There are two main criteria for which you need to program the rules and they are – market entry and market exit or your stop. You can use a large number of indicators to schedule your trades but in an automated trading system, you need to use as little as possible and here I am going to show you how to create a 1 rule system based on trading volatility.
There would be a very general system based on the ideal deviation (volatility) of the price. For example, the Bollinger Bands show a middle average band and two outer lines, which is the ideal deviation from the norm or average, because instability widens the bands from the average. You can easily create a simple instability system with your own settings so here’s what you do.
To get started you need to set a mid line moving average. This is where the price will find support in the bull market and resistance in the bear market. A buy signal will be generated (and held) in a bull market when the average hits, the bottom band outside will provide stop level.
All you have to do is check the various running averages and standard deviation settings for the external bands but with today’s software it is easy to do. Then, you need to decide on the spread of the currency to trade on it and test it over time to see how successful it is – because it has only one rule, it will show a realistic back test of performance.
The logic of the above system is easy to understand and below, you will see how to create and stop a buy signal in a bull market.
With a strong bull trend, prices may move away from the average price but they will usually find support against the average. If volatility moves prices through the mid-band to the outer bottom band, the supply and demand situation is likely to change from bullish to bearish and a stop can be made.
You need to do some research and you can add additional filters if you want, but a volatility based system will work if traded on unrelated contract spreads (these rarely work on a single contract).
I’ve seen people gain a lot through simple automated systems and you can too. Sure you need to spend some time researching and testing and long term like any system trade but if you do a little work, you can easily create your own forex automated trading system and get some great profit in less than 30 minutes every day.