Trading signals

On the previous page (Indicators) we added all indicators. If you want to edit your indicators, you simply go back and adjust your indicator's parameters. Next, you can create the trading signals ('signals') you want to use for the opening or closing of an order. A signal is a group of conditions which have to be met before an order is opened or closed.

Get started

Your EA has 4 signal types.

Open Buy
Open Sell
Close Buy
Close Sell

Signals are a very powerful tool to create almost any Open- and Close logic you can think of. Creating a signal may seem quite difficult in the beginning, but we believe that anyone can master building signals within a week. So please be persistent in learning how to create signals. You can always reach out to us to ask us how to create your signal if you don't know how to proceed, even after reading this page. Also, if you think the signal editor is too limited for your goals, please reach out to us, because we'll show you how you can achieve your goals anyway. We're got a lot of experience in solving complex scneario's. Just use the contact form , or mail us on .

Enable or Disable a signal

You can enable or disable a signal by clicking on the options button and select Enable/Disable. When your signal is disabled it will not be available in the generated output (mql or compiled). The EA needs at least one enabled Open Buy or Open Sell signal to open any orders automatically.

Enabled signals appear normal with a vertical blue bar in front of the signal name.
Disabled signals are grayed out with a vertical gray bar in front of the signal name.

Copy and Paste a signal

Open the options menu to Copy and Paste a signal to the other types of signal. A common scenario is that you start by creating the Open Buy Signal. When ready, you may want to copy the Open Buy signal to the Close Sell signal and you may want to copy the Open Sell signal to the Close Buy signal. This way the open order will switch from a buy order, to a sell order and vice versa.

Open the options menu for a particular signal.
Click Copy.
Open the options menu for a other signal
Click Paste.

copy and paste a trading signal — Click the option button to copy/paste a signal

Invert a signal

Open the options menu to invert a signal. A common scenario is that you start by creating the Open Buy Signal. When ready, you will want to create the Open Sell signal, which is the same as the Open Buy signal, but then Inverted. To do so, click the Invert button on the Open Sell signal after you copied the signal from the Open Buy signal. Make sure that you verify that the inverted signal is what you expect it to be.

invert a trading signal — Click the option button to invert the selected signal

Edit a signal

Click on a signal that you would like to edit. This will open the signal editor. If you started your EA based on a template then some signals may already contain some conditions. Some other signals may be blank and contain only a single node. Start building your signal from this root 'node'.

ANY | ALL Root Group

The root Group gives you a choise between ANY/ALL. This option effects all conditions that are directly in this Group.

ANY: Only one of the conditions has to be met for the signal to activate.
ALL: All of the conditions have to be met for the signal to activate.

Start building your condition(s) from this root Group.

root logical operator — A signal has 1 root ANY/ALL Group

Add condition

Open the options menu of a ANY | ALL group and select Add Condition. Alternatively, when the group is still empty, you can select an option from the shortcut bar. The shortcut bar will disappear after you add a condition. After you click Add Condition a simple condition will be added.

add condtion — Add a condition. Behind the context menu, there is the shortcut bar.

A condition is an expression with a Left-Hand side, an operator and a right Right-Hand side. By default, the Left- and Right-handside operands are indicators. The indicators you've added to your EA will appear here. You can replace the Indicator with a Function (Bid, Ask, Stoploss etc) or a constant value.

condition added — A simple condition with default Indicator values has been added. ADX is the name of the indicator. Main is the name of the MODE. S0 is the Shift (Bar) on which the indicator will be calculated

Toggle Indicator, Function or Constant

You can toggle between an indicator, function or constant. Click on the element you would like to edit and a popup window will appear.

Click on Indicator to access the indicators you have created.
Click on Function to access functions like ask, bid, hour, minute etc.
Click on Constant to add a constant value. The default value is EMPTY which represents a MetaTrader empty value, which is a long number (2147483647).

toggle between indicator, function and value. — Toggle between indicator, function and value

Shift (Bar)

For each indicator you use in your condition you have to select the Shift you want to use. By doing this, you specify which bar's value (of the indicator) you want to use.

Shift (Bar): 0 - The current bar
Shift (Bar): 1 - The previous bar
Shift (Bar): 2 - The bar before the previous bar, etc.

Select on which bar the indicator will be calculated — Select which bar's value you want to use

Operator

There are three operator categories:

Comparison
Crossover
Mathematical

Each category contains different operators. Depending on the context certain operator categories may not be available. Click here for a full list of available operators.

toggle between Logical, Comparison, Crossover and Arithmetic operators — List of operators can vary based on context.

Add Advanced Condition

If a simpel Condition does not meet your requirements you can add a Advanced Condition.

add advanced condtion — Add a **Advanced Condition**

A Advanced Condition can contain various elements.

Operation
Value
Mathematical Operator

The Advanced Condition supports all the requirements you may have. Here you can apply complex mathematical operations if needed.

advanced condition example — An example of a Advanced Condition. The Left-Hand side contains an **Operation**. The Right-Hand side exist of a **Mathematical Operator**. The Mathematical Operator Contains 2 **Operations** and 1 **Value**

When you are done with the Advanced Condition it can be collapsed. A summary of your condition will be shown, this will help you to keep a good overview of your signal.

Add Group Any/All

You can add a nested Group of Conditions. Click on Add Group.

Here you can add more Condtions, Advanced Conditions or another nested Group.

Remove node

You can remove a node by selecting "Remove" under options. The root Group (Any/All) can never be removed. Nested Groups can be removed.

Move | Cut-Copy-Paste

There are 2 ways to move elements.

Move a condition Up/Down

Cut and Paste

Copy and Paste

Move a node within its container (Group or Advanced Condition) by opening the options menu. Click on Move Up or Move Down to move the element Up or Down in order.

If you need to move a node to another container (Group or Advanced Condition), open the options menu and select Cut. The interface will be blocked for editing and you will be presented with options to paste your node. Click on the Paste button where you would like to move this item. The item will be moved to this location. Alternatively, you can use Copy instead of Cut to duplicate the node.

paste node — Click on a Paste button to move the Condition to that container. Click cancel to cancel this Cut or Copy action.

Invalid signals

When you are building signals you can create a signal that is invalid. Invalid signals cannot be saved. You know that your signal is invalid when you see the exclamation mark with an error message in the top summary box.

an invalid signal — A Advanced condition is missing a Left-Hand and Right-hand side operand. Add those elements to fix this error.

Nested conditions

You can make signals as complex as you would like. To easily understand how signals work, a good strategy is to divide them into groups. Each group returns true or false.

complex signal — Divide signals into groups. We have got 2 blue conditions in the root group and 2 green conditions in the nested ANY/ALL group. Each group returns true or false. One out of 2 green conditions must be true because it is a ANY group. The root group is an ALL group and therefore both blue conditions need to be true, and 1 condition out of the green nested group, for the signal to activate.

Operators

The signal editor enables you with a set of well known operators. We've added a set of special crossover operators to make things easier.

Symbol	Name	Category
	Cross	Crossover
	Up Cross	Crossover
	Down Cross	Crossover
==	Equal	Comparison
!=	Not Equal	Comparison
>=	Above or Equal	Comparison
<=	Below or Equal	Comparison
>	Above	Comparison
<	Below	Comparison
+	Add	Mathematical
-	Substract	Mathematical
/	Divide	Mathematical
*	Multiply	Mathematical
%	Modulo	Mathematical

Cross

Use this operator if the direction of the crossover does not matter.

Up Cross

Use this operator if the direction crosses over from below (Up Cross).

Down Cross

Use this operator if the direction crosses over from above (Down Cross).

Equal

Comparison operator. Returns true if both sides of the expression are equal.

Not Equal

Comparison operator. Condition is met if both sides of the condition are not equal.

Above Or Equal

Comparison operator. Condition is met if the left side of the condition is above or equal to the right side of the condition.

Below Or Equal

Comparison operator. Condition is met if the left side of the condition is below or equal to the right side of the condition.

Above

Comparison operator. Condition is met if the left side of the condition is above the right side of the condition.

Below

Comparison operator. Condition is met if the left side of the condition is below the right side of the condition.

Add

Use this operator to add numbers.

add example — If the value of indicator MA30 + 0.75 is above than the value of MA7, the signal will tell the EA to open an order.

Substract

Use this operator to substract numbers.

subscract example — If the value of indicator MA30 - 0.75 is above than the value of MA7, the signal will tell the EA to open an order.

Divide

Use this operator to divide numbers.

devide example — If the value of indicator MA30 divided by 0.75 is above than the value of MA7, the signal will tell the EA to open an order.

Multiply

Use this operator to multiply numbers.

Modulo

Returns the remainder after a division.

Functions

The signal editor provides the flexibility to apply various functions when specifying your conditions. Below is a description of the available functions.

Price

The price category of functions give information about the current price, based on your symbol.

Ask: the current price requested by your broker.
Bid: the current price offered by your broker.
Pip: the value of 1 pip. For EURUSD this is 0.0001.

Account

The account category of functions give information about your account.

Balance: the current balance of your account.
Equity: the current equity (balance + floating profit(s)) of your account.

Date

The Date category of functions give information about the date- and time functions.

Day of month: a number between 1 and 31. Each month, it begins with the value 1 and ends with a number between 28 and 31, depending on the length of the month.
Day of week: a number between 1 (Monday) and 7 (Sunday).
Day of year: a number between 1 (1st of January) and 365 or 366 (31st of December).
Hour: a number between 0 (0 am) and 23 (11 pm).
Minutes: a number between 0 and 59.
Seconds: a number between 0 and 59.

Order

The Order category of functions give information about open orders.

Stop loss: the stop loss value set for the most recently opened order of the same type as the Signal. For 'Open Buy' and 'Close Buy' signals, it refers to the stop loss value of the most recently opened buy order. If no stop loss value is set for the order, it defaults to the Empty value, represented by a long number (2147483647).
Take profit: the target profit value set for the most recently opened order of the same type as the Signal. For 'Open Buy' and 'Close Buy' signals, it refers to the take profit value of the most recently opened buy order. If no take profit value is set for the order, it defaults to the Empty value, represented by a long number (2147483647).
No. of open orders: the total number of currently open orders of both types (buy and sell).
Open price: the price at which the most recent order of the same type as the Signal was opened. For example, for a 'Buy' signal, it represents the price of the most recently opened 'Buy' order.
Open seconds: the duration, in seconds, since the most recent opening of an order of the same type as the Signal.

Next: Modules