Over the years, the language has been extended and adapted to work well in other markets, most notably stocks, options, and forex. However, some of its characteristics still reflect its origins in the futures markets. Oftentimes, instructional material for forex trading focuses on generic trading ideas and concepts, such as technical indicators and types of trading logic, and ignores the details of how the forex markets work and how that makes forex different from other markets, such as stocks and futures.
The fact is that forex trading does work somewhat differently from other markets, as anyone transitioning from a different market knows. MQL4 tends to reflect those differences. Unless otherwise noted, the discussion refers to writing trading strategies and back-testing them on historical data. Code Execution The premise of EasyLanguage code execution is that all code is executed on the close of each bar of the chart to which the strategy is applied.
If the chart consists of daily bars, for example, the code will be executed on the close of each daily bar. If you want the code to execute more frequently, the chart has to be changed to have a smaller bar size. You can, however, force the code to execute certain elements more frequently using the "Look-inside-bar back-testing" feature.
This uses price data at a higher resolution than shown on the chart in order to produce more accurate results. MQL4 code uses a function called start that executes on each tick. Typically, the main strategy code occurs within the start function. If you don't want the code to execute on each tick, you have to program this logic into start. There's no practical way to detect the close of the bar, so strategies in MT4 typically execute on every tick or on the bar's open.
Because EasyLanguage code executes on the close of the bar, trade order statements are always for execution on the next bar; e. The closest equivalent statement in MQL4 would be to place the order for the current bar at the current bar's open. In this case, the trading logic is always evaluated on the prior bar in MQL4, whereas in EasyLanguage, the logic is evaluated on the current bar. Unlike EasyLanguage, MQL4 doesn't restrict strategies to the data for the chart on which the strategy has been applied.
You can reference any available data series in a MT4 strategy by referring to the symbol and bar size. Bar sizes are limited to 1, 5, 15, 30, 60, and minutes as well as daily, weekly, and monthly. TradeStation has a greater variety of available bar sizes, including bar sizes of any integer number of minutes and tick bars of any number of ticks. Order Execution EasyLanguage does a commendable job of hiding the complexities of placing and executing trading orders.
For example, if you have a short position, and you place a long entry order, if you don't specify the size, the long entry will automatically close out the short trade at the same time it places the long trade. Likewise, if you have multiple pending orders to exit, say, a long trade at market depending on different conditions, if multiple conditions are true at the same time, only one exit order will be placed; the others will be cancelled automatically.
Also, trading orders in EasyLanguage persist for just one bar and are automatically cancelled if they're not filled at the close of the next bar. MQL4 leaves order handling largely up to the programmer. If you have multiple competing orders, you need to manage them yourself, cancelling the ones that don't get executed and making sure that multiple orders don't get executed unintentionally. For example, in MQL4, if you want an entry to reverse an open position, you have to either specify the number of lots to give the desired net result e.
Shares vs. Lots In EasyLanguage, the size of a trading position is specified in either contracts e. For forex trading, a standard position size in TradeStation would be 10, or , shares, corresponding to a small or full-size lot. In keeping with its forex orientation, in MetaTrader the trade size is specified in lots, which can be fractional.
A full size lot would be a lot size of 1. A mini lot would be a lot size of 0. Trading Costs and Fill Prices Because TradeStation and EasyLanguage were originally oriented towards futures trading, they follow the convention of using slippage to account for the fact that trades are not usually filled at the market price.
Slippage is the dollar cost added to the trade to account for this. All of these costs are treated the same way: they deduct a dollar amount from a profitable trade or add the same amount to a losing trade. The same costs are deducted from all trades, both long and short.
At the same time, the trade is assumed to have been filled at the specified price, either the current price for a market order or the specified stop or limit price. MQL4 uses a somewhat more sophisticated approach to trading costs and fill prices. Programmers can use TradeStation's proprietary EasyLanguage programming language to develop custom indicators, studies, and strategies that can be used to test and fully automate trading systems.
Alternatively, numerous EasyLanguage specialists and add-on developers can, for a fee, help you develop ideas into testable and tradable code. Any trading idea or strategy can be tested on an easy-to-access database of decades of historical market data. Strategy performance reports provide detailed analysis, including metrics such as maximum drawdown and average trade net profit, as well as equity curves and trade lists, to prove you're on the right track—or not.
It's simple to run different scenarios and optimize your variables to find the best parameters. And, of course, you can always try out an idea in your paper trading account to see how it performs in a live market before risking real cash.
Once you're happy with a strategy, you can enable automated trading and let TradeStation handle the trade entries, exits, and management. Of course, this doesn't give you a pass to leave your trading computer for the day. Things happen think: internet problems, power outages , so it's always advised to monitor your trades, even when they are fully automated. Costs TradeStation offers commission-free trading on stocks, ETFs, options, and futures, plus free market data and no monthly platform fees.
Keep in mind that many non-equity trades incur additional exchange fees for clearing and trading. The financial exchanges e. Cryptocurrencies trading incurs fees depending on your account balance. USDC transactions, deposits, withdrawals, market data, and the TS Crypto platform are free, and there is no minimum funding requirement.
Margin interest rates range from 3. There's no charge to receive a wire or send a paper check. Broker assisted transactions do not cost anything. How This Broker Makes Money From You and for You The business model for most online brokers has changed because of industry pressure to offer commission-free trading. Without these fees, the way a broker makes money from you might be less obvious. And there are some subtle ways they make money for you, too.
Interest on cash: Like most brokers, TradeStation generates interest income from the difference between what you are paid on your idle cash and what they earn on your cash balances. TradeStation does not pay any of this interest to you. Payment for order flow: Many brokers generate income by accepting payments from market makers for directing equity and options orders to them—a practice called payment for order flow PFOF. This is right around the industry average for brokers that accept PFOF.
Price improvement: TradeStation's Intelligent order router seeks out liquidity and price improvement while executing orders in a reasonable amount of time. Stock loan programs: These programs generate revenue for brokers when stocks held in customers' accounts are loaned to other traders or hedge funds, usually for short sales. The interest rate you earn depends on the demand in the lending market and the security's value. Portfolio margining: Portfolio margining computes real-time margin for stock and options trades based on risk instead of using fixed percentages.
TradeStation does not currently offer portfolio margining. Account and Research Amenities Because TradeStation caters to active traders, it doesn't provide in-depth fundamental research. Still, TradeStation offers some powerful research tools, especially for the more technically-inclined trader. Stock and ETF Screeners TradeStation offers several tools to help traders with market scanning and pattern recognition. Hot lists show traders which symbols are making unusual market moves, such as opening gaps, high volatility, and nearing or breaking week highs or lows.
The Scanner App scans thousands of symbols e. RadarScreen and the Scanner App are two of the most powerful stock and ETF screeners offered by any online brokerage today. Options Screeners The OptionStation Pro toolset lets you build, evaluate, and track just about any options strategy you can imagine. It provides a visual representation of options chains so you can see your strategy's break-even probability across a series of expiration dates.
You can use hot lists to find options opportunities as well. Mutual Fund Screener TradeStation has a proprietary scanner that can scan the entire mutual fund universe. While the scanner gets the job done, it's not particularly sophisticated compared to TradeStation's other scanners.
Fixed Income Screener TradeStation has a basic fixed income screener, but keep in mind that you will have to call a broker to place a trade. Tools and Calculators TradeStation doesn't have the typical calculators e. Trading Idea Generator TradeStation includes a built-in library of common studies to help with idea creation.
You can create your own custom studies to try out new ideas and methods. News TradeStation has a customizable news app on all platforms, with real-time news provided by Benzinga. You can symbol link positions and watchlists to stream relevant stories or filter by topic. TradeStation's in-house market commentary, called TradeStation Market Insights, is available on the desktop platform and website and is updated throughout the trading day.
Charting TradeStation offers top-end charting capabilities on all of its platforms. TradeStation 10 offers incredible charting capability based on tick data. Automated technical analysis is built into the charting package, displaying technical patterns on the charts as they form. The web charting has been greatly enhanced and includes all streaming real-time data with the ability to add overlays and all kinds of indicators.
Web charting capabilities more closely match TradeStation 10, including a new toolbar with access to adjust timeframes, drawing tools, sessions, and styles. You can trade directly from a chart, including previewing a closing bracket order on a chart. The order ticket can be modified by dragging and dropping closing price targets onto the chart. This is one of the best charting applications available from any broker, and it is especially notable for how well it is integrated with TradeStation's order management system.
Cash Management Customers don't earn interest on cash balances. You can transfer idle cash into a money market fund and earn 0. Portfolio Analysis Portfolio Maestro is a free feature that runs outside of the TradeStation platform you can access it with one click via the apps window.
It allows you to backtest and analyze the performance of a group of strategies applied to a basket of symbols in a portfolio—and balance the allocation of your portfolio assets. The performance is based on the trades generated by the rules in your strategies, including your money management and ranking criteria. Numerous reporting and analysis features help you optimize your portfolio, and you can view the performance of the overall portfolio and each individual symbol.
Education TradeStation offers various educational content on its website—including articles, videos, and a glossary—plus courses, quick tips, FAQs, and live events to help you learn to use TradeStation's trading platforms.
An active community forum provides a place to ask questions, search for answers, learn tips and tricks, and solve programming bugs. TradeStation also offers a sizable collection of trader education presentations and courses through its affiliate, YouCanTrade. Through YouCanTrade, you can ask questions and interact with the coaches, receive trade alerts, join free webinars, take courses, and watch live trading in its trading rooms. These offerings can be invaluable to new and intermediate traders trying to improve their trading prowess.
An extremely valuable tool for traders of all levels is TradeStation's trading simulator, which has all the functionality of TradeStation 10, including real-time streaming data, without the real money and real positions of a live account. The simulated environment lets you practice using different trading approaches, markets, and platform tools, and using it will help you figure out your preferred method of order entry.
Customer Service Phone support 8 a. ET Live chat with a human agent Monday — Friday, a. ET Chatbot TSbot on the website The Trade Desk is open during market hours which vary by asset to place trades and make balance, position, and margin inquiries Security and Reliability Two-factor authentication is available through the Auth0 Guardian app, Google Authenticator app, and SMS text messaging. Biometric face or fingerprint login for mobile devices.
TradeStation is considered an extremely stable, reliable platform with little downtime. It reported a It's easy to find detailed information about pricing structures, commissions, service fees, margin rates, market data, and exchange fees by clicking "Pricing" on the main menu from the top of any webpage.
TradeStation also has a full range of entity accounts trading accounts for businesses that cover everything from sole proprietorships, partnerships, limited liability companies, trusts, and corporations. Most individual investors will likely be looking at an individual account for trading, but TradeStation does have the full range of options and then some. Final Verdict At one point, TradeStation was the realm of active and institutional traders who were more than willing to pay the steep fees in exchange for the platform's robust functionality.
Today, with the elimination of platform fees and the addition of commission-free trading, cryptocurrencies, and YouCanTrade, TradeStation has become more attractive to and suitable for a broader range of traders and investors. That being said, TradeStation remains best suited for active, technical traders who can take advantage of all that TradeStation offers.
For this group, the offering is extensive, including top-of-class charting, technical tools, trade execution, strategy development, backtesting, and trade automation. This focus on trading obviously means that TradeStation is not the ideal platform for fundamental investors looking for buy-and-hold positions. TradeStation is taking steps to be more friendly to less experienced traders and investors, but there's room for improvement. For instance, tools aimed at the casual crowd—such as the mutual fund and fixed income screeners—are rudimentary compared to the powerful RadarScreen and scanner apps.
The challenge for TradeStation will be to serve this growing market of less-savvy traders and investors while maintaining its competitive edge with active and institutional traders. Methodology Investopedia is dedicated to providing investors with unbiased, comprehensive reviews and ratings of online brokers. This year, we revamped the review process by conducting an extensive survey of customers that are actively looking to start trading and investing with an online broker.
If the volume is selling volume the bar is red, and when there is no market bias the bar is white. The end result is one of the most accurate volume prediction indicators available. By taking account of the open and close of a bar and looking at the preceding volume bars it can sense the market mood and when combined with the other Hawkeye indicators , acts as a trigger for entry and exit into trades, which of course, makes your job simple.
High or Low? Volume is the second most valuable item of data after the price itself. Large volume signifies that there are a large number of market participants involved in the price action, including financial institutions, who bring the highest turnover to the market.
If the financial institutions are trading, it means they are interested in a price at certain level and they literally push the price up or down. Low volume tells us that there are very few participants in the market, and that neither buyers nor sellers have any significant interest in the price. In this scenario, no financial institutions will be involved, and therefore any moves from individual traders will be weak.
Volume and Trend Volume helps us to determine the health of a trend. An uptrend is strong and healthy if volume increases as price moves with the trend, and decreases when the market moves into a counter trend. When prices are rising and volume is decreasing, it tells traders that a trend is unlikely to continue. Prices may still attempt to rise at a slower pace, and once sellers take control which is shown by an increase in volume on a down bar , prices will fall. A downtrend is strong and healthy if volume increases as prices move lower and decrease when the price begins to re-trace pull back upwards.
When a market is falling and volume is decreasing, the downtrend is unlikely to continue. Prices will either continue to decrease, but at a slower pace or stop falling and start to rise. Volume and Reversals When volume spikes at certain price levels, professional traders know that this is a clear signal of increased interest being shown by traders at that price level.
If there is significant interest, as revealed by the volume bar, it means the level is an important one. This simple observation of volume allows traders to identify important support and resistance levels which are likely to play a significant role in the future. Where volume spikes are extreme, larger than any historical spikes, and generally called a volume climax, traders should look for reversal clues from the price itself.
Single volume spikes alone can often bring the market to an abrupt halt. These extreme volume spikes often occur during fundamental economic announcements which occur daily. News can cause a spike in volume for a single day then disappear again. Reversals, however, happen not over a single day but over a series of days.
If higher than average volume stays in the market for several days a huge volume spike, a volume climax, will often signal a point of market reversal. Volume and Breakouts Volume can help to validate all kinds of breakouts. When the market is consolidating on low volume, an increase in volume can signify that a breakout is due. A breakout occurring on rising volume is a valid breakout, while a breakout with low volume is more likely to be false. Simply because the lack of volume signals a lack of interest from the market and traders.
Trend lines and other breakouts are validated or voided in exactly the same way. So as you can see volume is without question the most important and powerful indicator of all. It is remarkably accurate at predicting future moves. When you start to incorporate Volume Price Analysis in association with a volume indicator, you then have an amazing trading tool at your disposal.
The FOREX Volume Problem Unfortunately forex volume cannot be measured as precisely as it is for equities, where every share traded equates to one on the volume bar. So selling shares means in selling volume. In stocks the number of shares traded is managed and reported by the central exchanges, such as the New York Stock Exchange. Whilst the Quantum tick volumes indicator considers the relationship between a single volume bar and its associated candle on the price time x-axis or groups of candles and volume bars, the Quantum VPOC indicator analyses the density and intensity of volume over time against price.
In other words the volume price relationship on the y axis. It does this in three distinct ways as follows: First, the Quantum VPOC indicator constructs the Volume Profile from a set number of bars in history to the most current bar. The Volume Profile is then presented as a vertical histogram shown at the right edge of the chart — a stack of horizontal bars of varying lengths, but of equal height representing the amount of activity at each price level.
Second, the Quantum VPOC analyzes the Volume Profile to find the key price levels where activity is strong and rising, or weak and falling. In other words, the indicator looks for peaks long bars of the Volume Profile where price tends to be attracted as these are areas where price was previously accepted.
The indicator also looks for troughs or valleys short bars of the Volume Profile where price tends to be repelled as these are areas where price was previously rejected. Both types of price level act as precise zones of support and resistance and as such are projected across the chart within the given period.
The indicator completes its calculations and updates as each new volume bar is delivered. The result is a chart revealing the overarching influence of volume at price, coupled with time. The Quantum VPOC indicator displays several key pieces of information on the chart as follows: Volume Profile — this appears as a histogram of volume on the vertical price axis on the right hand side of the chart. The peaks and troughs are clearly displayed highlighting both High and Low Volume nodes.
High volume node HVN — this is where we have a bulge in the volume profile generally as a result of an extended phase of price congestion. As a result, as the market approaches these regions on the chart price action is likely to become waterlogged with further congestion likely with the node acting as a strong area of support or resistance. As we have seen a strong acceptance of price at this level in the past, this is likely to be repeated with the market swinging in a range.
Ultimately the market may reverse off these levels, with any move through then confirming the current sentiment. Low volume node LVN — this is where we see low volume in the volume profile. In these regions, the market has only paused temporarily — in other words a region where price has been rejected in the past. As such we are likely to see the market move quickly through these regions with little in the way of resistance or support acting to prevent a further advance of decline in price.
The current sentiment is likely to continue and build quickly through these levels. Volume Point of Control Line — this is drawn as a single line on the highest volume of the High Volume Node in the timeframe and clearly defines the tipping point of sentiment. This moves dynamically and represents the fulcrum of market sentiment. If it is above the price action, then the current market sentiment is bearish.
If it is below the current price action, then the current market sentiment is bullish.
There is no central exchange, not yet anyway. And even if there were, what would it report? What there is however is activity, and this is captured as tick volume. After all, volume is simply displaying activity, the buyers and sellers in the market. So for volume read activity, and for activity read volume — simple.
The TradingView platform delivers tick data which the Quantum Tick Volumes indicator displays in a more elegant and useful way. First, the indicator paints the volume bars the same color as the candles on the chart.
If it is above the price action, then the current market sentiment is bearish. If it is below the current price action, then the current market sentiment is bullish. The VPOC Line reveals this balance simply, quickly and clearly allowing you to judge market sentiment with accuracy and confidence. As with all the Quantum Trading indicators, the VPOC indicator is dynamic, constantly changing and updating to reflect the relentless shift in sentiment as the market moves from bullish to bearish and back again.
The indicator works in all timeframes and provides a powerful and much deeper understanding of support and resistance through the prism of volume and the associated High and Low Volume Nodes, with the Point of Control itself, acting as the fulcrum of the market.
The Forex market measures volume by counting the tick movements. To use the indicator from such symbols, you need to choose Tick Count for its volume data otherwise no output will be generated. For other symbols, you may choose either Tick Count or Trade Vol from the options as source of your volume data.
Click OK to apply the indicator to the chart. In the Inputs section, find the MyQuantumTradingEmail input and enter here the email address you used at the Quantum Trading Shop to activate the indicator. Please note that you need to do this only once which means you do not need to input your email address again when running Quantum Trading indicators next time. Customizing the indicator in Chart Analysis Inputs MyQuantumTradingEmail — When running the indicator for the first time in your TradeStation trading account, you need to enter the email address you used to purchase the indicator in the Quantum Trading Shop as part of its verification process.
Please make sure that you enter your email address correctly and exactly without any extra spaces before and after it. If you made an error, simply fill this input again to update it. LookBack — This input determines the scope of the indicator. The objects generated by the indicator such as the support and resistance zones, volume point of control, and the volume profile will cover bars up to the set value of the period parameter.
For example, the Period is set to the default value which is 80 bars. The indicator will calculate the volume profile from the 80th bar in the chart to the most current one. The support and resistance zones as well as the volume point of control will only be projected to the 80th bar in history. ShowVolumeProfile — This input controls the visibility of the volume profile and you can set it to either true or false.
ShowVolumePointOfControl — This input controls the visibility of the point of control line and you can set it to either true or false. VolumeProfileBarColor1 — This input defines the color of the lower half of the volume profile. VolumeProfileBarColor2 — This input defines the color of the upper half of the volume profile. BorderColor — Thie input defines the color of the border lines of the shapes that comprise the volume profile and support and resistance areas.
General You can modify the name, short name, notes, maximum number of bars the indicator will reference, and more. Its text color changes depending on the current price of the symbol.