Well it’s been about a year since I published the “Top Ten Wish List for ThinkScript” and we’ve seen several implemented thus far. For those who don’t recall, here’s last year’s list:
1. Scriptable alerts – both the regular kind and audio alerts
2. Retrieve h/l/c data from a different aggregation period (i.e. Say I want to plot a 50 period moving average from a daily chart on my 5 minute intraday chart – Note that’s NOT the same as a 50×130=6500 period average on the 5 minute chart)
3. Change the paintbar color from thinkScript (I’m running out of combinations of dots, triangles, and squares!)
4. Label the study lines from thinkScript
5. Execute trades from thinkScript (oooo!)
6. Change strategy mode from thinkScript (e.g. from short_entry to long_exit)
7. Capture time and sales data
8. Vertical lines…please
9. Capture put/call ratio data
10. A way to directly plot lines on charts from thinkScript (e.g. plot(close[10], close) might draw a line from the close 10 bars ago to the current bar close)
1, 3, and 8 have been fully implemented. 2 is partially implemented as you still can’t grab data from another aggregation period except daily, weekly, and monthly on intraday charts. To do true multiple timeframe indicators, we need the ability to access other timeframe data directly. Furthermore, you should be able to place an indicator from another timeframe on your chart. For example, I would like to be able to put a 60 minute stochastic on my 5 minute chart. For number 4, I would like to be able to add a label on the far right margin for a horizontal plot line. I’m not sure where we stand with 5 as TOS seems to be focusing on Prodigio. Since the minimum trading requirements for Prodigio require you to be a mini-HFT (check out the minimum monthly contracts traded requirement!), I have no desire to use or code for it. 6 – Not sure what I was thinking here but I have all but abandoned strategies as a mostly worthless novelty item. TOS needs much more robust backtesting functionality here to regain my interest back. I believe 7 is in the works or at a minimum volume at the ask and offer (I’ve been told April/May timeframe). 9 – The data is there, why can’t we get the feed in thinkScript? And finally, for 10 I want to be able to draw lines directly from thinkScript without using the current continuous plot construct. Said another way, I want access to the TOS drawing tools from within thinkScript. We should be able to programmatically execute any of the drawing tools via thinkScript calls. As I stated before, a simple line might be executed via a command like plotLine(fromBarNumber, fromPrice, toBarNumber, toPrice, extend);
I will be formulating my new Top Ten List in the coming days and I’d love to hear what y’all think. Please post your thoughts in the comments below. – Eric
1. More data for 1600 and 3200 tick charts, 5 days is not enough. also have the option to see extended hours ONLY. ( I like 10 minute charts during the day but I want to see 1600 tick charts for extended session).
2. Be able to pull any tick chart (20 tick, 600 tick, whatever).
3. ability to hide the lines that are formed when a strategy completes a trade and also be able to edit the stuff that shows up, makes the chart too messy with studies and lines and dots, and on top of that lines and text from strategies.
4. give the option to connect directly to the market and bypass their server
5. Be able to transfer all saved settings and styles from paper money to live account. I can’t believe you have to recreate it (per TOS).
6. Be able to maintain the thinkscript window maximized, what a pain to keep having to re-size it every time you open it.
7. Be able to switch lower studies (put arrows like the multiple grid charts) so I can look at different indicators without having to be married to one.
8. Ability to import wave files to add more sounds to custom study alerts (not the same as the regular alerts).
9. Email alerts for study alerts. The box is there but per TOS it does not work for stocks and futures. That’s the whole point of alerts, email me so I can have a life away from the screen!
10. create a radar screen where I can have multiple symbols and tell me the state of different studies (squeeze, long in a Parabolic SAR, overbought, etc).
11. save my chart settings as default for all charts I may open in the future. I have to keep clicking on the darn little shortcut on/off boxes in the settings tab to see what I want to see every time I open a brand spanking new chart. Let me set it globally and forget it.
Excellent start. I can see I’m going to need both a thinkScript list and a TOS platform list. Most of yours fall into the latter.
-Eric
My Top Ten Wish List for ThinkScript:
1. Capture time and sales data
2. Capture time and sales data
.
.
10. Capture time and sales data
Yes, I need an ticker, like they have on ebay. Tell me how many times a price(s) is visited. Serious. Need help to make it happen.
I want to be able to save the layout of the left pane so I don’t have to re-create it everytime I start TOS
I think it’s high time thinkScript was repositioned to its own tab on the platform — it’s been too long hidden in the charts like the pretty bridesmaid hidden behind a horrible purple dress in the chart tab (almost literally … I mean, why purple in the font of the script editor? : )
Back-up and recover will be a great leap forward, but it has a helluva of scope of work. If you look at the (overly redundant) ways that thinkDesktop has separate ways and different menus for:
charts, grids, styles,
scripts (studies, strategies and sets)
alerts
scans (soon)
watchlists
account and sub-account (real trades)
analyze (simulated trades)
thinkback (backtrades)
… plus Prodigio adding yet another chart, scan, alert and script environment
It seems to me, all these should become file types, visible from the operating system and correctly associated with thinkDesktop with the usual open, save, close capabilities. By adopting a “file” metaphor for all the client platform assets, it would rely upon Java for platform portability and it would simplify what I imagine is the on-going challenge of what to put on the server and what to put on the client, especially in terms of keeping the version and state of all these objects.
The file metaphor would allow functionality such as saving real trades from the trade history, opening them as simulated trades (for analysis or “what if” changes to be saved and perhaps re-used as recurring real trades for expiration, etc.) I would also like to be able to open real trades from trade history as “backtrades” to use the P/L script and think AI script (both of which should appear in the script editor, btw) and to run my own studies to optimize a trade with back-testing, to identify draw-down, or stops, etc. In other words, one of the more valuable assets on the client platform is sets of trades (history, current, by sub-account, simulated, back-trades) but trades are one of the least easily managed and manipulated entities.
A file metaphor would create the “environment” to be able to save desktop layout, which seems to be a bugaboo for some users.
I think it also makes sense, by releasing thinkScript from the “bridesmaid” role, to add functionality to thinkScript to enable source to exist purely as a script (such as performing scans or alerts separate from a “host” chart) to create and reference any user-defined instance of any object rather than itself having to hang off a chart as strictly a stream editor and (powerful) cake decorator. : )
I have a dream of “opening” a script in the editor (with no chart) and running the script to see it open a chart, load studies, set all the parameters of the chart and then encounter an event that indicates a trade setup or trigger, then the script might open another chart, open the trade entry dialog loaded with the trade, open a window with the analyze tab showing that trade and perhaps other chores such as opening the “hacker” tab in a window to show recommended variants of trades given the underlying perhaps with a bullish or bearish sentiment, etc. A dream, but not so far-fetched, I think.
Alerts firing all session and all night highlights the
need to control the text of the alert. I’d like to be able to replace
all of the (redundant) text of the current alert format with just a
text string and maybe a price and a ticker. I’d also like to be able
to concatenate strings and I’d like to have an alert condition that
says “don’t send this alert more frequently than every n seconds”
f’rinstance, so if there’s a lot of chop, the alert would be able to
say “Hi, I’m an alert, my name is ‘joe’ and I triggered x crossovers
in the last n seconds…”
Anyway, small steps, the first thing is to replace the generated alert
text with a free form text (preferably with the ability in thinkScript
and the Alert code to concatenate strings.)
On a corporate/platform level, I’d like to see tos bring in the developer community from the cold.
* product road map
* feedback on prioritized feature lists for each major release
* email list for notification of bugs and workarounds
* trouble ticket, bug tracking and resolution
* comprehensive release notes
* dedicated QA and doc resources for thinkScript (language, developer tools and trading platform)
* forum site with allocated engineer inside tos with access and resources
On thinkScript as a language and development environment, aside from what I mentioned, above, to rework the platform, it seems to me that there should be a two-step process for rapid development (things like having a code window open, being able to “run” code on a specific window of time from historical data in OnDemand, etc.) and there should be a “deployment” step where “debugged” and “well-behaved” code is optimized (for execution efficiency, error handling and of course for the quality of the output trading.)
If every executed in the tos server cloud (something I’d happily pay for on a usage basis) then code could operate independent of the chart (the decoration of a chart would happen asynchronously “after the event” … more on this later) and process at an intra-bar or tick by tick level. Not quite HFT, but getting close.
I’m not suggested putting on blinkers to ignore the last five years of automated trading advancement and reinvent those wheels, I’m suggesting that within the “world” of thinkScript and Prodigio, there’s a potentially complete system to scan for trading context, identify candidates, immediately backtest the chosen trading plan on that candidate, evaluate backtest criteria and put on a trading plan (that might be comprised of numerous trades over a period of minutes or months.)
If tos spends the rest of 2010 with thinkScript as the cake decorator and Prodigio as the mechanical bull in a paper-trading china store, I don’t think progress will meet expectations and it does seem like competitive products are making progress.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nk_zpMory-0
Thanks Adam for the well thought out and provocative input. I may need to add an appendix to the Top Ten List: “Adam’s Manifesto.”
-Eric
TRAILING STOPS – Ability for TOS trades to use a thinkscript customizable trailing stoploss order. For the moment it only possible to have an offset trailing stop as a percent, tick or value. I would like to implement a chandelier trailing stop, loosely based on Chuck Le Beau volatility trailing stop.
1. >20day view for 2hour charts.
2. World indexes !
3. ability to add shortcuts to turn on/off studies
I am shocked that no one has mentioned this, but we REALLY need…..
1. ARRAY VARIABLES! (i.e. MatrixElement(1,1))
2. Ability to Use and Perform Matrix Algebra (Regression is a LOT easier!…of course, we need item 1 to do this)
3. Ability to LOOP through variables/bar numbers
4. Ability to print letters/numbers on screen (I agree, we’re running out of boxes, triangles, and dashes) (A)….(1)…..(k)….etc.
5. We should be able to print lines that look like —x—–x—-x
or —–+—-+—-+ (check out the options in Excel, people!)
Seriously!
Oh, and one more thing:
Why can’t we download open, high, low, close, whatever data from the platform into Excel?
God, yes. I’ve got boatloads of code that is of absolutely no use in Thinkscript. TS is painfully limiting and well short of my expectations so far.
After spending much time with thinkscript strategies, I must agree they continue be novelties as you can only back-test one stock at a time. The back-tests do seem to work correctly however after working a lot with Prodigio I much prefer Prodigio. Basic sub-sets of a strategy can be loaded into columns in Marketwatch however it will not market-wide scan but only track a list you give it.
That being said…even though the Prodigio programming is easy, it is very difficult to be sure what is happening when you implement your strategy. Prodigio charts are rather basic and do not allow you to see your strategy related to your custom-built studies as you can in TOS Charts. The logic in WizardLab is not clear enough to let one understand logic states or integer comparison levels as they relate through the chain of a strategy either.
It seems like there are a lot of great things with both TOS and Prodigio but both platforms have enough loose ends to make them both difficult to use.
I’m still favoring Prodigio and feel it meets my needs best by being able to take my emotions out of the trading process. I have been using TOS charts with studies to learn and experiment with various automated strategies for Prodigio. I guess we will have to wait and see what “Scan” offers us in TOS. I see that as the major advantage of Prodigio. It constantly scans the market looking for matches to your strategy.
It looks to me like the whole platform is reaching a point of maturity where many of the annoying loose ends will be tied up and we will have most of what we want.
Some more:
I’d like to be able to “highlight” any bar/candle – kind of like Prophet Charts does for Hammers, Hanging Men, etc. – with something like an “addcloudthisbaronly(High,Low,color.BRIGHT_YELLOW)”.
The ability to draw circles, ovals, rectangles, squares, etc. – and control the size/opacity/painting/fill – would also be great. I vaguely recall one poster who wanted to draw 10 minute candles around 5 minute candles…neat idea…and the ability to draw geometric shapes would go a long way here.
Vertical lines are great – but they would be even better if we could control where the plot starts and how high or low they extend.
just my 2 cents but ….
would be nice to just be able to access the data of a candle on a certain date & time.
also … a way to backup all your settings, drawings, scripts, etc
- Foreign index data — ie, the DAX, FTSE, etc. Even if we can’t trade those futures (Grr!!) the info is nice to have.
- Access to the Value Line Arithmatic Index data
- Better documentation / training / orientation for ThinkScript. Seems the best support/info comes from sites and blogs like this.
- The ability to track spreads when they’ve been modified. IE, if you have an Iron Condor and change a leg, it doesn’t show up as a replacement to the original position in the Portfolio page but rather as a Vertical Spread.
- Stock Scanner based on indicators or other custom settings.
- Range (ie Constant Value) Bars in charting
- The ability to have Paper Money (or a second Mac ToS application running) open alongside your actual account. I hate having to log in/out to switch sites during the trading day when I’m experimenting with trades or strategies….then having to tweak things each time I log in (as someone already mentioned.)
… there’s probably a few others, but this is a good start from my view. I also agree with lots of what’s been said previously in the comments.
All excellent comments….I can see this is going to require a different venue to handle all this info. Thinking cap on.
-Eric
Dear Sir or Madam, I would like to see ‘Ticks’ as an option in addition to time on the x axis for Thinkscript based alerts. They greatly facilitate day trading alerts.
1. Time and Sales
2. clock box that would default to chart (min,hr) setting,,, count down each candle — reset @ strart of next candle..
3. bar/histogram — showing net number of trades at the offer vs. the bid for each candle ..
4. show net u/d (red/green)vol on each vertical volume bar
My 2c. Some of these might already have been mentioned:
ToS Desktop
A. Ability to link multiple accounts, for people who manage multiple accounts. Hate to logout everytime to get into different accounts.
B. Custom chart / study settings per symbol. Really hate to change settings everytime I want to watch a different symbol.
C. Custom Ticks
D. Range Bars
ThinkScript – Bring it at par with other scripting engines like TS. This includes:
A. Ability to loop through
B. Ability to create proper variables – means I can reset the value of the variable after defining them (I am surprised no one has brought this up yet)
C. Reference time and sales data
D. Reference P/C
E. Reference custom studies in strategy
Well, since I trade FX I have to say after a few months on demo with TOS I am really thinking about buying me a Windows machine again.
I am sure everybody knows MT4.
MT5 just came out.
http://www.imagebam.com/image/fed08872127186
I would like to be able to run a custom strategy as a Stock Scan.
Better documentation for TS coding and syntax.
Thanks for asking.
1.Scan entire databank of stocks for the symbols which meet the criteria one specifies.
2. Identify a particular candle or pattern of candles.
I would like to see more time and sales information that is broken down between bid/ask and the ability to plot range bars showing this information – even if only exportable to Excel so that we can create our own tracking spreadsheet of the order flow. The ability to create a “pace of tape” indicator that would be something visual (akin to the auditory tapetweet at mombotrading.com) – That would be useful.
Not sure if this has already been mentioned in the comments but it would be great to create something similar to the TTM Trend (painted bar chart) for TOS.
i don’t know if these have been mentioned but.
i hope strategies had stop losses and trail stops implemented with a check of the button and the stop or trail values keyed in.
i think the backtesting on TOS needs a lot of work before many would actually use it.
range bars. custom ticks. the time to implement these are really starting to make me think of other charting/broker options. yes its that important !
the ability to drag and shrink oscillators. some people want them SMALL. yup i am one of them. correct me if i am wrong but ALL competitive platforms can EASILY do that. just let me drag and make it smaller… please?
As someone said earlier, the ability to loop back within the script would be more efficient. I would also like to be able to open multiple studies for view. Someone also mentioned drawing tools be made available and I think this is a great idea as I am struggleing with multiple dots, dashes and colors which is getting ridiculous. Last, why can’t they just open up the Java language/scripting to the charting platform, it would make my life (and wallet) happier.
1. I second the idea for the countdown “clock box” that would display the seconds remaining until the completion of the current candle — reset @ open of the next candle. This gives a better idea of how much time is left in the candle.
2. Also something very important to me would be the ability to draw 30 second candles. Or maybe a better approach would be custom bar/candle intervals so that candles would be drawn at whichever interval you like best. TOS has most of them covered, but not all…30 seconds is an important one at times.
Thanks for your work on this.
How about a volume spread analysis study?
Could you please create the “Smoothing the Bollinger %b” which was published in May issue of TASC?
I’ll take a look Jim.
-Eric
How about coding dr.cooper’s system. I have found this idea here: http://trader.online.pl/ELZ/t-s-Coopers_System.html
Thank you Eric,
Great work!
I second the 30-second candles feature