Carry Trade Tools Expert Advisor For MT4
WE IMPROVED THIS EXPERT ADVISOR FOR YOU!!!
PLEASE NOTE: This expert advisor was publicly available for free usage on other websites and is not programmed by us. We explain the functionality and possible improvements of the EA. Furthermore, we are convinced that fully automatic Expert Advisors will fail in the long run. On the other hand, our semi-automatic approach with detecting the best setups and then activating our Expert Advisors (e.g. V-Power EA, EdgeZone EA) produced many successful traders and some of them even got prop traders at prop trading firms. Therefore, we added a similar semi-automatic trading feature (to allow only buy or only sell trades) to the free Expert Advisors. You can download the modified version here and enjoy!
Table Of Contents:
- Carry Trade Tools Expert Advisor For MT4
- The Carry Trade Tools Expert Advisor For MT4 – Entry Criteria
- The Carry Trade Tools Expert Advisor For MT4 – Exit Criteria
- The Carry Trade Tools Expert Advisor For MT4 – Room for Improvement
The Carry Trade Tools Expert Advisor For MT4 is a simple tool that displays the swap values of the 28 major pairs on the chart. This information can be used by the trader in performing carry trade transactions in case he employs this trading strategy. While conducting carry trade operations seem confusing to many traders, the actual mechanism of performing such transactions is not that difficult in the foreign exchange market.
To make money from the forex market using the carry trade system, the trader only needs to short or long the currency pairs with positive swaps. For example, if EURUSD has a positive swap for the short side, the trader must sell the EURUSD and hold the trade for a long period of time. The amount of profit that the trader stands to make in this transaction depends on the leverage used and the volume of short position taken.
Assuming the interest rate differential between two countries, in this case Europe and United States, did not change for some time and the exchange rate of the EURUSD currency pair did not vary or just moved a little, the trader can make profit based on the number of days that the carry trade is held. In the forex market, swaps are applied on a daily basis so money gained or lost depends on the holding period in terms of days.
The Carry Trade Tools Expert Advisor For MT4 – Entry Criteria
While the Carry Trade Tools Expert Advisor is formatted as an expert advisor, this role is too much for this program when its function is taken into consideration. The main functions of expert advisors involve trade execution and trade management, such as sending, modifying, deleting and closing orders. None of these functions are performed by this program.
The expert advisor provides the user with only two options to work with in the Inputs tab, and there is not much he can do with these parameters, only to understand what they mean. These parameters are outlined below:
- UpdateSymbol = 10 – This value is in seconds. It refers to the interval of time when the expert advisor checks the 28 major symbols if they are added in the Market Watch window. The default value means 10 seconds. Thus, in every 10 seconds, the program checks the symbols and forcibly adds them to Market Watch. Having the 28 major symbols in the Market Watch ensures that the expert advisor can get data from them as needed, in this case, swap values.
- UpdateSwap = 5 – This figure is in seconds. It refers to the time interval when the robot cycles through the 28 major pairs, gets the swap values for short and long positions, and displays these values on the chart. Updating the swap information is not done on every tick so as to conserve computer resources. Besides, swaps do not change very frequently. There are times when the swap varies on some days, but normally they tend to remain constant in a week’s time.
The expert advisor uses a timer to check the swap values at regular intervals. As defined in Inputs, this interval is five seconds. If the user thinks that the swaps do not need to be updated this often, he can set a bigger value in the corresponding external variable. Getting the swap values and displaying them as a comment on the chart are done in one iteration. Other than this, the expert advisor does not perform any more functions.
The user must be aware that the swap values shown on the chart are expressed in points, not pips. As a small value, swap is not given much thought by many retail traders especially those who get in and out of trades quickly, such as scalpers and day traders. These trades do not go beyond one day anyway. For long-term investors such as swing traders, the swap value might affect the return on their investment as they hold their trades for a long period of time. Therefore, getting this information in one location can come in handy for these traders.
The Carry Trade Tools Expert Advisor For MT4 – Exit Criteria
The Carry Trade Tools Expert Advisor is not essentially a tool for trading, manual or automated, as it does not permit the user to execute or manage trades. It only provides information that the user can refer to when making trading decisions, no more no less.
Apart from its use in carry trade transactions, the swap information can be utilized by the trader to his benefit when considering trade entries. Either he will use this information as the first filter before looking for trade opportunities, or he can employ it as the final confirmatory factor for executing a trade signal.
The trader stands to make a big profit if the trade he has taken happens to be executed on the correct side of the market and has afforded him a positive swap for the entire life of the trade. This is the beauty of trading with positive swaps in mind.
The Carry Trade Tools Expert Advisor For MT4 – Room for Improvement
The Carry Trade Tools Expert Advisor performs only one function that can also be carried out by a lower type of program. By all means, this expert advisor can be converted into a custom indicator without any problems. Such conversion is actually good and beneficial in many respects.
First, the program would not hinder any expert advisor from being run on the current chart. It is just not possible to run more than one expert advisors on one chart. Second, putting the program as an indicator in other charts would not affect much the performance of the MetaTrader4 platform as an indicator is lighter than an expert advisor.
One thing that can be improved in the program is the manner of displaying the symbols on the chart. The arrangement of the 28 major pairs seems to have no logic in it, and the order looks random. It is better to arrange the symbols in alphabetical order to make it easy for the user to locate any symbol and check the corresponding swap values.
Another issue is that the symbols and swap values are hidden by the candlesticks on the chart (see image above). The user might waste some time trying to find the desired symbol and the swap values. To resolve this, the information must be put in front of a rectangle and then put the candlesticks behind this object. This way the user will have an unobstructed view of the symbols and swaps.
A better solution than using a rectangle object as discussed in the foregoing paragraph is displaying the swap information as a label or button object. Using the Comment function to display such information would limit the capability of the user to see the information in another way. With the object label or button, the user can position the data at any point on the main chart window. He can define the corner, x and y distances from this corner, and the height and width of the text.
Another way to improve the display of information is to apply color coding to the swap values. This means, for example, that if the swap value is negative, the text should be written in red, and if the swap value is positive, the text should be written in blue. By the color of the text itself, the eyes of the user can be easily directed to those symbols with positive swap values.
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