Expert Advisor Programming

My name is Shaun Overton and I’m the company owner. OneStepRemoved.com grew out of my love for programmming expert advisors and indicators in MetaTrader. Strategy development and backtesting took up nearly as much time as my job before I made my hobby a full time business. Programming an EA is about more than stringing MQL code together. It’s about building a vision. My team of MetaTrader programmers are ready to share our trading experiences, interaction with thousands of customers and programming skills to turn your passion into a working robot. Explain the expert advisor that you want to build using my conversation starters. You don’t need to worry about creating anything technical – that’s my job. Just talk to me like you’re teaching a trading buddy your exciting, new strategy. I’m a forex trader, too.

When you’re ready to discuss your EA idea with a programmer and trader, you can reach me in a number of different ways:

• Call me. My toll free number is (866) 212-1544. You can call me directly at (817) 210-4019, too.
• Fill out the contact form at the top right corner of this page. The form goes straight to my inbox and is quicker than an email.
• Email me. The company email address is info@onestepremoved.com.
• You can find me on Skype. My user name is “OneStepRemoved.com”.

Programming conversation starters

1. What indicators does your Expert Advisor use?
2. When should you enter the market with a buy and sell trade?
3. When should you exit?
4. What money management options do you want to use?

Build your Expert Advisor

The First Step To Building Your Expert Advisor – Communication

Most traders don't care about programming or software development. Your focus is on trading. It's our job to take your idea and turn it into an Expert Advisor.

Don't feel like you have to write your strategy in computer speak or pseudo code if you're not comfortable doing so. Instead, pretend like you're emailing a trading buddy. Write a quick email to info@onestepremoved.com. That email will help me understand what you hope to accomplish.

If your strategy isn't clear, that's ok. I speak English and I'm not shy about asking questions. Neither are any of my programmers. It's one of the benefits of working with an American company that has a real phone number and responds within one business day.

You should also watch the YouTube! video posted below. It explains some of the more common issues encountered when communicating a strategy.

What to Expect

Sometimes, the hardest part of building an EA is not the programming; it's the communicating and testing. Here's how a typical project (less than 10 hours) goes:

• The customer tries to explain the concept for the expert advisor. 1-2 weeks.
• The actual programming work. A maximum of 5 business days.
• The customer tries to explain problems that he has never explained before. We fix them and send a new version. The cycle repeats. 2-4+ weeks

The Scope of Work

Once the EA concept reaches a certain point of clarity, the project manager will send you a scope of work (SOW). The SOW attempts to bridge the gap between

1. Explaining a trading strategy in clear English
2. Structuring the explanation so that a programmer can pick it up, read it once or twice, and immediately start programming

The structure of the SOW reflects the idea of a checklist: I know to enter the market when items x, y and z are checked off. You can also think of those items as evaluating to true or false. If they're all true, then the EA should enter a trade. If not, then the Expert Advisor does not need to do anything.

Take a look at a sample SOW written for a triple moving average crossover robot. Although the strategy is simple, you will get a feel for how the document flows and how it may apply to your EA.

The project manager creates the SOW to confirm his understanding. In effect, he parrots the strategy back to you. It's our way of saying, "Yes, we understand the work that you want us to do" before we accept any form of payment. It also presents the opportunity to correct any mistakes before they actually happen.

The project manager does a lot of the mental heavy lifting. That said, you are the person with the fully formed idea in their head. You may find yourself strained at some point to translate thoughts from your brain into a format that others can follow. There are no shortcuts – it is best that you approach the subject with a great deal of patience.

Expert Advisor and Custom Indicator Delivery

Delivery of the initial expert advisor or custom indicator takes 5 business days from the date of payment, unless specified otherwise.

OneStepRemoved uses an email ticketing system for delivering and testing the programming project files. Customers are automatically registered and receive their EA or indicator as an email attachment. You can send as many messages as need without worrying about cluttering the inbox. The system neatly categorizes and organizes emails according to the order in which they were received. You can also login to the ticketing system directly.

We only do tech support via the ticketing system. The systems helps maintain the files, issues and comments within a single confined area. The project stays more organized, making your life easier and less stressful.

Testing Your Expert Advisor

The initial version of an Expert Advisor almost never comes out as a final, polished product. While the programmers do test the product, a difference exists between running an EA on backtests versus using the file in real life.

Almost all software companies hire a quality assurance engineer to test software. That profession exists for a reason. Testing software takes a lot of work.

Many of our customers are retail forex traders seeking to keep costs down. The most obvious way to reduce cost is to have you, the customer, do the testing.

Even the most trivial EAs usually require several hours of testing to find the little bugs. You are also probably not a quality assurance engineer, and thus not comfortable explaining what exactly doesn't work. We fully expect that you are inexperienced communicating software concepts or problems and reflect that in the estimated time.

The customer is the only person that can fully communicate the requirements and verify that the software we produce matches the scope of work. Therefore, that person has to do real work. You should expect to spend a significant amount of time verifying that the software functions as intended and sending documentation.

A defined process exists for communicating Expert Advisor issues. Most novices report general issues such as the "trailling stop does not work properly". Whenever these types of issues arise, expect the project manager to ask for MetaTrader log files, screen shots and an written overview of the problem. Although the problem may appear obvious, that is probably not the case for the person on the receiving end of the information. The process aims to reverse engineer your thought process, which in turn leads to the clearest description of the problem. The process also involves some degree of computer literacy on the part of the customer.

Ironing out the bugs, great and small, takes anywhere from 2-4+ weeks from the date of delivery. Some of that stems from our need to communicate consistently with all customers. Some of it results from waiting for the market to do something that causes the Expert Advisor to act incorrectly.

OneStepRemoved.com answers tech support requests within 1-3 business days.