MQL4 TUTORIAL BASICS – 69 SIMPLE PRICE CORRELATION

In this video we are going to create an expert advisor that is able to calculate the values for a simple moving average for two currency pairs, so let’s find out how to do that with mql4.
To get started please click on a little icon here or press F4 on your keyboard. Now you should see the Metaeditor and here you want to click on file, new file, expert advisor from template, continue, I will call this file, simple currency correlation, click on continue, continue and finish.
Now you can delete everything above the ontick function and the two comment lines here.
We start by calculating the ask price, this is a little bit different, in mql4 it is possible to just use the ask price without calculating it but this is only possible if you want to know the ask price for the current symbol and this is not the case, so we use a backported solution from mql5 and here is how it works, we use a function that is called symbol info double, this function takes a few parameters, the first one is the current symbol on the chart, the second one is what we want to know, in this case, we want to know the ask price so we use symbol underscore ask – all in capital letters – and with normalize double and underscore digits we make sure to calculate the right number of digits behind the dot depending on the currency pair that might be three or five digits.
And that’s how we do it for the current ask price on the current chart but we want it also to calculate the ask price for another currency pair and here is how we do it, it’s almost the same except that we are using the currency pair as a hard-coded string variable for the first parameter here and of course we use a different name for the variable, please make sure to exactly spell the currency pair as it shows up on your Metatrader screen. Depending on the account type you use you might see a different, this is what it would look like in Metatrader 5 for my RoboForex account.
And now we have the ask price for the current currency pair and for the one that we want to compare.
Now let’s continue with the moving average.
To calculate it we use the integrated ima function for the current symbol on the chart, we use the period m one constant here because I want to know the values for the one-minute chart, I want to use twenty candles for the calculation, no shift value, it should be a simple moving average so we use mode underscore sma, the result should be calculated based on the close price for candle number zero, that’s the current candle on the current chart.
Now let’s repeat that for the second currency pair. It’s almost similar but this time we have also hard-coded the currency pair, please keep in mind that this is just about the concept, usually, you wouldn’t hard code anything but for this little video, it is good enough.
Now let’s create a chart output by using the comment statement, it will output the current ask price for the current currency pair, the ask price for the other currency pair, the moving average for the current chart and the moving average for the Australian against the US dollar.
So that’s about it.
If you don’t understand what all the code here does or if this was too fast for you maybe you want to watch one of other videos in this basic video series or maybe even the premium course might be interesting for you, you can find that one on our website, by the way, this was a suggestion from a premium course member and if you are already a premium course member and have an idea for a video like this one please send me an email.
For now, please click on the compile button or press F7, I don’t have any errors here and if this is the case you can click on the little button here or press F4 to go back to Metatrader.
And in Metatrader we want to open a new chart window, like this one and now we want to click on insert, indicators, trend, moving average, I would like to see a moving average for twenty candles without any shift values, it should be a simple moving average and it should be based on the close price so let’s click on okay, here is the moving average and now we right-click into the chart, select template, save template and save it as default dot tpl because this is the template that is going to be used on a chart in real-time, we are not going to use the strategy tester in this case because that cannot show us two charts, you can overwrite the current value.
Now we repeat the whole process with another chart and when we click on a little symbol here we should see two separate windows, now let’s navigate to the new file that is called, simple currency correlation and drag it on to the chart, I’ll repeat the process for the second chart, nothing happens, it looks like my account is invalid, so let’s pick another one and now we see that the expert advisor is working.
On the first chart, all the values should be the same because we are comparing the same currency pair but on the second chart we are comparing two currency pairs and that’s how we can find if we have a correlation and in this little video you have learned how to create an expert advisor that is able to calculate the ask price and a moving average for two different currency pairs and you have coded it yourself with a few lines of mql4 code.

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