EA Programming companies.

[Mr Fox]

Can anyone recommend the best company to go to if money were not an issue, to have an idea turned from manual trading to automated.

Also, how hard is this to do by a professional company if for eg. it is not based on indicators available, but is done just on candle-stick formations, or even as vague as on the ohlc bars, and then I could overlap all the other various indicators I use on top.

Is this even possible, or would I just be wasting my money, and more importantly my time.

I look forward to your insight.

P.S. I am a firm believer in using your eyes, and knowledge, and to do everything manually, but I feel a little exhausted back testing a strategy on a 5 min chart over 2years worth of data, and would like a bespoke EA to be an extra tool in my arsenal.

Best
John.

 

[Trader333]

...Also, how hard is this to do by a professional company if for eg. it is not based on indicators available, but is done just on candle-stick formations....

If the rules are clear then it is very easy indeed in my view.

 

[Mr Fox]

If the rules are clear then it is very easy indeed in my view.

Fantastic.

Can you recommend a company to carry this work out.

Best
John.

 

[NVP]

you could go to the professional programmers site freelancer.com ......but beware as the work I have had done for me there has been very variable in quality and i have been shafted at times lsoing money in the process...........many promise all to get the work and have no idea what you are doing

also there is the interlectual property in your idea .........they will have it regardless of confidentiality agreements ....

If you offer enough money people here on T2W will come running

in truth though the best you seek wont get out of bed unless you offer a lot of money .........and even then they probably will want to feel connected to what you seek as they will inevitable start questioning it

also EA's are incredibly frustrating to build ...........the devil is in the detail that you will rapidly learn from dealing with programmers ...............systems are smart but also dumb.........believe me !

sorry - truth
N

 

[Purple Brain]

Can anyone recommend the best company to go to if money were not an issue, to have an idea turned from manual trading to automated.

Also, how hard is this to do by a professional company if for eg. it is not based on indicators available, but is done just on candle-stick formations, or even as vague as on the ohlc bars, and then I could overlap all the other various indicators I use on top.

Is this even possible, or would I just be wasting my money, and more importantly my time.

I look forward to your insight.

P.S. I am a firm believer in using your eyes, and knowledge, and to do everything manually, but I feel a little exhausted back testing a strategy on a 5 min chart over 2years worth of data, and would like a bespoke EA to be an extra tool in my arsenal.

Best
John.

You have to fully analyse what it is you want from your EA and break it down to the lowest level of detail to provide a specification which an applications programmer can use to develop the code regardless of your intended development route. My suggestion to you is not to use any commercial service, but to farm out on this site - there very likely are others you could use too - just small pieces of your requirements without reference to complete EA itself.

By compartmentalising and dispersing the requirements you will retain your intellectual rights to the system,though not the code, and will prevent anyone else using your ideas unless of course you don't mind them doing so. It will also more likely be done on a pro bono basis as coders love to tackle quick wins and will likely code you up an indicator or two for free, but would baulk at a commercial size undertaking.

You'd have to cobble all the bits together at some point, but that's an order of magnitude easier than writing all the code.

Even better still - without knowing your technical background, interests or skills - learn to code it yourself. There are literally hundreds of thousands of indicators with source code available and using them as templates it's quite a simple and enjoyable job to code your own stuff. I understand mq5 has some bells and whistles not available in mq4, but the mq4 user and skill base is far larger and you stand a better chance of getting the job done and getting support for it using that version.

 

[Liquid validity]

Can anyone recommend the best company to go to if money were not an issue, to have an idea turned from manual trading to automated.

Also, how hard is this to do by a professional company if for eg. it is not based on indicators available, but is done just on candle-stick formations, or even as vague as on the ohlc bars, and then I could overlap all the other various indicators I use on top.

Is this even possible, or would I just be wasting my money, and more importantly my time.

I look forward to your insight.

P.S. I am a firm believer in using your eyes, and knowledge, and to do everything manually, but I feel a little exhausted back testing a strategy on a 5 min chart over 2years worth of data, and would like a bespoke EA to be an extra tool in my arsenal.

Best
John.

Don't bother you are wasting your time and money.
Thats not me being negative, its a simple truth.

You will be back and forth to the programmer for changes,
coding new ideas and so on, most of which will
fall apart under back testing, let alone forwards testing.

The only realistic way is to code it yourself.
Even then, automation is poles apart from discretionary
in implementation.
In other words, you need to be a top class coder to even come remotely
close to programming a discretionary method.

If you aren't very good at coding, the approach most likely to yield results
has very little to do with common discretionary trading techniques.
You also mention indicators, I'm not a massive fan anyway, but in automation,
most indicators are worse than useless - remove the discretionary interpretation
and they are usually worse than random due to lag as well as false signals.

On another note, I don't know why the obsession with MT4 persists
as it being the best platform to get started with this.
It isn't, its probably the worst out there - go figure.
Unless you are deadly serious, willing to do lots of hard work and research,
and also willing to accept that automation, unless you are a brilliant coder,
will never match the efficiency of discretionary trading, then stop right now.

If you are serious and accept all the above, then here is something to get you started:
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/forex/174556-pls-recommend-forex-ea-mt5-2.html#post2139530
http://www.amibroker.com/devlog/2007/05/18/introducing-afl-code-wizard/
NinjaTrader New Programmers Strategy Development - YouTube
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/discretionary-mechanical-trading/161888-system.html#post2011254

Do not under estimate how hard this is...
If you are looking for the easy option this is not it.

 

[Mr Fox]

Thanks for the reply chaps. I really appreciate all the honesty, and I shall shelf the idea, as my technical ability to turn on a PC is poor at best, so programming myself is the impossible.

I guess that I'm really struggling with my psychology with trading at the moment, regardless of having a very very productive strategy, but I shall start another thread in another section.

 

[tp247]

Programming is easy but EA programming may be or may be not depending on the complexity of the logic/system you have in mind. I have developed around 70+ EAs/indicators for clients and cannot say all of them make money or help them or not. First you have to make sure that your logic is good is REALLY a money making one and test it (manual backtesting and forward testing). I am not sure about the policy on posting other websites in these forums. If you go around mql4.com you could see lots of programmers advertise for their services. The frustration is, as I a programmer and trader, I donot want to waste time on any logic which is not making money or something promising. If I have to do that I need to get compensated for the time I spend on developing the system/testing it. Most of the time, newbies ask for a MA cross or Price crossing candles and they think they found a great system which will make them to the millions over few weeks (little exaggeration! . Hope you get the point. And if you spend a bit time on mql4.com you could develop the code by yourself.

Goodluck.

 

[Crunchy1]

I would create my own EA too