Articles by: David Williams
Any kid can chatter, few can inform
Man, I’ve got a lot of respect for people who can speak more than one language.
I wasn’t exactly an overachiever in high school, and since I didn’t have to study a foreign language, I didn’t.
Also, and due in part because I was a goof-off in high school, I didn’t start college until I was older.
Now listen to this. The university I went to in New York required engineering students to take two semesters of a foreign language. I remember thinking “uh-oh“.
I decided to take Spanish because I heard it was easy. Now who takes Spanish in college? Kids – smart kids – who studied Spanish in high school.
So here I was, the big older dummy in an introductory Spanish class, asking the professor over and over again to repeat a sentence during an oral exam. The rest of the students understood the first time. I must have asked about 8 times. Not the highlight of my academic career.
But I did learn that I’m not good at some things. Hey, maybe I needed to be immersed in the language or maybe I needed to learn it at an earlier age. But at the end of the day, the truth is, I’m just not good at learning a foreign language.
So, why am I talking to you about this? Well, just like I’m not good at certain things, computers are not good at certain things either.
I bring this up because I don’t want you to be disappointed or frustrated at a later time. When I talk about computers, I’m including MQL and MetaTrader, and yes, even VTS.
Computers are not good at qualitative decisions. When you say something natural like “open a Buy position when the ADX is rising”, a computer will have trouble with that. In this case, your computer needs an exact definition of what “rising” means.
Sure, you know what “rising” means just by looking at a chart. But your brain is actually filtering out a lot of noise and making some assumptions.
For example, suppose the price is rising except for a few declines here and there. Or suppose a few candles are missing. A computer gets stuck on this kind of stuff.
When you sit down and design your Expert Advisor, one of the first steps is to describe how the trading system works.
If your description includes words like “rising”, “falling”, “strong”, “weak”, try to write an exact definition of what these terms mean. It will save a lot of time in the long run.
NOTE: The subject line of this email is from a song named “It’s Hard” by the rock band The Who:
Any gang can scatter, few can form.
Any kid can chatter, few can inform.
It’s hard. It’s very, very, very, very hard.
