4/02/2012

El Problemo






The demise of Automan?

Maybe.

Solfest waits for a blue bar and upon completion of that bar Solfest places an order one tick above/below that blue bar for entry.

Automan cannot do this. Automan can only be programmed for the blue bar, not the future bar, the bar after.

The best Automan can do is place the order at bar close of the blue bar. This creates a few problems, one as you see above is if the bar after blue does not go your way you are still in the trade.

In fact the trade noted above went so fast against Solfest that the EMA angle on the blue bar (it was there, trust me) came off enough that the blue disappeared.

The bottom line is Solfest would not have taken this trade and Automan did.

Upon review of past trades Solfest can see on the trades that worked going in at bar close on the blue bar gets Solfest in at a better price.

But the review Solfest doesn't have is how many trades the Automan bar close would have taken, with no break of the high or low, and lost a full stop.

So.....the Big Boy Solfest Trader thing to do is go back to manual and track the different results from hypothetical bar close entries and the one tick above/below entries.

The stupid Solfest really wants to be Automan thing to do would be to say close enough and let Automan run.

Solfest thinks Solfest will do the Big Boy Trader thing and put Automan in the closet for a while.

Solfest will now cry like a Big Boy Trader.

7 comments:

TimC said...

Perhaps it would be cheaper to hire a teenager to do what Automan cannot. Take the signals that Solfest desires. The pimply-faced youngster only gets paid (minimum wage) if he takes the correct entry signals. Thus, allowing Solfest to spend more time on landscaping and his golf game.

Solfest said...

I tried that, he drank all my liquor and stole my car.

Solfest said...

Yes I know what LW is thinking.

If Automan had had a winning bar close trade today Solfest would be singing his praises while running naked down the street mooing at the top of his lungs.

Solfest enjoys a good one trade recency bias just as much as the next guy.

Fortunately the trade was a loser and caused Solfest to actually think.

MBAGearhead said...

What program/software is Automan based in? It should be able to remember the blue bar's high or low to execute a stop entry order on a future bar, no?

Solfest said...

Sierra uses a XL spreadsheet for the stupid people coding.

So the conditions are in the cell that has the current bar or a cell for past bars, but no future bars.

As far as I know.

fm said...

in Ninja you can set your algo to caclulate wither on bar close or on every bar update. Since automan acted on a blue bar which eventually turned back to not-blue, it seems you are calculating on every tick. it would be simpler to only calculate on the close of a bar... I don't know what is possible in Sierra, but would it maybe be work to change your conditions so they apply to the bar 1 bar ago? It still doesn't help the problem of having to set the order at the high of the previous bar, if all you can choose is the close.... what I'm trying to say is that what you want be possible.

Solfest said...

Hi FM.

The bar did close blue and the order is sent at bar close of a blue bar.

The movement of a short EMA on the next bar will affect the previous bar.

This isn't the problem, it just happened in the example today.

That has happened in the past even with an entry on the break of the blue bar.

If the next one reverses hard after entry and the EMA conditions were barely met you can lose the colour of that previously blue bar.

I just note that it was blue and therefore a valid entry.

The problem is entering on bar close of a blue bar rather than entering on a break of that blue bar with the next bar.

That problem I don't know how to fix.

I like that parameter as the last condition to be met, the bar is blue so that's good, now let's have price break it in the right direction with my order sitting there waiting for it.

Actually now that I think about it it's the main reason I wanted auto trader. If things are going your way in a hurry I can't get the order in quick enough after the blue bar close and I have to just hit enter and get whatever fill I can get.