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In other words, a tick is a change in the Bid or Ask price for a currency pair.
During active markets, there may be numerous ticks per second. During slow markets, there can be minutes without a tick.
The tick is the heartbeat of a currency market robot. When you place an order through such a platform, you buy or sell a certain volume of a certain currency. You also set stop-loss and take-profit limits. The stop-loss limit is the maximum amount of pips price variations that you can afford to lose before giving up on a trade.
Many come built-in to Meta Trader 4.
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However, the indicators that my client was interested in came from a custom trading system. They wanted to trade every time two of these custom indicators intersected, and only at a certain angle. The start function is the heart of every MQL4 program since it is executed every time the market moves ergo, this function will execute once per tick. For example, you could be operating on the H1 one hour timeframe, yet the start function would execute many thousands of times per timeframe. Once I built my algorithmic trading system, I wanted to know: 1 if it was behaving appropriately, and 2 if the Forex trading strategy it used was any good.
In other words, you test your system using the past as a proxy for the present. MT4 comes with an acceptable tool for backtesting a Forex trading strategy nowadays, there are more professional tools that offer greater functionality. To start, you setup your timeframes and run your program under a simulation; the tool will simulate each tick knowing that for each unit it should open at certain price, close at a certain price and, reach specified highs and lows.
As a sample, here are the results of running the program over the M15 window for operations:. This particular science is known as Parameter Optimization. I did some rough testing to try and infer the significance of the external parameters on the Return Ratio and came up with something like this:.
You may think as I did that you should use the Parameter A. Specifically, note the unpredictability of Parameter A: for small error values, its return changes dramatically. In other words, Parameter A is very likely to over-predict future results since any uncertainty, any shift at all will result in worse performance. But indeed, the future is uncertain! And so the return of Parameter A is also uncertain. The best choice, in fact, is to rely on unpredictability. Often, a parameter with a lower maximum return but superior predictability less fluctuation will be preferable to a parameter with high return but poor predictability.
In turn, you must acknowledge this unpredictability in your Forex predictions. This does not necessarily mean we should use Parameter B, because even the lower returns of Parameter A performs better than Parameter B; this is just to show you that Optimizing Parameters can result in tests that overstate likely future results, and such thinking is not obvious. This is a subject that fascinates me. Building your own FX simulation system is an excellent option to learn more about Forex market trading, and the possibilities are endless.
The Forex world can be overwhelming at times, but I hope that this write-up has given you some points on how to start on your own Forex trading strategy. Nowadays, there is a vast pool of tools to build, test, and improve Trading System Automations: Trading Blox for testing, NinjaTrader for trading, OCaml for programming, to name a few. Here are a few write-ups that I recommend for programmers and enthusiastic readers:. This scenario involves an open position that is in profit, but stands a good chance of turning negative if the news event in question adversely affects the position.
Should you close the trade and book a small profit to be safe?
Joined Dec Status: Member 4 Posts. In short, red equals high-impact, orange is medium-impact and yellow represents low-impact news. In other words, what percentage of traders are buying or selling on different currency pairs. British pound GBP 4. Tonight we had many signals I am sure you guys saw them, all of them clean breakouts.
But then what if the market moves in favor of your position? If you close it now you risk missing out on potential profits.
Your number one job as a trader is capital preservation. Making money always comes second. I can always get back in later if the market presents a favorable opportunity. When a high impact news event is around the corner and you have a position that is well into profit, you have more options. One thing that can influence your decision here is how far away your trade is from its profit target. In this case I would be more likely to close the trade before the news event to book profits.
Your other options are to take a partial profit and leave the remaining position on or keep the entire position open throughout the event. But one thing is certain, you have a lot more options with a position that has run into considerable profit. By now you should know how to configure your Forex Factory calendar as well as how to manage news events. I have written before about how to use the news to gauge market sentiment. However this time I want to talk about actually reading the news through the price action strategies that form on your chart.
What is a pin bar, really? How about an inside bar? You probably know what they look like, but have you ever thought about why they form? These two strategies have a common thread — they are both the byproduct of news. Whether it be something that was just announced or a more gradual flow of news that causes market sentiment to either fluctuate or remain constant. However, the pin bar and inside bar really embody the essence of how news can influence a market. Pro Tip: Stick to the higher time frames 4 hour and daily in order to get a better feel for the impact of a major news event.
Some of the best pin bars form on the back of a major news event. In fact one of my favorite setups is the NFP pin bar.
The timing of a news event like this can often cause the price for US Dollar pairs to rise or fall quickly, thus forming a 4 hour pin bar. The inside bar can be thought of as the opposite to the pin bar. While the pin bar represents a volatile push in either direction, the inside bar represents consolidation after a large move. So whereas the pin bar forms as news is released, the inside bar often forms the day after a news release. This is why the inside bar setup is often referred to as a type of breakout strategy.
Pro Tip: While the pin bar can be traded on the daily or 4 hour time frame, the inside bar is best traded only on the daily time frame.
The markets can move because of an unscheduled event or perhaps an event that has already passed and the market is just now realizing the impact. Regardless of how or when the news occurs, the two strategies above give you a quick and easy way to read the news via your charts. We have covered a lot of material in this tutorial. Everything from how to configure the Forex Factory calendar to how to use it when trading price action. As such I would like to summarize some of the more important points to keep in mind when using the news calendar.
First and foremost, the news calendar should never be used as a tool to help you enter the market. In other words, attempting to trade a news event for the volatility it causes is a surefire way to blow up a trading account. The calendar can, however, be a great way to keep track of upcoming events. Knowing when these events are scheduled can help you make decisions about the timing of your entries.
As a price action trader, you have a distinct advantage over other market participants using something other than price action. You have the ability to read the news through your charts using strategies such as the pin bar and inside bar. Just remember to stick to the daily and 4 hour time frames with the exception of the inside bar, which should only be traded on the daily time frame. The Forex news calendar is a vital tool for any serious trader. It shows the scheduled news events for the week and usually ranks them from low to high impact.
I prefer the Forex Factory news calendar.
Plus, you can enter your timezone so events are displayed in your local time. In my opinion, the answer is a resounding no!
Trading the news is gambling. If so, you definitely want to download the free PDF guide that I just created. It breaks down how to use the calendar in 5 simple steps and explains which news events produce the most volatility.
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