Building an automated currency trading system from scratch

In the next few weeks we are going to explore the basics of designing an automated currency trading system. We are going to use MetaTrader as the basis for the trading system. The actual strategy we design will be for illustrative purposes only and NOT tradable. That being said the tips and techniques you learn over the course of this series will give you skills needed to develop your own trading strategy.

Before you start

Before we start designing the automated trading system I will assume you are familiar with some basic FOREX or currency market concepts. If you are new to the finance world you may like to read the following articles.

• What’s all this talk about money?
• The FOREX market, the exchange rate and bid and ask spreads.
• Pip’s, Lot’s and a little bit of math.
• Understanding the lingo: Spot market, traded currencies and other FOREX terms.
• The big three in FOREX: Leverage, margin and equity.

To get you quickly up to speed with MetaTrader you can download the software from MetaQuotes. You may also benefit from reading the following basic articles.

• An introduction to MetaTrader Part One.
• An introduction to MetaTrader Part Two.
• An introduction to MetaTrader Part Three.

So now you have a basic understanding of the FOREX or currency market and have MetaTrader installed on your computer we are ready to get started. Below is a roadmap for next few articles.

• What is an automated Trading System and how can we build one in MetaTrader?
• Expert Advisors and Indicators in MetaTrader.
• Designing a simple strategy and pseudo code.
• From pseudo code to a basic trading system.
• Garbage in garbage out: improving modeling quality.
• Testing, Testing, Optimization and more testing.
• Forward testing and performance evaluation.
• Automated Trading System version 2.0.
• So you are ready to go live: Choosing a broker.
• So you are ready to go live: Setting up a Virtual Private Server.

As you can see there is a lot of content that needs to be covered and I am sure as this series progresses there will be content added or removed depending on your input. If there is any materiel you want covered please send me an email or comment below.

About the author

Mark - Is a 28 year old form Australia. He has a Bachelor in Economics and a Major in CS. He is currently working towards his CFP. His interests include algorithmic trading systems, artificial intelligence, game theory and poker.