Excessive Alarms
Author: sdbens20
Creation Date: 1/23/2012 3:55 PM
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sdbens20

#1
WLP is Version 6.2.46.0, 64-bit Edition
Windows 7 Pro, 64-bit
Scale: 1 Minute
Data Range: 7 Days
Position Size: $100,000 (RP)
Portfolio contains 80 symbols
Strategy code created using Rules Wizard

I'm monitoring, in the Strategy Monitor, an 80 symbol portfolio using a strategy optimized for each symbol. Most of the day today, 60 of the 80 symbols were either long or short. Each open position would be closed if any of three conditions were met (hitting a profit target, trailing stop, or stop loss). Each minute, 180 alarms sound (or try to sound) telling me that new profit target, trailing stop, and stop loss values have been established (at least I think that's what I'm being alerted to). In Preferences/Sounds, I have only "Alert Triggered from Strategy Monitor" checked.

How can I stop receiving the three alerts of each open position every minute? What I need are alerts for a position being opened or closed. Code shown below.

Thank you,

Sherm

CODE:
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Cone

#2
There is no feature to create a sound for a position opening or closing. Alerts are trade signals, i.e., Stop, Limit, and Market orders. It's not going to help much, but by coding this manually, you could get combined the stop orders since you only need the most conservative trigger price.
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sdbens20

#3
Cone,

I hoped to be able to trade using this strategy on a minute by minute basis. Instead, I'm getting so much unneeded feedback (today, 180 alerts per minute) that I can't get to the basic goal of knowing when positions have actually been opened and closed. For example, it is not useful to know that a current long position will close at one of three stops/limits. Knowing that a long actually closed is what I need to know to trade.

Will you please consider adding this functionality, that is, alerting when a trade has occurred (whether by market order or hitting a limit or stop) and suppressing alerts being issued only because a new stop/limit price has been calculated?

Thanks,

Sherm
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Cone

#4
It's not for me to consider, but you can certainly call your Fidelity reps and request new features. It helps if multiple customers call in the same requests.

Fortunately, there's a way you can do this programatically. Turn off the Alert sounds and just add this in the Execute method, below the rest of your script. It will sound if a position was entered or exited on the last complete bar. It can't give you a real time alert, but with a 1-minute strategy, the most delay you'll have is about 59 seconds.

CODE:
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sdbens20

#5
Cone,

I have been unable to correctly place the code you have given me into my script. Would you please show my script with your addition included?

Thank you.

Sherm
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Cone

#6
Sorry about that.. just add this to the top and you'll probably have it licked.

CODE:
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Be sure to save the script, then you have to close and re-open the Strategy Monitor... but you may want to wait for tomorrow at this point.
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sdbens20

#7
Several issues:

1. Audible open trade alarms are occurring at different trading points than called for by the optimized trading strategy (as shown on the strategy's streaming chart). For example, the Strategy Monitor just alerted for a BUY on CHK at a blank price (no price shown in the Price column). CHK's streaming chart with optimized variables enabled shows an open Buy for 10 minutes earlier. No trade is shown within several minutes of the Strategy Monitor's alarm. "Use Preferred Strategy Parameters...." is checked in the "Strategy Activation Settings". It seems that maybe the Strategy Monitor is not recognizing the optimized parameters. My code is:

CODE:
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2. The Strategy Monitor shows all three alert values for all open positions. If 60 of the 81 symbols in the portfolio are in open positions, 180 alerts (Cover and Sell target values) are listed in the Strategy Monitor's "Alerts" window. Alerts signalling opening new Buys and Shorts are easy to find. New Cover and Sell alerts get buried in the 180 alerts that exist for the positions that are already open. How can the 180 alerts be not shown and only new Cover and Sell trades be shown?

Thanks for your help.

Sherm
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Cone

#8
The code makes a sound if a Position was opened or close on the bar that just completed - for 1-minute bars, that can be up to 59 seconds after the Alert occurred. It is not any more complicated than that, and it must work because the code is correct.

QUOTE:
Audible open trade alarms are occurring at different trading points than called for by the optimized trading strategy (as shown on the strategy's streaming chart). For example, the Strategy Monitor just alerted for a BUY on CHK at a blank price (no price shown in the Price column).
There's no Alert price because it's a BuyAtMarket. So, if the Alert bar was 1205, the market order will be filled a few seconds later during the 1206 bar. (Times in WLP are given at end of interval.) The sound occurs at the END of the bar the trade occurred on. Isn't that clear?

2. I don't know what you mean "getting buried". Take one symbol and give an example.
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sdbens20

#9
I just noticed that the "Symbols pending updates" counter at the bottom of the Strategy Monitor window counts down from 81, the number of symbols in my portfolio, to 36 and then resets to 81. Can this be causing the problem I mentioned in item #1 above? If so, is there a fix?

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sdbens20

#10
Just discovered that a setting was Year instead of Days. The strategy was monitoring a years worth of one minute data.
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Cone

#11
Until 6.3 is ready, I recommend that you break up large DataSets into DataSets of 10-symbols each, and activate each one as a separate item in the Strategy Monitor. The round trip polling delay for data is just too costly for 1 or 2-minute strategies.

6.3 (mid-Feb?) will greatly improve intraday updates in the Strategy Monitor, and breaking up DataSets will no longer be necessary.
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