Equity Sentry manual

What is Equity Sentry

Protecting your account equity is one of the most difficult functions if you need to do this

manually. Did you ever used some MT4 expert advisor that opens trades using some mysterious

trading system and your account floating loss keeps growing more and more? In other words

your account equity keeps getting lower and lower until your account money is loss because of

the margin call. I bet this is the scenario no one ever wants to see, but how to close all the

trades when account equity reaches certain amount in percent, money or pips? This could

happen at night when you sleep or some other time when you are away from your computer.

We have developed a special MT4 EA that will be your personal account equity sentry. EA will

monitor your account equity and close all trades when a certain amount in percent, money or

pips is reached. You can even set EA to use multiple functions for act as account equity stop loss

or take profit. Equity Sentry also has “cumulative trades basket”. It means that EA can calculate

the profit/loss of your closed trades and once it reaches certain level EA will act. Also “close MT4

platform” feature is included, which is very useful if you use trade copier software to receive

trades as most of the trade copiers does not stop operating when “Expert Advisors” are

disabled. In this case Equity Sentry EA can close your MT4 completely after all trades are closed.

How to Install Equity Sentry

1) Copy Equity Sentry EX4 file to your Metatrader 4 folder under \experts\

2) Restart MT4 if it was running during this short installation process

3) Locate Equity Sentry under “Expert Advisors” in the “Navigator” (Ctrl+N) window

4) Click and drag EA with your mouse left button to the desired chart or just double-click it

to run. EA must be attached only to the single chart.

5) In the EA settings window “Common” tab you should enable “Allow live trading” and

“Allow DLL imports”. Otherwise EA will not work.

6) Set any other desired settings and click OK to run EA

7) You should see smiley face in the top-right corner of the chart

8) On your Metatrader toolbar, make sure that Experts

Advisors are turned on (green)

9) A blue box with the EA settings will appear on the chart when EA will start running

How to use Equity Sentry

1) Once started EA will start monitoring current account equity and all upcoming closed

trades

2) You can set EA to close all trades and disable all EAs when account equity reaches a

certain loss or profit level in percent, money or pips. You can choose multiple options like

close all trades when account reach certain profit in percent or certain loss in money.

3) You can set EA to close all trades and disable all EAs when certain cumulative profit or

loss level is reached in money or pips.

4) Profit or loss target in money depends on your account currency. If you have USD

account, profit/loss target will be in USD, if your account is in USD, profit/loss target will

be in USD.

5) By default EA will manage all trades running on your account, but you can override this

by setting certain magic number in EA settings.

6) All values must be positive.

7) By default EA is set to disable all Expert Advisors on equity trigger. This means that after

EA will close all trades it will try to disable all EAs by virtually clicking “Expert Advisor”

button on your Metatrader toolbar. This will disable all EAs including Equity Sentry and

no trades should be opened by any EA until manual intervention. Note that we can not

guarantee that this will affect all EAs. Some EAs (like for Renko or other offline charts)

work in different mode and they can not be disabled until removed from chart.

8) You can set EA to use Trailing Stop and/or BreakEven function on your trades.

9) You can set EA to close your MT4 platform completely

Equity Sentry settings

DisableAllExpertAdvisors – by default this value is set to true and it means that EA will disable

all Expert Advisors on equity trigger or certain cumulative profit/loss reached. This means that

after EA will close all trades it will try to disable all EAs by virtually clicking “Expert Advisor”

button on your Metatrader toolbar. This will disable all EAs including Equity Sentry and no

trades should be opened by any EA until manual intervention. Note that we can not guarantee

that this will affect all EAs. Some EAs (like for Renko or other offline charts) work in different

mode and they can not be disabled until removed from chart.

“Expert Advisors” button should change from

To

CloseMetatraderCompletely – by default this value is set to false. If you set it to true EA will

close MT4 platform completely on equity trigger or certain cumulative profit/loss reached. This

is very useful if you use trade copier software to receive trades as most of the trade copiers does

not stop operating when “Expert Advisors” are disabled.

EquityLossPercent – when account loss equity in percent will reach this value EA will close all

trades. Set this value to zero to disable it. Value must be positive.

EquityLossMoney – when account loss equity in money (account currency) will reach this value

EA will close all trades. Set this value to zero to disable it. Value must be positive.

EquityLossPips – when account loss equity in pips will reach this value EA will close all trades.

Set this value to zero to disable it. Value must be positive.

EquityProfitPercent – when account profit equity in percent will reach this value EA will close all

trades. Set this value to zero to disable it. Value must be positive.

EquityProfitMoney – when account profit equity in money (account currency) will reach this

value EA will close all trades. Set this value to zero to disable it. Value must be positive.

EquityProfitPips – when account profit equity in pips will reach this value EA will close all

trades. Set this value to zero to disable it. Value must be positive.

CumulativeLossMoney – when cumulative profit/loss amount in money (account currency) will

reach this loss level EA will close all trades. Set this value to zero to disable it. Value must be

positive.

CumulativeLossPips – when cumulative profit/loss amount in pips will reach this loss level EA

will close all trades. Set this value to zero to disable it. Value must be positive.

CumulativeProfitMoney – when cumulative profit/loss amount in money (account currency)

will reach this profit level EA will close all trades. Set this value to zero to disable it. Value must

be positive.

CumulativeProfitPips – when cumulative profit/loss amount in pips will reach this profit level

EA will close all trades. Set this value to zero to disable it. Value must be positive.

IncludeCommissionsAndSwap – if set to true, EA will include order commission and swap when

calculating total profit/loss.

MagicNumber – this is where you set magic number that will tell EA which trades to monitor

and close. By default magic number is set to -1 which means EA will manage all trade regardless

its magic number. This means that the trade may be opened manually and/or by 3rd party

software. If you set MagicNumber value to zero, EA will manage only the trades that have no

magic number set which is usually manually opened trades. Otherwise you can set this value to

a certain number and EA will manage only the trades that have the same magic number. For

example if you set MagicNumber=1234, EA will manage only the trades that have magic

number set to 1234 as well. This way you can set Equity Sentry EA to monitor the trades of an

individual 3rd party EA or group of the EAs.

TrailStopStartPips and TrailStopMovePips – EA will activate Trailing Stop function when trade

goes in profit by pips value set in TrailStopStartPips. Once activated EA will move stop loss in

profit every pips value set in TrailStopMovePips

BreakEvenStartPips – sets how many pips trade should get into profit before stop loss is

moved to the entry price. BreakEvenMovePips is used to set how many pips EA must add to

the entry price if you want your trade to be closed in profit on reverse.

UninterruptibleMode – normally every EA on MT4 platform runs based on price ticks. This

means that when a new price tick is received from MT4 broker server, the EA will perform its

functions. As you may know there can be delay sometimes and new price tick may not be

received in 5 or more seconds when markets are calm. This may cause delay in Equity Sentry

functions to be applied to your trades. If you set UninterruptibleMode=true, EA will not wait for a

price tick and will perform all of its functions every second without any delays.

DashboardDisplay – this setting control how you want EA to display the dashboard (Blue Box).

If this value is set to 0 (zero), EA will not display the dashboard. If you set this value to 1, EA will

display the dashboard without background. If you set this value to 2, EA will display the

dashboard with the background set by DashboardColor and our company logo at the bottom

right corner. To display dashboard on top of the chart you may need to uncheck “Chart on

foreground” box in the chart properties window (F8) “Common” tab.

Dashboard and logo position on screen were chosen wisely.

Notice that the dashboard is aligned to the left but there are space left. This space is

reserved for your trade ticket numbers. Notice when you open trade and MT4 platform

display trade type (buy/sell) and ticket number at the left of the chart. This is why

dashboard is moved a bit to the right to not cover that information.

 Vertical alignment of the dashboard is set to the top but there is some space left and that

is where EA will display critical errors in red bold text. This is very helpful to not miss any

critical errors.

 Company logo is displayed in the bottom-right corner. If you enable “Chart Shift” your

chart will be moved away from the right border and logo will not cover your chart price.

With “Chart Shift” enabled it is easier to read the chart and indicators. Also many other

3rd party indicators and EAs use that space to display various info in the top-right corner.

What is slippage?

The short answer is that slippage is what happens between the time you close/place an order to

buy or sell a currency and the time that your oder is filled, i.e., the time that the transaction is

completed. In most cases, in a fast-moving volatile market such as EUR/USD (Euros and US

Dollars), from the time you place an order until the time it is filled the exchange rate will often

change anywhere from $.0002 to $.0003 from the price you saw and wanted to get when you

placed your order, even with the fastest automatic electronic ordering software. If you are

trading by hand, i.e., sending your order to your broker via a non-automatic signal generating

platform, then you can expect slippage to be as much as $.0010 to $.0015! The same is applied

when you are closing the trade or deleting pending order.

What is “Stop Level” or “Minimum Distance Limitation”?

The “Stop Level” is the minimum distance limitation between the market price and entry/stop

price. This value is different among brokers like the Spread value. The “Stop Level” value can be

variable as well, it means that it can be changed by your broker during news releases.

This value is controlled by your broker and can not be changed.

Example: if your account has “Stop Level” set to 6 pips, it means that stop loss, take profit or

entry price should be set at least 6 pips from the current market price. Any SL/TP/Entry price

closer to current market price than 6 pips will be denied by your broker.

The StopLevel limitation is explained on MQL website http://book.mql4.com/appendix/limits

Please look for “StopLevel Minimum Distance Limitation” on that webpage.Trading foreign exchange on margin carries a high level of risk, and may not be

suitable for all investors. The high degree of leverage can work against you as well

as for you. Before deciding to invest in foreign exchange you should carefully

consider your investment objectives, level of experience, and risk appetite. The

possibility exists that you could sustain a loss of some or all of your initial

investment and therefore you should not invest money that you cannot afford to lose. You

should be aware of all the risks associated with foreign exchange trading, and seek advice from

an independent financial advisor if you have any doubts.