Customizing Studies and Strategies

TradeStation studies and strategies have predefined settings and can be customized to your preference. For example, studies use a default number of bars to make their calculation, the lines are plotted in a certain style or color, and they are plotted in either the same subgraph as the price data or in another.

You can customize the settings in a number of ways to provide you with maximum flexibility in implementing your own analysis and strategy trading ideas. However, it is recommended that you use the default settings and change them only if you are using the study in a different way than it was originally designed. You can change all these settings either as you add the study into a chart or once it is plotted.

Customize Study and Strategy Parameters

The easiest way to customize a study or strategy is to modify the built-in parameters.

Customizing Studies

 Access using the Studies > Edit Studies menu sequence, highlight a study row, click Customize.

The Customize <study type>: <study name> dialog includes a number of tabs that allow you to review and change the settings of a study before or after adding it to an analysis app. Some tabs may not be used by a specific study.

  • Customize Study - General - Contains the general properties for the selected study or column. Options available depend on the type of studies and columns you are customizing, and where it is located.
  • Customize Study - Inputs - Displays the default values that is used in its calculation for the study and column. Most studies contain at least one input value; some contain more than one.
  • Customize Study - Alerts - Contains the settings for studies and columns that support alerts.
  • Customize Study - Style - Displays the different styles used for the plots drawn by the study or used in a column.
  • Customize Study - Color - Changes the plot color used for the study. Changing the color options does not affect how the study is calculated, only the display on the chart.
  • Customize Study - Scaling - Specifies the axis, scale type, scale range, and display settings used to plot the study. Choices depends on the selected study and how it calculates.
  • Customize Study - Advanced - Provides the optimization settings when the 'update value intra-bar' setting is enabled for the selected study. See General for more information.
  • Customize Study - Data Settings (ActivityBar) - Contains the interval and history settings for the number of minutes and days back. The Data Settings tab is only available when using the ActivityBar study.

 

Customizing Strategies

 Access using the Studies > Edit Strategies menu sequence, highlight a study row, click Customize.

The Customize Strategy: <strategy name> dialog includes a number of tabs that allow you to review and change the settings of a strategy before or after adding it to an chart. Some tabs may not be used by a specific strategy.

Creating Custom Studies and Strategies Using EasyLanguage

With TradeStation, you can create your own custom studies and strategies using EasyLanguage. This is done in TradeStation Development Environment by creating a new EasyLanguage document where you create EasyLanguage statements to specify your own analysis and trading logic.

Creating Custom Studies and Strategies without EasyLanguage

TradeStation includes a number of studies and strategies that allow you to plot your choice of input values and to set alerts based on your own conditions so that you create your own 'custom' versions without needing to program in EasyLanguage. These studies and strategies start with word "Custom" and have different numbers of plots and matching inputs. The inputs can accept a simple price value or more complex formula using standard TradeStation price values, including bars back references. Alert conditions can also be added in a similar way.

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