Have you ever been frustrated and felt like the universe was trying to make your life difficult?

I have. I think it’s most profound when you’re trying to do something you think is simple and you just can’t get it right.

Like opening a trade on a trading platform. That should be pretty darn easy, shouldn’t it?

Well, turns out it’s not.

OrderSend is a pain in the neck.

OrderSend is the MQL function used to open a trade.

Every  MQL programming language I’ve worked with has a few of these. Unwieldy functions that are difficult to work with – and in hindsight seem like they were poorly written.

There are 3 secrets you have to know to use OrderSend correctly:

• The stoploss and takeprofit values are price values, like 1.2345, not offsets like 20 or -50.
•  If it’s a Buy order, the price value must be Ask. And if it’s a Sell order, the price value must be Bid.
•  When OrderSend fails, it writes an error code to the Journal tab of the MT platform.

OrderSend has a lot parameters, and if any of them are wrong, the trade will not open. It’s so difficult that I had to create a special entry-screen for its parameters.

I actually created a new function named fnOpenOrder. It’s available in the VTS Toolbox, under the Trade menu. (You can read more about the Toolbox here: VTS-Help-Toolbox  )

The fnOpenOrder dialog makes it a little easier to open a trade. Hopefully it helps you avoid the frustration most traders experience when they work with OrderSend.

You can read all about fnOpenOrder here: VTS-Help-fnOpenOrder

Also you can see it in action at the 5:52 mark in the EA Wizard Video.