What is Expert Advisor optimization or how to increase the efficiency of an Expert Advisor. A practical guide for novice traders to optimize advisors in MT4. Schemes, rules and patterns How to change a step in an EA

Today we will consider the issues of testing and optimizing advisors in the MT4 trading terminal.

The strategy tester will open in which we will test our advisor Ilan16c_PipStepExponent_MFI_lock.

In the upper-left tab of the strategy tester, select “Expert Advisor”.

In the tab next to it, in the drop-down list, look for our advisor and double-click on its name.

In the tab below, select a symbol - a currency pair for which we want to test the advisor. Let's have USDJPY.

Choosing a testing model - choosing the most accurate "Every tick" method. “Control Points” and “At Open Prices” are models that are more suitable only for a cursory analysis of the EA's work.

We put a tick on "Use date" - set the interval. Let us have an interval from the beginning of 2015 to 2015.11.23.

The next item is "Visualization".

You can check the box for visualizations, or you can leave it blank. A check mark on the visualization means that you will see the entire process of testing the Expert Advisor on the selected history interval right on the chart.

Set the testing speed to maximum - move the slider all the way to the right.

Also available are Pause / Play and Skip to buttons.

Move your gaze to the right in the tester.

We make a choice of a time period - on which we will test the robot. Let's have an M5.

Now let's open the Expert Advisor settings - click "Expert Properties".

Here we see the standard settings of the Ilan16c_PipStepExponent_MFI_lock advisor - we will test with them. You can change the settings of the expert as you want and only then test it. Any Expert Advisor can be tested an unlimited number of times and.

On the "Testing" tab, you can select the size of the deposit for testing and its currency, as well as specify which positions to open: buy and sell, buy only or sell only.

Let our initial deposit be 10,000 USD, and positions: buy and sell (Long & Short) - this is always the standard in MT4.

Attention: in order to test the Expert Advisor on a decent history with high quality modeling, we need to download quotes for the symbol used in the tests. In our case, we need to download quotes for USDJPY.

This process is also useful for optimizing a trading Expert Advisor. You need to download the archive of quotes for any instrument only once.

How to upload an archive of quotes to MT4?

In the uppermost menu of the terminal, click "Service" and then "Quotes Archive". Or just press F2.

A window with archives of quotes for available instruments will open.

We are looking for our symbol (our currency pair) USDJPY in the list and double-click on its name, and then double-click on "1 Minute".

Press the button "Download". The process of downloading all quotes for USDJPY will begin - for all timeframes.

That's it - all quotes for USDJPY have been downloaded - now you can qualitatively test and optimize EAs at all ticks.

We close this window and try to test our advisor Ilan16c_PipStepExponent_MFI_lock - press the "Start" button.

Quotes are loaded from the quotes archive.

What's the bottom line? Draining the entire deposit.

As you can see, the standard settings are clearly not suitable for us - we will have to optimize this EA.

Note: you can save any report to your computer - go to the "Report" sub-tab of the strategy tester, where we display all the data about the passed test, and right-click in this window, and then "Save as report" - the report will be saved in HTML format ...

Click on "Expert Advisor Properties" and put a checkmark in front of those parameters that will take part in the optimization - check the boxes on the parameters that are more significant for us.

Also, we put down in front of the parameters with checkmarks their "Starts", "Steps" and "Stops" - in simple words, limit of values \u200b\u200bfrom and to with a step.

On the "Testing" tab, you can select the size and currency of the deposit, as well as specify the types of positions to open: buy and sell, buy only or sell only.

The optimized parameter is a certain indicator, the value of which determines the quality of the tested set of input parameters. The higher the value of the optimization criterion, the better the test result is estimated with a given set of parameters. The following optimization options are available:

- Balance: the indicator of optimizedness is the maximum value of the balance;
- Profit Factor: the indicator is the maximum value of the profit factor;
- Expected Payoff: the indicator is the maximum value of the mathematical expectation of a payoff;
- Maximal Drawdown: the indicator is the minimum drawdown value;
- Drawdown Percent: the indicator is the minimum value of the relative drawdown (in percent);
- Custom: when this parameter is selected, the value of the OnTester () function in the Expert Advisor will be taken into account as an optimization criterion. This parameter allows the user to use any custom metric for optimization.

A checkmark opposite the genetic algorithm - it is recommended to leave it with a tick. If there is no check mark, then be sure to check it. If you do not check the box, you will wait forever for the EA to be optimized, since absolutely all combinations of the EA input parameters will be searched.

Optimization tab. It allows you to manage constraints during optimization. If any of the conditions is met during a separate run, this run of the advisor will stop. Optimization will continue from the next run.

To enable a limiting condition, you must select the corresponding checkbox to the left of it. By double-clicking the left mouse button in the "Value" field, you can change the existing parameter, after entering the new value, press the "Enter" key.

Limiting parameters include:

- Minimum balance: the minimum value of the balance in the currency of the deposit;
- Maximum profit: maximum profit in the currency of the deposit;
- Minimum margin level%: minimum margin level in percent;
- Maximum drawdown%: maximum drawdown in percent;
- Continuous loss: the maximum total loss in one series. Several consecutive losing trades are called a losing series;
- Continuous number of losing trades: the maximum number of losing trades in one series;
- Continuous Win: Maximum total profit in one series. Several consecutive profitable trades are called a profitable series;
- Continuous number of winning trades: the maximum number of winning trades in one series.

After all the changes, click on the "OK" button.

We put a tick on "Optimization" and press "Start".

The optimization process has started - as you can see from the screenshot, there will be 10,496 passes, with an optimization time of almost 175 hours ... But we will not wait so long - as soon as we see an excellent option / options (for example, with a solid profit and an acceptable drawdown) we can stop the optimizer.

Open the "Optimization Results" tab and observe the process. The runs will line up vertically in a row. You can sort any cell - left-click on the header of the desired cell and the values \u200b\u200bwill be sorted in ascending order from top to bottom, click on the header again and the values \u200b\u200bwill be sorted in descending order from top to bottom.

I think 10 positive passes of the optimizer will be enough for the example. Stop the optimizer - the "Settings" tab, the "Stop" button.

So what do we see? We have some good passes, but the best one is the top-most — the highest profit and the smallest drawdown of all 10 passes. We will take these settings.

The settings in the Expert Advisor from the optimizer can be implemented in two ways: double-click on the desired pass (left button) or click on the desired pass with the right mouse button and then "Set input parameters".

Remember our advisor lost the entire deposit? Well, now we press the “Start” button and test the EA with new optimized settings.

Great, isn't it? The settings turned out to be excellent.

Open the “Expert properties” on the main page of the strategy tester and click the save button - we need to save this file with the settings for ourselves so that later it can be used with this Expert Advisor on different terminals at any time.

Choose where we will save the file and come up with a name for it, then press the "Save" button. IN in this case the file is saved to your desktop.

To embed any file with settings in an Expert Advisor in the Strategy Tester, click the Expert Properties button and then Load - specify the path to the file, select the required file with the mouse and click Open. The settings will be integrated into the EA - after that, do not forget to click on the "OK" button in the EA properties.

The results of this optimization testing and the settings file are included in the EA archive.

Now you know how to test an Expert Advisor and how to optimize it correctly. Good luck!

We do optimizations several times a month - as needed. You can also re-optimize the settings much more often on your own, if you are not satisfied with the recommended settings, or if you want to achieve a more comfortable Forex advisor (trading robot) for you, or want to try it with another built-in indicator, on a new time interval or on a new trading instrument.

Trading systems "Robots Forex" are a professional tool for working in the Forex market and commodity exchanges. Our robots have many parameters and settings, several indicators and additional features, all of which we do not even use, because it is simply physically impossible to cover the entire range of implementation of these features by several optimizer traders.

However, each robot owner can personally perform any number of optimizations in order to achieve optimal trading parameters in a given time period, or for a small quick additional optimization of parameters for a given market situation.

Preparation for optimization

Firstly, all optimizations need to be done on a fairly powerful computer, and an ordinary simple VPS server for Forex will not work, since optimization uses a large amount of memory and the processor is loaded quite heavily, which can lead to your VPS server freezing. Therefore, we recommend using a home computer with a good processor and sufficient memory. The weaker the computer, the longer the optimizations will take.

Secondly, for optimizations, you need exactly the same trading terminal from the same broker on which your trading robot works. You need to connect to the same trading account and open the chart of the currency pair (or commodity instrument - gold, oil) that you want to optimize. If there are no restrictions on accounts and instruments, then you can use different trading accounts and different trading instruments. For example, we did not deal with the tools "Bitcoin" or "dollar / ruble" or "corn", but you can easily optimize for these tools and, if you find it worthwhile to run a robot on them, you can do this for the Double Trader Extreme robot , which has no restrictions on instruments and accounts. If the robot has limitations, then you can change indicators, time intervals, trading schedule and any other parameters from the robot's control panel within the same trading instrument / currency pair.

So let's get started:

1. Install the MetaTrader 4 trading terminal on your computer.

You can download it from your broker's website,

2. Connect to your trading account in the terminal.

On the menu File select Connect to a trading account:

Enter your login (account number) and password, also select the correct broker's trading server.

3. Open the chart of the symbol to be optimized

Open a new chart of the required instrument by right-clicking on it and selecting Chart window.

If this tool is not among the active symbols, right-click on any symbol in Market overview and select symbols, then include the character you want.

4. Download manually the history of quotes from the chart

Before downloading the history of the broker's real quotes, you need to disable the auto-scrolling of the chart and set the maximum possible quote history.

On the menu Service select item Settings:

In the settings in the tab Charts install maximum number of bars in history and graph 2 000 000 000 .

Click OK.

Load the correct quotes for the desired time frame

Then, on the symbol chart, exactly on that time interval (time frame) that you plan to optimize, you need to click the mouse and press the key Home on keyboard. Or you can turn the mouse wheel down until it stops, after which the previous graph data should be loaded. Thus, pressing several times Home or by scrolling the mouse to the beginning of the chart and then repeating these actions again, you can load the maximum possible history of quotes of this broker, on which you can normally optimize the robot. Downloading the quotes archive in other ways (for example, from the MetaQuotes server) will only harm, since they will not be correct for this broker.

When the maximum number of quotes is loaded, you can start testing and optimizing.

5. Open the "strategy tester"

On the menu View select item Strategy Tester:

Or click on the tester button on the top panel of the terminal (if there is one):

A strategy tester window will open at the bottom of the terminal.

6. Select the robot to be optimized and the desired trading parameters

First select the robot, then the desired symbol, time period (time frame). Model to choose At opening prices. The spread needs to be set according to the broker - it is different for everyone and you can check its value with the broker, or by looking at the difference between buying and selling an instrument in the terminal (during business hours). If the symbol has no spread, bet current.

Set the desired optimization time - start and end dates.

7. Setting the robot optimization parameters

After setting the main parameters, you can press the button Expert properties.

The robot optimization control panel will open. In the first tab Testing you need to set the size of the deposit and the optimized parameter (usually we optimize by Maximal Drawdown - maximum drawdown), it is also desirable to include Genetic Algorithm... You can try to optimize for other parameters, if you understand them:

Then open the third tab immediately Optimization, where you can select the maximum value of the optimized parameter, which must also be included here. In addition, here you can speed up the optimization by setting additional restrictions (although it is usually better to start with as many results as possible in the end):

Then tear off the tab Input parameterswhere the main parameters are located. In this tab you need to select the desired indicator and set the corresponding parameters for optimization. Also here you need to choose which parameters will be optimized, and which, on the contrary, will be constant. In fact, you can optimize any parameters, but some just obviously remain the same and do not need optimization. Also, for example, it is pointless to waste time on parameter optimization MA filter period, if this MA filter is disabled. In addition, you need to understand that when choosing different indicators, they use different parameters to work and they must be selected accordingly. Which parameters are responsible for what you can find in

Don't forget to click OK to apply the set parameters before starting the optimization.

8. Optimization process

After setting all the desired parameters, you need to enable the mode Optimization and press Start.

If the optimization process has not started, then an error is possible due to too many parameters being optimized. To check this, you need to open the tab Magazine at the bottom of the strategy tester:

If this error occurs, a warning is displayed. As a way out, you can reduce the step in the optimization parameters and the maximum / minimum value of some especially large parameters. Then press again Start... When the optimization starts, the Start button will turn into Stop and the expected end time of the process will appear:

9. Selection of optimization results

And the final stage of optimizing trading systems is viewing the results and choosing the best parameters for using them in the future in automated trading.

Open the tab Optimization results... It will display many options for parameters and the results of their use. Sort by the parameter you need (for example, Profit or vice versa, Drawdown):

Then you need to apply the parameters you like, based on the preferences of the optimizer and the tasks set earlier - right-click on the desired result and select from the pop-up menu Set input parameters:

The tab will open automatically Settings strategy tester where you can click Start and run the selected optimization parameters on any selected time interval (for example, over a longer period or including an earlier or later interval) to find the optimal trading result). If the result of the run does not suit you, select and set other input parameters from the tab Optimization results. For a test run on history, you need to make sure that the checkbox next to the parameter Optimization removed.

After running the selected parameters in the tester, you can examine the result graphically in the tab Schedule either digitally in the tab Report:

Then come up with a name for the SET file and press the button again Save:

After that, this file with settings can be installed in a working trading robot and use new parameters.

Outcome

This detailed instructions on optimizing trading robots (Forex advisors) or trading systems, is designed to help those who want to professionally engage in robotics and achieve outstanding results in trading, even though we undertake all this work - for each of our robots - for each currency pair and for each time interval.

If you have any questions, you can leave comments - the instructions will be supplemented and improved as necessary.

How to properly optimize a Forex trading advisor yourself if you are not satisfied with the standard settings, or you want to make it work more comfortably or want to work on other time intervals using other indicators, trading instruments, and so on?

Today, we will try to answer this question and tell you how to implement the MT4, 5 terminal required settingsto optimize a trading advisor for the market situation you need.

If you are wondering how to properly optimize a Forex trading advisor, regardless of the goals pursued, first thing to rememberthat this process requires a sufficiently powerful computer.

It is also necessary to understand that an ordinary VPS server will not be enough, since the process of optimizing Forex advisors for the MT4, 5 terminal uses a large amount of memory with a heavy processor load, and this, as a rule, leads to a hang of simple VPS servers. Therefore, experts recommend optimizing your Expert Advisor on a powerful home computer with sufficient memory.

The weaker your technique is, the longer and worse the optimization process will take.

The second thing that is necessary for those who are thinking about how to properly optimize the Forex advisor for MT4, 5 is the presence of the same trading terminal from the same brokerage company where your trading algorithm works.

That is, you should connect to the same account on which you trade and open the chart of that trading instrument (currency pair, oil, gold, etc.) that you will optimize.

If there are no restrictions on instruments and accounts, then use different instruments and accounts. If your robot has any restrictions, you can change the time intervals, indicators used, trading schedule or other parameters within a particular trading instrument.

Video: How to Optimize Your Selected Expert Advisor in MT5 Terminal

So if you think how to properly optimize a Forex trading advisor for MT4 or 5 terminal, which means that the trading platform is already installed on your PC and we will not pay attention to this issue (installing MetaTrader).

You need to start by connecting in the terminal to your trading account. To do this, activate the "Connect to a trading account" item in the "File" tab.

After that, you need to open the chart of the optimized symbol, as shown in the figure below.

If this instrument is not in the list of active symbols, then right-click on any of the symbols in the “Market Watch”, select “Symbols” and find the one that interests you.

Next, manually load the quote history from the chart. Please note that before loading real broker quotes, you should disable autoscrolling of the chart and use the largest possible quote history.

Go to the "Service" menu and activate the "Settings" item. Then, in the window that opens, go to the "Charts" tab and set the maximum number of bars in the "history" and in the "window". Click OK.

Next, you should download the correct quotes for the required time interval. On the chart of the symbol for the time interval that you will optimize, click with the mouse and on the keyboard press "Home". You can also use the mouse wheel by turning it all the way down.

By repeating these simple steps, you can download the maximum allowable quote history of your broker, on which you will optimize your Forex trading advisor, for the MetaTrader terminal. Downloading the archive of quotes by other methods, experts do not recommend, because they may turn out to be incorrect. When the quotes are loaded to the maximum, you can proceed to testing and optimization.

Before you can optimize a trading advisor, you need to test it. So, select the "Strategy Tester" item in the "View" menu tab.

The same can be done by activating (if available) the tester button on the top panel.

At the bottom of the terminal, you will see a tester window that opens. Next, you need to select a trading advisor that will be optimized and set the required parameters. The model is selected based on the opening prices, the size of the spread for the respective broker, since it is different for each company (if the symbol has no spread, then the current value is set).

Do not forget to set the desired optimization time for the Forex advisor for MT4 terminal, 5, that is, the start and end date.

After setting the basic optimization parameters, proceed to setting the parameters of the Expert Advisor itself. To do this, activate the "Expert Properties".

The control panel for expert optimization should open in front of you. In the "Testing" tab, set the size of the estimated depot and the parameter to be optimized (as a rule, this is the maximum drawdown, or "Maximal Drawdown"). It is desirable to activate the "Genetic Algorithm". It is possible to optimize the Forex advisor by other parameters, but for this it is necessary to understand them clearly.

Only then can you open the second tab "Input parameters" (this is where the main parameters are set). In this tab, select the required s and set the corresponding parameters for optimization.

Generally speaking, you can optimize any parameters, however, some of them, as a rule, remain always unchanged, so there is no need for optimization.

So, for example, it makes no sense to optimize, spending time on this, such a parameter as "MA-filter period" if it is not used. In general, optimize only those parameters of the Forex advisor that will be used by it during trading. You can find out more about these parameters by carefully studying the user manual for your robot.

All settings are saved to a separate file (give it a name) after clicking the "Save" button. Before starting the optimization process, do not forget to click "OK" otherwise the set parameters will not be applied.

After everything that we have discussed above has been completed, you can proceed directly to the process of optimizing the advisor. To do this, turn on the "Optimization" mode and activate "Start".

It may happen that the Expert Advisor does not start testing. The reason for this may be an error caused by too many optimized parameters. You can check this by opening the "Log" tab located at the bottom of the tester.

If such an error occurs, then a warning will be displayed about it. A way out of this situation can be to reduce the optimization step and the minimum / maximum value of some particularly large parameters.

The final stage of optimization of Forex advisors for the MT5 terminal is the selection of the results of the optimizations. In other words, you should study the results and choose the best parameters to apply them later for automated trading.

So, open the section "Optimization Results", which usually displays a large number of different options and the results of their application, and sort them according to the parameters we need ("Drawdown", "Profit" and so on).

After that, we apply the parameters we liked by clicking on the desired result with the right mouse button and selecting the "Set input parameters" tab in the pop-up menu.

After that, the “Strategy Tester Settings” should automatically open, where after clicking on “Start” you can run the selected parameters on any time frame to find the most optimal trading result. You can study the result of the run in digital format or in the form of a graph.

If you are satisfied with the result, you can save it in a SET file for further use - activate the "Settings" tab, click "Expert properties" and then "Save". In the window that appears, name your SET file and save it again.

Your EA is optimized and ready to go. But before you start using it in real trading, it is recommended to try out how it will trade on a demo account.

VIDEO REVIEW:
How to properly optimize a trading advisor

In one of the previous articles, we looked at various methods, and today we will talk about how to optimize an EA using the standard MetaTrader4 trading platform, which is used by many. If you trade using an advisor, then at least once every six months it is necessary to optimize it, that is, to search for the optimal parameters: take profit and other parameters, the change of which can affect the increase in the advisor's profitability or decrease its drawdowns.

Optimization allows the selection method to reveal which values \u200b\u200bof a particular parameter show the best results over a certain historical period. At first glance, it seems that by choosing the necessary parameters on the history, you will get one that will help you earn millions. However, this is not entirely true, the Forex market is constantly changing, and very often in history it turns into a losing Expert Advisor on a real account. To prevent this from happening, it is necessary to change only those parameters that do not run counter to the rules of the trading strategy underlying the advisor. For example, if the size of the take profit offered by the developers of an expert advisor is 100 points, you can see what the final result will be if you change the value of the take profit to 80, 120, 140, etc. Thus, optimization should be considered as auxiliary a tool that simplifies the task of finding parameters for your trading system. You do not need to waste time manually looking at charts, just run the strategy tester in MT4, and it will go over everything possible options and combinations of parameters, and you just have to choose the most optimal among them.

The Expert Advisor is optimized in the MT4 trading terminal, no additional programs need to be installed. First, you need to open the strategy tester by pressing Ctrl + R, select the advisor you want to optimize, the currency pair, the simulation mode and the timeframe from the list. In our example, we will try to optimize the standard MACD Sample Expert Advisor, which is available in every MT4 trading terminal. But first, you need to download the quotes of the currency pair on which your advisor will open trades. To do this, press F2 or go to Service - Quotes Archive, select, for example, EURUSD and download minute quotes. After the quotes are loaded, you need to download them again to eliminate the possibility of any gaps.

Always choose the "Every tick" simulation quality - this is the most accurate and complete testing of the EA. It is also necessary to put a tick in front of the phrase "Use date" and indicate the required testing period - the last year, half a year or quarter. Some traders optimize the EA every week, specifying a time period equal to the last two weeks in the settings, but this does not bring any advantage in trading. Do not forget to also check the box next to "Optimization".

In the “Optimization” tab, you can set optimization limits, for example, when the minimum balance or maximum drawdown is reached, the tester will stop checking a certain parameter, which will significantly reduce the optimization time.

In the "Input Parameters" tab, you can tick off the parameters that need to be optimized. The "Value" column contains the developers' settings, they should not be changed, but in the "Start", "Step" and "Stop" columns, you need to specify the values \u200b\u200bthat will allow you to optimize your Expert Advisor. For example, you can optimize the take profit advisor. In the “Value” column of the MACD Sample advisor opposite the Take Profit parameter, 50 points are indicated, you can put in the “Start” column - 30 points, indicate the “Step” - 10 points and “Stop” - 80 points. As a result, the strategy tester will test the EA six times with take profit parameters: 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 and 80 points. It should be noted that the smaller the step and the more selected parameters, the longer the EA optimization will take.

After you have selected all the necessary parameters, you should click on the "Start" button in the strategy tester, while optimization can take quite a long time.

When the optimization of the Expert Advisor comes to an end, the "Optimization Results" tab will appear, in which you can see the profit received for each run, expectation, drawdown and input parameters, indicating the previously set settings. The higher the expected value and profit and the lower the drawdown, the better. Comparing the results obtained, you can select the parameter that has the best performance in history.

To set the selected input parameters in the "Expert properties", you need to right-click on the optimal result and select "Set input parameters" in the opened list. The next time you test an Expert Advisor, the selected parameters will be automatically entered in the Expert Advisor Properties.

Before entrusting trading to one or another Expert Advisor, we recommend optimizing it. That is, check how profitable it is. And if everything goes smoothly, consider trading on a live Forex account.

In this article, we will show you how the optimization of Forex advisors in MT4 looks like, and how to carry it out correctly.

To test the advisor for profitability, you need to perform the following actions:

1. Pass the selected trading robot through the strategy tester, which is included in every MT4.
2. Set up the optimization of the Forex advisor and see what came of it.
3. Test the robot on a demo account.
4. Try to use the advisor on a cent account.

Note right away that points 1, 2, 4 must be completed... As for the third point, its implementation is not so necessary, since testing on a demo account takes a lot of time. This is why some newbie traders choose to skip Stage 3.

The robot can perform well on a demo account and a Forex strategy tester, but on a real account (a cent account refers to real accounts), sometimes the picture is completely different. This happens due to price slippage and other issues that are not on the demo account. It is clear that there is no way to do without optimization of Forex advisors.

Strategy Tester

We have chosen the Ilan family of advisors as an example. When Ilan is installed in the trading terminal, select the asset EUR / USD... Then you need to select “all ticks”. You will also need to indicate the time interval within which the most accurate testing will be carried out. We have chosen the hourly timeframe... Testing interval June 2017.

Figure 1. Tester of the Ilan 1.6 Dynamic Expert Advisor.

When all the necessary parameter settings are specified, click on the "Start" button to test it in action and wait for the EA testing process to end. We left Ilan's settings as standard and got the following results:

Figure 2. Monthly trade report in the Expert Advisor Tester.

During the month, the robot opened only 255 trades. Net income was $ 21.18. The size of the deposit is $ 10 thousand. The maximum drawdown was 6.57% of the deposit. Profitability of the advisor 1.08. Moreover, the EA was not optimized in MT4.

Figure 3. Ilan advisor's trade statement.

To get a more accurate picture, many professional traders advise loading the quote history. To call the dialog box, we need to press the F2 button:

Figure 4. Quotes archive.

We need to select our EUR / USD pair, 1 minute timeframe:

Figure 5. Archive of EUR / USD quotes for 1 minute timeframe.

Now you can click on the "Download" button. After that, a warning about loading quotes will appear. Click "OK". After a while, the process of downloading quotes can be considered complete. Now everything is fine. Press the button "Load" and wait until the history is loaded.

Go to the strategy tester and click on the “Start” button. According to the data from the report, the numbers have changed slightly:

Figure 6. Retesting the Ilan Expert Advisor.

263 deals were opened. Net income was $ 19.52. The profitability is the same 1.08. The maximum drawdown was $ 658.43 or 6.57% of the total deposit. Conclusion: nothing has changed much, so we will resort to optimizing the Forex advisor in MT4 in order to extract the maximum possible profit.

Optimization attempt

The initial settings for the robot Ilan are as follows:

Figure 7. Standard settings for the Ilan 1.6 Dynamic robot.

So how to optimize this Expert Advisor in MT4? Let's try to change some of the settings:

• Max Trades from 10 to 20;
• Lot Exponent from 1.4 to 1.5;
• TotalEquityRisk from 20 to 50.

Figure 8. Optimization of the Ilan 1.6 Dynamic advisor.

We press the "OK" button. Then we start over. When Ilan's optimization was completed, the tester showed the following results:

Figure 9. Results of the EA trade after optimization.

A total of 282 transactions were concluded. Reading profit was $ 53.39. Profitability 1.10. Maximum drawdown 13.90% of the total value of the account. The Ilan robot was tested from 06/01/2017 to 06/30/2017. That is, these are results in 30 days.

What if you test it from the beginning of the year until June 30, 2017? However, we need to again resort to the optimization of Forex advisors in MT4 - change the DefaultPips parameter (the step between the opening of new orders) from 12 to 24.

After clicking on "Start" for more than six months, the robot managed to achieve the following results:

Figure 10. The results of trading the Ilan robot for six months.

In total, the robot managed to conclude 1479 transactions. The profit was $ 357.77. Profitability 1.10. The maximum drawdown was 77.16% or $ 7863.44 with an initial deposit of $ 10,000. For all grid robots, such a large drawdown is normal practice.... If you are not satisfied with such optimization of Forex advisors, you can open the strategy tester and try to change the settings of the automatic robot Ilan. You may be able to come up with a better optimization.

Conclusion

Above, we have not only shown how to optimize advisors on Forex and have derived the optimal settings for the Ilan 1.6 Dynamic robot, which have shown quite good results. That is why it is so important to understand the parameter settings yourself. After all, this will allow you to eliminate possible drawdowns in time.

As a conclusion, we note that the Ilan 1.6 Dynamic grid advisor is absolutely a working trading tool for making a profit in the Forex market. The main thing is that the optimization of the advisor in MT4 is carried out correctly. It can be used within a cent account. But you need to change the parameter upwards Lots, say, up to 0.2-0.3, or even higher. It all depends on the size of the deposit. Anyway we recommend checking this setting in the tester, and only then trade on a real account.

Also, be sure to select the date 365 days in the strategy tester, that is, 1 year, and approach the optimization of the advisor in MT4 more responsibly. That is, set the above parameters to the maximum, and only then gradually decrease their values \u200b\u200bin order to display the optimal settings. remember, that only the one will win who constantly withdraws the received profit... After all, each trading robot will sooner or later merge the trader's deposit, but during the trade it can be used to withdraw a decent profit.