This trading robot is aimed exclusively at night trading when the market is quiet and peaceful. Trading is conducted on m15 time interval (except for EUR/USD) and only at night, the currency pair does not matter.

 The Night Owl expert advisor trades during the Asian session, this approach is quite popular among the fans of scalping, because at this time you are less likely to face a surge in volatility. The price often moves within a narrow horizontal channel, which lies at the heart of the principle of this MTS.

With regard to capital management, the expert advisor gives the opportunity to trade with both fixed and dynamic lot. You can turn on the display of fractal levels in the setting of a trading robot – within them, according to the expert advisor, the price will be during the flat. Accordingly, the trading will be conducted on a rebound from them.

You can trade even with a small deposit. The minimum recommended size of the starting capital should be about $200. In this case, the optimal size of the lot is 0.01. When calculating the lot in the percentage of the deposit, it is not recommended to exceed 7% of the risk.

Night Owl EA: Getting Started

Among the other scalping advisors, this trading robot singles out by a large number of settings. All of them can be divided into 2 groups: normal (spread, slippage, lot size, etc.) and time, which are responsible for ensuring that the EA is trading at night.

Basic standard settings include:

• New_Trade – allows the EA to open new orders (the default setting is true); 
• lot – lot size; 
• risk – the percentage is given as a volume of one transaction. Works only if the lot parameter is not specified; 
• Hide_SL_TP – true value “hides" SL and TP orders from the broker; 
• slippage – the maximum allowable slip; 
• Max_Spread -–maximum spread.

Wrongly set Max_Spread can disable trading with the EA at all. The fact is that if the value of the spread is set to "0", the Night Owl EA will use the default values of the spread for each currency pair.

Spread default value varies depending on the currency pair. For EUR/CAD, spread is 4.0 points, USD/CAD – 3.0 points, EUR/CHF – 3.0; EUR/GBP – 3.0; USD/CHF – 2.5; USD/JPY – 2.0; GBP/USD – 2.0; EUR/USD – 1.6. And if, for example, the real spread for EUR/USD pair is equal to 2.0 points, the trading will not be conducted until the value of the Max_Spread field is equal to at least 2.

EA time settings

Incorrect time settings can greatly affect the performance of the expert advisor. This block of parameters includes:

• Use_Auto_Time – GMT time is determined automatically. Does not always work correctly, so it is better to disable this feature; 
• GMT_Offset – server time is set manually; 
• UseDST– if true, the expert advisor takes daylight saving time into account; 
• Trade_Pause_On_Loss – activation of the pause in the EA work after getting loss. There are 2 types of the pause; 
• Pause_Type – selection of the pause type, a value of 1 activates the pause in minutes, 2 – in points; 
• Trade_Pause_Minutes/Trade_Pause_Pips ¬– the value of the pause in minutes/points; 
• Allow_Second_Open_Trade – allows to set the 2nd order after the installation of the 1st; 
• Distance – the distance in points between the orders; 
• Lot_Factor – the size of the 2nd order with respect to the 1st is given using this coefficient; 
• Show_Fractal_Levels – allows you to turn on the display of fractal levels on the chart.

The server time indicates how the time of the terminal is different from GMT+0:00. You can know Greenwich Mean Time by visiting greenwichmeantime.com (format 24h), then it must be compared with the time in the terminal. If the GMT time is 18:00, and the terminal shows 19:00, the parameter in the settings GMT_Offset is 1.

Testing of the expert advisor

The basic working timeframe of the EA is m15, only in the case of the EUR/USD pair it is recommended to trade on the m30 time interval. To test the survival of the Night Owl expert advisor, it was tested for prolonged time interval.

The worst result was on the EUR/USD pair, for the period from 2007, the profit was $7,829.94. At that, trading was conducted with a fixed lot. The good thing is a small drawdown (not more than 6.18%) and a high percentage of profitable trades – 79.27%. The advantages of the EA should include the fact that the balance curve grows smoothly without sudden jerks, which suggests that the hypothesis underlying the algorithm of the robot works.

The result was much better on other currency pairs. So, GBP/USD for the same period of testing showed a profit of $427,812.22 (at the initial deposit of $10,000). In this case, a little more aggressive method of trading was used – the amount of each deal was calculated in % of the size of the deposit.

Gains on other currency pairs were in the range of $60,000 – $70,000 for the same time period. Only the result of EUR/CAD is knocked out of the picture, the profit on this pair is $483,396.71.

Summing-up

The test results allow to firmly say that the Night Owl EA really works. However, we should not delude ourselves with high profits shown in backtesting, as in reality it can be much less. Moreover, much depends on the correct setting of the trading robot.

Another good thing about the expert advisor is that the algorithm of its work is known at least in general terms. Trading is conducted on a rebound from the borders of the horizontal channel in which the price often moves at night. So the basis of the algorithm is not the readings of the set of indicators, but the current market pattern.

It is necessary to reiterate the importance of the proper setup of the MTS. Most of the negative reviews about EA is associated just with the fact that the trader was too in a rush to set the correct server time or forgot to specify the actual spread. Even such a trifle is able to radically change the result of the expert advisor.

Summarizing we can say that the Night Owl expert advisor is a good example of the working multi-currency scalper. Given the large number of deals, it is recommended to trade on pairs with tight spreads.