Indicator Scanner
Last updated
Was this helpful?
Last updated
Was this helpful?
The Indicator Scanner is a special type of a backtest that allows the user to scan one variable within an indicator. All of the possible variables, such as length, Deviation Offset values, candlestick type (default or heiken ashi), and reversed trade signals may be scanned against a user-determined time frame. The indicator scanner will then run through all of the possible values for each variable and present the user with a list of the top combinations. These results are also associated with a performance score. The performance score does not represent profit, but it represents the total number of trades relative to the number of early/late trades. The indicator scanner is a tool that traders can use to fine tune their strategies for specific market conditions.
Before using the indicator scanner, there are a few things you need to do first. In order for it to work, you need to make a Trade Bot with the Indicator you want to run in the indicator scanner, and you need historical price data. So the first thing you want to do is to make a Trade Bot on the exchange/currency pair you want to scan, set up the trade settings correctly (you can do say a fixed amount of 0.05 BTC) and save it. You will then select the Indicator you want to run through the indicator scanner and choose a higher time interval (of like 4 hours) so that we force the bot to grab a lot of price data. Click "Update" and run an indicator backtest. Once the backtest is finished you will have all the data you need. For this, I chose Stochastic for a time period of 15 minutes (but I ran a 4 hour backtest beforehand to ensure the price data is loaded).
Click on "Indicator Scanner" from the left panel menu. Now we need to decide which aspect of the Indicator we want to scan for. With Stochastic, we have Length, Buy Level, and Sell Level. Here, I chose to scan the length, which will scan between 5 and 40. You can set these variables to whatever you want, but the default values are a good range to test.
Next, determine the market time interval. I left it at 15 minutes. Now choose the Start Date. I chose a period of 2 weeks.
You do not want to run this for a period of longer than 1 month, as your results will be negligible. A good time period is a few days to a few weeks. You may also want to look at the market and test your indicators against that specific market. This is especially good for helping you figure out good settings for your Indicators with those specific market conditions.
Once you have started the indicator scanner, it will run for a minute or two. Be sure to let it finish. Once the results come up you can look through them to find some interesting results. You generally want to filter by highest performance and the number of "ideal trades" on both the buy and sell side. Be sure to check the Legend below on how to comprehend the results.
Below is a legend of what each variable of the indicator scanner means. You can also filter the results by clicking on each icon after your results are generated.
Deviation Offset Value for a delay.
Candlestick Type (Default or Heiken Ashi)
Reversed Trade Signals (True = Enabled, False = Disabled)
Indicator Perimeter that you set (In the example, this is the Length value).
Total Number of Buy Signals (over the time period of the scan)
Number of Early Buy Signals
Number of Late Buy Signals
Number of Ideal Buy Signals
Total Number of Sell Signals (over the time period of the scan)
Number of Early Sell Signals
Number of Late Sell Signals
Number of Ideal Sell Signals
Total Number of Trades (over the time period of the scan)
Performance is a value that is relative to the total number of trades during the scan compared to the number of early/late trades. The higher the performance value, the better these settings did over the time period selected in the indicator scan.
Save Settings (This will save the settings within the that you made for the indicator scan).
