Creating EA’s with

I have been trying to create an EA with 1.5 to 3 pips SL and higher TP (breakout strategy) and keep getting errors after hitting the start button in building.  The error goes away after I set SL to 5 and above.  From your experience if you have tried to make an EA like this, is there a tick box somewhere that I am missing?  Thanks.

And please do not make comments about “why the $^* would you want an EA like that?”.  I have my reasons…

i am also interested in this subject

i never tried to create strategies with 0 SL but technically you can create with 5 or above and adjust later on the platform in Inputs

i have created strategies with 10 pips SL and kept the 10 pips in Inputs but so far none is usable/profitable because it takes too many SL

i dont have solid experience to speculate about the behavior of a strategy with 1 pip SL because it depends alot on the market orders building blocks, especially enter at market. I think many of those strategies will hit dozens of SL until they will catch a trend

One of my favorite EA’s is Morpheus on MQL5.  It has a SL of 1.5pips with a TP target of 50.   It is a breakout EA with stop orders.  The reason I like this on some trading is because the trades are in and out very fast.  Not scalping though.  An EA may only have a 40% win rate, but have a profit score of 3 and obviously almost nothing for a DD.  Yes – you can make it 6 or 10 pips in SQX – but as soon as you have a successful strategy in SQX with that high of a SL and you change it in MT4 for a BT, the BT is shit.  Would love to figure this out.

i am certain we are not the first or the only ones thinking about a trading system with little or no DD at all

i will try a few more experiments on major pairs

so far, when i generated something similar to what you described, when generated on Selected timeframe and retested on 1 minute, all strategies failed. Of course, i didnt even bother to put those on test account. When generated on 1 minute or real tick, almost no strategies were generated

its possible or conceivable that with SQ, you simply cannot generate Morpheus types of strategies and the only way is to create it manualy

what i find discouraging is that most if not all good portfolios, have some DD so experienced traders dont focus on obtaining something without a DD. So far i didnt saw a real credible example of strategies or portfolio without a DD so its possible we are simply not looking right at the problem

there would be also a matter of comparing the long term performance of a classic strategy with a Morpheus type, my best generated strategies, on H1 with aprox 100 – 200 pips SL, had close to 500 net pips/month and 160 – 190 net pips per trade but i am very sure there are elsewhere even more profitable with manual tuning

so the main question is just how profitable a morpheus type strategy can be, and if its worth the effort in searching/generating/testing

in theory, such a strategy must make at least 10 trades on the same trend, to match a classic one which make the same pips in one trade

I am going to continue to play around.  I might be able to squeek out a 5SL with 20TP with no ATR.  Keep you updated.

I made several tests and what i found is that the SL is corelated with the number of strategies and their performance.

I generated on major pairs, GBPUSD, GBPJPY, EURUSD, XAUUSD, most used timeframes, from H1 downward and if the SL is increased, the number of strategies increases and their performance increases, and vice versa. By the time the SL is decreased to 100 pips or even less, no more strategies are generated or the few that there are generated, are too weak to be used. At 50 pips or less, no strategies are generated for 24 hours and keeping the system on is pointless, waste of electricity

the only way to create a strategy with very short SL is manually, but i have some doubts about its stability or performance compared to classic strategies

what is interesting is that profitable stable strategies are obtained with a SL of 500 pips or even more, 900 – 1000 pips, which in theory would be a problem to small accounts, of 200 or 300 euro. Most strategies hit 3 – 6 SL for every TP, so if we consider that every 100 pips is 1 EUR, in some cases its possible that the portfolio blows up the small account before it gets the chance to make profit. By many standards, 1000 pip SL is huge but it depends on the general performance

one of my theories for the big SL is that there is a delay between the signal for a trade and the actual movement in the market and the trade must be open well before the movement. Probably is almost impossible to open the trade at the exact moment of movement so that no SL is needed, that moment is impossible to predict exactly and maybe SQ was simply not designed for such tasks

500 pips or more for SL – this is not STOP LOSS, how often will SL of 500 or more pips will be hitted, if daily moves are 60 pips and no more 🙂

this is no SL trading

some 6 months ago i obtained something similar to that Morpheus EA, on EURUSD, with a very small SL, 30 pips if i remember, but it was too inefficient to be of any use in that state. It had so many stop losses, over 15 that by the time it took a TP, its performance was below of a strategy with 200 pip SL with fewer trades. And a greater number of trades to the same profit is only good for the broker

i do believe its technically possible to increase the performance of such an EA but this can only be done manually by fine tuning which is too complicated for beginners and medium users which brings us back to square 1. If someone is expert enough to manually fine tune a strategy, probably doesnt need a software like SQ

I am having “some” success at getting EA’s with SL 10-30, but with TP of 20-50 (target).  What I am finding is that my win rate – yes – it is about 40%.  But, after optimizing I am able to get a couple of EA’s past a 10 year BT with 55-60% win rate and with a profit score of 2+.  Not exactly what I am looking for, but it is getting close.

bigger win% will always mean worse RRR and this is what you dont want to trade on your real account…you will make backtest which will look OK, but on live you will get more SLs and you will never recover from drawdown

I would hardly say 40-50% win rate looks great on a back test.