Steve Hopwood's new AshFX V2 auto-trading robot

[SteveHopwood]

I have added 'big number' support and resistance functionality to the robot. Details on page 3 of the user guide.

As always, this is subject to forward testing on demo. The code is pretty straightforward, but please report any bugs that have crept in.

:)

[AshFX]

This is something that has been exceedingly difficult over the years - specifically, to implement Support and Resistance for an EA. For example, the AshFX V2 System relies heavily on price action/S&R, yet all the EAs that have been developed for it have failed to implement these features, due to it's dynamic nature.

However, the first steps have been taken in tackling such a problem, and although I've expressed my doubts about EAs many a time over the past few years, it's actually refreshing to see a coder such as Steve attempting this. Good luck is all I can say.

[SteveHopwood]

There is no pretending that a mql-coded robot can ever come close to having the instincts, understanding and experience of a good, manual trader.

What I have added is a blunt instrument unlikely to become much sharper. Ah well, as you say Ash, this is a start. Who knows where fresh insights may lead?

So far, on demo the robot has taken trades I would have taken and rejected those I would have rejected. Looking good so far.

:)

[SteveHopwood]

Originally Posted by Shiva

Hey Steve, great work and thanks:) Are you planning to build position management in this EA like ur other EA?

Returning to this, although it is impossible to code a proper mm module because of the dynamic nature of the stop loss, it is still possible to code an imprecise one.

My KG Range robot uses the formula of x lots per x percentage of the account balance, both customisable by the trader. Is this any use here?


:)

[moondog]

Originally Posted by SteveHopwood

.

My KG Range robot uses the formula of x lots per x percentage of the account balance, both customisable by the trader. Is this any use here?

:)

Hi Steve,

Back to Business:

As promised I started testing the basic core functionality of your program, from D1 down to M1 !, ( just an initial functionality shake down, speeding time up and not looking for profits at that stage)...and it performed brllliantly....
I have not really tested any of the whistles and bells yet, just one pair and a one step at a time approach, but all has gone very well with only a couple of minor issues to address.

This will be a great AshFx trading tool for conditional auto-sending of orders and trade management, especially when I should be sleeping, (unlike our night-owl Ash !!).

I am trading full time, ha ha, most of the time is actually waiting for specific setups, so I am really full time waiting and part time trading and forever learning!, so I am pretty dedicated to forex and also have a good systems and software engineering background. (Not an mql expert! only rookie) but I can relate to and read specific mql code, when needed) .

Initial testing therafter (normal trading basis) was on the D1 and H4 TF's using the GBPJPY over the period 01/01/09 to date and limited to ;

Valid/Invalid AshFx Signal Rules
Opening/Closing of trades/ BE
PartClose/CloseLots/PreserveLots
CandleLengthLookBackBars/CandleLengthOverAverage
AllowableWickPercentage

Finished now in this regard, so I will put pen to paper and document some initial findings, comments, screenshot etc and send to you in a PM over the weekend prob. Sunday.

Other work that I envisage at a later stage will be to tailor the settings and optimisation frequency for specific pairs through optimisation and analysis.

When the change status looks stable I will put it on a 24/5 vps demo test to log the whole broker/ea thing.

Regarding your comment above about Money Management, I think it would be a great feature to add some basic/simple MM facilty for us lazy ones but it will also be a great feature for risk scenario testing on back data etc.

Its Sundowner Time
Moondog

[SteveHopwood]

Cheers moondog. I hope the sundowners are good.

For sure, the robot appears to be behaving as it should. I look forward to your comments on Sunday.

Thanks for the time you have spent on this. I lack an eye for detail, and so appreciate your work all the more.

:)

[Rob]

nice work!

[SteveHopwood]

Thanks Rob.

I have added the basic money-management module requested by moondog. Details in the user guide - use the one attached here; the old one has a reference to a mm feature that did not actually exist.

:)

[Om_Salat]

Hi Steve,

First of all, let me thank you for the work you've put into making this EA. I'm a newbie to the AshFX daily system and this EA sure would help me a lot understanding the system while I learn to trade the system manually.

One suggestion if I may? The CandleLengthLookBackBars parameter, could you use the ATR for it instead. That way users don't have to check the average candle length for each currency pairs we want to use the EA to trade with. Instead, we just have to choose whether to use the specified parameter or not and how many candles back we want to average.

For ATR, I usually use a 20 days (1 month) range.

I'm attaching the indicator I'm using to calculate the daily ATR. I'm no programmer but maybe it's useful to you. (copy paste the subroutine? :p)

One question. Does your EA works on H4 chart too or does it only work on D1 chart only?

Salat

[SteveHopwood]

Thanks, Salat. I will leave things as they are because they appear to be working well.

Just to confirm, the robot will trade any time frame. Whether it can be successful on anything but the D1 is open to question. Try it and see.

:)

[Om_Salat]

Originally Posted by SteveHopwood

Thanks, Salat. I will leave things as they are because they appear to be working well.

Just to confirm, the robot will trade any time frame. Whether it can be successful on anything but the D1 is open to question. Try it and see.

:)

Thanks for the quick response Steve. Have you tried the EA on any other time frame other than D1? Right now I'm going to test it on H1 first as it should be one that will have trades initiated more often than in higher time frames. Lesser time frame is just too much noise.

Also, if you don' mind my asking, what is the EA's winning percentage and how long have you been using it? And, if it's not too much asking, could you please attach the graphic chart? Just the chart, nothing else. This is only if you're using the EA on a separate account just by itself though.

TIA

Salat

[rewing]

Steve:

Just to let you know....There were 2 "valid" Ash Signals today. My robot on FXDD Demo did NOT take either of the trades...I would assume the length of the candle on one and the length of the wick on the other....

Did you see the same results?
Ron

[SteveHopwood]

Originally Posted by rewing

Steve:

Just to let you know....There were 2 "valid" Ash Signals today. My robot on FXDD Demo did NOT take either of the trades...I would assume the length of the candle on one and the length of the wick on the other....

Did you see the same results?
Ron

Yes. I did. The robot hasn't taken a trade for ages.

:)

[SteveHopwood]

After a ridiculous length of time without taking a trade, the robot finally leaped into life tonight, right at the start of the new trading week.

moondog has been doing some wonderful testing of this robot, to a level I could not even begin to hope to achieve.

One of the conclusions he came to is this: a long wick in the direction of the potential trade is actually a good thing.

After a bit of thought, I realised why this might be so. By the time all the indi's line up, a substantial move has already taken place, so a retrace is inevitable soon. The longer the candle that triggers the trade, the more likely there is to be a retrace.

From this it follows that:

• Yes, a long candle in the direction of the potential trade is most likely to lead to immediate dd as the market retraces soon after entering the trade.
• The same long candle with a long wick means the retrace has already taken place. In this case, the market is likely to finish the retrace soon and resume its move in the direction of the trend.

Therefore, the trading conditions we really want are these:

• All the indi's line up
• We have an overly long candle in the direction of the potential trade
• We have a long wick in the direction of the trade, to indicate the retrace has already happened and the market is likely to resume its movement in the direction of the daily trend

Bearing all this in mind, I have set AllowableWickPercentage to 100; for sure, this has allowed one of the trades to trigger tonight. As to the longer-term results of this, we shall see.

:)

[SteveHopwood]

The robot has 4 trades opened now - EJ, CJ, AUDCAD, GU.

The robot closed half the EJ & CJ trades and moved the stop to BE as it should. I have manually moved it to +10 just to lock in a little extra profit. Next week, I shall add code to allow the robot to do this automatically.

I am as sure as I can be that all four trades were taken because I have moved the allowable wick percentage setting to 100%. The GU was taken at the start of today's candle and is under discussion in the manual trading thread. I took advantage of a spike in the price this morning, to close half the trade and move the stop.

AUDCAD is in the doldrums of DD, so it will be interesting to see what happens to it.

All in all, a good start to adopting moondog's findings that a long wick is an advantage.

:)

[SteveHopwood]

I have added one new feature - the robot can automatically calculate 50% the Close_lots and Preserve_lots sizes for you. Details in the user guide.

:)

[Chills]

Hi Steve,
I've never used an EA but decided to give this a try as it sounds interesting and potentially like it will work!

Two things I can't find in your user guide, sorry to have to ask...

What is 'bab' and does it require anything inputted or just leave default?

Currency Symbol... default is pound (don't even know how to type that as it's not on the keyboard!!)
Does this refer to your account or the chart you are using the EA on?
If so, then on AUDJPY would you put '$' or 'yen'?

Help.. if I need to change to Euro or yen... how to type that? They are not on my keyboard!!!!

Thanks so much :)

[SteveHopwood]

Originally Posted by Chills

Hi Steve,
I've never used an EA but decided to give this a try as it sounds interesting and potentially like it will work!

Two things I can't find in your user guide, sorry to have to ask...

What is 'bab' and does it require anything inputted or just leave default?

Currency Symbol... default is pound (don't even know how to type that as it's not on the keyboard!!)
Does this refer to your account or the chart you are using the EA on?
If so, then on AUDJPY would you put '$' or 'yen'?

Help.. if I need to change to Euro or yen... how to type that? They are not on my keyboard!!!!

Thanks so much :)

bab is just an information label.

Currency symbol is purely for display. If your account is in usd, then change it to $

:)

[SteveHopwood]

Backtesters at FF had trouble with the magic number auto-generation function. I have replaced this in the latest version. If you are happy with the previous, then ignore this one.

:)

[Chills]

Originally Posted by SteveHopwood

bab is just an information label.

Currency symbol is purely for display. If your account is in usd, then change it to $

:)

Steve...Thankyou for your reply!

[vff]

Hello Steve and everyone else.
I was doing some google search and found this thread.Hope you are doing well Steve.Glad to see your KG ea is doing well for you.
I just downloaded your new version of the AshFx EA and will give it a go. I want to you for the hard work put into the ea and also to all the other testers and Mr. Ash for the manual system.
Time here is now 10 Am and new candle does not occur until midnight on my broker.I wanted to use the broker I have in the test to see how the results will be if I were trading it live.
My broker has 25 pairs so what I just did was load all 25 pairs to do a scan to see which ones would trigger a trade.So far three pending trades were hit on the following pairs: NZDCHF-Long EURNZD-short and AUDNZD-Short.I guess will see what happens at new candle on the three?
Was wondering if spread is really important as a factor to entering the trade?
EURNZD has a 25 spread on my broker?
Since my broker is a 4 digit one, I just went with the set file provided and just deleted a zero.
Have a great day everyone
Vince

[SteveHopwood]

Originally Posted by vff

My broker has 25 pairs so what I just did was load all 25 pairs to do a scan to see which ones would trigger a trade.So far three pending trades were hit on the following pairs: NZDCHF-Long EURNZD-short and AUDNZD-Short.I guess will see what happens at new candle on the three?
Was wondering if spread is really important as a factor to entering the trade?
EURNZD has a 25 spread on my broker?
Vince

The spread is irrelevant to me, as the trades are sent late at night. It could be that it is irrelevant to a daily trading strategy. IMHO, you are perfectly safe to change the setting to something huge and forgetting about it. To be honest, the setting is only there because it always is in my ea's.

:)

[vff]

Ok Steve thanks and have a great evening!

[vff]

Hello Steve and everyone, I waited until midnight to see what trades would open, and I have a few questions?
On the stoploss it entered the following for the eurchf pair:
23:59:55 '77536': instant order sell 0.02 EURCHF at 1.5134 sl: 6.5144 tp: 0.0000
23:59:56 '77536': request was accepted by server
23:59:56 '77536': request in process
23:59:56 '77536': order was opened : #1104064 sell 0.02 EURCHF at 1.5134 sl: [COLOR="DarkOrange"]6.5144[/COLOR] tp: 0.0000
Also on the NZDCHF long entry, it never happened.I saw where it tried to open twice with an error message invalid stoploss.After two attempts, the trade never happened.

Also if I read the manual correctly, when you turn autolots on the ea will calculate the lot size.0-499 .02 lots etc.The eurchf pair was opened with .02 lots where I have currency as $5000.00.I think it should have been at least .04?

Here is the set file on a 4 digit broker.

daily.doc
Have a nice day!
Vince

[SteveHopwood]

Originally Posted by vff

Hello Steve and everyone, I waited until midnight to see what trades would open, and I have a few questions?
On the stoploss it entered the following for the eurchf pair:
23:59:55 '77536': instant order sell 0.02 EURCHF at 1.5134 sl: 6.5144 tp: 0.0000
23:59:56 '77536': request was accepted by server
23:59:56 '77536': request in process
23:59:56 '77536': order was opened : #1104064 sell 0.02 EURCHF at 1.5134 sl: [COLOR="DarkOrange"]6.5144[/COLOR] tp: 0.0000
Also on the NZDCHF long entry, it never happened.I saw where it tried to open twice with an error message invalid stoploss.After two attempts, the trade never happened.

Also if I read the manual correctly, when you turn autolots on the ea will calculate the lot size.0-499 .02 lots etc.The eurchf pair was opened with .02 lots where I have currency as $5000.00.I think it should have been at least .04?

Here is the set file on a 4 digit broker.

Attachment 1060
Have a nice day!
Vince

Re the lot size, it is the user guide that is wrong, so thanks for pointing this out. In fact, it should be 0.02 lots until reaching $9,999.99, then click up to 0.04 at $10,000.

Hehe. That eurchf stop does look a tad distant; interesting that the invalid stop trade also contains chf. I shall look into this.

:)

[SteveHopwood]

Here is what I think happened to eurchf:

The original stop was less than the broker's minimum stop level. There is code in the robot to deal with this, but I had forgotten to scale the min stop level down to suit the pair. This led to a ridiculous stop that just got through the ec trade but killed the nc.

This has not come up before because I am demoing hedge not stop; I imagine most people are, to see what happens, so the bug did not come to light before.

I am not absolutely certain this is the answer, but it is the only one I have right now. Fixed version attached, along with an updated user guide.

:)

[vff]

Originally Posted by SteveHopwood

Here is what I think happened to eurchf:

The original stop was less than the broker's minimum stop level. There is code in the robot to deal with this, but I had forgotten to scale the min stop level down to suit the pair. This led to a ridiculous stop that just got through the ec trade but killed the nc.

This has not come up before because I am demoing hedge not stop; I imagine most people are, to see what happens, so the bug did not come to light before.

I am not absolutely certain this is the answer, but it is the only one I have right now. Fixed version attached, along with an updated user guide.

:)

Wow that is fast work.That is why I am glad I found this thread.I really trust you Steve with the work quality you do.
As far as the .02 lots, I am perfectly glad to use .02 even with a larger account demo.Perhaps that is the reason this is happening.Since most might be using a broker where you can hedge that this is not happening.
Also this might be a stupid question but will ask it anyway
On the NZDCHF pending order, the ea first waited for the psar flip which can happen at any point during the candle, then at midnight with new candle the trade should of happened but for some reason it didn't due to fact of invalid stop message.Now the message is waiting for new candle to confirm trade can be met.This means that it will have to wait again until midnight.
My thinking if it is correct thinking that once the flip happens and the first confirm candle tick occurs after new candle and all the conditions regarding a valid trade are still in line that the trade can still be made and not have to wait another 24 hours? A lot can happen in 24 hours?
Thanks again for fast turn around and will see what happens at new candle tonight.
Vince :)

[vff]

Hello all...
I put in the modified ea, it did have a lot of pending last night. but no active trades after midnight new candle.I then put it on a 1hr time frame around 10 AM this morning to see if any active trades would trigger?
Again there were a lot of pending, but no trades until now at 7:00 PM.
Two trades were to be made, but only one actually triggered. The stop on that one triggered with a 15 pip stoploss.
On the other trade got the same error as before the modified ea:
2009.10.21 19:01:32 AshFX V2 auto-trading robot by SteveHopwood NZDUSD,H1: open #1144186 sell 0.02 NZDUSD at 0.7570 sl: 0.7585 ok
2009.10.21 19:01:10 AshFX V2 auto-trading robot by SteveHopwood EURNZD,H1: Order send failed with error(130): invalid stops
2009.10.21 19:01:10 AshFX V2 auto-trading robot by SteveHopwood EURNZD,H1: Alert: EURNZD 0 order send failed with error(130): invalid stops
I don't see any other testers making comments, so I guess the problem is just with using the broker I am using?
As you said before, most are using a 5 digit hedging broker, so I guess all is working great for them.
Since you also said the tf should be for daily, I will put it back to the daily tf, and see what happens tonight at midnight?
Again I want to thank you for all the work you put into your ea.
Have a nice day!
Vince

[padman]

Just found this and it looks very good. i have a problem, when i put the ea on the daily chart I get the message. incorrect start position 0 for ArraySort function.

Two questions
What does that mean
How to i sort it out

cheers Paul

[SteveHopwood]

Originally Posted by padman

Just found this and it looks very good. i have a problem, when i put the ea on the daily chart I get the message. incorrect start position 0 for ArraySort function.

Two questions
What does that mean
How to i sort it out

cheers Paul

Don't know. doesn't seem to matter. Ignore it.

:)

[padman]

I seem to have got rid of it now anyway - just changed true on big numbers and horizontallineSR to false and it stopped - I am on a 4 digit broker so changed all the lot size stuff as well.

Took a manual long on the 1hr audusd in demo 17 pips so 1st play trade was a success - no auto trades as yet

image attached -

[SteveHopwood]

Originally Posted by padman

I seem to have got rid of it now anyway - just changed true on big numbers and horizontallineSR to false and it stopped - I am on a 4 digit broker so changed all the lot size stuff as well.

Took a manual long on the 1hr audusd in demo 17 pips so 1st play trade was a success - no auto trades as yet

image attached -

Cheers padman. The fact that the errors disappeared when you changed some settings show that there is a bug in the code - evidently not serious but I will track it down.

:)

[SteveHopwood]

Originally Posted by padman

I seem to have got rid of it now anyway - just changed true on big numbers and horizontallineSR to false and it stopped - I am on a 4 digit broker so changed all the lot size stuff as well.

Took a manual long on the 1hr audusd in demo 17 pips so 1st play trade was a success - no auto trades as yet

image attached -

I cannot replicate the errors on my platform. Make sure you have the latest version, attached.

:)

[vff]

Hello all.
I went ahead and started a demo with a broker that allows hedging.For this test, I am using the 15m tf to make it possible for some actual trades to open since using the daily tf does not always allow for open trades.

If I am reading this area of the manual correctly:
8. Jumping stop settings: the robot can set a jumping stop based on your setting in
JumpingStopPips. Remember to adjust your settings for 4 digit criminals. This
feature is not a part of Ash's live manual strategy.
I. JumpingStop: set this to 'true' to use this feature.
II. JumpingStopPips: the number of pips the stop must jump by.
III. JumpAfterBreakevenOnly: defaults to 'true' and stops the robot from jumping
the sl until the trade is already at breakeven, which will happen at the end of the
candle if the trade is in profit.
9. Part close settings:
I. PartCloseEnabled: this addresses the part of the system that closes half the
trade at the end of the first candle in which the trade is in profit. What happens
depends on these two settings:
II. Close_Lots: the proportion of the trade to close. The robot will do this with
every new candle until the trade is left with only Preserve_Lots lots.
III. Preserve_Lots: the lot size beneath which the robot will not close any more of
the trade.
IV. AutoCalculatePartClose: set this to true to tell the robot to calculate 50% of a
successful open trade to close at the end of the candle. This figure will grow with
the growing lot size if the robot is also automatically calculating the lot sizes.
This will only function if enabled when the trade is sent; sending a trade and
then setting this to true will not work. PartCloseEnabled must be true for this
function to work.
I would think this would apply to the audjpy trade in the attached? I do have
jumpingstop pips as 50.

test.doc
Just checked the audjpy trade that was at +117 pips in the attached.It is now at -89 pips.I must have something not set correctly?
Have a nice weekend all.
Vince

[SteveHopwood]

The robot will only set a jumping stop after the stop loss has been moved to breakeven, which in turn only happens when a candle closes, the trade is in profit and the robot has closed 50% of the original trade, as per the strategy.

Having said that, the trade should have half-closed as you have the robot on a 15 min chart, so I will do the same on Monday. In the meantime, could you post a pic with the trade comments showing as well, please?

:)

[SteveHopwood]

Coded fixes for the bugs uncovered by Pavel at FF. At least, I think I have - the code is pretty straightforward, but we shall see. 'Tis working ok in strategy tester. The bugs are in the stop loss functions; they have not shown up on my demo because I am using hedging rather than stops.

Added a couple of new inputs. From the relevant parts of the user guide:

• MinStopLoss: the smallest stop loss you will accept if you are not using hedging to manage losing trades.
• BreakEvenProfit: this allows you to lock in some of the profit at breakeven time. It tells the robot to add\subtract this figure from the breakeven stop loss.

:)

[vff]

Originally Posted by SteveHopwood

Coded fixes for the bugs uncovered by Pavel at FF. At least, I think I have - the code is pretty straightforward, but we shall see. 'Tis working ok in strategy tester. The bugs are in the stop loss functions; they have not shown up on my demo because I am using hedging rather than stops.

Added a couple of new inputs. From the relevant parts of the user guide:

• MinStopLoss: the smallest stop loss you will accept if you are not using hedging to manage losing trades.
• BreakEvenProfit: this allows you to lock in some of the profit at breakeven time. It tells the robot to add\subtract this figure from the breakeven stop loss.

Hello Steve and thank you for the update.I guess I could go back to my fxsol demo to check out the sl problem I was having before I switched to the hedging broker?
On the hedging broker, results are looking great.I have the gif you asked for, but I don't see any comments regarding hedge in the comments section on the audjpy trade?
Thanks again for all the great work!
Vince

:)

Here is a pic of the current open trades

Thanks again!
Vince

[SteveHopwood]

I have added a slippage allowance to the trade sending function.

:)

[aharon.amir]

Originally Posted by SteveHopwood

Coded fixes for the bugs uncovered by Pavel at FF. At least, I think I have - the code is pretty straightforward, but we shall see. 'Tis working ok in strategy tester. The bugs are in the stop loss functions; they have not shown up on my demo because I am using hedging rather than stops.

Added a couple of new inputs. From the relevant parts of the user guide:

• MinStopLoss: the smallest stop loss you will accept if you are not using hedging to manage losing trades.
• BreakEvenProfit: this allows you to lock in some of the profit at breakeven time. It tells the robot to add\subtract this figure from the breakeven stop loss.

:)

Hi Steve,
I am trying to test your EA, but I always get errors like:
"2009.10.25 19:38:05 TestGenerator: unmatched data error (high value 1.4713 at 2009.01.19 00:00 and price 1.4887 mismatched)
"
Do you have a sample configuration for a currency like GPB/USD or other,
that I can start with?

[SteveHopwood]

Originally Posted by aharon.amir

Hi Steve,
I am trying to test your EA, but I always get errors like:
"2009.10.25 19:38:05 TestGenerator: unmatched data error (high value 1.4713 at 2009.01.19 00:00 and price 1.4887 mismatched)
"
Do you have a sample configuration for a currency like GPB/USD or other,
that I can start with?

Ignore them. They are strategy tester thingies that are nowt to do with the robot.

:)