MQL4 TUTORIAL – SIMPLE COMMODITY CHANNEL INDEX

In this video we are going to trade the Commodity Channel Index,
that’s the Indicator right here; you see the two dotted lines and
whenever the line here crosses the upper dotted line we consider
that to be a sell signal and when it crosses the lower dotted line
that would be a buy signal. In this video we are going to find out
how to automatically calculate this signal with a few lines of MQL4
code. To do that please click on the little button here and now you
should see the Metaeditor window and here you want to click on
“File New Expert Advisor (template)” from template, “Continue”, I
will call this file: “SimpleCommodityChannelIndex”, click on
“Continue”, “Continue” and “Finish” and now you can remove
everything above the “OnTick” function and the two comment lines
here. Let’s start with a string variable for the signal, that
variable will also be called: “signal” – we don’t assign a value
because we are going to calculate that later on. Let’s define our
indicator that is done by using the “iCCI” function that comes with
MQL4 and if you mark it and hit the F1 key you will see it takes a
few parameters. The first parameter is for the symbol – that’s
actually the currency pair on your chart –, the second one is for
the time frame, in our case we use the 1 minute time frame –
another time frame could be 5 minutes or 15 minutes and so on –,
the third parameter is for the averaging period, that’s actually
the period we use to calculate the signal and if you click on
“Insert Indicators Custom CCI” you will see that the CCI period is
14, so that’s what we are using here followed by a typical price.
You could also use a close or an open price, the highest or the
lowest price, and the last parameter here is for the shift. You
could use a shift value to move the Indicator window to right or to
the left. We are not going to use it so our last parameter will be
0. Now that we know the value we want to find out if it is above
100, so if the “ICCIValue” we have defined here is greater than 100
– that would be the case when it’s above the dotted line here,
because this is the 100-plus line –, we consider our currency pair
to be oversold so we assign the word: “sell” to our signal. In the
other case if our value is below -100, so if our “ICCIValue” is
below -100 – that would be the case when the line is below the
dotted line here, because the lower line is the minus 100 line – in
that case we consider it to be a buy signal so we assign the word:
“buy” to our signal. In the last step we create a chart output that
is done by using the “Comment” function and we want to output the
word: “Signal:” followed by the calculated signal (signal) and in a
new line we want to have the output: “ICCI Value:” followed by the
current ICC I value (ICCIValue). Okay. Please don’t forget the
closing bracket and when you are done you can click on the
“Compile” button here or press F7 on your keyboard and now you
should see an output like this. We have compiled it without any
errors and without any warnings and in that case you can click on a
little button here or press F4 to go back to Metatrader and in
Metatrader we use a little trick; please click on “Insert
Indicators Custom CCI” we will go with the default values here so
please click on “OK”. Now you should see the little window with the
Indicator below the candles and now we right-click in our chart and
select: “Template Save Template” and save it as: “tester.tpl”
because this is the template that our strategy tester is going to
use for the next back test. If you don’t see the strategy tester
panel you can click on “View Strategy Tester” or press CTRL and R,
let’s select the simple “SimpleCommodityChannelIndex.ex4” file we
have just created enable the visual mode here, pick a currency pair
and start our test. So let’s speed up the test and now you can see
buy and sell signals appearing on your chart so our little Expert
Advisor works and now you know how to code the Commodity Channel
Index Indicator in...