Hi OleOle & Naeir.
I'm relatively new to the bot- I've been using it since I think October. I used to use the 'suggested' settings for BTC-e, until one day the bot sold low & bought high because of them, and then I went looking for new settings, and someome on the forums here suggested that I dial down my EMA numbers. Doing so was the best thing I've ever done, because now in backtesting, depending on the day, I can sometimes get over 16,000% profit from my new settings.
So I'll share them with you, and will suggest that you slowly tweak the buy/sell threshold numbers, testing them with backtesting every day or so to see how different numbers affect the settings. Go slow with the adjustments. And try tiny negative numbers in place of the zeros on them.
Short EMA: 7
Long EMA: 15
Frequency: 2 Hours
Buy Thresholds: 0/0.25
Sell Thresholds: 0/0.1
Tick Offset: Anything
I also use bitcoinwisdom.com and enter these EMA numbers into it and set it to display EMA lines so I can watch & see what the bot sees, I find it helps to visualize what's happening. It also helps to visualize new strategies before I test them in the bot by punching the numbers into bitcoinwisdom first, too & seeing where the EMA lines would cross.
So good luck, hopefully these settings will either help or inspire you.
Thanks very much NginUS, while it's one thing for people to comment on what they think the bot does or what they think the market will do over time, it's quite another to share your settings and your ideas for tweaking them, thank you
I really appreciate that as it helps my understanding of the changing of settings in the context of the current choppy market and the quite wide range of flexibility that the settings allow.
Really appreciate all your comments, guidance and observations. There's no doubt that it's going to be tricky to get the balance right between taking a longer term view to work with the design parameters of the bot over the longer term and honing the settings to take account of the shorter term volatility in the market. You mention that you are constantly backtesting your settings, this does make sense when you get your settings into a 'sweet spot' where you feel that they are adapted nicely to the current market and are making a certain level of profit. I'm nowhere near that 'sweet spot' yet, so I'll review your remarks and the comments that other folks have kindly made and I'm sure that with some time and application I'll be able to make greater sense of it all and fine tune the settings. I also like the idea of being able to visualise things, so I'll take your advice and use bitcoinwisdom to 'paint the EMA pictures'.
Thanks very much once again, it's greatly appreciated.
I want to +1 everything OleOle just said... I have read everything between his post that I quote and this one and want to also thank Vesperwillow for sharing his knowledge with NginUS who in turn shared it with us. Allowing all of us to prosper from shared knowledge is what makes things like Bitcoin and opensource communities what they are today. So many times have I asked in the BTC-e trollbox for some insite into bots and trading with the API that I was just lost. I understand people wanting to make a buck but can't we all profit some? Much thanks also goes to fible1 for offering the bot (which I just purchased last night because in the trial it paid for itself). I have been using bitcoinwisdom and playing with the EMA crosses which is how I knew where the bot should have sold but didn't. What I am having a bit of trouble wrapping my head around is exactly what the long and short EMA really mean. I am going to search now.. 3 sick kids and the wife and myself have made my research time limited this week. I just set the bot and forgot about it and got lucky I guess. Going to play with BCwisdom and some backtesting settings... Again thanks for sharing my faith in humanity has been restored... hahahahha j/k ... but really thanks.
Naelr
