Will NT7 allow for "future" bars plotting?

[astra]

flexible future bars ?

Excellent news Ray! Just to add my opinion and I am not sure what I propose here is feasible/desirable from your side.

I agree with the others that a handful (or perhaps two) of future bars will be sufficient for most forecasting techniques. However, some other techniques like geometry and pattern recognition will require more bars which are relevant to the time interval. For example, price path projection for the following day exists out there using overnight (but even realtime) data mining techniques which may require few hundred bars depending on the time interval.

As NT7 will have the option of maximum bars look back 256 as default and then an option of holding all stored values like now, then it may be possible to work around this feature. To the first option, something like minimum 250 lookback bars /maximum 6 lookforward bars allowance, and to the second option a percentage of the stored values to be added for future bars as a maximum, at the time of loading (to avoid constant calculations / expanding arrays). Around 2% should be enough IMO. So, if someone wishes to have up to maximum 200 future bars capability, will know to load 10000 bars and bear the performance implications of his adventure!

The idea here is that if there are performance tradeoffs to find a formula to pass those tradeoffs to the "experimenting" user who wishes to do so with neglible or no effects to mainstream users/ general usage of NT, but to not unccessarily rescrict the software with arbritary limits. Lets leave the limits to be defined by the box makers. Especially now that quant techniques are becoming more accessible to us and we still dont know what we will discover around the corner tomorrow... Just my opinion...

[Alfred]

Plots into the future...several examples...

In the attached screen shot below there are 3 simple techniques that demo plotting into the future ...these could be automated if you had the ability to plot into the future.

1) 2 small boxes at upper left demo a projection extension across pivot points...often accurate.
2) 3 tall boxes demo a length of swing technique...often accurate...
3) AB = CD...a J R Stevenson technique. Read about it here...

http://ptt.50webs.com/about.html

Or take a look at a video on this technique here...

http://www.ensignsoftware.com/support/video/pttlines/pttlines.html

These are just some of the really useful techniques that could use plotting into the future...

Thanks...Alfred

[astra]

Interesting site Alfred. The automation of these strategies is possible even now with NT 6.5. I think with future bars we will be able to do more interesting things easier as the example of post 6 below. Future projection of geometrical patterns involving straight lines is somehow easier to imagine than curvy cycles or irregular pattern projections.

The news are great and either with fixed or flexible bar limits I hope "future bars" to be included by the end of September.

[psa150ninja]

Future Bars would be good

Ok, just joined and fired up NinjaTrader, went through the examples for Ninja scripting and I decided to join this Forum to ask if Ninjascript had any future bar capability, since I have coded up a predictor but can only plot to the present day.

Found a thread on Future Bars and after reading through the thread found out "Future Bars" will not be supported on NT7 . Anyways, if my vote counts hopefully the Ninja developers will allow us some future bars.

[Alfred]

Plottng into the future study demo...

In post #17 below I outlined an AB = CD (J R Stevenson like) study and gave a link to a demo on the idea. Here is short video of another demo of a variation of that same idea...my feeling is that something like this in Ninja would be a valuable addition to the program...

Thanks...Alfred

http://www.screencast.com/t/oX6YMabl

[NinjaTrader_Ray]

Thanks Alfred.

[astra]

Ray, any updates now that NT7 beta is out?

[NinjaTrader_JoshP]

astra,

In NT7, you can put draw objects into the future of the bars.

[astra]

astra,

In NT7, you can put draw objects into the future of the bars.

Thanks Josh. Do you mean in NT7 it will be possible to apply negative values in a Dataseries (like ... IndicatorA[-2] ...for two bars ahead from CurrentBar) or just that the right hand side of the chart is freed for applying drawing tools after the CurrentBar? Or both?

[NinjaTrader_JoshP]

astra,

Only draw objects, so things like DrawDot(), DrawLine(), etc. You will be able to specify a DateTime to place the object at.

[Wessel]

Excellent,

Can I find any examples of this somewhere ? I'm currently beta testing NT7 and would like to test it right away!

Great that you implemented this.

In the manual of NT7 this is the call for example the DrawDot:
DrawDot(string tag, bool autoScale, int barsAgo, double y, Color color)
DrawDot(string tag, bool autoScale, DateTime time, double y, Color color)


Suppose it's December the 8th, and I am on a daily chart I should be able to plot a dot into the future say tomorro that for insance represents my stop loss level of tomorrow like this ?


DrawDot(string tag, bool autoScale, DateTime time, double y, Color color)
Where time is the date of tomorrow.


Would be really nice is we could use the intBarsAgo instead. that way we have not to deal with what time frame we're toying in just for instant say

barsAgo = -1 and this will plot the dot the next bar in the future.


Anyway, hope I get some additional input on how to use this.


Many thanks!




Wessel

[NinjaTrader_JoshP]

Wessel,

Thank you for the suggestion. Plotting into the future requires you to use a DateTime though as the time axis is not segmented out with "negative" indexes.

[aviat72]

I will add that being able to store future bars is almost a must have feature for many techniques.

Being able to draw using dateTime it is a start; however what we need is the ability to store and use these DataSeries natively. It would be a HUGE time-saver.

In order to not slow down the existing computation, these could be a special type so that the compiler knows that they will have negative indexing. To begin with a fixed look forward size will work for most applications. Internally, all the programmers need to do is overload the access operator [] for these special types to add a shift operation to calculate the new index, while using zero based storage internally. This will allow the use of indicator functions (i.e. SMA(FutureProjection), which will also store future values).

[NinjaTrader_JoshP]

aviat72,

Wouldn't necessarily work. X-axis does not require the next bar to be any specific distance. It could be a whole inch away or a few mm away from the current bar. It is only possible to draw to the future with known DateTime's as the x-axis can be segmented precisely by time only and not by bar index.

[Wessel]

Josh,

I'm still puzzled by this future bar plotting. Could you please give a very simple example with best practices or something like that? I'm not sure if I have to copy the array every time into a new array+1 future bar as to me that looks very intensive.
Please give us a simple example of a future bar that is created. Say just copy the last bar into the future so we would see two equal bars at the end of the chart.

Many thanks

aviat72,

Wouldn't necessarily work. X-axis does not require the next bar to be any specific distance. It could be a whole inch away or a few mm away from the current bar. It is only possible to draw to the future with known DateTime's as the x-axis can be segmented precisely by time only and not by bar index.