MQL4 TUTORIAL BASICS - 21 HOW TO CODE A MACD EXPERT ADVISOR - YouTube

In this video, we are going to code an Expert Advisor that is able to calculate the MACD

Oscillator, it does not only generate signals it actually trades them, so let's find out

how to do that with MQL4.

To get started please click on the little symbol here or press F4, now you should see

the Metaeditor window and here you want to click on: “File/ New/ Expert Advisor”

from template, “Continue”, I will call this file: “SimpleMacDEA”, click on “Continue”,

“Continue” and “Finish”.

Now you can remove everything above the “OnTick” function and let's also delete the two comment

lines here.

We start by creating a signal, that will be a string variable. Right now we don't assign

any value here, because we need to calculate that later on. And to do that we use the included

“iMACD” function that comes with MQL4, it uses a few parameters so let's go through

the parameters one by one.

The first one is for the current symbol; “NULL” is a placeholder, it will actually calculate

the current symbol, you could also use “_Symbol“ and for the time frame we could use “_Period”.

I would like to calculate the values based on the close price, “MODE_MAIN” is used

to calculate the base Indicator line, the last value here is a shift value. That would

be used to calculate the value for a different candle but in our case we use 0, because

we want to calculate the value for the current candle.

So what's left are these 3 values here. Let's open a new chart window, click on: “Insert/

Indicators/ Oscillators/ MACD”. Now you should see the values: fast EMA 12, slow EMA

26, MACD SMA 9, apply to close. That's exactly what we are using here, so let's click on

“OK” and the MACD should appear in the lower part of your chart.

Let’s right-click select “Template/ Save Template” and save it as “tester.tpl”

because this is the template that is going to be used in the backtest. But before we can

do that, we need to finish our Expert Advisor here.

If the current value for the MACD is greater than 0 – zero is this line here – so

if the signal line is above the zero line, we would expect it to return to the zero line.

That would be a sell signal so we assign the word: “sell” to our signal.

Otherwise if the MACD is below the zero line, that would be a buy signal so we assign the

word: “buy” to our signal. And if the signal equals buy and “OrdersTotal” equals

zero, that would mean we have no open orders - we use the “OrderSend” command to buy

10 micro lot.

Otherwise, if the signal equals sell and we have no open orders, we use “OrderSend”

to sell 10 micro lot.

Finally, we use “Comment” to output the text: “The current signal is:” and the

signal that we have calculated on the chart.

Let’s click on the “Compile” button here or press F7, you shouldn't get any errors

here. But if it was too fast for you, you might want to watch the other videos in this basic

series first. Or maybe even the premium course is interesting for you.

If everything is okay, you can click on the little button here or press F4 to go back

to Metatrader. And in Metatrader you want to click on: “View/ Strategy Tester” or press

CTRL and R, please pick the new file: “SimpleMacDEA.ex4”, enable the visual mode here and start a test.

Here we are!

Our Expert Advisor is actually working, we also have open positions and in this little

video you have learned how to automate the MACD using MQL4 to open buy and sell trades

on your chart. And you have coded it yourself with a few lines of MQL4 code.