RULE-BASED STRATEGIES WITHOUT PROGRAMMING.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

• The trading strategy wizard
• Defining the long entry
• Defining the exit condition
• Customize your code at any time

 

THE TRADING STRATEGY WIZARD.

The trading strategy wizard facilitates the development of strategies with selection lists and other form elements. Different conditions based on indicators, price patterns or time and date criteria can be selected for generating trading signals without having to write a single line of code. This is done by the wizard for you. How little time is required to transfer your own trade idea in code is shown in the following example. Suppose you want to create a trend-following strategy, which buys after short-term corrections in a long-term uptrend. The rules we decide are as follows:

• Enter Long, if the closing price is above the SMA 200 while the price closes under its 20-day low (correction)
• Exit Long, if the closing price is below the 50-day low

 

DEFINING THE LONG ENTRY.

First, click on the toolbar button “strategies” and then select the third choice option in order to use the wizard. The window above will appear which initially contains no trade rules.

Click “NEW” and start entering the order type for the long entry.

In our example, the strategy will enter long at the next bar, therefore you select “next bar at market”. If only the long side has to be traded, uncheck the box next to “generate reversed trade condition” (bottom left).

The following screen will appear next. Click on “New” to select the first condition.

You will see a range of different categories defining the trade rules. To define the condition for the uptrend, in the field “Standard Price Series” select the penultimate condition “price is in an uptrend” and confirm the entry with “OK”.

The same procedure will be repeated for the second condition, which generates the actual entry for an X-day low. Again, please click on “New” and select the condition template “Price <= lowest price within the look-back period” and confirm your entry. The trading strategy wizard automatically creates the code in the background.

Of course you can modify the period settings at this point already by clicking on the “Edit” button.

BY THE WAY: All parameters of the strategy such as the period of the SMA can be declared as inputs. So, after applying the strategy on a chart they can be modified directly through the properties window. They can also be checked for robustness using the optimizer.
Reading tip: Tradesignal How To 3.

The entry condition is now completed and only needs to be confirmed with a click on “Done”. The corresponding code to get started is now displayed in the wizard.

 

DEFINING THE EXIT CONDITION.

To complete the example strategy, only the exit condition must be set. This can be done by repeating the process just shown. Each additional condition can be implemented in this way without any programming skill. The simple example code is shown on the figure above.

After renaming the strategy you can save it on your Tradesignal workstation by clicking on “OK”.

 

CUSTOMIZE YOUR CODE AT ANY TIME.

The finished Equilla code is automatically displayed in your workspace after being saved and is ready for use (see figure on next page). Select your previously created strategy under “strategies” and add it to any chart; now you can see all entry and exit signals and the associated equity curve. Of course you can edit this code at any time; either as previously demonstrated using the wizard or directly in the Equilla Editor*. For this purpose, just click the right trading strategy symbol within the chart or in the strategy drop-down list. As you can see, using the built-in strategy wizard in Tradesignal for even more complex trading strategies is possible – without programming knowledge. Try the wizard today!

FIGURE 1: EDIT EQUILLA CODE.

 

CONCLUSION.

With Tradesignal, traders can develop individual trading strategies and to put their own trading on a solid base without any great programming skills. With predefined functions, they can transfer their own ideas into a script and then check them thoroughly and optimise them. Equilla provides many tools and modules for this that make the lives of strategy developers easier. For more on this, see the next part of our Equilla series.

For questions about Tradesignal we are always happy to help. If you are not yet a Tradesignal customer, we will gladly provide you with a trial version.

That’s it for today. Take care, take profit and auf Wiedersehen.