Using the principle of the Martingale in trading looks quite attractive, at least in theory. For profitable trading you only need a large deposit, which would be able to withstand a significant drawdown. However, the practice tells a different story: the use of the Martingale is a sure way to siphon off the deposit. The creator of the Silent Ilan expert advisor tries to deny this truth.

“Quiet” modification of the well-known Ilan expert advisor uses basically the same style of trading, but it introduces additional filters. According to the assurances of the creator of this robot, these filters significantly increase the reliability of the trading robot.

At that, the changes introduced in the traditional Ilan can’t be called revolutionary – it is rather simply a version of the advisor where the author tried to best protect trading. This is why the trading robot "learned" to also consider the Ozymandias indicator signals in addition to RSI. The working time of the adviser was also a bit corrected – now it does not trade around the clock. The rest is all the same Ilan.

Features of Silent Ilan expert advisor

The attractiveness of the Martingale is that, theoretically, this approach makes the trader independent from what happens in the currency market. If, after opening a position, the price moves in an unprofitable direction, at a certain distance you re-enter the market in the same direction. Thus, the whole grid of orders is accumulated.

In the end, there is a price movement in the right direction and due to the constant increase in the lot, the trader not only covers all the accumulated losses, but also makes a profit. But more often the opposite happens – a strong trend movement instantly eats up the entire deposit and here comes margin call.

The main purpose of such restrictions is to catch the “wide” flat – the state of the market where the price, although moving in a horizontal channel, still goes within it a considerable distance. For this reason, it is not recommended to trade before the release of important news, when the volatility of many pairs does not exceed 10-15 points.

"Quiet" version of the Ilan involves trading only for a few hours a day. Another way to improve the reliability of the EA can be an exception of the currency pairs with the American currency from the work. Results on the crosses – for example, EUR/AUD – look much better.

Conditions for making deals 

One of the major innovations the Silent Ilan expert advisor is use of the Ozymandias indicator. This indicator can also be used as a standalone tool to remove the effects of price noise. At that, it is necessary to consider the color of the median line and the position of a chart with respect thereto.

For example, if the median line of the indicator is blue, the expert advisor will give priority to the buy (blue color indicates overbought). If the center line is red, it will open mostly short positions. The advisor also takes into account the position of the price relative to the top and bottom line.

In addition, the RSI readings are used in the expert advisor with default settings. According to the algorithm of the trading robot, the previous 2 candles are taken into account. If, for example, RSI is in the overbought area, and the closing prices of 2 previous candles grow, it can be regarded as a signal to go short. At the same time, the Silent Ilan also takes into account the Ozymandias indicator.

Timing constraints for the expert advisor 

Limitations of the time are advisory in nature, the advisor can be well used around the clock. But in this case you are more likely to stumble upon impulse price movement that will lead to margin call.

As you know, the foreign exchange market can be in 2 states: trending and flat market. Moreover, the pronounced trend movement hardly takes 25-30% of the time, all the rest time the price chart behaves rather calmly. In order to minimize the impact of the fundamentals on the trading results, it is not recommended to trade in the period from 3pm to 5pm Moscow time.

Also, do not leave the deals overnight. It is best to set a goal: to earn about 1-3% of the deposit per day. Once the goal is achieved, all open deals are recommended to close. You can only leave them overnight if no important news are expected to be released the next day or at night.

Talking about the choice of the currency pair, the Silent Ilan trading advisor can be used on virtually any pair. But it showed best on the EUR/AUD cross. This is due to the fact that the Forex market is very sensitive to the data from the United States.

Setting up and testing a "quiet" Ilan

Despite its simplicity, the expert advisor is quite flexible and can be customized for any trading regime. Among the basic settings, the following should be highlighted: 

• UseHour – value of 0 means disabled time filter, 1 turns on a time limit; 
• Start and Stoptime – the time of start and end of opening new deals, respectively (adding is not considered a new deal). If the Stoptime parameter is 16:00, the EA will stop making deals after 16:59;
• Amplitude – this parameter is responsible for setting the Ozymandias indicator; 
• Dynamicpips – allows you to enable or disable dynamic mode of trading in which the advisor opens the next orders on its own; 
• Defaultpips – the distance between the orders; 
• Glubina – responsible for the number of candles the EA takes into account.

Testing of the expert advisor was conducted on the pair recommended by the author – EUR/AUD. M5 timeframe was used. The default settings were also used for this currency pair in testing. The test was conducted for the period from the beginning of 2013.

Based on the test results, the expert advisor has truly become "calmer", it provided a steady deposit growth for more than 1 year. Significant divergences between the equity line and balance are typical of the advisers on the basis of Martingale, and should not confuse traders. But you must always remember that any strong trend movement can instantly reset the deposit, so you should always withdraw profit.