Can I Make My Own Forex EA for Metatrader

A forex EA, or expert advisor, is merely a set of rules that is used to tell the Metatrader software when to make trades. If you wish to make your own forex EA, then you can either learn to program the meta trader language or you can hire a third party to do it for you.

Develop a Trading System.
You will need to have a good understanding of technical analysis and system development in order to begin developing your own EA. Most expert advisors that are currently available on the market are based off of one of three systems: scalping, trend following or counter trend trading. Unfortunately, with the exception of the trend following system, the other two will have a high winning percentage, but will lose money over the long term. If you decided to develop your own system then make sure that you have back tested over at least five years worth of data to see that it is a winning system over the long term.

Learn MetaTrader Code.
If you want to develop your own EA, once you have your system rules you will need to learn how to write code in Mql4 the MetaTrader 4 language. MetaTrader comes with an integrated development editor (IDE) called MetaEditor which is designed to make writing code relatively easy. It also comes with a text editor, and you can can compile the program yourself by clicking on the F5 key. This will produce the usable script.ex4 file, which can be installed on the MetaTrader 4 software.

Use VisualTrader.
Another way to build an expert advisor is to use a program called Visual Traders Studio. This has a drag and drop interface that will allow you to build an EA within minutes without having to write any code. Using a visual programming tool it will write the code for you and compile it for you so that you don't need to learn Mql4.

Hire a Third-Party Programmer.
The final route to developing an EA is to hire a third-party programmer. A few that you might consider are iTicSoftware, OneStepRemoved and MQLSoft. These are independent programmers that will translate your trading ideas into a software system. Consultations are free, but coding the EA is charged at between $60 to $85 per hour. In general, a simple expert advisor should only take about three to five hours to write the code for.