I also wanted to be able to display the current spread, so it is easily viewable from the chart window.

I have made the following varibles modifible when attaching the indicator to the chart:
fontColor – This is the colour of the price display if bidAsk=”False”.
spreadColor- This is the colour of the spread display.
fontSize – This is the size of the bid and spread prices.
corner- This controls which corner you want your price and spread detail displayed in.
bidAskColor- This is set to true by default, if you wish to display solid colour only set to false.

Below is a screenshot of SpreadPriceInd.mq4 in action:

The source code for the indicator is shown below:

//+------------------------------------------------------------------+
//|                                               SpreadPriceInd.mq4 |
//|                                  Copyright © 2010, TraineeTrader |
//|                                     http://www.traineetrader.com |
//+------------------------------------------------------------------+
#property copyright "Copyright © 2010, TraineeTrader"
#property link      "http://www.traineetrader.com"

#property indicator_chart_window
   // usr mod vars
   extern color     fontColor = Yellow;
   extern color     spreadColor = Blue;
   extern int       fontSize=24;
   extern string    font="Arial";
   extern int       corner=1;
   extern int       diffDig = 10;
   extern bool      bidAskColor = True;

   double           prevPrice; // easier if global

int init()
  {
   return(0);
  }

int deinit()
  {
   //kill chart objects
   ObjectDelete("nonFracPrice");
   ObjectDelete("fracPrice");
   ObjectDelete("marketSpread");
   return(0);
  }

int start()
  {
   int xOffset = fontSize - 8; // for fractional pip offset
   string priceBase; 

   if (bidAskColor == True)
   // shown movements in price by color change
   {
    if (Bid > prevPrice){ fontColor = LawnGreen; }
    else{ fontColor = Red; }
    prevPrice = Bid;
   }

   // Usually 5 or 3
   priceBase = DoubleToStr(Bid, Digits);
   int SLength = StringLen(priceBase);

   // Create chart objects
   ObjectCreate("nonFracPrice", OBJ_LABEL, 0, 0, 0);
   ObjectSetText("nonFracPrice", StringSubstr(priceBase, 0, SLength-1),
fontSize, font, fontColor);
   ObjectSet("nonFracPrice", OBJPROP_CORNER, corner);
   ObjectSet("nonFracPrice", OBJPROP_XDISTANCE, xOffset);
   ObjectSet("nonFracPrice", OBJPROP_YDISTANCE, 1);

   ObjectCreate("fracPrice", OBJ_LABEL, 0, 0, 0);
   ObjectSetText("fracPrice", StringSubstr(priceBase, SLength-1, 1),
 fontSize-diffDig, font, fontColor);
   ObjectSet("fracPrice", OBJPROP_CORNER, corner);
   ObjectSet("fracPrice", OBJPROP_XDISTANCE, 1);
   ObjectSet("fracPrice", OBJPROP_YDISTANCE, 1);

   ObjectCreate("marketSpread", OBJ_LABEL, 0, 0, 0);
   ObjectSetText("marketSpread", DoubleToStr(MarketInfo(Symbol(),
MODE_SPREAD)/10,2),fontSize, font, spreadColor);
   ObjectSet("marketSpread", OBJPROP_CORNER, corner);
   ObjectSet("marketSpread", OBJPROP_XDISTANCE, 1);
   ObjectSet("marketSpread", OBJPROP_YDISTANCE, 40);
   return(0);
  }

Display Info MT4 Indicator

This is an excellent indicator that can be configured and modified as desired. Hanover has done an excellent job as he does with all his indicators he has released. This indicator will display the following info, for all currency pairs offered by your broker:

• Symbol (A=AUD, C=CAD, E=EUR, F=CHF, G=GBP, J=JPY, N=NZD, U=USD)
• Current bid price
• Daily range to date:ave daily range (DR as a % of ADR) (note: Sunday candles not included in ADR)
• Spread (spread as a % of ADR)
• Dollars per pip (per full lot traded)
• Swap paid(+) or charged(-) by broker on long and short positions

The screenshot below shows the Display Info indicator in action.

Download Display Info MT4 Indicator

Plot News MT4 Indicator

The Plot News Indicator is one of the most useful indicators I have come across.  This indicator can be configured to alert you of up coming news events, it also allows you to see the market impact of every news announcement. Once again this indicator is written by hanover. The screenshot below shows the Plot News indicator in action.

Download Plot News MT4 Indicator

Auto-Session v1.5 MT4 Indicator

This indicator graphically displays the overlap between different trading sessions. The indicator also displays the pip range from the given session. The screenshot below shows the Auto-Session v1.5 indicator in action.

Download Auto-Session v1.5 MT4 Indicator

TimeZone Indicator

The TimeZone indicator displays time zones of the different currencies in a separate window. The screenshot below shows the Auto-Session v1.5 indicator in action.

Download TimeZone MT4 Indicator 

p4Clock MT4 Indicator

The p4clock indicator has been around for quite sometime and displays different time zones in your preferred corners. It also displays your brokers time and how long is left in the current bar. The screenshot below shows the p4Clock indicator in action.

Download p4Clock MT4 Indicator 

Forex Market Hours MT4 Indicator

Forex Market Hours Indicator graphically displays the market overlap and the time in GMT that markets open. The screenshot below shows the Forex Market Hours indicator in action.

Download Market Hours MT4 Indicator

Sample Pages

Download the eBook now FREE, just enter your details below and we will send you a FREE copy. A full table of contents is shown below.

Table Of Contents

1. What’s All This Talk about Money?

1.1. Introduction to Money

1.2. Characteristics of Money

1.3. Vodka as Money

1.4. Paying the Man

2. The Forex Market, Exchange Rate & Bid Ask Spreads

2.1. Introduction to the Forex Market

2.2. Over the Counter Markets

2.3. Example: Travel & the Exchange Rate

2.4. Exchange Rates: Indirect Quotes

2.5. Exchange Rates: Direct Quote

2.6. Base Currency or Commodity Currency

2.7. Exchange Rates: The Bid Price

2.8. Exchange Rates: The Ask Price

2.9. Why is the Ask price always more than the Bid price?

3. Pips, lots and a little bit of math

3.1. Introduction

3.2 What is a Pip?

3.3. How Much is a Pip worth?

3.4. What is a Lot?

3.4. Pip Calculation: Indirect Currency

3.5. Pip Calculation: Direct Currency

3.5. Pip Calculation Summary

4. Understanding the lingo

4.1. Introduction & Key Forex Terms

4.2. The Spot Market

4.3. The Long and Short of it

4.4. A Closer Look at Currency Symbols

4.5. Liquidity

5. The Big Three in Forex: Leverage, Margin & Equity

5.1. Introduction

5.2. Leverage

5.3. Margin

5.4. Equity

5.5. Final Word on Margin

6. The Best Trading Times in the 24 Hour Market 22

6.1. Introduction

6.2. When Can I Trade Forex?

6.3. Best Times to Trade Forex

6.4. Simple Time Zone Conversion

7. Putting it Into Practice

7.1. Setting up a Demo Account

7.2. MetaTrader Client Terminal

7.3. Creating a Chart in MetaTrader

7.4. Chart Time Frames

7.5. Charts Toolbar

7.6. Line Drawing Tools

7.7. Placing an Order

7.8. Modifying or Closing an Order

7.9. Moving Forward

Writing Pseudo Code in MeataEditor

For simplicity reasons we will write our trend following system pseudo code in MetaEditor. Open MetaEditor from “[drive]:/Program Files/MetaTrader4/” folder. Alternatively you can open MetaTrader and press F4 or Tools –> Meta Quotes Language Editor.

Step One

Create a New File of type Expert Advisor. File –> New or CTRL +N.

Step Two

Click Next an enter appropriate details for the system. Call your Expert Advisor Turtle System.

Finally, you should see a code window similar to the one below:

We will be following the pseudo code convention outlined in the pseudo standard presented in the previous article. We will enter the pseudo code as comments in MetaEditor, for simplicity we will use the quote modifier. Below is sample pseudo code I have written to implement most parts of the Turtle Trading system. This is the first iteration and there are errors present in the code. Can you find the errors in the pseudo code?

// Calculate True Range
FUNCTION trueRange WITH todaysHigh AND todaysLow AND pDayClose
    RETURN CALL findMax((todaysHigh - todaysLow), abs(todaysHigh - pDayClose), abs(pDayClose - todaysLow))
END FUNCTION       

// Calculate N
FUNCTION calcN WITH prevN and trueRange
    RETURN (19 * prevN + trueRange) / 20
END FUNCTION

// Detrmine the dollar value of a pip
// 1 lot = 100,000 base currency
// PPV = Per Pip Value
FUNCTION PPV WITH lotSize, currentPrice, accCurrency, pipVal
    inCurr = pipVal / currentPrice
    RETURN accCurrency * inCurr * (lotSize *100000)
END FUNCTION

// Calculate the dollar volatility of a currency pair
FUNCTION dollarVol WITH n AND ppv
    RETURN n * ppv
END FUNCTION

// Calculate unit value for given account
FUNCTION calcUnit WITH dollarVol, accBalance
    return (0.01 * accBalance) / dollarVol
END FUNCTION

// Misc rules
// max 12 units in one direction
// if account drops 10% reduce available equity by 20%

////////////////////// Entries ///////////////////
// System One A shorter term 20 period breakout
// buy or sell 20 period breakout
// buy or sell 1 unit
// if previous breakout winner skip trade
// losing if previous breakout 2N loss
// stops set at 2n below entry

IF currentPrice > 20periodHigh AND prevLongTradeLoser THEN
    CALL buyCurr
ELSE IF currentPrice < 20periodLow AND prevShortTradeLoser THEN
    CALL sellCurr
END

// System Two 55 period breakout entry
IF currentPrice > 55periodHigh AND THEN
    CALL buyCurr
ELSE IF currentPrice < 55periodLow THEN
    CALL sellCurr
END

// Adding units
// Additional units added stops raised by half n
// add a unit every 1n move
IF tradeLong AND currentPrice > (lngEntPrice + n) THEN
    CALL buyCurr
    CALL adjStop
ELSE IF tradeShort AND currentPrice < (lngEntPrice - n) THEN
    CALL sellCurr
    CALL adjStop
END

///////////////////Exits ///////////////////////
// System one
// 10 period low for long posn
// 10 period high for short posn 

IF s1tradeLong AND currentPrice < 10periodLow THEN
    CALL sellCurr
ELSE IF s1tradeShort AND currentPrice > 10periodHigh THEN
    CALL buyCurr
END

// System two exit
// 20 period low for long posn
// 20 period high for short posn

IF s2tradeLong AND currentPrice < 20periodLow THEN
    CALL sellCurr
ELSE IF s2tradeShort AND currentPrice > 20periodHigh THEN
    CALL buyCurr
END

As you can see this code gives us an excellent starting point for the development of our Turtle Trading system. In the next article we will go through the specifics of coding in MQL. I have provided a basic implementation of the code for this trading system but you will derive most benefit from creating your own implementations of this system.

Related Articles

• Building an Automated FOREX System: Designing a Simple Strategy and Introduction to Pseudo Code.
• Building an Automated FOREX System: Expert Advisors & Indicators
• Building an automated currency trading system from scratch.

Today I will be looking at the TIMFundamentals DVD package. This package consists of TIMFundamentals a 4 DVDs in total and a thick workbook. TIMFundamentals is aimed at new traders and traders who want to learn Timothy Sykes strategy.

Timothy Sykes: TIMFundamentals DVD One approximate runtime 1 hour 3 minutes 

The first DVD is a recorded coaching session of Tim doing some 1-1 coaching and is split into four chapters. As usual the first 26 pages of the workbook detail Tim’s other products. This may be useful to some people, but most people will derive little value from this advertising. This DVD pretty much consists of Tim going through the basics of how he undertakes his research. This DVD covers some important topics and is helpful for people wanting to learn how to trade Tim’s strategy. This DVD shows how Tim goes about identifying potential trades and the websites he uses. It would have been helpful if we could actually see what Tim and his student were actually looking at on the screen.   

Topics covered include:

• The benefits of using free sites.
• Ticker gathering process.
• Typical moves.
• Identifying the usual suspects.
• Self fulfilling prophecies.
• Some example trades.
• Stock promoters.

Timothy Sykes: TIMFundamentals DVD Two approximate runtime 1 hour 30 minutes

In DVD two we resume with Tim and his coaching student going through the watch list building process.  In this DVD we gain some excellent insight into Tim’s research process. Once again some very interesting concepts are introduced. You will need to make sure you take notes when watching this DVD as some excellent topics points are made that are not written in the workbook.

Topics covered include:

• Specific forums and message boards for research.
• More research sites revealed.
• Press releases and there usefulness.
• Some detailed variables.
• Some basic fundamental indicators.

Timothy Sykes: TIMFundamentals DVD Three approximate runtime 1 hour 50 minutes

DVD three is split into ten chapters and is in screencast format. This is the practical part of the Tim Fundamentals DVD, we get to see Tim create his actual watch lists.  This DVD is highly practical and reinforces the concepts presented in the first DVD. Tim spends quite sometime going through how he uses Clearstation in his research process. Tim also shows us Covestor and his ranking and briefly talks about auto trading. In short this DVD gives excellent practical advice for researching and building of watch lists.

Timothy Sykes: TIMFundamentals DVD Four approximate runtime 1 hour 34 minutes

In the final DVD Tim continues his research and watch list building. In this DVD we also get to see a behind the scenes look at his TimAlerts program. In this DVD Tim continues to filter his watch list. This DVD as the previous is very practical in nature and has some valuable information. It is good that Tim is going through his actual techniques he uses and goes into a lot of detail. In some parts of this DVD there is blurring and the image is un-viewable, Tim needs to get Camtasia and make sure he does the screen capture on a computer with decent RAM and a fast CPU. Finally the DVD goes over actually trading the stocks that were researched the previous day. In his conclusion Tim makes some very good points about the research process. 

Bottom Line

TIMFundamentals is for new traders or people who have little experience in the stock market. The concepts presented are simple, practical and easy to understand. The first two DVD’s moved slowly however they had useful content. The final DVD’s were highly practical and showed the tools that Tim uses on a daily basis. If you are interested in seeing how Tim trades and what he does on a daily basis then TIMFundamentals is for you. This is an excellent introduction to the research process. The one thing that surprised me is that Tim has not automated his processes. TIMFundamentals delivers on its promises and provides you with a look behind the scenes on the Timothy Sykes research process. 

Pros

• Excellent for beginners.
• Research process explained in detail.
• Both theory and practical concepts covered.
• The best free research websites revealed.

Cons

• First two DVD’s slow.
• Screen cast quality not the best.

Related Reviews

• Timothy Sykes DVD Review: PennyStocking.
• Timothy Sykes DVD Review: PennyStocking Part Deux.
• Timothy Sykes DVD Review: ShortStocking
• Timothy Sykes DVD Review: Tim Raw.

What the Hell is Game Theory?

The wikitionary describes Game Theory as:

Game theory attempts to mathematically capture behavior in strategic situations, in which an individual’s success in making choices depends on the choices of others. While initially developed to analyze competitions in which one individual does better at another’s expense (zero sum games), it has been expanded to treat a wide class of interactions, which are classified according to several criteria.

I know what you are thinking, that sounds complicated and boring. Before you give up on it however you might like to look at Yale Universities FREE Introduction to Game Theory course. The course is highly practical and covers the basic concepts of Game Theory. You can download the videos and watch them at your own pace.

Topics Covered

1. Introduction: five first lessons
2. Putting yourselves into other people’s shoes
3. Iterative deletion and the median-voter theorem
4. Best responses in soccer and business partnerships
5. Nash equilibrium: bad fashion and bank runs
6. Nash equilibrium: dating and Cournot
7. Nash equilibrium: shopping, standing and voting on a line
8. Nash equilibrium: location, segregation and randomization
9. Mixed strategies in theory and tennis
10. Mixed strategies in baseball, dating and paying your taxes
11. Evolutionary stability: cooperation, mutation, and equilibrium
12. Evolutionary stability: social convention, aggression, and cycles
13. Sequential games: moral hazard, incentives, and hungry lions
14. Backward induction: commitment, spies, and first-mover advantages
15. Backward induction: chess, strategies, and credible threats
16. Backward induction: reputation and duels
17. Backward induction: ultimatums and bargaining
18. Imperfect information: information sets and sub-game perfection
19. Subgame perfect equilibrium: matchmaking and strategic investments
20. Subgame perfect equilibrium: wars of attrition
21. Repeated games: cooperation vs. the end game
22. Repeated games: cheating, punishment, and outsourcing
23. Asymmetric information: silence, signaling and suffering education
24. Asymmetric information: auctions and the winner’s curse

If you manage to get through these videos you will have and excellent understanding of the fundamentals of Game Theory and it might just help your trading.

Forex Factory Calendar- This is one of the best free calendars around, previous result and forecast result are shown as well as a link to the page were the news announcement will be posted. The Forex Factory Calendar also allows you to alter the time zone settings to display what time a news announcement will occur in your region which is handy if you don’t have a program like ZoneTick. Forex Factory Calendar also allows you to setup email alerts for news events.

Bloomberg Economic Calendar- This is a very US centric calendar, market focus is highlighted for the current day at the top of the calendar. The Bloomberg calendar also has a very intuitive slider base interface for navigating day and date of interest. Boomberg calendar also goes into a bit more detail about each event and for the bigger events a consensus is provided. It should be noted that Bloomberg licenses the calendar data from Econoday.

Some of the bigger news announcements can tend to move the market anywhere from 20 to 100 pips. If you are a new trader I would definitely stay clear of trading around these times. I use ZoneTick to keep track of these news events, with the release of the new version including countdown timers and stopwatches.

My ZoneTick Setup

At the moment I am monitoring three time zones in the task bar Tokyo, London and New York. When a market is open the clock has a green background and when a market is closed the clock has a purple background. Alarms can also be set for each clock. This can be seen in the screen shot below:

In the screen shot above you will also notice the three countdown timers. These are new to ZoneTick version 4 and are very configurable. At the moment I am monitoring the AUD/USD So I have setup my countdown timers to countdown to these events. The real beauty of ZoneTick is that I can enter an event in the countdown timer and I can use any world wide time zone I wish without having to manually convert to my local time zone.

Unemployment Claims announcement will be occurring later this week. This announcement occurs at 8:30 AM New York time so I simply enter this in my location field. Then I set the countdown timer to automatically open the web page when the announcement is released. In addition to this you can add alarms to sound at a given time before the event and change the colour of the countdown timer for the last five minutes before news is released.

Taking it to the next level

This is a good start however I am working on a program that will download the latest announcement, use text mining and artificial intelligence and then recommend a buy or sell signal for the given currency(this is a long way off). I am very happy with ZoneTick for the moment and I would recommend to any currency trader.

You can download it and try it for 30 days: Download ZoneTick.

or

You can read more about ZoneTick on their web site.

When you first start Microsoft Excel 2007, you will be presented with a screen similar to the one shown below. The key areas and terminology are also highlighted.

1. The active cell has a square border surrounding it. A cell can be activated by single clicking.
2. The formula bar allows formulas or data can be entered in this area. If you wish to insert a formula, the first character in this bar must be the equals sign.
3. The cell format controls will probably be the most extensively used control. The format options include general (no specific format), number, currency, accounting, short date, long date, time, percentage, fraction, scientific and text.
4. The expand formula button is useful when entering complex formulas as it allows you to see the whole formula without having to scroll.
5. This button allows for the recording of a macro and is an easy way to tell if a macro is currently being recorded.
6. The active sheet is the highlighted sheet at the bottom of the screen. A sheet can be made active by simply single clicking on it. To rename the sheet you simply double click on it.
7. Inactive sheets are every other sheet that resides in a workbook that are not currently active. These have a gray appearance.
8. You can add new sheets to the workbook by clicking this button.
9. The status bar gives you instant feedback about the current operation.
10. Page layout allows you to change the layout of pages on screen. You have three options normal, page layout, or page break preview.
11. Page zoom allows you to dynamically zoom in and out of the current workspace.

This has been a very quick introduction to the main navigational components and terminology used in Excel.

Calculating the average closing stock price

In our new spreadsheet the first thing we will do is name the active sheet by double clicking on it, we will call the sheet “StockInfo”.

Click to activate cell A1 and enter the text “Day”.

Click in Cell B2 to activate it and enter the text “Adjusted Close”. You will need to adjust the cell to accommodate the text. The process is shown in the image below.

Click in cell A8 to activate it and enter the text “Average Closing Price”. You will have to follow the procedure outlined above to increase the size of the cell to accommodate the text.

Under the day column, starting in A2 enter each day of the week in a new cell.

Enter the following adjusted close prices in the adjusted close column, starting at B2 enter the closing price for each day.

Notice the closing prices do not have a preceding dollar sign. Before we move on, we need to change the format of these adjusted close prices from general. To do this select all of the adjusted close prices and click on the dollar sign in the cell formatting controls box.

As I am sure you all know a simple average is merely the sum of all of the individual observations divided by the number of observations. In this example it would be

MondayClose + TuesdayClose + WednesdayClose + ThursdayClose + FridayClose / 5

Excel makes this process simple with the use of formulas. Before we enter the formula, we will set the format of the cell B8 to currency as described above.

To indicate to Excel that we are entering a formula the first character you enter must be an equal’s sign. So activate cell B8 and enter the = sign. As we can see from the formula above, we need to add each day’s closing price and divide by 5. Enter the formula as shown below.

If everything has been entered correctly, you should have an average adjusted close price of $10.17.

Trainee Trader Homework

That’s right you have homework to do, first go through the worked example above.

1. Enter this data above into excel
2. Adjust the size of any columns so all the text is visible
3. Format the adjusted close price as currency.
4. Calculate week ones average adjusted closing price.
5. Calculate week twos average adjusted closing price.
6. Calculate the combined week one and two average adjusted closing price.

I have attached the answers in an excel spreadsheet download this after you have worked through the problem. If you have any questions at all please add them in the comments field below.

TraineeTraderTutorialOneHomeworkAns.xls

• Never bet against the house.
• Recession starts next Tuesday.
• End of year financial checklist.
• How to recognize stock market manipulation.
• Retail sales analysis
• The psychology of human misjudgment (PDF)
• Dealing with sympathetic bias

A highly informative and easy to understand film covers just about everything that isn’t taught in school regarding the corrupt banking system. It explains how these institutions get away with robbing the unsuspecting public by creating monetary policies designed to enslave society, while keeping the system in a perpetual state of rising debt.

I will only post the first three videos as I think the final two videos are so biased as to be of little use.

Corrupt Banking System – Cartels Robbing the Public

This video delves into a brief stylised history of the banking system, loans and Fiat currency.

Corrupt Banking System – How Money is Created

This video looks into the modern monetary system, the loan establishment process and a very simplified version of the multiplier effect.

Corrupt Banking System – Money is Debt

This video explores money as debt theory and highlights how interest payments exceed principal. The end of the video starts to look at monetary system reforms.

The final two videos in my opinion are far to biased to be of any real use. I have to say these videos provide a basic introduction to the monetary system and provide it in an easy to understand manner.