it had.
The Walking Zombie system has potential, as I backtested a £2608.65 profit from a £1000 account using 3% on every trade. 174 trades using H4 USDJPY data Jan 2013 – June 2014. Avg win £69.49 avg loss -£46.14. 52.8% profitable trades and max drawdown of £252.47 (9.91%).
Ok this was using open prices but I was using Zombie 1, Zombie 2 should perform better.
Regards, Trader9.
Something about this strategy made me wonder and it looked very familiar so I went back and had a check, this strategy has been taken from the cowabanga strategy.
The only difference here is you have no MACD and also you have added a 20MA to the charts but all in all it is very simillair.
Hi Icequebe,
Variations of this strategy have been around for years there is a simpler version in Ed Ponsi book “Patterns & Probabilities”
Normally there is no MACD, Stochastic or RSI you just go long when the fastest MA is above the medium speed MA which is above the slowest MA and all three are in Proper Order as Ed Ponsi calls it.
The exit is normally as soon as soon as the fast crosses back below the middle moving average.
This is a better approach as in this way you are never always in the market and don’t suffer so many whipsaw losses.
Regards, Trader9.
P.S. I don’t think a lot of these systems that are based on a trending market work so well these days since the banking crisis of 2009. Also there are so many automated traders now, myself included that give the market a completely new dynamic.
Hy Trader9,
if you are an automated trader, how do you exactly trade?
… You find a system that suits for you and you “transform” it in to an EA and let him “work” for you?
Hi utalk,
Thanks for the question. You will be sorry you asked, so much to read.
Like 95% of most would be traders I was losing money.
I had done quite well over the years with buy & hold (B&H) and I still believe there is a place for B&H.
I was lucky and worked for both Cable & Wireless and National Grid for many years and bought company shares at a discount. This paid for holidays in USA , double glazing, a new drive for the house and even a new car, so B&H is not all bad. If I am honest B&H also paid for my early losses as a “Trader”.
I was convinced that I would do well as a trader, so I took early retirement so I could trade, as trading while at work was impossible.
However, all is not what it seemed and since the banking crisis and more and more corporations and individuals using computer trading, the market has changed and the trends that were there have gone.
I stopped trading shares years ago as I was convinced the market was being manipulated, now it seems even the Forex market which I thought was too big to be manipulated has apparently been manipulated too.
Like most “Trader” I have read all the books been to a few seminars etc. But at the end of the day it is just you, your computer and your beliefs about the chart you have been staring at for the last week.
All those good trades that you missed were at three o’clock in the morning or on that day you were at the dentist.
So, still not making any money, but making progress, I could almost break even some months and I can even remember making a profit once or twice. Wow!!! Maybe I am a “Trader” after all.
Early 2013 I made my last manual trade and decided to go automated. I did consider as a “Trader” I was free from the emotions of fear & greed and as I had been loosing for so long it was winning that scared me.
Was winning allowed, would my broker phone me and tell me it was all a big mistake and he wanted the money back.
I decided to learn to write my own EA’s so I could trade 24/5 (Sunday 10:00 – Friday 10:00) I had always been able to alter an MT4 indicator to mimic a system I thought had potential and could eye-ball on the charts, but the elusive consistency failed me.
I went on Amazon and ordered Expert Advisor Programming by Andrew R Young. Best £20.00 pound I ever spent, as the book has all you need to start coding your own EA.
I started by coding every system I had ever tried trading in the past and guess what, none of them worked.
The strategy tester in MT4 has it limitations, but you quickly learn how much more difficult it is to trade.
No wishy washy price is above the SMA, MACD is going up and Rsi looks above 50, so I am going long.
EA trading is all about precise rules of entry, exit, money management and level of optimisation. For me it has made trading even more interesting as an EA can do things I can’t do.
Van Tharp always said you can only trade your beliefs about the market and that is true. I now have the opportunity to trade my beliefs about the market and experiment with my own trading ideas.
I now trade only using EA’s this is a different approach as you PC needs to be on 24/7 to run the EA.
Also I have installed a Interruptible Power Supply (UPS) to run PC and fibre modem, so I don’t lose control of any trades during a power cut. I bought a dedicated PC just for running MT4 told Windows Updates to get lost as I cant have the PC doing a re-boot. I swapped out the mechanical hard drive for a solid state hard drive as they are faster and use less power and don’t get hot when on 24/7.
My current market belief is that the market has become unstable because of all the turmoil in the word and therefore goes from stability when it ranges to instability when it is in a mess.
So my current trading, is a form of breakout trading using the ATR(14) as a measure of bar size. To this I add a multiplier like ATR*0.3 and add a buy stop and a sell stop in the market above and below the last bar high and low. The protective initial stop is also a multiple of the ATR as this gives my method a measure of market volatility.
Money management is 0.5% of my account as I trade up to ten pairs at a time so I could have ten pairs long or short at any time. Also I have found that a short signal should not close a long trade already open, as often the new trade could fail. So periods of being both long and short of the same pair can happen.
This is a positive thing as once the market gets unstable again I will already be in the market in the right direction. The other trade will just be stopped out, no drama. Also this form of trading reduces whipsaw losses as being long and short at the same time with wide stops normally keeps me safe.
Also I never move my initial stop but trail my stop out of the market. As I only trade on the new bar open, my EA only runs once every four hours if I was on a H4 chart.
Thus my EA only checks every four hours to see if the last bar closed below where my trailing stop would be. If so then it closes the trade, but imagine if there was a spike lower than my out the market trailing stop value, then I remain unaffected and still in the trade. As my original stop is still there, then my risk is always a max of 0.5% of account.
I can sleep at nights knowing every thing is ok. I can go out, even go on holiday, no problem.
And one day, I may even become a rich trader. But for now I am having fun.
Regards, Trader9.
Good story and from reading this it is good to see someone being a go getter and no offence to anyone just hoping someone would post a strategy or even just asking for the EA
Amazing work.
Eventually one day I will learn to code and also write an awesome EA
Thanks for the answer :5:
I spotted there some good ideas that I could also implement in the future, and thanks for that.
… what can I say … I am just at the beginning, and still much more to learn.
I also want to find/create a system that suits me, and after that to put it into an EA.
For now I am just testing … there is a long road ahead. I must prepare myself with patience.
So, good luck also to find THE system, and thanks for sharing …
I have been trying many strategies for Forex, but the simplicity of this one is great! Keep up the good work and I hope to see more posts on this thread
For my input on this Walking Zombie Strategy, I suggest looking at the charts about 9:00 AM Eastern Time. All of the EMAs close together. If the 5 and 10 EMAs don’t breakout you could possibly trade the bounce… Finally, this strategy works best on a trending market rather than a ranging market. Hope this helps 
Yeah, just trade in trending market, it will easy to get the pips…
I’m really like trade on this such situation. Only need few time to get the pips…
Anyone trading this system? Looks good on paper…
Hi
Is it possible to add - trade once per signal should trade be closed by TP, SL, trailing stop.
Thanks