Eroco,

The code you provided cannot be traded in real life!

Be very careful with the Ref() function, especially when you use +periods because this is looking into the future. Please reconsider the algorithm so that you are only looking back in time. The easiest way to do this is to draw a chart on a piece of paper with the "pattern" you are looking for and code it from the "perspective" of the last bar looking back into history (i.e. NOT from a history bar looking forwards).


Hope this helps.

wabbit [:D]

Eroco,



Let us pretend today is Wednesday. Your code is looking for the condition when Wednesday's CLOSE is greater than the expression in the ValueWhen() function. Let's also assume this expression is TRUE today, Wednesday. How can the expression in the ValueWhen() be evaluated as being TRUE today when it makes reference to the HHV(H,2) in two days time, that's Friday but today is only Wednesday?

The only way the expression can be evaluated on Wednesday is for Friday's information to be known, that is, on or after Friday, at which time the entry signal is placed on Wednesday's bar. If you have a broker that will allow you to buy stocks on Friday at Wednesday's prices, knowledgable of the price movement then please give their number to me! Your code will be giving you a signal today that you should have entered the trade two bars ago! Is this much use in real life?

You have to be very careful writing codes that use foresight or know the final result before it is possible for the final result to be known, or code that uses hindsight to add/remove indicators in the past. If you put your code into an exporation, you will notice that MS returns only N/A preventing any signals from being generated, and see on a chart there are no returns from the indicator on the last two bars of the chart; this is the effect of the forward referencing. MS will still show the signals generated before, but these cannot be traded in real life, the system tester thinks they can!

Rethink your algorithm from the perspective of Friday's bar, only looking backwards into the known history and I am sure you will find you have completely different results. Once you have your algorithm, run it in an exploration and see how many results it gives on the last bar. If the exploration rejects 100% there is probably something still wrong with the code.



Hope this helps.


wabbit [:D]



P.S. On a slightly different note; you should be careful about how MS counts bars. HHV(H,2) will compute the highest value on the most recent bar and the one before it, a total of two bars, whereas, Ref(H,-2) will return the value 2 bars displaced in history, that is not the most current bar, not the bar before the current bar, but the bar before that, so MS actually 'looks' at three bars. This can cause some confusion when trying to align, for example, HHV() and Ref() functions.

Wabbit,

I think I see your point now, but I was under the impression that my code was looking for the condition when today's CLOSE is greater than the HIGH of the FIRST BAR where the EXPRESSION is true.

Isn't that right?

Valuewhen() function reads all the bars loaded from right to left and the exploration does it from left to right loading one bar at a time.

Thanks for the help you are giving me a great hand to figure this out, please bear with me I am not always this stubborn... [:D]

Eroco

The post above partially explains why it is possible to turn an indicator "on and off" to limit the returns to a defined period, but this can only be done once i.e. once switched on, the indicator will continue to return values until the end of the chart or it is switched off and cannot be switched back on again.

If MS allowed the user to define multiple sets of first valid bar and last valid bar boundaries for each indicator, we could have indicators that returned values only when certain conditions are met and not return any values inbetween these times. For the mean time we cannot do this, cest la vie.



wabbit [:D]