Short-term Trading Strategy Based on EMA

Author: ChaoZhang, Date: 2024-02-20 14:06:27
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Overview

This strategy is designed with the crossover principles of EMA lines to make appropriate short-term trades and gain decent profits when prices fall back to some extent.

Strategy Logic

The strategy adopts 5 EMA lines with different parameters, specifically the 10-day, 20-day, 50-day, 75-day and 200-day lines. The logic for generating trading signals is:

  1. When the price crosses above the 75-day line and falls below the 50-day line, it is considered a signal for a proper short-term pullback to take a short position.

  2. After going short, if the 10-day line crosses below the 20-day line, continue holding the short position. When the 10-day line crosses back above the 20-day line, close the position to complete this round of short-term trade.

Through this logic design, major fluctuations of prices in the short run can be caught to gain from price spreads during pullbacks.

Advantages

The biggest advantage of this strategy lies in its simple and clear signals that are easy to implement. Just by the crossover situation of several moving averages, trading decisions can be made smoothly, without complex models and loads of historical data, lowering the difficulty of implementation.

In addition, the combo use of multiple EMA lines helps filter out market noise effectively and spot the timing of mid-to-short term trend reversals precisely to make sensible trading decisions.

Risks

The major risk of this strategy comes from violent price swings in the short term. Uncontrolled sharp rises or falls may result in stop loss or take profit lines being broken, causing huge losses. Also, improper parameters may lead to overfrequent trading signals that undermine strategy profitability.

To control risks, parameters of moving averages should be adjusted appropriately to maintain signal frequency at a proper level. Reasonable stop loss and take profit ranges should also be set to avoid oversized losses per trade. Manual intervention is needed as well facing special market conditions, suspending strategy trading.

Optimization

The main optimization space lies in parameter tuning. More combinations can be tested to find the optimal parameter portfolio. For instance, more moving averages can be introduced like 60-day and 120-day lines to form a richer signal source.

Optimization can also be done around aspects like stop loss and take profit. Properly loosening the stop loss range may decrease the probability of wrong stops. Tightening take profit range could increase profitability. These parameter adjustments need to be based on backtest results for optima.

Conclusion

To conclude, this strategy is fairly simple overall. Designed with basic EMA crossover signals, it shapes into a feasible short-term trading tactic. Its advantage lies in clear signals that are easy to carry out, which can effectively seize trading opportunities from mid-to-short term trend reversals. Further improvements can be achieved through parameter tuning and optimizing stop loss, take profit settings.


/*backtest
start: 2023-02-13 00:00:00
end: 2024-02-19 00:00:00
period: 1d
basePeriod: 1h
exchanges: [{"eid":"Futures_Binance","currency":"BTC_USDT"}]
*/

// © theswissguy

//@version=5
strategy("Jan 2024 Daily (Short)", initial_capital = 10000, overlay=true, commission_value = 1)

// use closing prices as data source throughout calcs.
ema_source = close
price = close

// set up the EMA curves.
ema10 = ta.ema(ema_source, 10)
ema20 = ta.ema(ema_source, 20)
ema50 = ta.ema(ema_source, 50)
ema75 = ta.ema(ema_source, 75)
ema200 = ta.ema(ta.ema(ema_source, 200), 35)

plot(ema10, color=color.red, title="EMA10")
plot(ema20, color=color.orange, title="EMA20")
plot(ema50, color=color.green, title="EMA50")
plot(ema75, color=color.yellow, title="EMA75")
plot(ema200, color=color.blue, title="EMA200", linewidth = 4)

// if EMA50 <= price <= EMA75 AND EMA10 < EMA20 - sell
dailySellIndicator = ta.crossover(price, ema75) and ta.crossunder(price, ema50) and ta.crossunder(ema10, ema20) 
dailyBuyIndicator = ta.crossover(ema10, ema20)

if(dailySellIndicator)
    strategy.entry("daily", strategy.short)
else if(dailyBuyIndicator)
    strategy.entry("daily", strategy.long)



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