subhead,
can you please share your indicator combination with the public? i´m still trying to improve the outcome every day but i´m still not satisfied at all with the bot.
I like the PPO indicator and have tried using it several times, I've also tried using it with a stochastic indicator, but no matter what I do, it seems like it always buys in too late and sells too late. I've also tried different trade intervals with the update timer. Anywhere from 20 seconds up to 5 min, but still didn't have any luck. The longer intervals seem to make the buy late and sell late problem even worse.
Another problem I've seen with using just these indicators, is that the bot would sometimes make a unprofitable trade (usually just a few cents). I assume that when the bot sells, the price could fluctuate slightly, and the small difference causes the loss of a few cents.
Anyway, I decided to try out the "Price Change Indicator" (for some reason the indicator list shows it as a "Price Difference Indicator"). I set the "Sell at Price:" to about 3 times the exchange fee, just to make sure that I would always make a profit. I played around with the "Buy at Price:" and decided that it probably works best at a very low value. The "Buy at Price:" requires that the market price drop below the last Sell price, so a lower value here will require less of a drop in case the trend continues to go up after the sell.
By itself, this indicator will make a few profitable trades, but it is limited by the fact that it will often Sell too soon (it will sell even if the price continues to climb), and it will often stop trading because the price does not always drop back below the last Sell price.
So, once I was happy that my trades would always be profitable, I decided to add the ROC Indicator. The default values "Buy at -0.005" and "Sell at 0.005" are actually about right for most trading. I usually tweak them slightly if it looks like the indicator is not selling and buying often enough. I've used values from 0.0045 to 0.007 with good results.
The addition of the "ROC indicator" prevents the "Price Change Indicator" from immediately selling once it is satisfied, usually making trades more profitable. The other benefit is that it waits for the price to start dropping before it indicates a sell. This helps to ensure that the price is lower than the last Sell price which the other indicator wants before it will purchase.
So basically, the "Price Change Indicator" just makes sure that the trade is profitable, while the "ROI Indicator" Buys and Sells at the appropriate trend reversals.
The only problem I've seen so far is that the bot will sometimes get stuck in a sold position waiting for the price to drop below the last sell price. I typically keep an eye on it and change the text box with the last sell price considerably above the current price. This will cause the bot to begin trading again at the appropriate buy price.
Here are my settings for BTC-e trading LTC:
Update Timer 180 sec (3 minutes)
Trade Amount 20 ltc (or whatever you want, if BTC you will need to calculate a different Sell profit price for the "Price difference Indicator")
Last Sell Price Current price + $5.00 (this will allow the "Price Change Indicator" to start trading)
Drop Loss $20.00 (or whatever you want)
In the advance settings, make sure you check the "Disable minimum raise/drop safety". You can leave the other advanced settings at default. I believe that I set the "Drop Loss adjustment time out" to 3600 with a drop loss of 95%
The indicators are set up as follows:
Price Difference Indicator (Sell at profit price: 0.3, Buy at drop price -0.02) (buy and sell trade fees will be around 10 cents for LTC)
Rate of Change Indicator (Offset 0, Reference 10, Buy level > -0.005, Sell level < 0.005)
Please try this with a small amount at first just to make sure it works like you want. Also try it with the benchmark test.
Good luck.
Darrell
As far as improvements to the bot, it would be nice if the "Price Change Indicator" was named consistently in the lndicator list and it would also be great if the requirement for the price to drop below the last Sell price could be disabled.
The "Rate of Change Indicator" works okay, but it is confusing. I think that the negative and positive numbers are swapped in the settings displayed in the indicator list. The Indicator list shows that Buying is a negative number, while the dialog box for set-up shows it as a positive number.
first of all thanks for your detailed strategy. i will have a look at it later. the rate of change indicator is also confusing me.
after several days of bechmarking i came to quite solid strategy for me. I trade BtcUsd and use a 180 second interval with an macd 10/21 and an pricae change indicator. its not perfect but at least the bot trades. overall i trade less with the bot and more by myself. It would be so awesome if stephan could add the possibility to trade manual besides the automatic system.
