[justlurkin]

maybe someone can chime in and clarify how this statement works in tradestation:

theavg = average((( s_low + s_high) /2 ), len);

I would assume that average requires a series as input. So what happens when s_low + s_high) /2 is inserted instead? Is this truly equivalent to the following ninja statement:

Midpoints.Set((s_low + s_high)/2.0);
theavg = SMA(Midpoints, pLen)[0];

[thehaul]

If we were averaging the last swing hi/lo I think it would look like this.

[thehaul]

The real question is how you code it so it doesn't smooth with length is added. I will make a video of how the average works within multicharts to see if that sheds some light. We know there's some questionable code in the EL version it just happens to do some good things and some things that can't be answered. This is not a good place for an indicator. Trading should be built around solid mechanics and the user should understand exactly what's going on. I think this is my process now and thankfully Justlurkin is helping me out. There's lots of disciplines in this game. It's all about the one you decide works for you. I've started on this path and want to see it to the end and if the end is a cliff I'm ready to move to the next peak!

[thehaul]

Jan 20, 2009 was a good day even for the Ninja version. It's crazy to me the volume spike didn't happen till the move was over. Maybe it's not crazy? Expected? The cyan arrow is the overnight low, I would think breaking that would of caused more selling volume. I guess everyone believed the Obama rally hype. I know I did when I first turned on the TV.
It obvious there's plenty of trades on this chart. I look at it as the longer average is over the shorter so I just look for shorts. There's a few here. You just have to figure out what plan to follow. I like crosses of the shorter average and not rejections but on the longer I like rejections and not crosses. If that makes any sense.

[thehaul]

Even the NQ had a good setup at the open.

[justlurkin]

I think this makes more sense now. The previous code averaged all points between swing high/lows since it uses a dataseries. This means, that if there are 4 swing points across 100 bars, the midpoint series would be 100 bars wide and an average using, for example, a length of 4 would average the last 4 points and tack it on. However, it seems that you are looking for average of 4 midpoints only, regardless of the number of bars, making the actual dataseries of midpoints much shorter and out of sync with the bars series, an array or list perhaps. This would get you a flat line between swing paints. This probably sounds incoherent but I'll look into it, seems simple enough.

This implies that the following are not equivalent:
tradestation:
theavg = average((( s_low + s_high) /2 ), len);

Ninja:
Midpoints.Set((s_low + s_high)/2.0);
theavg = SMA(Midpoints, pLen)[0];

The tradestation version is adding to "theavg" only when a new swing is detected.
The Ninja version is adding a point on every bar, hence the extreme smoothing.

At least this is my assumption.

[thehaul]

Sounds like you're heading the right direction. I'm not sure how to code it but if the length is set to 4 then the average needs to have 4 points to take the average of the 4 before. So, as price moves on the line is static and plots a flat line based from the last calculation until it has the required 4 to make the next calculation.... i think


thx!

[justlurkin]

This looks more in line with your description, although still buggy ...