Just an FYI about paintbars and hotkeys interaction

[Mike Medved]

There is a mechanism of interaction between hotkeys and charts that will allow you to use any indicator or in general any computed value from the chart in a hotkey.

 

That’s the ChartVar and InterVar (look it up in the MT help file)

The flow is as follows:

1. You make a paintbar that sets an InterVar or a ChartVar (with a SetInterVar or a SetChartVar function in the paintbar). (Or you can even do the SetInterVar inside a scan).
 

2. You place that paintbar on the chart from which you will be executing the hotkey (or if it is in a scan, run the scan)

3. Inside the hotkey, you can reference that InterVar or ChartVar by calling the intervar or chartvar in the hotkey for the particular parameter (like the limit price).

So – for EMA(9) for example, you would have a paintbar that uses EMA(9), calls it let’s say EMA9 inside its code, then calls

SetInterVar(“EMA9”, EMA9);   // this will set the intervar “EMA9” for this symbol, to be used in the hotkey

 

Inside the hotkey, in the Limit parameter for example, you would use

 

intervar(‘EMA9’)-0.2   

 

or something like that. That way the value that is set in the paintbar would be passed to the hotkey.

Of course, the value that is passed can be a result of some complex calculation in the paintbar, not necessarily just an indicator value.

 

[Arg]

Is there a way to use this to have a hotkey sell when candle closes below an ema (a type of trailing stop)?

[Mike Medved]

We do not let any orders initiate "automatically". For various reasons.

But you can have a hotkey that sells *when you press it* if candle closed below an EMA.