1. Strategy - How to... When people say "you need a trading strategy!!" Its because trading is very hard and emotional. You need to stick to your rules at all times. Dont panic and move your stop loss or target unless your rules tell you to. Now how do you make these rules? Well this is the part that takes alot of time. If your rules are very simple (for example: "Buy if Last candles low was the lowest low of the past 10 candles." Lets make this a rule. You can backtest it manually by looking at a chart and going back in time and check every candle. or you can code it using super simple software like prorealtime, MT4 ++ Alot of software is basicly "click and drag" and press a button and it gives you backtest from 10-20-30 years ago in 5 seconds. This is the absolute easiest way to backtest rules and systems. If your trading "pure price action" with your drawn lines and shit, the only way to truly backtest that kind of trading is going in a random forex pair to a random point in time, could be 1 year ago, 1 month ago, 5 years ago.. and then you just trade! Move chart 1 candle at a time, draw your lines and do some "actual trading" and look at your results after moving forward in the chart. If you do not test your strategy your just going in blind, which could be disaster.. Maybe someone told u "this is the correct way to trade" or "this strategy is 90% sure to win every trade!!!" If you think you can do trading without a strategy, then your most likely going to look back at an empty account and wonder why you moved that stop loss or why you didnt take profit etc.. and then your gonna give up. People on youtube, forums, interwebz are not going to give you/sell you a working strategy thats gonna make you rich. If they had a working strategy, they would not give it away/sell it to you.
2. Money management - How to.... Gonna keep this one short. Risk a small % of your capital on each trade. Dont risk 10%, dont risk 20%. You are going to see loosing trades, your probably gonna see 5-10 loss in a row!! If your trading a 1000$ account and your risking 100$ on each trade (10%) and you loose 5 in a row, your down -50% and probably you cant even trade cus of margin req. Game over.. Now how does one get super rich, super fast, from risking 1-3% of your account on each trade?? Well heres the shocking message: YOU CANT GET RICH FAST FROM TRADING UNLESS YOUR WILLING TO GO ALL IN! You can of course go all in on each trade and if you get em all right, you might get 1000%, then you go all in 1 more time and loose it all... The whole point of trading is NOT going bust. Not loosing everything, cus if you loose it all its game over and no more trading for you.
3. Find your own trading style.... Everyone is different. You can have an average holding period of 1 month or you could be looking at a 1 min chart and average holding time = 10 minutes. For some, less volatility helps them sleep at night. For others, more volatility gives them a rush and some people crave this. There is no "correct" timeframes, or holding periods, or how much to profit or how much to loose. We are all individuals with different taste in risk. Some dont like risk, others wanna go all in to get rich over night. The smart approach is somewhere in the middle. If you dont risk anything, your not gonna get anything. If you risk everything, your most likely going to loose everything. When people are talking about trading style, this is kinda what that means.
4. There are mainly 2 ways to trade: Divergence and Convergence. Or in other words: Mean reversion or trend following. Lets talk about them both: Trend following is trying to find a trend and stay with the trend until its over. Mean reversion is the belief that price is too far away from the average XX of price, and sooner or later, price will have to return to its average/mean (hence the name: MEAN reversion). Trend following systems usually see a lower winrate (30-40% winrate with no money management is not uncommon to see when backtesting trend following systems.. You can add good money management to get the winrate % higher. Why is the % winrate so low? Well a market, whatever that market is, tend to get real choppy and nasty right after a huge trend. So your gonna see alot of choppy fake signals that might kill 5-6 trades in a row, until the next huge trend starts which is going to cover all the losses from the small losses before the trend took off. Then you gotta hold that trade until trade is done. How do you define "when trend starts and stops"? Well thats back to point 1, find a strategy. Try defining rules for an entry and exit and see how it goes when you backtest it. For mean reversion the win % is usually high, like 70-90% winrate, but the average winning trade is alot smaller than the average loosing trade. this happens because you are basicly trying to catch a falling knife, or catch a booming rocket. Usually when trading mean reversion, waiting for price to actually reverse can very often leave you with being "too late", so you kinda have to find "the bottom" or "the top" before it actually has bottomed/ topped out and reversed. How can you do this you ask? Well your never going to hit every top or every bottom, but you can find ways to find "the bottom-ish" or "the top-ish", thens ell as soon as price reverts back to the mean. Sometimes your gonna wish you held on to the trade for longer, but again, back to point 1: Backtest your rules and figure that shit out.

1. We identify the big orange trend up.
2. We see the big break down (marked with the vertical red line) this is telling us we are not going higher just yet. Our upwards trend is broken. However we might continue going up in a new trend, but when will that trend come?
3. We can draw the blue trend very earyly using highs and lows, lines up and down. Then we begin to look for breakouts of the upper blue line. So every time price breaks upper blue line we have to buy (cus how else are we going to "catch the next trend going up?)

1. Beginner who wants to work as a cashier will have to learn how to use cash machine, count money and customer communication, only 3 main functions. It will take not more than 1-2 weeks to become good cashier in a store. It will bring money for living.
   
2. Beginner who wants to become bank worker will have to be familiar with financial sphere, probably pass banking courses, work with specific computer programs, be ready to communicate with customers, and work with money. Become good bank employee will take some weeks. The higher position in the bank, more need to learn and know. It also will bring money for living.
   
3. Beginner who wants to be a forwarder in a logistics company, will have to do more functions. As minimum need to learn information from Internet or pass some courses – to understand how logistics works, etc. Then it is necessary to start communicating with customers, offer good services conditions, provide specific information about cargo, documentation and so on. It will take some months to become advanced worker in this profession. It will bring money for living as well.
   
4. FOREX – Beginners who want to become successful Forex traders and earn money for living will have to:
   

• MAIN rule – don’t expect that Forex will bring you profit when you start trading, so you have to get somewhere money for living, while you are learning Forex and reach the point when Forex brings you amount of money that is comfortable for living.
  
• learn Forex information by their own, searching it in Internet, watch some courses, or visit a local city Forex courses. Everyone choose his or her own learning method.
  
• Practice trading on Forex terminal that you chose. I recommend to practice on demo account, so you could increase your trading skills and experience without spending money.
  
• Find or build your trading method that will have loss-profit ratio as minimum 1:1+, so you could get more profit rather than loss.
  
• After you reach the aim for getting more profit than loss, you move to real account and start trading.
  
• Strictly follow your trading strategy rules, don’t trade on emotions, and control money management. In a result Forex trading will bring you profit for living.
  

#property indicator_chart_window #property indicator_buffers 8 // <---- have to set this to match your copy and pasted buffer amount #property indicator_color1 LightSeaGreen #property indicator_color2 LightSeaGreen #property indicator_color3 LightSeaGreen // hack in (make 'em colourful. Turns out I didn't understand how the numbering worked, and indictator_color4 is never visualised) #property indicator_color4 clrWhite #property indicator_color5 clrWhite #property indicator_color6 clrRed #property indicator_color7 clrGreen #property indicator_color8 clrRed //--- indicator parameters input int InpBandsPeriod=50; // Bands Period input int InpBandsShift=0; // Bands Shift input double InpBandsInnerDeviations=1.0; // Add in for our other Band input double InpBandsOuterDeviations=2.0; // Bands Deviations //--- buffers double ExtMovingBuffer[]; double ExtUpperBuffer[]; double ExtLowerBuffer[]; double ExtStdDevBuffer[]; // hack in buffers (these buffers will store our trade signals) double SellSignalBuffer[]; double BuySignalBuffer[]; // these buffers will hold the additional bands. apologies for the naming, I didn't originally intend to share this double ExtUpperUpperBuffer[]; double ExtLowerLowerBuffer[]; //+------------------------------------------------------------------+ //| Custom indicator initialization function | //+------------------------------------------------------------------+ int OnInit(void) { //--- 1 additional buffer used for counting. IndicatorBuffers(8); // don't forget to adjust this to account for the new buffers IndicatorDigits(Digits); //--- middle line SetIndexStyle(0,DRAW_LINE); SetIndexBuffer(0,ExtMovingBuffer); SetIndexShift(0,InpBandsShift); SetIndexLabel(0,"Bands SMA"); //--- upper band SetIndexStyle(1,DRAW_LINE); SetIndexBuffer(1,ExtUpperBuffer); SetIndexShift(1,InpBandsShift); SetIndexLabel(1,"Bands Upper"); //--- lower band SetIndexStyle(2,DRAW_LINE); SetIndexBuffer(2,ExtLowerBuffer); SetIndexShift(2,InpBandsShift); SetIndexLabel(2,"Bands Lower"); SetIndexBuffer(3,ExtStdDevBuffer); //--- Copy and paste from above, and just change the number! Upper outer band is INDEX 4 SetIndexStyle(4,DRAW_LINE); SetIndexBuffer(4,ExtUpperUpperBuffer); SetIndexShift(4,InpBandsShift); SetIndexLabel(4,"Bands Outer Upper"); //--- Copy& paste, lower outer band is INDEX 5 SetIndexStyle(5,DRAW_LINE); SetIndexBuffer(5,ExtLowerLowerBuffer); SetIndexShift(5,InpBandsShift); SetIndexLabel(5,"Bands Outer Lower"); //--- remind myself which is which so I don't forget later: sell signal is INDEX 6!!!! SetIndexStyle(6,DRAW_ARROW); SetIndexArrow(6,218); SetIndexBuffer(6,SellSignalBuffer); SetIndexShift(6,InpBandsShift); SetIndexLabel(6,"Sell Signal"); //--- buy signal is INDEX 7 !!! SetIndexStyle(7,DRAW_ARROW); SetIndexArrow(7,217); SetIndexBuffer(7,BuySignalBuffer); SetIndexShift(7,InpBandsShift); SetIndexLabel(7,"Buy Signal"); //--- check for input parameter if(InpBandsPeriod<=0) { Print("Wrong input parameter Bands Period=",InpBandsPeriod); return(INIT_FAILED); } //--- SetIndexDrawBegin(0,InpBandsPeriod+InpBandsShift); SetIndexDrawBegin(1,InpBandsPeriod+InpBandsShift); SetIndexDrawBegin(2,InpBandsPeriod+InpBandsShift); // hack in our additional buffers, so they also start at the corect point SetIndexDrawBegin(4,InpBandsPeriod+InpBandsShift); SetIndexDrawBegin(5,InpBandsPeriod+InpBandsShift); SetIndexDrawBegin(6,InpBandsPeriod+InpBandsShift); SetIndexDrawBegin(7,InpBandsPeriod+InpBandsShift); //--- initialization done return(INIT_SUCCEEDED); } //+------------------------------------------------------------------+ //| Bollinger Bands | //+------------------------------------------------------------------+ // all of this code is from the default indicator int OnCalculate(const int rates_total, const int prev_calculated, const datetime &time[], const double &open[], const double &high[], const double &low[], const double &close[], const long &tick_volume[], const long &volume[], const int &spread[]) { int i,pos; //--- if(rates_total<=InpBandsPeriod || InpBandsPeriod<=0) { return(0); } //--- counting from 0 to rates_total ArraySetAsSeries(ExtMovingBuffer,false); ArraySetAsSeries(ExtUpperBuffer,false); ArraySetAsSeries(ExtLowerBuffer,false); ArraySetAsSeries(ExtStdDevBuffer,false); // hack in to make sure our custom buffers run in the same direction ArraySetAsSeries(SellSignalBuffer,false); ArraySetAsSeries(ExtUpperUpperBuffer,false); ArraySetAsSeries(ExtLowerLowerBuffer,false); ArraySetAsSeries(BuySignalBuffer,false); ArraySetAsSeries(close,false); ArraySetAsSeries(high,false); ArraySetAsSeries(low,false); //--- initial zero if(prev_calculated<1) { for(i=0; i1) pos=prev_calculated-1; else pos=0; //--- main cycle for(i=pos; i After a bit of tweaking typos, the indicator now displays two sets of bands, one at 1x SD and one at 2xSD from the mean (moving average). It also has two buffers that will use the DRAW_ARROW style to mark out potential trades.
 Adding trade logic
 I still can't decide if it's better to isolate the logic code in the Custom Indicator or the EA, in the long run. There seem to be performative, stylistic and redundancy issues, but for the moment the project is to put the logic in the Indicator, so that's what I did.
 The fastest way to prototype this idea seems to be identifying when price closes outside of the far band. 
 This is trivial to achieve. We compare the close to the two outer bands, and if it's outside them, then we set the relevant trade signal buffer.
 //
 
 double tempclose = close[i]; if(tempclose>(ExtUpperUpperBuffer[i]+10*Point)) { SellSignalBuffer[i] = high[i]+(20* Point); } else { SellSignalBuffer[i] = 0; } if(tempclose<(ExtLowerLowerBuffer[i]-10*Point)) { BuySignalBuffer[i] = low[i]-(20*Point); } else { BuySignalBuffer[i]=0; } } 
 It works!
 http://i.imgur.com/Ak3UkkK.png
 Green arrows successfully mark out possible sell entries where price closes above the top band, and red arrows mark out possible buy entries when price closes below the lower band. 
 The logic can be a lot more complicated than this obviously, but the point of my project is to develop the iCustom technique, rather than make a good autotrader.
 Now it's time to switch to the EA.
 part two to follow