Asctrend indicator in depth

 

With newdigital, and its topic about Signal System, I started to get interested in Asctrend indicator. The oldest traders certainly knows this indicator, but personally, being a novice trader, I had never heard before. As a programmer, I decided to start this thread to share my analysis of this indicator, as published in the codebase.

My goal is to better understand its operation. For the best use for trading, and then try to make it the basis of an EA. I already made ​​an EA based on the ideas of newdigital, but I would like from this analysis go much deeper.

 
angevoyageur:

With newdigital, ...

thank you both.
 

Asctrend indicator is mainly based on WPR indicator. WPR is Larry Williams Percent Range indicator natively available in MT5 under William's Percent Range.

How is Williams %R calculated ?

Default period is 14.

%R = (Highest High - Close) / (Highest High - Lowest Low) * -100
  • Lowest Low = lowest low for the period
  • Highest High = highest high for the period
  • %R is multiplied by -100.

So WPR value is between 0 (if Close = Highest High) and -100 if (Close = Lowest Low). WPR reflect the relative move of Close price relative to Highest high.

Two levels are usually monitored -20 as overbought level and -80 as oversold level.

 

As I understand - asctrend system (original one which came from AbleSys platform to Metatrader 3 and later on - to Metatrader 4) - it is about WPR as a filter to filter false signals. MT4 versions of those indicators are attached.

I am not going to tell that WPR is the best filter. I only wanted to say that those kind of indicators are/were using in Asctrend for the long time and it is classical approach/style of asctrend. I mean: everything was started from it. Just for information. 

Files:
WPRfast.mq4  3 kb
WPRslow.mq4  3 kb
 
newdigital:

As I understand - asctrend system (original one which came from AbleSys platform to Metatrader 3 and later on - to Metatrader 4) - it is about WPR as a filter to filter false signals. MT4 versions of those indicators are attached.

I am not going to tell that WPR is the best filter. I only wanted to say that those kind of indicators are/were using in Asctrend for the long time and it is classical approach/style of asctrend. I mean: everything was started from it. Just for information. 

As you know, Asctrend system (from AbleSys) is composed of several indicators. I am talking here about AscTrend Signal indicator, only one available in Codebase. This AscTrend signal use WPR not as a filter but as main signal. I will come back later.

I will study your files wprfast and wprslow, thanks.


 

So. See these indicators WPRFast and WPRSlow :

There are exactly the same, only differs by settings : WPRFast P=9, WPRSlow P=54

There are only a another view to WPR indicator, same data but with histogram in red/blue, in place of a line.

Settings
WPR
WPR Fast
 WPR Slow
 Period
9
9
54
 Level 1 (buy)
 >-30
< 9< 9
 Level 2 (sell)
<-70
> 49
> 49

These are exactly the same level :

-30 = -30 * -30 / 100 = 9

-70 = -70 * -70 /100 = 49

So WPRFast is WPR with period 9 and levels to -30 and -70, and WPRSlow is WPR with period 54 and identical levels.

And you know what, this is exactly the same settings used within AscTrend for WPR. See a chart with all indicators (MT4) :

WPR and AscTrend

As you can see, AscTrend signal (Magenta and Aqua arrows) perfectly match WPRFast first bar followinf reverse color (ex. first blue bar after a red).

So if you use WPRFast to filter AscTrend this is non sense. You only have to change AscTrend Risk settings to obtain same results.

For WPRSlow, similar to AscTrend but with a period of 54, that take more sense as you are comparing a fast and a slow oscillator. But I do not comment on the quality of the filter.

 

You know - the classical approach of this asctrend system is the following: asctrend signal is confirmed if the following:

  • WPRfast and WPRslow are agree with each other by same color on close bar.

This is the very very first asctrend system. I mean: everything was started from it. And the meaning of this system is the following: we should take some part of already existing trend to our profit. We can not tal all the trend. we can take just some part of the trend.

 

You can see - this is classical asctrend (very very first one) - MT4:

 

 

 

 

And this is Asctrend indicator and template for MT4 - attached.

Files:
 
newdigital:

And this is Asctrend indicator and template for MT4 (classical one - original - very very first one) - attached.

More to follow. 

AscTrend1sig (MT4) in your package is exactly the same as AscTrend you can find here for MT5.

But in your template RISK setting of AscTrend1sigis setted to 5. WPRFast & WPRSlow settings are defaults as indicated in my previous post. So :

  • If you change RISK of AscTrend1sig to 3

or

  • You change setting of WPRFast to P=13, n1=7.84, n2=51.84 (in fact you can't set these value for n1 & n2 as there are defined as integer, so you can try 8 and 52).

Then you obtain exactly the same info for AscTrend1sig & WPRFast. Red arrow match first red bar following a blue bar, blue arrow match first blue bar following a red bar. Because rounded value, maybe you can have a little shift.

Filter AscTrend1sig with WPRFast is the same as filter AscTrend1sig with AscTrend1sig (at best with slightly modified settings).

We can try to find better filter.

 

Better filter exists already (for MT4 sorry). I will upload it later today. :)

The meaning of this  WPRFast & WPRSlow is the following: if red color of WPRSlow is same with WPRFast so it means that asctrend signal is confirmed. yes, I understand that asctrend = WPRFast. But it is more comfortable visually to use histogram to compare the color of 2 indicator on separated wondow - just for this purpose.

Documentation on MQL5: Standard Constants, Enumerations and Structures / Objects Constants / Web Colors
Documentation on MQL5: Standard Constants, Enumerations and Structures / Objects Constants / Web Colors
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