Data Sheet for Trendline Trader Pro Introduction Trendline Trader Pro is a hybrid software application which used a JavaFX based interface to communicate with an underlying MetaTrader MT4 Expert Advisor. Concept Trendline Trader Pro was designed to provide traders with a quick and easy way to configure bespoke automated trendline trading strategies within the MetaTrader MT4 environment. Trendline Trader Pro s JavaFX interface was principally designed to provide pre-trade configuration options for the trader. These options include:- Defining the trading behavior of specific trendlines on the underlying MT4 chart Setting stop loss and take profit levels with multiple take profit exits (Scale out) Controlling position size and risk Controlling the maximum number of trades and minimum interval between each trade Controlling a wide variety of on chart display options such as line lengths, styles, colours, trigger channels and object visibility Defining Profiles for trader preferred scenarios Deploying saved Profiles within a couple of mouse clicks Once trades have been executed the JavaFX interface cannot control the stop loss, take profit levels or scale out percentages of the active trades. However, the trader can easily control these levels graphically by simply selecting the SL or TP levels and dragging them to the preferred value.
Getting Started A note on tick data Trendline Trader Pro like every other MT4 EA and indicator is driven by tick data. However Trendline Trader Pro is a little more complex as it uses system files to pass information between the JavaFX interface and the MQL4 program (the Expert Advisor) which sits on the MT4 chart. Therefore the market must be open in order for changes made in the JavaFX interface to be reflected in the MT4 Expert Advisor.
Installation Step 1 - Java Firstly make sure you have Java running on your computer. Java is freely available on the www.java.com website. Trendline Trader Pro is developed using the Java version 8 standard edition. Step 2 Installing Trendline Trader Pro The installation process is documented here. If you are trying the tool in as a trial please follow the instructions under the Demo Products tab. If you are licensed customer please follow the instructions under the Full Products(Purchased) tab.
What the gets installed? Note: Please do not move files around manually. ONLY point the installer at your MT4 Data Folder the installer does all the work for you. Program Location Description FXA Trendline Trader Pro.ex4 MT4 Experts Folder FXA_JFX_Interface.jar MT4 Data Folder Launch JFX Interface.ex4 Launch JFX Interface (Reset).ex4 MT4 Scripts Folder MT4 Scripts Folder The expert advisor which must be installed on all charts where automated trendline trading is required The JavaFX application which provides the interface and synchronization with MT4 Script which loads the JavaFX interface from within MT4 Script which resets all interface window positions to top left hand corner of screen and also removes JFX Active.csv file in the event of a Java interface is already running error
Loading Trendline Trader Pro onto an MT4 chart NOTE: The FXA Trendline Trader Pro EA (Expert Advisor) icon will be greyed out in your Navigator window as there is no accompanying MQL4 source code packaged in the installer. This is completely normal so don t worry about the change in colour. To load Trendline Trader Pro on a chart:- Open a new MT4 chart Open your MT4 Navigator folder by pressing the Control key & N Open your Expert Advisors folder and scroll down to FXA Trendline Trader Pro Load Option 1: Right click on the EA and select Attach to Chart as shown in the screenshot below Load Option 2: Click and drag the Trendline Trader Pro icon onto your chart
You will now see the Trendline Trader Pro main dialogue as shown in the screenshot below: Make sure Enable alerts, Allow live trading, Allow DLL imports & Allow import of external experts are all ticked. Click OK when you ve checked everything is set up correctly. You will now see a red notification alert displayed on your chart don t worry this is just telling you that you need to load the JFX interface
Now load the JavaFX interface. You can do this in two ways which are:- o By double clicking the script called Launch JFX Interface in your MT4 scripts folder o By opening the MT4 Data Folder and double clicking the file called FXA_JFX_Interface.jar You will now see the login screen as shown in the screenshot below. Enter your unique reference number and ID into the text fields, tick the Remember Login Details tick box and then click the Customer Login button. If you are a demo customer use the Trial User Login section.
If this is the first time you ve run the system you will see this notification. The JavaFX interface needs to know where the MT4 Data Folder is in order to transfer data. By default the system uses the installation folder location but you can of course change this anytime you wish. The next screen is the MT4/JFX Data Synchronisation page. This is where you can manage which MT4 accounts can be used in conjunction with the Interface. You can add new MT4 account any time you want to. Just add the path of the MT4 Data Folder and click the DONE button. You can change which MT4 account the system is synchonised with by simply selecting the specific MT4 account from the dropdown box.
The next screen you see will be the product catalogue To select Trendline Trader Pro click Trendline Trading Systems and then select Trendline Trader Pro from the dropdown list.
The Main Interface
Now draw a trendline on your MT4 chart and then click on the trendline. The trendline line thickness will go bold and the trendline ID will be displayed in the Trendline ID textfield in the interface.
Right click on your MT4 chart and select Properties. Then select the Common tab and select Show Object Descriptions
Now go to the JavaFX interface and select Touch from the Behaviour dropdown menu. As soon as you select the trading behavior you will see data displayed around the selected trendline as shown in the screenshot below. You will see the Stop Loss, Take Profit level, trigger channel and associated labels. This is the Trigger Grid which visibly shows the trader where the entry and exit levels are for the trade.
Trading Scenario 1 Buying a test of support Draw your trendline under the swing lows of the price action. We are looking for the price to come back and test the trendline. For this example we are going to use the Touch trading behaviour so that if price action touches anywhere inside our trigger channel the trade will execute.
So let s go ahead and configure the interface accordingly. In the screenshot below the highlighted sections are of particular interest to us we ve configured the Behaviour as Touch, set the Action as Buy, set Lots at 0.5, Set our Stop Loss at 25 pips, our Take Profit at 50 pips, our exit at 100%, our Sensitivity at 5 pips, selected the Single Order radio button and set out Max Risk at 2% of the account equity. In depth analysis of parameters.. Most of the parameters are self explanatory but there are a couple of parameters which require further explanation. % Exit by default the system uses 100% exit for TP1 this means that if price hits the TP1 level the entire position will be
closed. Ie 100% of the position which in this example would be 0.5 lots. On the other hand if we set the % Exit for TP1 at 50% the system then moves the remaining % to TP2 so we would exit 50% of the trade (0.25 lots) at TP1 and 50% (0.25 Lots) at TP2. You can set up to 4 take profit levels with custom percentages at each level. Single Order If this radio button is selected the system will only place a single trade from this trendline. Sensitivity This is an important parameter as it effectively control the depth of the trigger channel around the trendline. In our case we ve used a trigger channel of 5 pips so if we look carefully at our chart we can see this channel represented as a dotted line above the trendline. So for our trade to trigger we need price action to momentarily enter the area between the dotted line and the trendline this is effectively our trigger channel we can adjust the depth of this channel by increasing and decreasing the sensitivity parameter.
Now we need to decide on the the trendline behaviour. We will discuss all the different trading behaviours later in this guide but for the purposes of this example we will use the Touch behaviour. Touch executes trades when price action touches a defined pip range around the trendline. We can adjust how big this trigger zone is by using the Sensitivity parameter. So let s go ahead and configure the trendline for Touch based trading using a 4 pip trigger zone around the trendline.
Adjusting Levels You can adjust the trigger grid levels from the Interface or directly from the MT4 chart. On Chart Adjustment Double click the level you would like to move/adjust you will see three boxes on the level as shown below. Click the middle box and then move the level up or down. Note the interface will automatically update when a tick is received. TIP: We recommend setting your entry and exit levels in conjunction with pivots. We supply a comprehensive range of pivot systems on the website
Interface adjustment method SL & TP Adjustment We can adjust the SL & TP levels easily by simply clicking the up and down arrows in the SL and TP spinner boxes. Before Adjustment: After Adjustment:
A note on spinner adjustment. You can enter numbers directly into the spinner fields from your keyboard but you need to press the ENTER key for the change to be detected by the system. Adjusting Multiple Exits We can adjust the TP levels and the exit percentages by simply adjusting the spinner values. Trendline Trader Pro automatically calculates the available percentages for additional positions so if you have 100% set for TP1 you won t be able to add an additional TP level until you decrease the percentage on TP1 below 100%. The screenshot below shows what happens when TP1 is set to 100%. The additional TP levels (TP2,TP3 & TP4) are greyed out. However if we reduce the percentage for TP1 to 50 percent you can now see what happens below:- We can now see the additional TP2 exit level being displayed in the screenshot below. We increased the TP2 exit level to 120 pips from entry.
Scale out percentage adjustment We can only adjust the scale out percentage using the interface. It is not possible to adjust the scale out percentages directly from the MT4 chart. TIP: Once the trade has been executed adjusting the Profit Controls and SL levels in the JavaFX interface will not change the live levels in MT4. The traders can adjust the levels directly by using the graphical click drag and drop method. It s not possible to edit/change the scale out percentage once the trade has been executed.
Controlling Risk The final stages of setting up the system are:- Defining the maximum risk parameters Controlling the maximum number of orders Defining the minimum order interval Defining Maximum Risk We simply enter the maximum percentage risk as a percentage of account equity we are prepared to lose. The system uses a 2% default value. So if your account equity is $10,000 USD, using a 2% max risk setting would close any trades where the loss was greater than $200 Controlling the maximum number of orders and minimum interval If Single Order is not selected, we can set the maximum number of concurrent orders which each trendline can execute and control the minimum interval between each order. This is useful in situations where the trader wants to build a position in a long term trend where there are repeated tests of support or resistance aka buying and selling opportunities.
Saving your strategies as Profiles Obviously we wouldn t want to have to go through the interface every time we wanted to deploy a trading plan. To enable the trader to save the settings for a specific type of trade we ve included profiles which can be deployed very quickly onto new charts and trendlines. Once you ve configured a trendline you can very easily save the trading commands as a profile by simply entering a name for your profile into the profile text field and clicking the Save/Update Profile Button. When you want to deploy a profile onto a selected Trendline simply click Select Profile and then select the profile from the dialogue box.
Trading Behaviours Trendline Trader Pro has 6 types of trading behaviours which are:- Touch Trade Behaviour Where price action momentarily enters the trigger zone around the trendline. The trigger zone is specified by the Sensitivity spinner control.
So in the case where the sensitivity value is set at 5 and the Action is a Buy the system places a 5 pip channel above the trendline. In the case where the sensitivity value is set at 5 and the Action is Sell the system place a 5 pip channel below the trendline.
Retrace Retrace trades are where a support or resistance level is initially tested, price is then rejected from the level and the level is subsequently tested again. Some traders prefer to enter trades on the retracement after an initial test. A trader would set up a retrace trade as follows:- o Select the trendline required for auto trading o Select the Retrace behaviour option as shown below:- o You will now see the Retrace Controls shown below:- o Now enter the retrace period in bars/candles or periods. o Let s say we enter 1 and 5 as shown below:-
This tells Trendline Trader Pro to enter a trade if price action tests a support or resistance level and then retests the same level between 1 and 5 bars after the initial test. For the retrace to be valid the closed prices within the retrace window must be above the trendline (in the case of a buy) and below the trendline (in the case of a sell) The screenshot below shows how the Retrace trigger zone is related to the Retrace controls.