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Alert(), alertcondition() or strategy alerts?Variety of possibilities offered by PineScript, especially thanks to recent additions, created some confusion. Especially one question repeats quite often - which method to use to trigger alerts?
I'm posting this to clarify and give some syntax examples. I'll discuss these 3 methods in chronological order, meaning - in the order they were introduced to PineScript.
ALERTCONDITION() - it is a function call, which can be used only in study-type script. Since years ago, you could create 2 types of a script: strategy and study. First one enables creating a backtest of a strategy. Second was to develop scripts which didn't require backtesting and could trigger alerts. alertcondition() calls in strategy-type scripts were rejected by Pine compiler. On the other hand compiling study-type scripts rejected all strategy...() calls. That created difficulties, because once you had a nice and backtested strategy, you had to rip it off from all strategy...() function calls to convert your script to study-type so you could produce alerts. Maintenance of two versions of each script was necessary and it was painful.
"STRATEGY ALERTS" were introduced because of alertcondition() pains. To create strategy alert, you need to click "Add alert" button inside Strategy Tester (backtester) and only there. Alerts set-up this way are bound with the backtester - whenever backtester triggers an order, which is visible on the chart, alert is also fired. And you can customize alert message using some placeholders like {{strategy.order.contracts}} or {{ticker}}.
ALERT() was added last. This is an alerts-triggering function call, which can be run from strategy-type script. Finally it is doable! You can connect it to any event coded in PineScript and generate any alert message you want, thanks to concatenation of strings and wrapping variables into tostring() function.
Out of these three alertcondition() is obviously archaic and probably will be discontinued. There is a chance this makes strategy/study distinction not making sense anymore, so I wouldn't be surprised if "studies" are deprecated at some point.
But what are the differences between "Strategy alerts" and alert()? "Strategy alerts" seem easier to set-up with just a few clicks and probably easier to understand and verify, because they go in sync with the backtester and on-chart trade markers. It is especially important to understand how they work if you're building strategy based on pending orders (stop and limit) - events in your code might trigger placing pending order, but alert will be triggered only (and when) such order is executed.
But "Strategy Alerts" have some limitations - not every variable you'd like to include in alert message is available from PineScript. And maybe you don't need the alert fired when the trade hit a stop-loss or take-profit, because you have already forwarded info about closing conditions in entry alert to your broker/exchange.
Alert() was added to PineScript to fill all these gaps. Is allows concatenating any alert message you want, with any variable you want inside it and you can attach alert() function at any event in your PineScript code. For example - when placing orders, crossing variables, exiting trades, but not explicitly at pending orders execution.
The Verdict
"Strategy Alerts" might seem a better fit - easier to set-up and verify, flexible and they fire only when a trade really happens, not producing unnecessary mess when each pending order is placed. But these advantages are illusionary, because they don't give you the full-control which is needed when trading with real money. Especially when using pending orders. If an alert is fired when price actually hit a stop-order or limit-order level, and even if you are executing such alert within 1 second thanks to a tool like TradingConnector, you might already be late and you are making entry at a market price. Slippage will play a great role here. You need to send ordering alert when logical conditions are met - then it will be executed at the price you want. Even if you need to cancel all the pending orders which were not executed. Because of that I strongly recommend sticking to ALERT() when building your alerts system.
Below is an example strategy, showing syntax to manage placing the orders and cancelling them. Yes, this is another spin-off from my PulseWire Alerts to MT4 MT5 . As usual, please don't pay attention to backtest results, as this is educational script only.
P.S. For the last time - farewell alertcondition(). You served us well. Strategy
Moving Stop-Loss mechanism + alerts to MT4/MT5"How to code moving stop-loss mechanism", is one of the most often repeating questions in private messages I receive, so just to focus on this mechanism, I made a spin-off from my previous script: PulseWire-Alerts-to-MT4-MT5-dynamic-variables-NON-REPAINTING .
The logic here moves the stop-loss each time a trade is running and a new pivot high/low is detected. When such event occurs (UpdateLongStopLoss or UpdateShortStopLoss), stoploss_long or stoploss_short mutable variable is modified. And it needs to be coded inside strategy.exit() line as "stop=stoploss_long" or "stop=stoploss_short". Entries are pretty straightforward - on Stoch crosses.
Last lines of the script show how to wrap information about such updates and send send alerts to MetaTrader via TradingConnector for execution in Forex/indices/commodities/crypto markets via MetaTrader. Please note that "tradeid=" variable must be passed with each alert, to let MetaTrader know which trade to modify. SLMOD, TPMOD are recently added commands, along with BE (as in "move stop-loss to breakeven" - but that's another topic).
Please disregard strategy backtest results, as this script is for coding education purposes only. However, it seems with the stop-loss mechanism enabled, the results are even better, than in original version of the script :) Strategy
How to use Leverage and Margin in PineScriptEn route to being absolutely the best and most complete trading platform out there, PulseWire has just closed 2 gaps in their PineScript language.
It is now possible to create and backtest a strategy for trading with leverage.
Backtester now produces Margin Calls - so recognizes mid-trade drawdown and if it is too big for the broker to maintain your trade, some part of if will be instantly closed.
New additions were announced in official blogpost , but it lacked code examples, so I have decided to publish this script. Having said that - this is purely educational stuff.
█ LEVERAGE
Let's start with the Leverage. I will discuss this assuming we are always entering trades with some percentage of our equity balance (default_qty_type = strategy.percent_of_equity), not fixed order quantity.
If you want to trade with 1:1 leverage (so no leverage) and enter a trade with all money in your trading account, then first line of your strategy script must include this parameter:
default_qty_value = 100 // which stands for 100%
Now, if you want to trade with 30:1 leverage, you need to multipy the quantity by 30x, so you'd get 30 x 100 = 3000:
default_qty_value = 3000 // which stands for 3000%
And you can play around with this value as you wish, so if you want to enter each trade with 10% equity on 15:1 leverage you'd get default_qty_value = 150.
That's easy. Of course you can modify this quantity value not only in the script, but also afterwards in Script Settings popup, "Properties" tab.
█ MARGIN
Second newly released feature is Margin calculation together with Margin Calls. If the market goes against your trades and your trading account cannot maintain mid-trade drawdown - those trades will be closed in full or partly. Also, if your trading account cannot afford to open more trades (pyramiding those trades), Margin mechanism will prevent them from being entered.
I will not go into details about how Margin calculation works, it was all explainged in above mentioned blogpost and documentation .
All you need to do is to add two parameters to the opening line of your script:
margin_long = 1./30*50, margin_short = 1./30*50
Whereas "30" is a leverage scale as in 30:1, and "50" stands for 50% of Margin required by your broker. Personally the Required Margin number I've met most often is 50%, so I'm using value 50 here, but there are literally 1000+ brokers in this world and this is individual decision by each of them, so you'd better ask yourself.
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Please note, that if you ever encounter a strategy which triggers Margin Call at least once, then it is probably a very bad strategy. Margin Call is a last resort, last security measure - all the risks should be calculated by the strategy algorithm before it is ever hit. So if you see a Margin Call being triggred, then something is wrong with risk management of the strategy. Therefore - don't use it! Strategy
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Reversal with Bollinger Bands + RSI + ADX + ATR (Upgraded)Hi,
Welcome to my 4th script.
Someone asked me some questions about the Bollinger Band strategy I previously published. When I went back to my published script I couldn't help myself but simply try and make it better. Which I did.
Since I've published that script, I've gained much more knowledge about how Pinescript functions. As well as gaining more and more knowledge about how the markets are structered etc.
In this reversal script we use 4 indicators to determine good entry signals, we determine whether the market is ranging or trending and we still only want to take trades in the direction of the "trend".
Bollinger Bands are used for our entry signal. When price hits either side of the band, we wait for a reverse candlestick before we enter a position.
RSI is used to determine if we're in a trending market or in a ranging market. You can adjust the values in the inputs. You can determine the minimum RSI value and the maximum RSI value.
ADX is used the same way as RSI, you can adjust the value in the inputs. You can determine the minimum ADX value.
Last but not least we use two EMA's, a 200 EMA and 100 EMA. Both are adjustable through the inputs. I used two EMA's because I noticed when using this strategy that we'd enter a new position often after having a bad trade. Using two EMA's might clean up some signals, in my case with EUR/USD on a 15m timeframe, it didn't clean up enough signals.
All the default values are pretty decent but might require some finetuning on a certain instrument. Don't overfit the strategy though, that'll only give you bad signals in the future.
Then we are off to our exit signals.
Initially I wanted to incorporate my previous Bollinger Band exit signals as well, but it was too much of a hassle to make the script work as intended so I left it out. If you want to use those exit signals, just find my other script.
When we're in a position and price crosses the opposite band, we wait for a reverse candlestick before we exit the position.
Additionally we want our losses to be as small as possible, so we use RSI to signal us when the market is, or starts to, trend against us. This is where you use the minimum and maximum exit values. So when RSI crosses over or under that value, it'll exit the position.
Furthermore, we use the ATR indicator to set our stop loss, which is pretty basic stuff. You can adjust the ATR multiplier in the inputs. Disabling "Use Trailing Stop?" is really inadvisable unless you know this script inside out as your only exit signals will be opposite Bollinger Band Cross and RSI overbought / oversold areas. Strategy
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PulseWire Alerts to MT4 MT5 - Forex, indices, commoditiesHowdy Algo-Traders! This example script has been created for educational purposes - to present how to use and automatically execute PulseWire Alerts on real markets.
I'm posting this script today for a reason. PulseWire has just released a new feature of the PineScript language - ALERT() function. Why is it important? It is finally possible to set alerts inside PineScript strategy-type script, without the need to convert the script into study-type. You may say triggering alerts straight from strategies was possible in PineScript before (since June 2020), but it had its limitations. Starting today you can attach alert to any custom event you might want to include in your PineScript code.
With the new feature, it is easier not only to execute strategies, but to maintain codebase - having to update 2 versions of the code with each single modification was... ahem... inconvenient. Moreover, the need to convert strategy into study also meant it was required to rip the code from all strategy...() calls, which carried a lot of useful information, like entry price, position size, and more, definitely influencing results calculated by strategy backtest. So the strategy without these features very likely produced different results than with them. While it was possible to convert these features into study with some advanced "coding gymnastics", it was also quite difficult to test whether those gymnastics didn't introduce serious, bankrupting bugs.
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How does this new feature work? It is really simple. On your custom events in the code like "GoLong" or "GoShort", create a string variable containing all the values you need inside your alert and this string variable will be your alert's message. Then, invoke brand new alert() function and that's it (see lines 67 onwards in the script). Set it up in CreateAlert popup and enjoy. Alerts will trigger on candle close as freq= parameter specifies. Detailed specification of the new alert() function can be found in PulseWire's PineScript Reference (www.pulsewire.com), but there's nothing more than message= and freq= parameters. Nothing else is needed, it is very simple. Yet powerful :)
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Alert syntax in this script is prepared to work with TradingConnector. Strategy here is not too complex, but also not the most basic one: it includes full exits, partial exits, stop-losses and it also utilizes dynamic variables calculated by the code (such as stop-loss price). This is only an example use case, because you could handle variety of other functionalities as well: conditional entries, pending entries, pyramiding, hedging, moving stop-loss to break-even, delivering alerts to multiple brokers and more.
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This script is a spin-off from my previous work, posted over a year ago here: Some comments on strategy parameters have been discussed there, but let me copy-paste most important points:
* Commission is taken into consideration.
* Slippage is intentionally left at 0. Due to shorter than 1 second delivery time of TradingConnector, slippage is practically non-existing.
* This strategy is NON-REPAINTING and uses NO TRAILING-STOP or any other feature known to be causing problems.
* The strategy was backtested on EURUSD 6h timeframe, will perform differently on other markets and timeframes.
Despite the fact this strategy seems to be still profitable, it is not guaranteed it will continue to perform well in the future. Remember the no.1 rule of backtesting - no matter how profitable and good looking a script is, it only tells about the past. There is zero guarantee the same strategy will get similar results in the future.
Full specs of PulseWire alerts and how to set them up can be found here: www.pulsewire.com Strategy
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