How to Build Your Own Forex Expert Advisor?

A recent trend in Forex and stocks trading is to use automated trading robots (Expert Advisors). As explained in the previous lesson, an Expert Advisor is an automated trading algorithm, which can analyze current market condition, open and close trades and move stop orders. Instead of trading yourself and stay behind the screen all day, many traders have started to utilize Expert Advisors for taking over their Forex trading. These EAs can be bought in the market, but are often sold quite pricy. If you have found and developed a proper trading strategy for yourself, then it is also possible to create your own expert advisor, which can replicate your proven trading strategy.

How to Create Your Own EA?

To create your own expert advisor, you will need to install MT4 and gain an understanding of programming and the MQL4 language, but there a plenty of forums out there, which you can use. Once you have these things in place, you can then start with the following these steps:

1. Open MetaEditor: Tools > MetaQuotes Language Editor.

2. Select New > Expert Advisor. Click Next to continue.

3. In the General Properties of the Expert Advisor window, input the Name, Author, Link and Parameters. Use the Add and Delete buttons to add or remove special parameters. Click Finish to continue.

4. In the new window you can enter the Expert Advisor programming code using MQL4 language and syntax.

(Note: Traders can learn more about programming in the MQL4 environment by studying the MT4 Help Guides and researching MQL4 community forums).

5. When the code part of the Expert Advisor has been completed, click File > Compile.

6. After successful compilation, or Expert Advisor appear in the Navigator window, and it is ready to be used.

To remind you again, it is important that you test and verify that the created EA is trading profitably. You should test it in the strategy tester, firstly on a demo account before you test it on a live account.