[This post contains video, click to play]

In this video, we want to create an Expert Advisor entry signal for this little Oscillator here. This is the volumes percent range oscillator. So let’s see how we we can create an entry module for our Platin System with MQL4. The Williams Percent Range Indicator is actually an oscillator signal, therefore it will be shown in a separate oscillator window below the candle chart. To create an entry signal for our Platin System we need to create a file called CheckEntry_WPR.mq4 in the same directory as our other files.

Actually you can use this entry signal file also for your own, self coded system or for the RobotTradingSystem. The file has one function called CheckEntry and we use it to calculate the signal for our main module. To do that, we create a string variable called signal but we are not going to assign a value right away, because that will be calculated in the following steps. MQL4 comes with an included function for that calculation and the name of the function is iWPR. It needs a few parameters that we have to pass. The first parameter is for the current symbol on the chart.

The second one is for the currently selected period on that chart. The third parameter is used for the number of candles that we are using to calculate our result. And the last parameter is for a shift value. We don’t need that, so we set it to 0. If you open an empty chart in Metatrader and click on Insert, Indicators, Oscillators and pick the Williams Percent Range oscillator, you will see that the default value for the period is also 14. Please confirm that setting with Okay, right click into the chart and save the template as tester.tpl. Tester.tpl is the template that is used in the strategy tester to actually see the entry signal. But back to the entry signal module.

Now that we have calculated the WPR value, we can check if the value is below -80. If this is the case, we consider that to be a buy signal, so we assign the word buy to our signal. In the other case, if the signal is below -20, that would mean we have a sell signal and then we assign the word sell to our signal. Finally we use the return statement to return the signal to our main module. Please save the file for the entry signal, but you don’t need to compile it. It will be compiled with the main module when you have changed the entry signal there. To do that, please open the main module, and modify the include statement for your entry signal below the import section.

You can outcomment your current module with two slashes. It will then become gray. Please enable the toolbar and click on the compile button to compile the main module and your entry signal at once. You shouldn’t get any errors. If you have errors, please go to our website and check the shop for precompiled source codes. Okay. By now, you should have a working Williams Percent Range indicator entry file that you can use in the Platinum system.

Or you can use it in your own system. If you have any problems, please check out our website. Maybe even the premium course might be interesting for you. For now, I say thank you for listening, and I will see you in the next video.

[This post contains video, click to play]

In this video we are going to talk about a standalone Expert Advisor that is going to actually trade. Whenever the price is below this yellow line here – this is a Moving Average – we have already made a sell trade and in this video we are going to find out how to do a standalone Expert Advisor that actually trades in MQL4.

[This post contains video, click to play]

In this video we are going to trade the Commodity Channel Index, that’s the Indicator right here; you see the two dotted lines and whenever the line here crosses the upper dotted line we consider that to be a sell signal and when it crosses the lower dotted line that would be a buy signal.

[This post contains video, click to play]

In this video, I wanted to talk about back-testing.

[This post contains video, click to play]

In this video we are going to talk about common backtesting errors and how to find them. This is an Expert Advisor, but it doesn’t show anything and it doesn’t trade. So the first thing you need to check is the journal tab here. And here you might see an error message like this one: order send error 131. Now, what does that actually mean? Let’s pause the strategy tester here.

Right click on one of the error messages and select Copy. Now go to Google and paste the text here. I will remove the currency pair and the time and date stamps here. So now it says MQL4 order send error 131. Now you can press Enter. And you should see this one: error codes appendixes MQL4 tutorial.

And when you click on the link, you will see what each and every code of these errors mean. In our case it was 131. That’s an indicator for an invalid trade volume. Another very common error is error 138 for broker requotes. Let’s change the slippage for our trade from three to zero.

Recompile the code for a simple buy trade. I have called this Expert Advisor MQL4 errors because I wanted to show you how to create errors. Because that might help you to find them. Right now we don’t get any errors here. So let’s set this one to minus one. Now click on compile. And you can compile it without any errors and any warnings because syntactically everything is correct.

Now let’s start a new test here. And this time it says order sent error 4051. Let’s see if we can find this one: 4051 means invalid function parameter value. So let’s get back to three pips for the slippage. Let’s try a value of Ask plus 100 points for the stop loss, compile the code.

And once again you don’t see any errors here. But when you restart your Expert Advisor test, you see order send error 130. And 130 stands for invalid stops. Let’s fix this error and set the take profit value to Ask minus ten times point. Once again you can compile everything, but when you start a new test you will see other send error 130.

Well, we intentionally created all the errors here, but you might even experience order errors just because you change a setting. Everything is all right here. Let’s compile it, restart a test and you should see that it works. But when you stop the test and change the spread value here to 100, you will see, after you have clicked on start, that the order send error 130 remains. From time to time you may ask yourself: what is going wrong here?

So there is a way to output the last error directly here on the chart. Let’s stop the test here and change our little test expert advisor here. We are going to use the comment function to output the text “the last error was” and we use the function get last error, because that will return the contents of the system variable last error. And in this last error, you will find all the error codes here. So let’s check it out.

Just recompile the code, click the little button here, or press F4 on your keyboard. And when I start the expert advisor, it says the last error was 130. If I readjust the spread here and start another test, the output is the last error was zero. Okay, now, you know how to find errors in MQL4, and you know how to create an output directly on your chart. And I would suggest to use this simple expert advisor here and change a few things.

And when you restart your expert advisor, you should get the output of the error code directly on the chart.

In this video we are going to create a little custom function to calculate the local time. You see that we have an output for the current date that is traded here in the Strategy Tester and this is the current time and now we are going to create a custom function in MQL4 to calculate and output the time in this way. To do that please click the little button here or press F4 on your keyboard, now you should see the Metaeditor window and here you want to click on: “File/ New/ Expert Advisor (template)” from template, “Continue”, I will call this file: “SimpleCustomTimeFunction”, click on “Continue”, “Continue” and “Finish” and now you can delete everything above the “OnTick” function and let’s also delete the two comment lines here. We start with a string that will be called: “myTime” it’s a string variable for the custom time that we are going to calculate and we are going to create a custom function that will be called: “GetTime” and to calculate “myTime” I just try to call the function: “GetTime” here. If I click on the “Compile” button now you will see that “GetTime” function is not defined so this is definitely nothing that comes with MQL 4 and now we are going to create it. It should return a string value, the name is: “GetTime” and as soon as I add two curly brackets and recompile the code the error is gone. Now let’s add some logic to the “GetTime” function that we have created right now. I would like to output the time with seconds like we see it here: 17:55 means 5 minutes to 6:00 p.m. and to calculate the time we use a function that is called: “TimeLocal” and we want the output for the date; this is the first part here with the date (TIME_DATE), this is the pipe symbol and here is the second parameter for the time with seconds (TIME_SECONDS) – that’s the second part here – and we use time to string (TimeToStr) to convert the time from a datetime variable to a string. Let’s mark “TimeToStr” press F1 and we see; okay, it converts the value of the time and seconds that have passed since January the 1st in 1970 into a string that has this format here and now that the calculation is done we want to return the calculated time to the main function that is done by using “return” for our string variable that we have calculated here, so everything within the “GetTime” function will be calculated here and the result is assigned to the variable: “myTime” so if we add the “Comment” function here for “myTime” it should create the desired chart output for the time we have calculated. Now please click on the “Compile” button or press F7 that should work without any errors and if that is the case please click here or press F4 to go back to Metatrader and in Metatrader we click on: “View/ Strategy Tester” or press CTRL + R that will bring up the Strategy Tester panel here and here you want to select the new file: “SimpleCustomTimeFunction”, please enable the visual mode here and start your test. …and here we are. Our Expert Advisor is working and now you know how to create a custom time function for Metatrader 4 and you have coded it yourself with a few lines of MQL4 code.