Lot Scalp 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:
- Lot Scalp Expert Advisor For MT4
- The Lot Scalp Expert Advisor For MT4 – Entry Criteria
- The Lot Scalp Expert Advisor For MT4 – Exit Criteria
- The Lot Scalp Expert Advisor For MT4 – Room for Improvement
The Lot Scalp Expert Advisor For MT4 is a simple scalping trading system that can be used on any timeframe and symbol in the foreign exchange market. It utilizes a basic price action strategy to enter trades, and it opens one trade only in every trading day if the entry rules are satisfied. The entry time is 7:00 AM broker time. It is not possible to change the trading time, though, because the variable holding this information is not available in Inputs.
Initial testing shows that this expert advisor is not ready to be used for live trading. While the win rate was really high (80 percent) and drawdown was manageable (12 percent), the trading system failed to make money for the trading account. This result is not surprising at all. Looking at the code, one can tell that the program is outdated and must be reviewed to update the code and determine if the algorithm still applies to the current market environment.
The Lot Scalp Expert Advisor For MT4 – Entry Criteria
The Lot Scalp Expert Advisor is indeed a simple trading system. The moment the robot is dropped on the chart, it will check the current broker’s time to find out if it is time to look for trades. If the time hour is not 7:00 AM server time (see image above), the robot will not execute trades but instead put a little comment on the chart indicating the current server time and a note that trading will not be done at the current time.
The trading system comes with a limited number of variables that the user can adjust in Inputs. These variables and their default values are explained below:
- TakeProfit_L = 10 – This amount is the take profit for long trades in pips.
- TakeProfit_S = 10 – This value is the take profit for short trades in pips.
- slippage = 20 – This value is expressed in points. This means that the user is willing to get an order filled at a price 20 points beyond the price requested by the expert advisor.
- AutoLot = true – Automatic lot sizing is enabled by default. Therefore, the lot size varies by the account size at trade entry. No calculation is done to get the lot size, though. The program simply goes through a list to find the lot size equivalent to the current account balance.
- Orders = 1 – This means that the trading system will open one trade at a time on the current symbol.
- MaxOpenTime = 504 – This variable should facilitate trade closure when the trade has been opened for a while. However, it did not happen in the actual scenario.
- magic = 2846 – This is the number given to each trade that will identify it from other trades. This is important when other expert advisors are running on the same trading account.
The expert advisor does not use any type of technical indicator to define a trade entry. As already pointed out in the beginning, it uses a simple price action method. From the current open bar, it selects candle 2 and candle 6 and obtains their open prices. Then the open prices are subtracted to get a difference in pips. For a long trade, the difference should be at least six pips, while for a short trade, the difference should be at least 21 pips. It is not clear why these values are not the same and why the disparity is so big. The user might want to explore which values are best in trading.
Prior to the actual trade execution, the robot will check if the account has enough free margin to handle a new trade. If so, a trade request is sent to the server with the desired lot size, stop loss and take profit. The user cannot adjust the lot size in Inputs as it is hard-coded in the program. Meanwhile, the default take profit is 10 pips, and the user can set another value. However, the stop loss of 60 pips is not adjustable. If the user would not look at the trade results in testing or the code, he would have no idea about the stop loss amount.
The Lot Scalp Expert Advisor For MT4 – Exit Criteria
The Lot Scalp Expert Advisor depends on the initial stop loss and take profit set during trade execution for trade exit. While there is an attempt to close a trade when it has been live for some time, this does not happen in the actual situation. The expert advisor contains a function for trade closure as noted in the code, but it seems that function is not working. As observed in testing, trades are not forcibly closed by the robot. A trade is closed only when price hits either the stop loss or take profit.
The Lot Scalp Expert Advisor For MT4 – Room for Improvement
The Lot Scalp Expert Advisor needs a lot of improvement to become a profitable trading system, and these improvements involve changes in the program code. As observed, external variables are scattered in the global area. While this is not visible to the user when the expert advisor is run in the client terminal and does not matter when the program has been compiled, it can be confusing when users refer to the code. All external variables should be placed close to each other in one specific location in the global area.
At present, the user cannot define the minimum gaps in points between the open prices of candle two and candle six for both long and short positions as they are not available as variables in Inputs. In addition, the candle number or shift itself (for candle 2 and 6) is not customizable. Therefore, the user cannot do trial and error to find the values that would lead to better results.
Another information that can be shown in Inputs as a variable is the trade time wherein the expert advisor starts taking trades. The default start hour of 7:00 AM broker time might not be the best time for every trader or symbol. This is an important option that should not be denied to the user unless the robot is designed to be used in one specific market session.
As might be noticed by the user, the lot size cannot be adjusted from the outside of the program. This is because the values of the lot size are written in the code. If one looks at the code, he can see a long schedule of account balances with corresponding lot sizes. This way of setting the trade volume does not look professional. In fact, it is not the best way to determine the lot size. That is too manual. A better and simple way is to define a risk percentage of the account balance and then make this a variable that the user can adjust in Inputs.
While the take profit amount is available in Inputs for the user to adjust at will, this is not the case with the stop loss. Normally, the user is given freedom to control the number of pips for the take profit and stop loss in most trading systems so that he can explore and find the best settings. Also, using two variables for the take profit on the long side and on the short side is not necessary because one variable can be used in both instances. These observations and suggestions for improvement make the statement that the expert advisor is old and might be written by a newbie programmer. As such, using the trading system in live trading could lead to bad results.
Partially Automated Trading Besides Your Day Job
Alerts In Real-Time When Divergences Occur
