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Straddle trading EA

  • #441
  • Edited 8:13am Mar 13, 2013 7:07am | Edited 8:13am
Thanks Alan, great EA/bit of coding.

Demo the rest of this week then I'm live.

Update: USD Core Retail Sales, program seemed to work well, user could have been a bit more relaxed. Next time I won't set CTCBN but just use the PointsAway, try 8 pips, not sure yet which would have been best.

Q, if CTCBN is say 5 and I have (simple example) a 5 bar range high of 1.3000 and a low of 1.29000 is PointsAway added to this? (looks like it is),

so if points away was 40 my entries would be 1.2860 and 1.3060

So if I am going to use CTCBN then I should be setting points away to 0 and if I choose not to use CTCBN i.e set to 0 then I would set points away to say 8 or 10 or whatever I wanted it to be ?

Many thanks

PG
  • #442
  • Mar 13, 2013 9:52am Mar 13, 2013 9:52am
Quoting Alan111S
Clive

I have attached a simple EA named CloseOrDeleteAll. When you want to close drop it on any chart and say OK and it will close every order and pending order with that broker.

I don't want to add this to AmazingEA as it could interfere with other EAs etc. The adavantage of the suggestion I had before is you can control which trades are closed when. The CloseOrDeleteAll is a bit of a blunt instrument if you know what I mean.

Alan
Thanks Alan for advice, EA etc much appreciatted.

I understand this EA can also be used for a tight range breakout entry, is that right?? If so how do you go about setting it up? What time do you give it to stop modifying orders etc?

Cheers Clive
Feel the Fear and do it anyway!!!
  • #443
  • Mar 13, 2013 3:07pm Mar 13, 2013 3:07pm
I wonder, does anyone know of an indicator that will show on a chart historically where the news happened, like draw a red line for high impact, green for medium etc. I am convinced I had something like this once but I cannot recall where I saw it or the name of it.

PPI and unemployment claims tomorrow, will report back the demo but so far the EA is spot on.

Thanks
PG
  • #444
  • Mar 13, 2013 11:17pm Mar 13, 2013 11:17pm
Quoting pgtips
Thanks Alan, great EA/bit of coding.

Demo the rest of this week then I'm live.

Update: USD Core Retail Sales, program seemed to work well, user could have been a bit more relaxed. Next time I won't set CTCBN but just use the PointsAway, try 8 pips, not sure yet which would have been best.

Q, if CTCBN is say 5 and I have (simple example) a 5 bar range high of 1.3000 and a low of 1.29000 is PointsAway added to this? (looks like it is),

so if points away was 40 my entries would be 1.2860 and 1.3060

So if I am going to use CTCBN...
Hi PG

You've understood it perfectly. Except the example you gave is good on a 4-digit broker, you'd use 400 on a 5-digit broker. You can setup Pointsaway=0 and use CTCBN instead - there is a feature that if price and your pending order level are inside the brokers minimum distance then Pointsaway is increased automatically upto the minimum distance.

If price is extremely steady you can use CTCBN=0 and 5 pips for Pointsaway. If there is a lot of volatility I would use CTCBN=1 on a 1 minute chart plus at least 8 pips and maybe upto 12 or 15 depending. Most NFPs I have used CTCBN=1 and Pointsaway=80 on 5-digit brokers. On the last NFP I used CTCBN=0 and Pointsaway=80 and I had trades go live early, which is very bad.

Alan
  • #445
  • Mar 13, 2013 11:30pm Mar 13, 2013 11:30pm
Quoting clivepackham
Thanks Alan for advice, EA etc much appreciatted.

I understand this EA can also be used for a tight range breakout entry, is that right?? If so how do you go about setting it up? What time do you give it to stop modifying orders etc?

Cheers Clive
Hi Clive

To setup for Breakout do the following:-

Choose your timeframe (and pair obviously)
Count the candles for your time range. e.g. if you want highs and lows over 4 hours, use 1 hr charts and set CTCBN=4. Either set Pointsaway=0 or a small amount. You may find a little bit gets added to Pointsaway automatically for the minimum distance for Pending orders - some brokers specify 2 pips, for example.

When you want trades placed at the end of your time range, set that as the 'news time'. Set SecBPO to something small but not too small like 60.

If you want the Pending Orders to live for 2 hours for example, then set STWAN=7200.

You can also specify long or short or both by changing the Common EA settings where it says Long & Short Positions allowed or 'Only Long' or 'Only Short'.

I have been trying to be successful with trading the London open after Asian consolidation, but it's not going that great.


Alan
  • #446
  • Mar 14, 2013 5:12am Mar 14, 2013 5:12am
Quoting Alan111S
Hi Clive

To setup for Breakout do the following:-

Choose your timeframe (and pair obviously)
Count the candles for your time range. e.g. if you want highs and lows over 4 hours, use 1 hr charts and set CTCBN=4. Either set Pointsaway=0 or a small amount. You may find a little bit gets added to Pointsaway automatically for the minimum distance for Pending orders - some brokers specify 2 pips, for example.

When you want trades placed at the end of your time range, set that as the 'news time'. Set SecBPO to something small but not too small...
Hi Alan

Thanks again for your advice here but have a couple of queeries I would appreciate your advice on. By the way I have decided not to use as a breakout EA so everything I ask is about using it as a News Trading EA.

I'm a little bit confused as to how CTCBN works compared to pionts away??? I am only using pionts away as it makes sense to me to use an active figure from the live price, whereas CTCBN is old data (being 1 minute away) whats the advantage of using CTCBN over piontsaway??? For News Trading, I mean?

Also I have noticed that some trades kick in before the news release time, generally 1 minute earlier. I realise this is down to price moving too fast for the EA to adjust pending orders in time, so what do you suggest I should do to avoid this ? Should I increase piontsaway to say 10 to give it more room to move the orders?? Any ideas??

Lastly would like to capture as much as initial spike as possible, which is fine when I am sitting there as would use your closeall EA but if not there what method would you suggest to capture as much of the spike as possible??

Many thanks yet again for your help.

Great little EA too.
Feel the Fear and do it anyway!!!
  • #447
  • Mar 14, 2013 5:52am Mar 14, 2013 5:52am
Quoting Alan111S
On the last NFP I used CTCBN=0 and Pointsaway=80 and I had trades go live early, which is very bad.
yes I think with NFP 15 is still a shade tight. I gave this some thought last night and getting the seconds down until live entry (I think mine is set to 2 secs at the moment but 0.5 might be more appropriate if this is possible) is one way of getting the price volatility 'manageable' if thats the right word for it, but you cannot control broker spreads which vary per broker and for NFP can grow hugely.

I read thats how they protect themselves, the days of guaranteed fills and spreads etc crucified them, so they closed the loophole and introduced variable spreads.

8 pointsaway gives a max spread of 16 pips and a little volatility in price kerboom. When all is said and done this (NFP) may be the one trade I don't take or if I do it will be a one way trade based on other indicators.
  • #448
  • Mar 14, 2013 6:01am Mar 14, 2013 6:01am
Clive,

I can probably help with some of those Qs.

CTCBN count candles before news gives you a range. you can set to enter at the high and low of the range. Points away is points away from price, so if CBNews is 0 then it works on just points away from price. Have a look at my earlier post a couple of posts ago, I put some examples which were coreect as to how it works.

Also I have noticed that some trades kick in before the news release time, that's just the way it is unfortunately, could be a leak or someone driving it early.
Lastly would like to capture as much as initial spike as possible.... wouldn't we all :-)



cheers
PG
  • #449
  • Mar 14, 2013 6:40am Mar 14, 2013 6:40am
Quoting clivepackham
Hi Alan

Thanks again for your advice here but have a couple of queeries I would appreciate your advice on. By the way I have decided not to use as a breakout EA so everything I ask is about using it as a News Trading EA.

I'm a little bit confused as to how CTCBN works compared to pionts away??? I am only using pionts away as it makes sense to me to use an active figure from the live price, whereas CTCBN is old data (being 1 minute away) whats the advantage of using CTCBN over piontsaway??? For News Trading, I mean?

Also I have noticed...
Hi Clive

In order to answer this, I have to give a little history lesson. The EA used to use the most recent 1 minute candle all the time as it was hardcoded, until I changed it so that CTCBN=0 really meant just use the Pointsaway setting. I only changed this recently. Before it was rare to get trades going live early, but now it happens a lot more regularly. The reason I changed it is to allow tighter settings but I have found that if price is very stable which it often is before news, then the increase in the straddle was marginal and if there is a lot of volatility the CTCBN of at least 1 minute smooths out the bumps as it were. In the next release I will default it to 1 and suggest in the instructions that people use it as well as Pointsaway.

Another thing is that I often found that if trades are going to go live early it is often around the 60 seconds or 30 seconds before. The way you are trading with multiple pairs is going to cause the EA to work hard modifying all those pending orders. Remember you have 1 pipe to the broker and you are stuffing 2 trade updates per pair per second down it. So, on 9 pairs that is 18 modifications per second, with the result that the EA may be going a bit faster than the broker can cope with. I suggested in a PM that you send me some logfiles. I would be able to see if there is a problem from that. The CTCBN=1 also smoothes out the trade modifications so there is less of them.

Basically I use to use CTCBN=1 on 1 Minute and Pointsaway=50 all the time and never had trades go live early. For exceptional releases like NFP I would increase Pointsaway to 80, but that was it,

Regards closing trades I don't know the best answer. The best suggestion I could come up with is to create a TrailOffset so instead of trailing from 0, it trails from 30 pips. the advantage of this is that you could set it so that the initial spike doesn't activate a tight trailing stop too early but once it's gone 30 pips, you could have it trail 5 pips for example.
  • #450
  • Mar 14, 2013 6:44am Mar 14, 2013 6:44am
Quoting pgtips
yes I think with NFP 15 is still a shade tight. I gave this some thought last night and getting the seconds down until live entry (I think mine is set to 2 secs at the moment but 0.5 might be more appropriate if this is possible) is one way of getting the price volatility 'manageable' if thats the right word for it, but you cannot control broker spreads which vary per broker and for NFP can grow hugely.

I read thats how they protect themselves, the days of guaranteed fills and spreads etc crucified them, so they closed the loophole and introduced...
Hey pg, the EA adds on spreads automagically. They are not included in the Pointsaway calculation, so if you use 8 and the spread is 10 you'll have a gap of 8+8+10=26 pips

Alan
  • #451
  • Mar 14, 2013 6:53am Mar 14, 2013 6:53am
That's good to know, thank you for telling me.
  • #452
  • Mar 15, 2013 4:53am Mar 15, 2013 4:53am
Quoting Alan111S
Hi Clive


Another thing is that I often found that if trades are going to go live early it is often around the 60 seconds or 30 seconds before. The way you are trading with multiple pairs is going to cause the EA to work hard modifying all those pending orders. Remember you have 1 pipe to the broker and you are stuffing 2 trade updates per pair per second down it. So, on 9 pairs that is 18 modifications per second, with the result that the EA may be going a bit faster than the broker can cope with. I suggested in a PM that you send me some logfiles....
Hi Alan

Just got your PM could we hook up on skype?? Sent you my skype address by PM but just in case you miss it my skype address is:

clive.packham1

Call me any morning as at home till about midday most days of the week and if ok with you any week end you see me online is fine too.

Chat soon hopefully.
Feel the Fear and do it anyway!!!
  • #453
  • Mar 18, 2013 4:52am Mar 18, 2013 4:52am
How to install this EA ?
  • #454
  • Mar 21, 2013 10:42am Mar 21, 2013 10:42am
Hi,

had a hiccup with SL today , my own fault. I was just wondering if I have missed this or I need to be going about this in a different way.

Basically entry was set ok above / below range of prev candles, all ok there, but i ideally would have my SL at the same place, just below low/high of the candle range I specify.

SO SL for each entry being the opposite end (i.e the ether entry price which gets OCOd once one side is open.

Apart from that blip, I had my SL a bit too tight and spread widened and took out my entry, the EA is great.

PG
  • #455
  • Mar 21, 2013 10:32pm Mar 21, 2013 10:32pm
Quoting pgtips
Hi,

had a hiccup with SL today , my own fault. I was just wondering if I have missed this or I need to be going about this in a different way.

Basically entry was set ok above / below range of prev candles, all ok there, but i ideally would have my SL at the same place, just below low/high of the candle range I specify.

SO SL for each entry being the opposite end (i.e the ether entry price which gets OCOd once one side is open.

Apart from that blip, I had my SL a bit too tight and spread widened and took out my entry, the EA is great.

PG...
PG

I also had issues yesterday with NZD GDP and found my SL was too tight and my trades got taken out within a second or two. Unfortunately I also had one that was slipped to the top of the spike and ended up in negative territory. Not a good day

After some investigation, I discovered there is a bug in the SL reset code that I introduced in 1.2.3. I didn't pick this up during testing (yes, I actually test my code!) because it only occurs when spreads widen greatly or there is excessive slippage. I hope you didn't lose too much but I am working on improving it right now. I will discuss it in more detail in another post.

Alan
  • #456
  • Mar 21, 2013 11:07pm Mar 21, 2013 11:07pm
Hi Alan,
Given what happened for NZD GDP.. Is it possible to add the following:

1- Spread Limit
If spread is larger than this value, cancel orders, or minimize our lots by certain percentage (lot reduction %)
e.g if spread>= 5 then cancel or reduce lots by (lot reduction %)

2- Slippage control
If fill price will be larger than buy/sell stop values by this amount , cancel orders . don;t take trade.

3- if we use free auto clicker to click on certain button to cancel pending order if deviation is not hit, can we point the clicker to click this button that would cancel orders... this should be fast before order get filled ...

by the way, how u test the EA ? do u have a simulator for spikes ? on which we can experiment too , this will be very great... r u using forex tester ?

Thanks
  • #457
  • Mar 22, 2013 12:34am Mar 22, 2013 12:34am
Quoting mosalem2003
Hi Alan,
Given what happened for NZD GDP.. Is it possible to add the following:

1- Spread Limit
If spread is larger than this value, cancel orders, or minimize our lots by certain percentage (lot reduction %)
e.g if spread>= 5 then cancel or reduce lots by (lot reduction %)

2- Slippage control
If fill price will be larger than buy/sell stop values by this amount , cancel orders . don;t take trade.

3- if we use free auto clicker to click on certain button to cancel pending order if deviation is not hit, can we point the clicker to click...
Hey

I was thinking along similar lines..... I may want to put it to the wider user base. Might try and create a 'Poll' on FF if possible.

1) Spread Limiter is possible, although I think most news traders accept that spreads will grow.
2) Slippage Control is not possible - with Straddling, you are placing Pending Orders and it is not possible to set a Slippage amount. It is upto the Broker or his Liquidity Provider to decide where he fills you. In reality, people who spike trade with an autoclick, turn off slippage control or set it so high you'd be better off straddle trading. For example, most people that Autoclicked the NZD GDP got in at higher than 0.826. One of my brokers filled me at .82444, another at .8251
3) Free AutoClick - cancel orders if deviation not hit. You can do this already if you know how to setup an Autoclick; if you close the chart where the EA is loaded, it will immediately delete any pending orders for that symbol.

In answer to your question, I test by trial and error and I can't test spikes which is why I didn't spot the Stop Loss bug.

Alan
  • #458
  • Mar 22, 2013 1:17am Mar 22, 2013 1:17am
Thanks Alan, the poll will be great idea,,,
It would be interesting to add spread Limit and provide an option to enable or disable..
I believe that Straddle Pro has slippage control, but as u said , to get filled u wanna let this open...
the auto-click cancellation by clicking closing of chart would be a race between which is faster clicker or spike fill... but it would be a guard ..
It seems like u r connected with a wide base of news traders, can u point us about this forum or how to get together with this community...
I would suggest forex tester to simulate market historical data and apply the EA there.. may be would be a good test for the expert but it needs a license...

Thanks Alan .... my skype is mosalem2003
  • #459
  • Mar 22, 2013 1:39am Mar 22, 2013 1:39am
Quoting mosalem2003
Thanks Alan, the poll will be great idea,,,
It would be interesting to add spread Limit and provide an option to enable or disable..
I believe that Straddle Pro has slippage control, but as u said , to get filled u wanna let this open...
the auto-click cancellation by clicking closing of chart would be a race between which is faster clicker or spike fill... but it would be a guard ..
It seems like u r connected with a wide base of news traders, can u point us about this forum or how to get together with this community...
I would suggest forex...
I could make a Param for Max Spread. If it's 0 it's disabled. That way it is up to the user. Then if the spread goes over the MaxSpread value, the orders are deleted. If the spread narrows again or you change the parameter the orders could go back in .....

StraddlePro doesn't have slippage control. You can't have slippage control with any type of Straddle. You can with certain Direct Deal orders depending on your broker, but that will only work with a clicker.

I checked what happened on NZD GDP through http://wingstarfx.webs.com/apps/blog/

Forex Tester requires you to rewrite the EA for their API .....
  • #460
  • Mar 22, 2013 3:01am Mar 22, 2013 3:01am
Stop Loss Bugs

Firstly, I want to say that there has always been a bug in AmazingEA since the SL setting was introduced. The Stop Loss would always be SL-Pointsaway from current price on your Pending Orders, so by the time the Pending Orders go live @ Pointsaway, they are SL from the Market price. Sounds alright, doesn't it.

Once I started to play around with CTCBN, I realised that if CTCBN is 1 or more which I recommend most people to use, then your Stop Loss is not in the right place. Particularly, if price has been moving one way and then reverses on the news. Your Stop will be far from where you expected it to be.

So, in 1.2.3 I wrote some code that resets the stop as soon as the trade goes live. The idea was to code around slippage, but the whole thing is a lot more complicated than I thought. For a start, the trade goes through 3 stages. From SL to BE, then BE, then Trailing. So for the SL code, it's only relevant if you are below BE.

Then the other issue is what to do about slippage and spread etc. Asuming a buy trade, the bug problem was that I forgot that the Order price is an Ask and that Stops should be coded around the Bid price - SL. So when I was writing code to reset the SL I was using the Order price. If spreads were very wide and the SL value small, this bug could cause trades to be closed almost immediately. I am also putting in some code so if the Bid price retraces quickly below your SL then the EA will close the trade immediately.

So I am working on it and I should have a fix early next week.

Alan
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