Calling an Indicator in Strategy

[AgriTrdr]

Hi,

I've a question on how to call an indicator in a strategy. For example, if I wanted to call buy when Parabolic SAR was below the price in a buy trend and call sell when Parabolic SAR was above the price in a sell trend. What's the if statement for this?

Thanks!

[NinjaTrader_ChrisL]

Hello, thanks for writing in. The support team will not be able to write out specific code. But I will show you how to access and print out the data you can get from the Parabolic SAR indicator, then you can take this code and implement it into a trading strategy and test the output.

For examples on accessing indicator data for the Parabolic SAR first see the help guide examples:

https://ninjatrader.com/support/helpGuides/nt8/NT%20HelpGuide%20English.html?parabolic_sar.htm

double SARvalue = ParabolicSAR(0.02, 0.2, 0.02)[0];
Print("The current ParabolicSAR value is " + value.ToString());​

The part here: ParabolicSAR(0.02, 0.2, 0.02)[0] is referencing the latest value of the parabolic SAR. Taking this further, you can start to find your trading strategy by comparing this to the Close[0] value, which is the latest price of the security on the same bar:

Print("SARvalue " + SARvalue);
Print("Close[0] " + Close[0]);

Then go further by incorporating these two values into an IF statement, and print when this is true.

if(SARvalue > Close[0])
{
Print("The SAR is above the Close price " + Time[0]);
}

if(SARvalue > Close[0])
{
Print("The SAR is below the Close price " + Time[0]);
}

From this kind of testing is how you will start to get comfortable accessing and creating conditions for your custom strategies.

[AgriTrdr]

Thanks Chris for your reply.

So if I added the indicator in State.Dataloaded, then would an example be:

if (Close[0] > ParabolicSAR[0])
EnterLong;

[NinjaTrader_ChrisL]

Hi, thanks for the follow up. This code will need to go into the OnBarUpdate method. It will likely take much more code than just

if (Close[0] > ParabolicSAR[0])
EnterLong();

to get the strategy you are aiming to build, so this is why I suggest printing out every piece of data you are using in your script. I was able to provide some test code in my first reply as a courtesy, but I will unfortunately not be able to help develop an entire strategy.

[AgriTrdr]

Thanks Chris. The example that you provided will go into OnBarUpdate as well, correct?

[NinjaTrader_ChrisL]

That is correct.

[AgriTrdr]

Sorry one more question. If I wanted the indicator on the third data series. How would I do that?

[NinjaTrader_ChrisL]

Hi, you can pass in the BarsArray object like so:

double SARvalue = ParabolicSAR(BarsArray[2], 0.02, 0.2, 0.02)[0];

[AgriTrdr]

Thank you!