OkurraGlobal — the shared settings designer

Tool version: OkurraGlobal 2.00

A note on chapter scope. This chapter describes how to operate the OkurraGlobal panel — its layout, sections, Apply, saving configurations. The meaning of the individual global settings is covered in the topic chapters: global filters (10), Break Even Auto (12), Stop on Opposite (13), Daily P/L Limits (14), Equity Guard and Profit Target (15), Trading Hours (16). Here you learn the tool; there — the mechanisms.

Table of contents

5.1 What OkurraGlobal is 5.2 Relationship with OkurraButton — sister panels 5.3 Panel anatomy 5.4 Two layouts: vertical and horizontal (tab bar) 5.5 Section families — what you set where 5.6 Apply (N) — the change counter and committing 5.7 Save / Load .set — the full setup of the entire EA 5.8 Global companion indicators 5.9 Cross-sync with OkurraButton 5.10 The typical design cycle for global settings

5.1 What OkurraGlobal is

OkurraGlobal is the second design panel of design mode — the sister of OkurraButton. Where OkurraButton deals with the five strategies (B1…B5), OkurraGlobal deals with everything that is shared by the entire EA: global filters, account guardians, the Break Even Auto mechanism, Stop on Opposite, Trading Hours, chart objects and the settings of the control panel itself.

The split is simple:

• OkurraButton = what each of the five strategies does (chapter 4).
• OkurraGlobal = the frame within which all the strategies operate — filters shared between buttons, limits protecting the account, working hours, basket mechanisms.

Just like OkurraButton, OkurraGlobal is a design tool — you lay out settings in it, watch the effect (e.g. global filters on the chart through the companion indicators), and save to a .set. It trades nothing. And just like OkurraButton, it is a free tool (chapter 3.2) — it works right after installation, with no key and no activation.

There is one important practical difference, which we return to in section 5.7: it is from OkurraGlobal that you save the full .set — the complete configuration of the entire EA (the global settings plus all five buttons). OkurraButton saves only the buttons; OkurraGlobal saves everything. That is why, in practice, OkurraGlobal is more often “the panel you export the finished setup from”.

5.2 Relationship with OkurraButton — sister panels

OkurraButton and OkurraGlobal are designed to work together on one design chart (without the EA — chapter 2). By default OkurraGlobal appears to the right of OkurraButton (with an offset set so that the panels do not overlap), so after dropping both onto the chart you have the strategy designer on the left and the global settings designer on the right.

They cooperate in two ways:

• A shared .set file. Both panels read and save the same configuration. When you load a .set in one, the other can refresh its own part (cross-sync — section 5.9).
• Global vs local companion indicators. OkurraButton pulls in the companion indicators that show the filters of the active button; OkurraGlobal pulls in the ones that show the global filters (section 5.8). They can coexist on the chart — you see the global and the local context at the same time.

Like OkurraButton, OkurraGlobal has no business on a chart with a running EA — we keep designing separate from execution.

5.3 Panel anatomy

The OkurraGlobal panel, from the top:

1. Title bar — tool name, the collapse button for the whole panel ([-]/[+]), the drag handle.
2. Status bar — state messages (e.g. “Loaded: …”, “Applied locally (state saved to disk)”, errors).
3. Top action row — the global buttons: R (Reset), Apply, Save, Load (sections 5.6–5.7).
4. Settings sections — 32 collapsible sections grouped by topic (section 5.5), in one of two layouts (section 5.4).

The editing mechanics are identical to OkurraButton (chapter 4.6). You change values in three ways, depending on the field type:

• Numbers and text — click the field, type the value, confirm with ENTER (ESC cancels).
• Fields with a small number of options (2–3) — each click jumps to the next value in a loop (the click commits immediately, no ENTER). This is how the on/off switches work, among others, as well as the Equity Guard mode (target/trailing), the Daily P/L action or the 3-state stop action.
• Longer lists (timeframes, larger enums) — a click opens a menu, from which you pick the item.

Just as in OkurraButton, the draft → applied distinction applies: an edit goes into the working version, and only Apply commits it (section 5.6), while an uncommitted field glows gold. The panel also supports size scaling, corner and position selection, the Consolas font and dragging by the title bar — like its sister panel.

5.4 Two layouts: vertical and horizontal (tab bar)

OkurraGlobal has more sections than OkurraButton (32 versus 11), so it offers two ways to arrange them:

Vertical layout (classic, default). Sections stacked one under another, each collapsible via a header with +/−. You scroll the panel and expand the ones you are working on. In this layout each section header also has an optional “A” button (quick-Apply) — it commits only that section (an option enabled in the panel settings).

Horizontal layout (tab bar). At the top of the panel (below the action row) a horizontal bar of narrow tabs appears — one per section. Each tab’s label is a short section code written letter by letter, vertically (e.g. DPL, EG, GSAR, GOKUR, TH). You click a tab and the panel shows only that one section at full width. This keeps the panel vertically compact — instead of a long list you have “index cards” switched with a single click. Convenient when you are designing one thing at a time (e.g. only Trading Hours) and do not want to scroll through everything.

The switch between layouts and the selected tab are remembered (per chart), so the panel returns to your arrangement after a timeframe change or a restart.

Which layout to choose? Vertical is good when you want to see several sections at once and scroll. Horizontal — when you have many sections and prefer to jump between them like tabs. It is a purely visual preference; it does not affect the settings being designed.

5.5 Section families — what you set where

Thirty-two sections sound like a lot, but they fall into eight logical families. The order on the panel is deliberate: from position and money management, through filters and basket mechanisms, to the settings of the panel itself.

A few practical notes on this breakdown:

• The global filters (4 sections) are the shared SAR/MMD/SR/OKUR sets that buttons “plug into” via the Use Global … Filter opt-in (chapter 4.5, meaning in 10). Here you set them once for the entire EA. The Global SR Filter section has — next to the SR Reaction Mode row — a “SR Last Zone Mode” row: a mode in which the last confirmed SR zone determines the only allowed entry direction (chapter 10.5).
• Break Even Auto is as many as six sections — BEa itself plus five separate Auto-Arm trigger sections (Time, SAR, MMD, SR, OKUR). This reflects the fact that each trigger has its own independent parameters (chapter 12). As of release 1.28 the BEa Auto-Arm: OKUR Cross section holds two triggers on a shared oscillator instance: the zone-based OKUR transition and the rows Bounce (arm on pull-back) / Bounce BUY Th / Bounce SELL Th / Bounce Correction — the sixth trigger, arming on a bounce off an exhaustion extreme (chapter 12.7). The “Break Even Auto (BEa)” section itself also holds the cells controlling the guard and the size of add-on positions: Zero-level guard (since Global 1.15 — the zero-level guard on its own switch, enabled by default), Adapted sizing, Multisize x / step / max lot (since release 2.00 the multiplier accepts fractions, and values below 1 give degression — chapter 12.6), Adapted 1st hedge % of basket (since Global 1.15 — the scale of the shield’s first add-on), Adapted tolerance unit (since Global 1.15 — the threshold’s unit: lots or % of the protected basket) and Adapted tolerance (0=flip, -=early) — the zero-level guard threshold (up to Global 1.14 the label “Adapted tolerance lots (0=flip)”); plus the 1st hedge open on arm row (formerly “Instant open on arm”) and Manual arm incl. all (enabled by default — a manual arm sweeps in the whole direction; chapter 12.3); since Global 1.23 also, at the end of the section, the Auto-Arm Mode SELL / BUY pair — the combination mode of that direction’s Auto-Arm triggers (any (OR) = the first one met arms, the default; all (AND) = a confluence of every enabled one; chapter 12.8); the meaning of all of them is described in chapter 12.6.
• Stop on Opposite is five sections — the shared StopOpp Setup plus one per filter (SAR/MMD/SR/OKUR), with parameters independent of the entry filters (chapter 13). The StopOpp Setup section (since Global 1.25) mirrors the F7 group “Stop Opposite Setup” and holds the Sources Mode (all buttons) row — the global combination mode of the button’s active SO filters (any (OR) = the first opposite one reacts, the default; all (AND) = the reaction only when all are opposite at once; chapter 13.9). The setting is shared by all sources and all buttons — which is why it lives in its own section rather than in any of the per-filter ones.
• T. on Server — a separate section in the position/guardians family (under this label on the panel): the mode for writing real SL/TP on the broker’s server side (with a schedule), an alternative to the virtual (stealth) SL/TP watched by the EA. We cover the mechanism in chapter 9.
• The “Price movement sensors” family is a single Price Movement section (the family’s shared settings + four sensor blocks of six rows each) — physically it sits on the panel between Global Core and Alerts; meaning in chapter 18.
• The “Panel and system” family does not concern strategy, only the look and visibility of the EA control panel — what to show, how to arrange it. Global Core contains system settings: the Magic Number plus the virtualization of pendings and SL/TP. (The license key is not shown by the panel — you enter it only in the EA inputs, chapter 3.) The meaning of these settings is covered with the EA panel (chapter 8). The Alerts section also belongs to this family — ten cells for muting the EA’s alert popups (the eleventh alert switch — Own Registry Popup — lives only in the EA’s Inputs window; described below in this subsection).

This chapter is about where these settings are and how to commit them. For the meaning of each of them, reach for the chapters in the right-hand column.

The same can be set in the EA itself. Each of these sections corresponds to a group of parameters in the EA’s Inputs window (e.g. Global Position Management, Daily P/L Limits, Equity Guard, T. on Server, Trading Hours…). So OkurraGlobal is not technically necessary — you can configure everything directly in the EA via F7. The panel, however, gives you a readable division into sections, a preview of the global filters on the chart and the gold marker of uncommitted changes, so designing in it is more convenient and less error-prone than in the raw, long Inputs list (chapter 8.1).

Position Management section cells — including price deviation (slippage)

In the Position and account guardians family, the Position Management section gathers the global order execution settings. Next to the “Max Spread (pts)” cell (maximum allowed spread) and “TS Min Delta (pts)” there are two price deviation (slippage) cells:

• “Open Slippage (pts)” (default 20) — the maximum allowed price deviation when opening a position.
• “Close Slippage (pts)” (default 500) — the maximum deviation when closing. A larger value = fewer rejected closes (in practice a forced exit, at the cost of a slightly worse price).

Why such a large margin on closing: on accounts with Instant execution the broker honors the allowed deviation and, during a fast move, can reject a close or a modification (requote). A generous margin on closing means that protective exits (an emergency Break Even close, Equity Guard, virtual SL, manual Close All) do not get rejected. On Market accounts the deviation is ignored (the close goes at market anyway). The concepts of Market / Instant execution and slippage — chapter 3.

You set the values in the OkurraGlobal panel, and then — like any configuration — save them to a .set and load them into the EA via F7 (section 5.7).

Volatility-based lot normalization (ATR) — six cells

Since release 2.00 the Position Management section also holds six cells of ATR lot normalization — a mechanism that scales the base lot of all buttons inversely to the market’s current volatility (high volatility = smaller lot, low = larger): the Lot ATR Enabled switch, the ATR period and timeframe, the reference ATR in points (= 100% of the lot; 0 = the mechanism stays inert, even with the switch on) and the Min/Max percentage bounds (25–400% by default). The whole thing is disabled by default. The meaning and calibration are described in chapter 9.9; like every Global section, you export the values via .set (the LotATR_* keys) and load them into the EA through F7 — the same group in the EA’s Inputs window is called “Lot Volatility Normalization (ATR)”.

Monitor Own Only — the “own only” mode

The “Monitor Own Only” cell (enabled by default) switches the EA into “own only” mode: the robot manages (Break Even, Trailing, virtual SL/TP, baskets, all closes) only the positions it opened itself — not all positions with a matching Magic Number on the symbol.

What it is for: when two EA instances work on the same symbol with the same (or an overlapping) Magic Number — e.g. two charts of the same instrument with different settings — without this mode each would see the other’s positions as its own (“bleed-through”): it would count them into its basket, move their stops, and close someone else’s positions on Close All. In “own only” mode each instance keeps its own position registry (a persistent file in MQL5/Files/OKU/ea_memory/, identified by account, symbol, Magic and chart), which survives a terminal restart and a recompilation.

How does the EA know a position is “its own”? Since EA 1.11 the registry entry is created at the moment this instance sends the order — not based on a Magic Number read back from broker notifications. This is a deliberate hardening: broker notifications can be incomplete (a rejected asynchronous order can come back without a Magic), and with two instances sharing or overlapping a Magic, a notification-fed registry would credit each of them with the neighbor’s openings as well — punching holes in the isolation exactly where it was supposed to protect. Now a neighboring instance’s position will never end up in the registry; the only moment the EA adds positions “by Magic” is the one-time adoption on the mode’s first run (see below).

Three behaviors worth knowing about:

• Updating on a live basket is safe. On the first run of this mode (the registry does not exist yet) the EA automatically adopts the currently open positions with its own Magic — nothing falls out of its care. If the registry already existed and some positions nevertheless remained outside it (an emergency case), the EA settings include a one-time switch Global_OwnOnly_AdoptExisting (disabled by default): enable it, restart the EA — it will add all current positions with its own Magic to the registry — and switch it back off.
• Resilience to broker refusals. A position is removed from the registry only when it has actually disappeared from the account. A close rejected by the broker does not push it out of protection.
• The mode’s boundary: it isolates the management of open positions. The realized result of the day (Daily P/L) is still counted per Magic Number — two instances sharing a Magic still share “the daily zero”. That is why spacing the Magic bases apart (by ≥7) remains recommended (chapter 9); “own only” protects against mixing baskets, it does not exempt you from Magic hygiene.

Disabling the cell restores the old behavior (everything by symbol+Magic). The related “Markers Own Only” cell in the Panel: Trade Markers section analogously narrows the visualization of trades (history arrows and position lines) to this instance — details in chapter 19.

Close Model — how the EA sends closes

Two cells control how closes are sent (Close All, Equity Guard, Profit Target, Basket Max Loss, BEa, virtual SL/TP):

• “Close Model (0=Auto 1=Sync 2=Async 3=Adapt)” (default 0 = Auto; up to EA 1.22 the default was 3 = Adaptive) — the mode of the first close attempt:
  • 0 Auto — the classic behavior: honors the Async Close All switch,
  • 1 Sync — always synchronous: each close waits for the broker’s confirmation before the next one goes out (slowest with a large basket, maximum predictability),
  • 2 Async — always asynchronous: the whole basket is sent at once (fastest),
  • 3 Adaptive — asynchronous, but with learning: if after an asynchronous send the broker leaves positions unclosed, the EA switches to synchronous mode for the duration of a cooldown, after which it by itself tentatively returns to asynchronous.
• “Adapt Sync Cooldown (min)” (default 30) — the length of that cooldown in minutes.

In prose, about the default combination (since EA 1.23): the Auto mode honors the Async Close All switch, and that switch is off by default — so without changing anything every close waits for the broker’s confirmation (maximum predictability). If you want faster closing of large baskets, enable Async Close All or switch the model to Async/Adaptive — the mechanics of the modes are unchanged.

The safety net always works. Regardless of the model, after every send the EA verifies that the positions really closed, finishes off any stragglers synchronously and raises an alert. The model only picks the first shot — the verification and the finish-off are non-removable.

Before the EA sends anything, it also checks whether trading is enabled at all (the terminal’s AutoTrading + the algo permission for the EA). When it is not — instead of an avalanche of rejections you get one clear “PROTECTION OFFLINE” alert every minute (chapter 21.6).

Commission per Lot — the broker’s commission in result accounting

The “Commission / 1.0 Lot RT (0=off)” cell (default 0 = off) tells the EA the estimated broker commission cost for 1.0 lot both ways (round-turn: open + close), in the account currency. Example: the broker charges 3.50 USD per side → enter 7.0. You will find the value in your broker’s account specification.

What it is for: the platform does not report commission on an open position — its current profit/loss (floating) looks better than it really is. Once you enter a value, the EA reduces the floating of every open position by lots × cost, so that Equity Guard, Basket Max Loss, Daily P/L and the Status panel see the net result and react at the true thresholds, not ones inflated by costs. Additionally:

• “Close profitable only” (and Profit Target in “close losing only” mode) will not consider profitable a position that barely covers its own commission.
• The BEa shield moves the break-even level so that “zero” also covers the basket’s commission — it closes slightly later, but at a true zero after costs (chapter 12.2).

The EA does not estimate closed trades — there it always counts the actual commission booked by the broker (including the part already charged at position open). A value of 0 = result accounting exactly as before.

The Alerts section — controlling the popup windows

The EA reports important events with MetaTrader alert popups (Alert), and optionally also with push notifications to your phone. During intensive trading the popups can pile up — the Alerts section (since EA 1.08 / Global 1.05) lets you enable each group separately. Eleven switches (the tenth — BEa Level Cross Popup — arrived in EA 1.20 / Global 1.15; the eleventh — Own Registry Popup — in EA 1.26, and for now it exists only in the EA’s Inputs window, the panel shows ten cells), since EA 1.23 DISABLED by default with one exception: Own Registry Popup is factory-enabled (purely informational — chapter 7.9). The remaining popups you enable consciously, only the ones you want to see (up to version 1.22 they were all enabled by default):

Three rules worth knowing:

• You mute only the popup / push. Each switch silences only its group’s popup/push channel — the entry in the Experts journal (log) always remains, so diagnostics never go blind (chapter 21).
• License alerts have no switch — deliberately. You must always see why the EA is not trading. To keep them bearable, the popup about the same persisting problem repeats at most once every 4 hours (chapter 3.7); the journal line is written on every attempt.
• Push requires a MetaQuotes ID configured in MT5 (Tools → Options → Notifications). Without it, an enabled switch simply sends nothing.

In prose about the tenth switch: BEa Level Cross Popup alerts only when the BEa shield’s protection level crosses to the add-on side — for a SELL basket the target ends up above the price, for a BUY basket below it, meaning the protected basket now needs the market to travel further against it. The “locked” state (equal lots — no target and no line) is deliberately log-only: with an equalizing shield it occurs on every arming, and alerting it would bury the truly dangerous case (chapter 12.6).

In prose about the eleventh switch: Own Registry Popup (Global_AlertOwnRegistry, since EA 1.26) is the only factory-enabled alert — purely informational, it never changes trading (muted in the tester). It covers the position-ownership registry events: an orphan with proof of ownership gets an individual popup, cases without proof are collected into one summary popup per session, plus the message about pendings swept after a restart and the MagicBase ≤ 0 warning. The switch has no cell in the Global 1.18 panel — you set it only in the EA’s Inputs window (F7); a .set file saved from the panel does not contain this key, so loading it via F7 keeps the default value (enabled). Disabling it (Global_AlertOwnRegistry=false) silences only the popups — the Experts journal entries remain. Details and the anti-flood guard — chapter 7.9.

Like every Global section — you export the settings via .set (the Global_Alert… keys) and load them into the EA via F7; the same “Alerts” group is directly in the EA’s Inputs window.

5.6 Apply (N) — the change counter and committing

OkurraGlobal — like OkurraButton — separates the draft (your current edits) from applied (the committed state, which the companion indicators read and which you export). Apply moves draft → applied.

What OkurraGlobal adds is a change counter right on the Apply button. When you have uncommitted edits, the button shows Apply (N), where N is the number of fields waiting to be committed. When everything is committed, the button simply shows Apply. This lets you see at a glance how many changes are pending in the draft — helpful with a large number of sections, where it is easy to forget that something changed somewhere.

In the vertical layout the sections additionally have “A” buttons — these are shortcuts to the same, full Apply: clicking “A” next to any section commits the entire panel (all sections at once), exactly like the main Apply. The “A” button shows no counter and does not commit selectively — it exists so that, with a long, scrolled panel, you do not have to go back to the main button.

What Apply does (the manual model, chapter 2.7), identically to OkurraButton:

1. Draft → applied (saved to the internal state Global_applied.ini).
2. An auto-saved copy to history (OKU/history/auto_Global_<timestamp>.ini) — a rolling backup.
3. A refresh of the global companion indicators on the chart.

And just as in OkurraButton: Apply sends nothing to the EA. For the configuration to reach the robot — Save .set + F7 (section 5.7).

The R (Reset) button clears the applied global state (with a safeguard against an accidental click), without touching the history — analogous to Reset in OkurraButton.

5.7 Save / Load .set — the full setup of the entire EA

This is where OkurraGlobal differs functionally from OkurraButton and why it tends to be “the main export panel”.

Save — saving the full setup. Clicking Save in OkurraGlobal saves to a .set the complete configuration of the entire EA:

• the global section (all the settings from this panel’s 32 sections),
• plus the parameters of all five buttons (B1…B5).

This is a file ready to be loaded into the robot “as is” — everything is in it. After clicking Save a small save dialog opens with a name field — you name the file right there, in the dialog (the default Global_<timestamp>.set is suggested; confirm with “V”, cancel with “X”). The file lands in the OKU/sets/ directory; the name can also be changed later, in the Load dialog (chapter 7.2).

Comparison with OkurraButton. Save in OkurraButton saves only the buttons (B1…B5), without the global section. Save in OkurraGlobal saves everything (global + buttons). If you are designing a full setup and want one file for the EA — save from OkurraGlobal. A detailed comparison of both kinds of .set — chapter 2.4, and the full description of transferring configurations — chapter 7.

Load — loading a .set. Opens a browser of the .set files in OKU/sets/. You pick a file, the panel loads the global section from it (and — via cross-sync — passes OkurraButton its part). In the Load dialog you can also rename the saved files.

5.8 Global companion indicators

OkurraGlobal pulls in the global versions of the companion indicators — showing the global filters on the chart, i.e. the ones buttons plug into via the opt-in:

• auto-loading of the global SAR — overlays the OkurraGlobalSAR indicator (the global SAR dots).
• auto-loading of the global MMD — overlays OkurraGlobalMMD (the global MMD clouds).
• auto-loading of the global SR — overlays OkurraGlobalSR (the global SR zones).
• auto-loading of the global OKUR — overlays OkurraGlobalOscillator (the global OKUR Filter in a separate window).
• auto-removal of the indicators — removes these overlays when you take OkurraGlobal off the chart.

All five switches are active by default — after dropping OkurraGlobal onto the chart the full set of global overlays pulls itself in, and when the panel is removed it disappears along with it.

These indicators show the global context — regardless of which button is active in OkurraButton. Thanks to this, while designing the global filters, you immediately see on the chart where they fall and can tune them to fit the strategies that will plug into them. The full description of companion indicators (local and global) — chapter 6.

Zero state. Even though auto-loading is enabled by default, a given global overlay appears only when you enable “Show … On Chart” for it (after Apply). Without that, OkurraGlobal does not draw it at all — a fresh chart stays empty (chapter 6.6).

5.9 Cross-sync with OkurraButton

When both panels are on the same chart, a synchronization on .set loading works between them (the mechanism described in chapter 2.5):

• You load a .set in OkurraGlobal → OkurraGlobal loads the global section, and OkurraButton (if present) loads the B1…B5 parameters from the same file.
• You load a .set in OkurraButton → OkurraButton loads the buttons, and OkurraGlobal loads the global section.

One file load thus refreshes both panels — you do not have to load the same configuration twice. The synchronization is local to the chart and — worth repeating — does not touch the EA. For a change to reach the robot, you save the .set and load it in the EA via F7.

5.10 The typical design cycle for global settings

The working rhythm with OkurraGlobal is a twin of the OkurraButton cycle (chapter 4.12), only it concerns the frame within which the strategies operate:

1. Drop OkurraGlobal onto a design chart (preferably next to OkurraButton, without the EA). The global companion indicators will pull themselves in.
2. Choose a layout — vertical or horizontal (section 5.4) — depending on how you like to work.
3. Design the settings in the section families (section 5.5): first what you actually want to enable — e.g. the global filters, if the buttons are to use them, and the account guardians, if you want limits. The rest stays on sensible defaults.
4. Apply. Watch the Apply (N) counter — when it goes back to Apply, everything is committed. The global companion indicators will redraw under the new configuration.
5. Look at the chart. Do the global filters fall where you want them to gate the buttons’ signals? Fix and commit again.
6. When the whole thing is ready — click Save to save the full .set (global + all buttons). This is the file you will load into the EA (chapter 7).

You usually design in both panels in parallel: the buttons in OkurraButton, the frame in OkurraGlobal, and at the end you save everything with a single Save from OkurraGlobal. Patience and watching the companion indicators — here, as everywhere in design mode — are the main tool.

This concludes the pair of design panels. In the next chapter we look at the companion indicators — eight visualization tools that show on the chart what the filters and oscillators see: how to read them, when to use them, how they interplay with the panels and with the EA.