Trend Is Your Friend 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:
- Trend Is Your Friend Expert Advisor For MT4
- The Trend Is Your Friend Expert Advisor for MetaTrader4 – Entry Criteria
- The Trend Is Your Friend Expert Advisor For MT4 – Exit Criteria
- The Trend Is Your Friend Expert Advisor For MT4 – Suggestion for Improvement
The Trend Is Your Friend Expert Advisor is designed for use in MetaTrader4 trading platform. The trading system uses a set of moving averages and a familiar candlestick pattern to attempt to trade with the trend. With the use of varied trade management strategies, the expert advisor takes multiple trades on the active timeframe and instrument.
The program creator designed this expert advisor to be used in any major foreign exchange asset and any time period. For best results, the user must do thorough testing to determine which pairs, timeframes and combination of settings will yield desirable outcomes. While the robot takes trades when run in the strategy tester, the trading operation started late in the testing period. Therefore, anyone looking to determine the profitability of this trading system should use a demo account instead of the strategy tester to arrive at a reliable result.
The Trend Is Your Friend Expert Advisor for MetaTrader4 – Entry Criteria
At the outset, the Trend Is Your Friend Expert Advisor offers the user several options to consider and tweak as needed before running it in back test, demo or live trading. The user can use the default settings with no problems, but it is better to go through the available parameters to optimize the performance of the robot. The expert settings provide the following parameters:
- Exit = false – This variable can be true or false. When false (default setting), the exit strategy will not be implemented.
- IncreaseFactor = 0.001 – This value can range from 0.001 to 0.1. It defines the increment amount for the lot size of the subsequent trade in case the previous trade resulted in a loss. To maintain a fixed lot size throughout, this value should be set to zero.
- Lots = 0.01 – This value can vary from 0.01 to 1. It is the lot size of the initial trade.
- TrailingStop = 40 – This number should be between 10 and 100 inclusive. It refers to the number of pips when trailing stop gets into play.
- Stop_Loss = 20 – Each trade taken by this robot has a stop loss, with a default value of 20 pips.
- MagicNumber = 1234 – This integer is assigned to every trade initiated by the expert advisor to separate it from another trade taken by another expert advisor.
- Take_Profit = 50 – Each trade executed by the robot has a take profit, and its default value is 50 pips.
- FastMA = 6 – This is the period of the fast-moving average used for trade entry.
- SlowMA = 85 – This is the period of the slow-moving average used for trade entry.
- Mom_Sell = 0.3 – This is the maximum limit for momentum value at which the expert advisor accepts a trade entry.
- Mom_Buy = 0.3 – This is the maximum momentum value accepted by the expert advisor to initiate a trade entry.
- UseEquityStop = true – This property can be set to true or false. If true (default setting), the current drawdown of all open trades will be monitored to protect the trading account.
- TotalEquityRisk = 1.0 – If the previous property is set to true and the net negative profit of all open trades equals one percent of the account balance, all such trades will be closed immediately for a loss, but saving the capital in the process.
- Max_Trades = 10 – The expert advisor can take as much as 10 trades at any given time.
All predefined conditions must be satisfied before the expert advisor opens a trade. First, the program waits for a new bar to form in the current timeframe. Then it checks if the current drawdown in the trading account is less than one percent of the account balance. If there are open trades, the robot looks at the number of pips gained or lost in each trade and then moves the stop loss to breakeven or beyond as the trading algorithm dictates.
If the algorithm gets past the checks above without being redirected to other functions, the expert advisor identifies if there are more than 100 bars on the chart and if the take profit amount set in Inputs is greater than 10 pips. Also, the robot investigates if the account has enough free margin to open new trades. If so, the program counts the number of open trades, if there are any, to see if it is less than the maximum value defined by the user.
After these initial checks, the program looks to the technical indicators to find a trading opportunity. The indicators in use are explained below, along with their settings and interpretation.
- Linear weighted moving average (period 20, price typical) and exponential moving average (period 8, price typical) – These two moving averages are used on the next lower period, and values are generated for the current open candle. If the 8 EMA is greater than the 20 LWMA, a bullish signal is indicated, while if the 8 EMA is less than the 20 LWMA, a bearish signal is given.
- Candlestick pattern – A pair of candles is used to determine the recent price action sentiment. The two candles considered are the previous two candles on the next higher timeframe. This candlestick pattern is commonly called bullish engulfing for a bullish combination and bearish engulfing for a bearish tandem. This signal is one factor for trade entry.
- Momentum (period 14, price close) – The momentum indicator is applied on the next higher period and for three previous bars. If any of the values is less than 0.3, the signal provided by the moving averages and candlesticks is confirmed.
Once a trade signal is determined and confirmed, a trade is taken will a lot size of 0.01. Each trade taken by the trading program has a specific stop loss and take profit upon trade execution. As defined in Inputs, take profit is 50 pips, and the stop loss is 20 pips. These figures are only nominal, though, because the robot factors the spread value into the actual stop loss and take profit. Whatever the current spread is for the current symbol, it is added to the stop loss and deducted from take profit.
The Trend Is Your Friend Expert Advisor For MT4 – Exit Criteria
The Trend Is Your Friend Expert Advisor may take both buy and sell trades at the same time. The maximum number of open trades at any point in time is 10. This robot uses both active and passive approaches in trade management. The passive approach happens when trades are closed by the take profit or stop loss. The active approach is through the use of breakeven and trail-stop functions.
The Trend Is Your Friend Expert Advisor For MT4 – Suggestion for Improvement
The Trend Is Your Friend Expert Advisor needs reworking to be able to produce profits for the user. The robot failed in this regard in testing. While drawdown was low (less than two percent), net profit was negative, and the win rate was low (around 30 percent). Plus, the equity curve was moving down slowly but continually until the end.
One possible reason for this poor performance is the close proximity between trades. Sometimes a couple of trades overlaps with each other, which leads to more frequent losses. Therefore, the trades must be spaced out evenly or regularly to address this issue. Another drawback with this trading system is that both buy and sell trades are taken when the market is clearly moving in one direction. This aspect may be improved by taking trades only in the direction of the short-term trend. Therefore, signals against the current trend must be filtered out.
Partially Automated Trading Besides Your Day Job
Alerts In Real-Time When Divergences Occur
