ATM Wiki

Scheduled process run from the Command Centre. Some run at recurring intervals of your choosing, such as every minute, every 5 minutes, every 30 seconds, every 24 hours, or whatever. Others are "streaming" in that it's more like flicking a light switch on or off.

These scheduled processes do various things. Some download price bars from a broker, some create price bars, one kicks off automated trading, another alerting, another downloads events from the Forex Factory calendar and converts them to holidays. And so on.
 

Scheduled processes for downloading price bars

There are streaming downloads, recurring downloads, special recurring downloads, backfills, and historical prices.

Streaming downloads lets ATM receive prices from the broker as soon as the broker sends them. The brokers are always broadcasting the new prices, and by turning on the streaming process what you're telling ATM to do is log in to that broker and start saving the prices it receives. Mostly brokers offer tick prices in this way, and then you would need to also run the recurring process for that broker that creates price bars.

Recurring downloads lets you grab a few bars at regular intervals. Special recurring downloads target only those price bars that are needed for trading systems that are auto-trading right then at that time (and active alerts).

Backfill refers to trying to get price bars you might have missed, had your computer been turned off, disconnected from the internet, or crashed.

Historical prices are those going back potentially many years.

Not all brokers offer all options. But yet there are all of these scheduled processes for all the brokers. The ones that don't actually work have an explanatory note, telling you what to use instead. If having those that don't work still appear in the list is a bit strange, you can filter the list to only those that can be run.
 

ATM can be started from the command-line (DOS prompt). All arguments below are optional, except that specifying /scriptargs= without /script= will have no effect. The ordering of the arguments is not important.

Remember that spaces are used to delimit command-line arguments, so if an argument has a space in it then you need to use double-quotes. In fact it's safest just to always use double-quotes.
 

/file=

When you start ATM normally, it either tries to automatically open the last file you had open, or shows the New File Wizard. If you do not use /file= then ATM reverts to that default behaviour. If you do use the argument then ATM opens the settings file you specify instead.

C:\>"C:\InstallDir\tsatm.exe" /file="C:\User\Bob\Settings File 1.tsatm"

 
/title=

Prefixes your text to the ATM title (which is normally "Thinking Stuff's ATM vX.Y.Z").

C:\>"C:\InstallDir\tsatm.exe" /title="My ATM 1"

Using the arguments above the title becomes:

My ATM 1 - Thinking Stuff's ATM vX.Y.Z

 
/script=

Runs a script / executable / batch file of your choosing after ATM has finished opening a settings file.

C:\>"C:\InstallDir\tsatm.exe" /script="C:\SomeDir\SomeProgram.exe"

 
/scriptargs=

Passes the arguments to the script specified by /script=. But there are some hoops to go through to get the right arguments passed to your script. DOS first parses what you type at the command-line, and then opens ATM with the command-line arguments you give it, and then ATM parses those arguments and forwards anything in /scriptargs= to the script. Here's an example:

C:\>"C:\InstallDir\tsatm.exe" /script="C:\SomeDir\SomeProgram.exe" /scriptargs="arg1 arg2 arg3"

That passes these 3 arguments to SomeProgram.exe:

1. arg1
2. arg2
3. arg3

It's especially important to wrap those script arguments in double-quotes, otherwise only the first one will be treated as an argument to be passed to the script (the other two being considered arguments being passed to ATM due to the spaces).
 

Scriptargs that contain spaces

For example, you might want to pass a filename that has spaces through as an argument to the script. Now it starts to get a little tricky. This is the wrong way:

C:\>"C:\InstallDir\tsatm.exe" /script="C:\SomeDir\SomeProgram.exe" /scriptargs="arg1 with spaces arg2 arg3"

That passes 5 arguments to SomeProgram.exe:

1. arg1
2. with
3. spaces
4. arg2
5. arg3

So you might try to wrap "arg1 with spaces" with double-quotes. Like this:

C:\>"C:\InstallDir\tsatm.exe" /script="C:\SomeDir\SomeProgram.exe" /scriptargs=""arg1 with spaces" arg2 arg3"

But that wouldn't work either. Those first two double-quotes in /scriptargs="" would cancel each other out, and much like having no double-quotes at all, only arg1 would make it to SomeProgram.exe.

In this case what you need to do is, while remembering to wrap the entire thing in double-quotes, put a backslash before every double-quote in-between those surrounding double-quotes:

C:\>"C:\InstallDir\tsatm.exe" /script="C:\SomeDir\SomeProgram.exe" /scriptargs="\"arg1 with spaces\" arg2 arg3"

Now 3 arguments will be passed to SomeProgram.exe:

1. arg1 with spaces
2. arg2
3. arg3

All good. Notice those double-quotes don't make it into SomeProgram.exe per se - they are just used to indicate that the first 3 words are all part of the first argument. More than likely "arg1 with spaces" would actually be a filename with spaces, so that's how you'd do it.
 

Scriptargs that contain double-quotes

First I have to ask, ok, why? But it's possible. And ugly. Luckily this should be a very rare case.

C:\>"C:\InstallDir\tsatm.exe" /script="C:\SomeDir\SomeProgram.exe" /scriptargs="\"arg1 \\"\"with\\"\" spaces\" arg2 arg3"

That's right - you need to type \\"\" for each double-quote that you want to make it into SomeProgram.exe. Here are the arguments that will be passed now:

1. arg1 "with" spaces
2. arg2
3. arg3

%title% and %file%

These two placeholders (or tokens, or whatever) will be converted by ATM into the application title and the settings file full path, respectively, and then passed on to the script. The values used are simply whatever file was opened regardless of method, and whatever application title is visible regardless of it being customised or not:

C:\>"C:\InstallDir\tsatm.exe" /script="C:\SomeDir\SomeProgram.exe" /scriptargs="%file% %title%"

Now the 2 arguments are:

1. C:\User\Bob\Settings File 1.tsatm
2. Thinking Stuff's ATM vX.Y.Z

(Assuming of course that "C:\User\Bob\Settings File 1.tsatm" is the file opened and you didn't use a custom title).

These placeholders can only be used in the /scriptargs= argument. ATM will put double-quotes around them individually, so you don't need to. But you still need to wrap the entire /scriptargs= setting with double-quotes as per the example above.
 

Entering this information in the Options window

/file= aside, all of these settings are also available in the Options window in ATM. Two points to note about that:

1. If you run ATM from the command line, the arguments above will override the settings in the Options window.
2. Entering the values in the Options window is much easier with respect to spaces and double-quotes (because we no longer need to worry about the DOS level of parsing). You don't need to wrap the entire thing in double-quotes. But you do still need double-quotes for arguments with spaces. Forget about the backslashes though:
   

   In DOS prompt: /scriptargs="\"arg1 with spaces\" arg2 arg3"
   Field on Options window: "arg1 with spaces" arg2 arg3

   And to enter an argument which contains a double-quote, now you use the backslash:

   In DOS prompt: /scriptargs="\"arg1 \\"\"with\\"\" spaces\" arg2 arg3"
   Field on Options window: "arg1 \"with\" spaces" arg2 arg3

%title% and %file% can also be used in the arguments field of the Options window.
 

Testing

We provide a simple exe file which can use to test your argument settings. Located in the ATM installation directory is a sub-directory called "testargs". In there you will find a file called TestArgs.exe. All that file does is show a message telling you the arguments you passed to it.

Set the script to that TestArgs.exe file, and play around with your argument settings until you get it right. Then change the script to be the actual script you want to use.

TestArgs.exe was written using AutoHotKey (AHK). TestArgs.ahk, also in the testargs sub-directory, is the AHK code. It's mostly a direct copy-paste from an example in the AHK help file.
 

Why would you want you want to do any of that?

See automating ATM.
 

This tutorial demonstrates how to create a custom indicator, which is then charted.

It assumes:

1. You started ATM and opened a settings file.
2. That settings file already has some price bars in it.
3. ATM is sitting there ready to go.

This tutorial does these things:

1. Charts some price bars.
2. Adds an indicator to the chart - the LOW minus 0.3%
3. Creates a custom indicator implementing the Chandelier Stop.
4. Adds the Chandelier Stop indicator to the chart.

It's probably better NOT TO WATCH this video tutorial if you are new to ATM, and especially if you're not good with computers. Custom indicators are the hardest things to understand, and you are totally going to get the wrong impression about this software. ATM comes with a whole number of pre-made custom indicators, so most likely you will not need to create one of your own.

On the other hand, if you can understand this then the rest of the software will be a cinch.

Click here to watch the video, and use the browser's back button to come back. Or click here to open in a new window.
 

This tutorial starts from a brand new settings file, loads a text file of historical tick prices, creates price bars from those ticks, and charts the price bars. The file in question was obtained from Gain Capital, but the theory is the same for text files from any source.

Note, however, that the file we used in this particular case was an older one. Gain Capital's newer files are slightly different. See the settings to use on the File Loader window.

This tutorial assumes:

1. You started ATM, created a new settings file, opened it, and ATM is sitting there ready to go.
2. You downloaded some text files containing historical prices.

This tutorial does these things:

1. Loads the historical tick prices from the files.
2. Creates 10-Minute bars from the ticks.
3. Creates Hourly bars from the 10-Minute.
4. Charts the 10-Minute bars.

A very similar process is described (in words) in this post.

Click here to watch the video, and use the browser's back button to come back. Or click here to open in a new window.
 

See also:

• Video: Backtesting

This tutorial starts from a brand new settings file and goes through to downloading historical prices from FXCM.

It assumes:

1. You installed the FXCM bits when you installed ATM.
2. You started ATM, created a new settings file, opened it, and ATM is sitting there ready to go.
3. You used this information to go and open an FXCM demo account, and also you logged in to that account using the FXCM trading platform and got your account number.

This tutorial does these things:

1. Enters the FXCM demo user and account details.
2. Creates the Data Manager entry for EUR/USD, Daily, FXCM.
3. Starts the download.

We, as creators of the software, know the pre-requisites and create them first. However, a normal person just knows that they want to download prices, so they might try that first without entering any of the pre-requisite information. There's a sister video tutorial doing it that way as well.

Ok, so... let's download some EUR/USD Daily bars...

Click here to watch the video, and use the browser's back button to come back. Or click here to open in a new window.
 

See also:

• Video: Backtesting

Wiggle room is the technical term *ahem* for the distance between the current price and the stop loss price.

Even in strong uptrends, the price will often fall a bit before continuing up. That's known as a pullback, and pullbacks are immediately obvious after the price has continued its upward journey. In real-time though, while the price is currently going down, is that a pullback, or reversal? There is no way to know.

This has implications on where we put the stop loss. We need to both:

• Keep the stop loss far enough away so that these little pullbacks have enough room to move before the price resumes its upward journey; and
• Keep the stop loss close enough so that we keep as much as the profit as possible if this is an actual reversal and a downtrend begins.

How much wiggle room you give the price is a balance between these two objectives. And that's how charting the backtest results can improve your results - the amount of wiggle room is clearly visible and you will be able to tell if you are placing the stop loss too close or too far away.
 

Bollinger %b is a single line whose value is determined by where the closing price is in relation to the upper and lower Bollinger lines.

When the close is exactly at the lower line, %b equals 0. Below the lower line, %b is negative. When the close is exactly at the upper line, %b equals 1. When it's exactly in the middle, %b equals 0.5. And so on.

It's very rare for %b to be lower than -0.3, or higher than 1.3.

The way Bollinger Bands are constructed, the price moves from the lower band, to the upper band, and back to the lower band. The problem is that the Bands aren't static. Just because the price moved from the lower band to the upper band, it doesn't necessarily mean that the price is rising - the upper band might have come down to meet the falling (or stagnating) price.

Anyway, here's a system which attempts to use this knowledge. In very rough testing, we used 5-Minute bars, 720 for the Bollinger period, which is kind of big, and the normal 2 standard deviations above and below.
 

 
We know that the price oscillates between one of the outer Bollinger lines and the other. So when the price falls down near the bottom one, we set a trap waiting for it to start heading back to the top one. When the price does start rising again, the limit order is taken up, and a trailing stop loss is kept at 0.3% below the close.

That's setting the stop loss pretty close to the price, but we were using 5-Minute bars which don't need as much wiggle room as Daily bars would.

Similarly, when the price rises up near the upper Bollinger line, we set our trap this time waiting for it to come down.
 

How often have you heard "the trend is your friend"? Or "always trade with the trend"? Common wisdom has it that knowing the direction of the trend is very important. Moreover, not all indicators work in all trading conditions. Some work very well in trending markets, others work well in ranging markets. The ones that work well in trending markets normally die painful deaths in ranging markets, and vice versa.

So you've got 3 kinds of markets - up, down, sideways. Up and down = trending, sideways = ranging. More volatility = trending, less volatility = ranging. These market conditions are often easy to spot in hindsight with the naked eye. But for automated trading you need objective, measurable, and repeatable rules which work in real-time.

This post hopes to list such indicators. If you know of others or other ways to use them, you are free to edit this wiki entry and add them to the list for the benefit of your fellow traders. Or send us an email and we'll add it for you.

Just as no indicator can give 100% correct trading signals, so to do these indicators sometimes give false readings. You should experiment and backtest to find the best one for you.
 

Directional Movement Index

+DI, -DI, and ADX are part of the Directional Movement Index group of indicators.

ADX measures the strength of a trend. A larger value means the market is trending; a lower value means ranging. Where is the cut-over point? This depends on the symbol and time-frame you are trading with, so backtest to find the value that works for you. 25 seems like a good starting point. I have also read that below 20 means ranging, above 30 means trending, and values between 20 and 30 are either or none.

+DI and -DI determine the direction. From Investopedia:

When the +DI is above the -DI, prices are moving up, and ADX measures the strength of the uptrend. When the -DI is above the +DI, prices are moving down, and ADX measures the strength of the downtrend.
 

One Moving Average

If a moving average of decent length (say 20+) is rising, you can say there is an uptrend. If falling then there's a downtrend.

Using one moving average is better than nothing, but if using one is good, surely using two is better.
 

Two Moving Averages

Use a combination of faster and slower moving averages, say SMA(10) and SMA(50). If the faster average is above the slower, that's an uptrend. If the faster is below the slower, that's a downtrend.

The distance between the 2 averages gives an indication of the strength of the trend. The MACD indicator measures this, so a rising MACD means a stronger trend.
 

Three Moving Averages

If two moving average is better, maybe using 3 will be fantastic. For example, moving averages of period 5, 10, and 20:

1. When SMA(20) is above SMA(10) is above SMA(5) - that's a downtrend.
2. When SMA(20) is below SMA(10) is below SMA(5) - that's an uptrend.
3. When they are not in that nice order, the market is ranging.
    

Two Bollinger Bands

Use a combination of a faster and slower Bollinger Bands. While the faster Bollinger Bands are contained within the slower, it's a ranging market. Otherwise it's trending.

Normally in this trend it's just one of the faster Bollinger lines outside the slower. If the faster upper Bollinger line is above the slower, that's an uptrend. If the faster lower Bollinger line is below the slower, that's a downtrend. If it's both, then that price is about to move big time! (Or the price has already done it's big jump and now it's too late. Cest la vie).
 

Bollinger Bandwidth

A Bollinger Band's two outer lines flare outwards when prices are volatile, and narrow when they aren't. The Bollinger Bandwidth indicator actually measures that distance, so a rising Bandwidth means higher volatility, and that means a higher possibility that the market is trending. Or you could say any Bandwidth value over X is fine. Or perhaps when the Bandwidth indicator is above its moving average.
 

High-Low Range

The High-Low range gives a value indicating how long a candle is. You can use the average or maximum high-low range - if rising then the bars are getting progressively longer. Longer bars means more volatility.
 

True Range

The High-Low range checks just 1 bar, whereas the True Range checks a bar and the bar next to it. Again, the average or maximum true range can be used as a measure of volatility.
 

Ichimoku Kinko Hyo

We added this indicator for a customer but don't really know how to use it yet. Apparently it's good for this kind of thing. Here is Investopedia's explanation. And here is another random link Google gave us.
 

This system was found on the Chairman Maoxian website, more particularly at this page.

He credits a book called "Street Smarts", written by Linda Bradford Raschke.

Here's how it is described:

The basic idea for this set-up is that when the Average Directional Index (ADX) is high and price drops back to the 20 period exponential moving average (EMA), you should look to buy and target the previous swing high as your exit.

Obviously this technique can be applied to the short side as well: High ADX, price pulls back to the 20 EMA from below, get short and target the prior swing low.

A bit of tinkering is required to complete this system (in terms of what I think of as a "complete" system). For example, that paragraph uses the words "...you should look to buy..." But when creating purely objective trading systems, a specific value of where to enter needs to be written out.

Here's what I came up with:
 

 
Actual entry method and stop loss placement methods are not given on the Maoxian webpage. So I chose arbitrary values, as this is just a demonstration anyway. For longs, I put the stop loss 50 pips below the low, and the entry price is 10 pips above the high.

Why that entry point? Because this trading technique is to (I guess) find a good buying opportunity in an established uptrend. So to confirm the uptrend, I make sure that the EMA(20) is rising. And to make sure it's just a minor pullback and not a complete reversal, I put the entry price above the high. So the price has to push higher after initially falling back and triggering our entry rules.

The last thing to note about this system is the placement of the take profit. For longs, the take profit wants to be at the current bar swing high. So I just make sure that this take profit is actually going to be placed above the entry point of high + 10 pips. If not then there's no reason to trade.