Blog for Building Expert Advisors for Metatrader 4

REASONS FOR EXPERT ADVISOR PROGRAMMING

 

 

The most important reason to build your own expert advisor is you will have full knowledge of when, why and how it trades. Also, by developing an EA yourself, you have complete control over the parameters of the system, such as the markets traded, time horizon, risk capital required, trading frequency and maximum drawdown to name a few.

For instance:

• You can historically test performance under different market conditions.
• You know that there is no vagueness or fuzziness in your trading rules.
• With full knowledge of the Expert Advisor's rules and trading tendencies.
• You will have the confidence to trade through the inevitable losing periods.
• Having built your own trading system, you also are more adept at modifying it when market conditions change.

When a trader builds his own Expert Advisor, he knows why it performs as it does and can make adjustments.

Of course, building an Expert Advisor has its drawbacks as well. First, it's not necessarily easy and can be mentally draining, often with little or no payback. Also, if you are going to build your own Expert Advisor, you do need some knowledge of how the markets work, and that takes time to learn as well.

An Expert Advisor you build will be limited to your own trading knowledge. For beginners, this could be a significant, binding constraint. A successful Expert Advisor will likely need to have an edge over other competing systems. If you don't believe that you can provide any edge, then it may be better to consider purchasing an EA.

Systems development can be very time consuming, making use of Metatrader 4, can take a level of technical background that the average trader does not have. Outsourcing MT4 development services, to program technical indicators or expert advisors is always a reasonable alternative. It is important to demand open source code and copy rights disclosure from your programming vendor.