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Friday, November 11, 2011

Aver4Sto + Postzigzag Expert Advisor Review

Okay, "Aver4Sto + Postzigzag" doesn't trip off the tongue, but this is another one of the free Expert Advisors available from the MetaTrader resource list, in the MQL4 Code Base. The great thing about the resource code base is the vast number of free strategies to try (and tweak) which help guide your own development, and offer a benchmark against many of the commercial Forex robots available.

While it's still early days, there hasn't been a strategy to bear Forex MegaDroid - yet. Maybe this will be the one...

Aver4Sto + Postzigzag can be downloaded from here.  The strategy also requires a download of the Post-zigzag indicator available here. The welcome page offers a summary of a backtest run on the USDJPY in a 5-minute timeframe ujsing Minilots; note the very low Modelling quality:

or not:
This test will look at performance in the EURUSD on a 15-minute timeframe; starting account of $10,000 using 0.1 Lots.  The default strategy calls for the default use of Minilots, but I have configured the strategy not to use Minilots. If you wish to test in a time frame other than M5 or M15 you will need to edit the code to allow this (it's a simple true/false fix in MetaEditor). I have left the MyStopLoss at '800' but this should be adjusted and tested to suit your own risk thresholds.


No Optimization was used.

Comparative Test Period

The three time periods common across all of the strategy tests are as follows:

March 31th 2000 - 2001
June 29th 2003 - 2004
May 17th 2001 - 2002

Comparative Results

The strategy, used "off-the-shelf", failed to generate any Long positions. It also threw the repeated message:


There are comments on the forum board about the lack of Long trades but there is no clear answer from the Developer as to why they don't trigger.  The aforementioned "zero divide" is likely a non-issue and not related to the lack of Long trades (I think!).  It would appear the strategy was designed as a primary Short strategy with the Long side an afterthought; this will limit the strategy's appeal.  As a short strategy it performed poorly, trading the test account to ruin.


The Cash equity curves made for grim viewing


Given the flaw in the strategy design I did not perform a Random Test Period set of examples.

It may be a simple tweak to get this strategy to work; so if you are willing to put the time in you can download it here.

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