Sporadically opens trades when EA should be preventing this

Question

Morning all,

I'm currently testing out a segment of my EA which is supposed to only open a trade (providing other conditions are met) on the opening of the candle bar, which in MQL4 language is LastActiontime=Time[0];.

It's working really well: it is only opening trades on the LastActiontime=Time[0]; time, and not opening any trades part way through the candlestick bar should the EA need to be reinitialised.

However, on some occasions (though not every occasion), when I close the trade party way through the current candlestick bar, it sporadically opens another trade and thus defying the "only opening a trade on the opening time of the candlestick bar" rule.

I have the the snippet, below. Does anyone know where I'm going wrong?

Notes:

The best way is to test this on a 1M chart so you're not waiting any longer to confirm the EA works.
The EA will only allow one trade to be open, if there are any trades open when the EA is reinitialised, it won't open a new trade - this is by design so as to avoid overtrading.

Suggestions / thinking points

The EA may not be initialising fast enough to comply with the oninit parameters, so does not recognise that the conditions before another trade is initialised.

//+------------------------------------------------------------------+
//|                                          initialization_test.mq4 |
//|                        Copyright 2020, MetaQuotes Software Corp. |
//|                                             https://www.mql5.com |
//+------------------------------------------------------------------+
#property copyright "Copyright 2020, MetaQuotes Software Corp."
#property link      "https://www.mql5.com"
#property version   "1.00"
#property strict
//+------------------------------------------------------------------+
//| Expert initialization function                                   |
//+------------------------------------------------------------------+

datetime LastActiontime;
bool totalOrders = OrdersTotal();
double currencyConversion;

int OnInit()
  {
//---

  LastActiontime=Time[0];
  
  if (totalOrders == 0){
      totalOrders = true;
  }
   

//---
   return(INIT_SUCCEEDED);
  }

void OnTick()
  {
//---
   int LotSize = 30;
   int RewardFactor = 3;
   int stopLossPoints = 200;
   double entryPriceBid = MarketInfo(Symbol(),MODE_BID);
   double spread = MarketInfo(Symbol(), MODE_SPREAD);
   double tickvalue = MarketInfo(Symbol(), MODE_TICKVALUE);
   color sellcolor = clrGreen;
   bool Newbar = true;
   
   if(LastActiontime!=Time[0])
   if(OrdersTotal() == 0)
   if(totalOrders == true){
   
      bool OpenShort = OrderSend(Symbol(),OP_SELL,LotSize,MarketInfo(Symbol(),MODE_BID),100,((entryPriceBid/Point)+(stopLossPoints))*Point,((entryPriceBid/Point)-(stopLossPoints*RewardFactor))*Point,"Spread Charge £"+DoubleToStr((spread * tickvalue)*LotSize,2),Period(),0,sellcolor);
LastActiontime=Time[0];    
       
   }
  }
//+------------------------------------------------------------------+

All the best,

PaulB PaulB · Accepted Answer · 2021-03-03T14:59:47

Your code is not really best practice for what you are trying to achieve. The best method to only carry out operations at the start of a bar would be as follows:

void OnTick()
{
    if(TimeBar==Time[0])
    {
        //Carry out any operations on each tick here
    return;
    }

   if(TimeBar==0)
   {
       // Operations carried out on First Run only here
       TimeBar=Time[0];
   return;
   }

   // Operations at the start of a new bar here

   TimeBar=Time[0];
return;
}

Sporadically opens trades when EA should be preventing this

1 Answers