External indicators (eg. sentiment)

Author: VaFrie

Creation Date: 4/6/2013 10:46 AM

Wealth Lab » Trading Strategies » External indicators (eg. sentiment)

VaFrie

4/6/2013 10:46 AM

Hi guys,

first of all, although Im trading for about 5 years quite successfull (especially last 3 years) Im a newby in the field of building trading stretegies with concrete defined parameters. Nevertheless I am interested and think I can handle it in some time (just bought a book for C#) :)

i have a question regarding the use of indicators and the sources of indicators. All those predefined technical indicators of wealth lab refer somehow to the chart and the movements of the underlying. Is it possible to integrate some external data and build an indicator that refers to it?

For example there is the EUWAX Sentiment that shows a put/call-ratio (see https://www.boerse-stuttgart.de/rd/de/euwax-sentiment/?time=). It tells me how many private investors are long short at the moment.

Is there a way to include such data in my trading system? Or are there sentiment data tools and I just didnt see them?

Thx for helping!

Eugene

4/6/2013 12:06 PM

Hi Valentin and welcome to the forums,

It looks like the EUWAX Sentiment index (ISIN:DE000A1MAA56) is available from Yahoo! Finance as 14311192.SG. Unfortunately, the data seems to be crippled for me (stopped updating October 2012).

Nonetheless, if you can download the data and create a DataSet using any supported data provider like ASCII or Metastock, then the symbol can be utilized as a basis for almost any indicator. Did you notice that all indicators accept a Bars or a DataSeries as a parameter? Usually it's something like Bars (primary symbol) or Close (current symbol's closing prices) but by passing an external symbol or its DataSeries, they become based on that (external) symbol rather than the charted (primary) symbol.

For more on how to use this in Strategy code, see the WealthScript Programming Guide, DataSeries > Accessing Secondary Symbols.

Eugene

4/6/2013 12:18 PM

And here's some Saturday fun. This strategy downloads the EUWAX historical quotes from www.ariva.de on-the-fly, stores them in global memory to avoid repeated internet requests, parses the data, builds a Bars object, applies Bollinger Bands on the EUWAX index and trades using some random rules:

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[code]using System;
using System.Globalization;
using System.Net;
using System.IO;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.Drawing;
using WealthLab;
using WealthLab.Indicators;

namespace WealthLab.Strategies
{
	public class EuwaxDemo : WealthScript
	{
		protected override void Execute()
		{
			//ClearGlobals();
			Bars Euwax = new Bars( "Euwax", BarScale.Daily, 0 );
			IFormatProvider format = new CultureInfo("de-DE");
			string startDate = "1.1.2000";
			string endDate = DateTime.Today.Date.ToString("d.M.yyyy");
			
			string URI = 
				string.Format(
				@"http://www.ariva.de/quote/historic/historic.csv?secu=105921463&boerse_id=47&clean_split=1&clean_payout=0&clean_bezug=0&min_time={0}&max_time={1}&trenner=%3B&go=Download",
					startDate, endDate);

if ( GetGlobal("onDemand")  == null )
			{
				WebClient client = new WebClient();
				string text = client.DownloadString(URI);
				string[] lines = text.Split(new string[] { "\n" }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

for ( int i = lines.Length-1; i >= 1; i-- )					
				{
					try
					{
						string[] t = lines[i].Split(';');        
						DateTime d = DateTime.ParseExact( t[0], new string[] { "yyyy-MM-dd" }, format, DateTimeStyles.None );
						double o = Convert.ToDouble( t[1], format );
						double h = Convert.ToDouble( t[2], format );
						double l = Convert.ToDouble( t[3], format );
						double c = Convert.ToDouble( t[4], format );
						Euwax.Add( d,o,h,l,c,0 );
					}
					catch
					{
						//PrintDebug( lines[i] );
					}
				}
				SetGlobal( "onDemand", Euwax );
			}
            
			Euwax = Synchronize( (Bars)GetGlobal("onDemand") );
			ChartPane EuwaxPane = CreatePane( 30, true, true );
			PlotSeries( EuwaxPane, Euwax.Close, Color.Blue, WealthLab.LineStyle.Solid, 2 );
            
			DataSeries bbL = BBandLower.Series( Euwax.Close, 20, 2 ); bbL.Description = "Euwax Ratio: Lower BB";
			DataSeries bbU = BBandUpper.Series( Euwax.Close, 20, 2 ); bbU.Description = "Euwax Ratio: Upper BB";
			PlotSeriesDualFillBand( EuwaxPane, bbU, bbL, Color.Empty, Color.Empty, Color.Brown, WealthLab.LineStyle.Solid, 1 );

for(int bar = 50; bar < Bars.Count; bar++)
			{
				if (IsLastPositionActive)
				{
					Position p = LastPosition;
					if ( p.PositionType == PositionType.Long  )
						SellAtStop( bar+1, p, p.EntryPrice * 0.9, "Stop Loss" ); else
						CoverAtStop( bar+1, p, p.EntryPrice * 1.1, "Stop Loss" );
					ExitAtAutoTrailingStop( bar+1, p, 5, 25, "AutoStop" );
				}
				else
				{
					if( CrossUnder( bar, Euwax.Close, bbL ) )
						BuyAtMarket( bar+1 );
					if( CrossOver( bar, Euwax.Close, bbU ) )
						ShortAtMarket( bar+1 );
				}
			}
		}
	}
}[/code]

VaFrie

4/6/2013 1:54 PM

Wow, thank you very much for your answer.

I also see the problem with the crippled data. I think Euwax Sentiment exists for longer than one year and apparently it wasnt updated a long time. Already wrote them an email asked them if these data can be accessed somewhere.

And there is a wealtch script programming guide?? Well, I guess the book I orderes is for the bin :D