Working With Expert Advisors Presets

“Do you have sets?”, “Give me profitable presets!”, “I need more sets!” - Such comments can often be found in the discussions about Forex advisors in the forums. So what are presets? Do they really have a kind of magic or some key to the profitability of any Forex Robot lies in them? In this short tutorial, we will talk about what are the Forex advisors presets, what do we need them for, how to create, upload, edit them, and if the mystery of the universe lies in them.

What are the presets?

Presets are settings files for the expert advisor. That is, you can set advisor to the chart, load a preset and the settings that were specified in the file will be automatically uploaded. You will not need to customize the new adviser every time. Just download the saved settings, and all of them will be reflected in it.

Preset files have a .set extension.

And usually are stored in the ‘presets’ folder:

Installing preset files in the terminal

For example, we consider Generic EA. You can download it in from our portal, if you are interested. Another point. In order the preset files to be edited and maintained properly, without any errors, you should run the terminal as administrator. How it’s done?

In the terminal label, you pick properties:

Compatibility tab:

And put a tick in the ‘Run this program as an administrator’ field. Press apply. Now the program will run as an administrator. And you will not have problems with the data storage.

Go to the terminal in the File -> Open Data Catalog -> MQL4 -> Experts.

We paste our advisor files into this folder. And then copy the preset files. To do this, find the Presets folder:

It can not be in the terminal by default. Therefore, if it is not there, in MQL4 catalog you should create it yourself.

Copy your preset files. In this case, there are 8 preset files. From the installation folder with the advisor, copy to the terminal:

The preset files are copied. Done. Now restart the terminal. Our adviser works on GBPUSD, USDJPY, GBPCAD, GBPCHF, EURGBP, EURCHF, USDCAD, USDCHF pair. M15 timeframe. Our adviser should appear on the “Navigator” tab.

Let’s open GBPUSD chart and put adviser on it.

So here we pass on the input parameters tab:

We could have spent a long time to manually configure the settings. But we have a preset file, so we can just upload it.

Click on the “Load” button:

Choose your preset. In our case, we choose GBPUSD preset file. Click “Open”:

And all the settings are changed in such a way that they have been registered in the preset file. After that we press “Ok” and the adviser is ready to use. With those settings that were in preset.

If you have just one advisor and it is intended to work on a variety of currency pairs, (as in our case 8 pairs), instead of customizing it differently 8 times to suit each currency pair, you can download ready-made presets. That’s it, you can work.

Saving settings to your preset

Let’s consider the situation when you have an adviser and you want to save your own settings. In order not to spend too much time and effort when uploading this adviser for the next time. To save a preset, enter the settings, edit the settings and click “Save” button:

Here you should write a preset name, for example, “test1” and click “Save” again:

Next time, when you install this adviser to some other terminal, you simply copy the preset files, press ‘Load’ and select your preset.

How to edit a preset?

Let’s say you found somewhere an expert advisor with preset files, you are satisfied with everything, except for one or two parameters. You can change them and save these settings.

To do this, you select the “Save” tab:

And simply replace the existing configuration file. And all the changes will be made in it:

But you can do it in a different way. Not many people know, but the adviser settings file can be edited by a simple “Notepad.” To do this, find this file in your folder or in the folder already installed in the MQL4 terminal and with the right mouse button choose to open with “Notepad”.

Notepad is a standard application. You can find it in any Windows by default. You open the file in Notepad or another text editor and change the settings that you need to change.

After you have done all the necessary changes in the configuration file, click “Save”.

That’s it. Our file has changed. Once it appears in the terminal, we will load it in the adviser chart, and it will be applied to the adviser settings with the changes that we made.

Myths about presets and advisers

Very often in comments about some Forex robot in some forums, you can see such a popular question: “Do you have sets? Upload profitable sets.” And so forth. That is, people ask for ready presets with magical settings. The reality is that normal, appropriate settings are usually already installed in the adviser by default. But sometimes there are some presets that go with the advisor. For different purposes, different pairs, different risk levels.

For example, it happens that the there are sets with aggressive, moderate and conservative levels of risk in the bundle. When the adviser is uploaded to the net, people ask for some magic profitable sets. This began from the moment when optimization was popular. It was a few years ago. Now the fashion for advisers optimization is over. But people are still asking for sets.

Also, it is a belief, that almost any adviser can be profitable if you pick up some profitable sets by means of optimization. In general, it is the myth for more than 80%. And if there are no sets that go with an adviser, there is nothing to worry about. In the end, you can create them and save. But the most appropriate and also the most profitable settings go by default. And you shouldn’t change them too much. Because EA developers, in any case, know better how their strategy works, its pros and cons. Therefore, the default settings are usually the most balanced.

Take care, Michael

ForexTraderPortal.com