Tutorial: How to use an Indicator in a Condition or Strategy in the AgenaTrader (Advanced)

This tutorial will show you an advanced example for indicators, conditions, strategies and give you the ability to communicate between these scripts. This will lead you to more code transparency and reduces your programming time.

Download source code files

Why do we want this?

AgenaTrader provides you the ability to create indicators, conditions, alerts and strategies in c# and use them during trading. Of course, you can start creating an indicator and copy the code afterwards into a condition, a strategy or an alert. Programming by using “copy & paste” is easy but on the other hand there are many disadvantages like lack of testing reasons, no single point for bug fixing and low maintainability.

Indicator

In many cases we are starting with indicators because indicators are the easiest place to start on script development. You will get a quick indication if your trading idea is working and addionally you can screen your instruments of choice visually and verify if your trading idea will be profitable.

Result value

The “ResultValue” object will hold all result data from the “calculate” method. Based on this result data, the next steps will be determined. In a strategy we create long or short orders, in a condition we set the “Occured” object, and so on. In our example, we use our global “ResultValue” object, of course you can use your own class if you need more properties.

Method calculate

We want to encapsulate the main logic into one main method in the indicator. In our case we do this  by using the following public method in the indicator.

[pastacode lang=”java” manual=”public%20ResultValue_Example_Indicator_SMA_CrossOver_Advanced%20calculate(IDataSeries%20data%2C%20int%20fastsma%2C%20int%20slowsma%2C%20bool%20islongenabled%2C%20bool%20isshortenabled)%20%7B%0A%2F*%0A*%20Here%20we%20do%20all%20the%20smart%20work%20and%20in%20the%20end%20we%20return%20our%20result%20object.%0A*%20So%20the%20calling%20scripts%20knows%20what%20to%20do%20(e.g.%20a%20strategy%20will%20create%20an%20order%20in%20the%20market%2C%20the%20condition%20will%20create%20a%20signal%2C%20and%20so%20on).%0A*%2F%0A%7D” message=”” highlight=”” provider=”manual”/]

So it is possible that other scripts just call the “calculate” method of the indicator and get a decision of what to do. In our case the “calculate” method returns an object which holds all important information what has to be done. If we get the “OrderAction.Buy” as an “Entry” result, we need to start a long order in a strategy or we set the condition value to 1.

Condition

As we have finished our indicator, we can start working on our condition. Because we already have added our trading concept in the “calculate” method in the indicator, we just need a reference to our indicator and we are almost done.

Now we are ready to use the “calculate” method of the indicator in our OnBarUpdate() method of the condition:

In the code snippet above we see that the return value of the “calculate” method is our “ResultValue” from the beginning of this tutorial. So we just need to evaluate this object.

[pastacode lang=”java” manual=”%2F%2FEntry%0Aif%20(returnvalue.Entry.HasValue)%0A%7B%0A%20%20%20switch%20(returnvalue.Entry)%0A%20%20%20%20%7B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20case%20OrderAction.Buy%3A%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%2F%2FLong%20Signal%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20Occurred.Set(1)%3B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20Entry.Set(1)%3B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20break%3B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20case%20OrderAction.SellShort%3A%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%2F%2FShort%20Signal%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20Occurred.Set(-1)%3B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20Entry.Set(-1)%3B%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20break%3B%0A%20%20%20%20%7D%0A%7D%0Aelse%0A%7B%0A%20%20%20%2F%2FNo%20Signal%0A%20%20%20Occurred.Set(0)%3B%0A%20%20%20Entry.Set(0)%3B%0A%7D” message=”” highlight=”” provider=”manual”/]

Strategy

Of course we are following the same procedure as in our condition. We create a variable of the indicator class, we initalize this variable during the OnStartUp() method and we use the object in our OnBarUpdate() method. Please pay attention while backtesting with the parameter “Orders Handling Mode = Advanced”, in this case we need at least two bars!