RE: Setting colour on a multi-plot indicator

["Bill Irwin" <Bill-Irwin@xxxxxxxx>]

Well Dave, I've got some of your suggestions working and I can see the power
in building tests on indicators that are based on other indicators.  This is
what I've done so far:

The first indicator is _Triple MA
ShortTime := 25;
MediumTime := 75;
LongTime := 200;
ShortMA := Mov(CLOSE, ShortTime, S);
MediumMA := Mov(CLOSE, MediumTime, S);
LongMA := Mov(CLOSE, LongTime, S);
ShortMA; MediumMA; LongMA;

Next is _Triple MA Crossovers:
Sma := FmlVar("_Triple MA","ShortMA");
Mma := FmlVar("_Triple MA","MediumMA");
Lma := FmlVar("_Triple MA","LongMA");
LongSignal := Cross(Sma, Mma) AND Lma > Mma;
ShortSignal := Cross(Mma, Sma) AND Lma < Mma;

Then comes  _Triple MA Positions:
BuyLong := FmlVar("_Triple MA Crossovers", "LongSignal");
SellShort := FmlVar("_Triple MA Crossovers", "ShortSignal");
If(
	BarsSince(Ref(BuyLong,-1)) <= BarsSince(Ref(SellShort,-1)), +1,
	If(
		BarsSince(Ref(SellShort,-1)) <= BarsSince(Ref(BuyLong,-1)),
		-1,0)
);

And lastly, _Triple MA Equity:
Cum(
    If(Fml("_Triple MA Crossovers")=1,
        OPEN-Ref(OPEN,-1),
        If(Fml("_Triple MA Crossovers")=-1,
            -1*OPEN-Ref(OPEN,-1),0
        )
    )
)

I've plotted the _Triple MA and set the 3 colours and saved that as a
template.  Plotting the Positions indicator produces a horizontal line at 1
when I'm long, -1 when short and zero when out.  That's as I think it should
be.

The Equity indicator, when applied to the price bars, produces a stepping
pattern that's horizontal until it steps vertically up or down to another
location, then horizontal again.  This doesn't seem right to me.

The Exploration:
ColA: FmlVar("_Triple MA","ShortMA")
ColB: FmlVar("_Triple MA","MediumMA")
ColC: FmlVar("_Triple MA","LongMA")
ColD: ((HHV(C,250)-LLV(C,250))/LLV(C,250))*100
ColE: Fml("_Triple MA Equity")
Filter: 	colD > 100 AND
		colD < 300 AND
		CLOSE > 5.00
Running this Exploration on the TSE produces a report where ColE ranges
from -1331.80 to 17.95.  Does this mean that, using this Triple MA
indicator, and buying/selling when the crossovers hit, the best stock earned
$17.95 over the history (5 years) and the worst stock lost $1,331.80?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-metastock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:owner-metastock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Dave Nadeau
> Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2000 7:00 AM
> To: metastock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: RE: Setting colour on a multi-plot indicator
>
> Now, you can create an Exploration with INDICATOR4 as one of
> the columns and quickly see the equity performance across your
> portfolio of stocks.  Then, you can change "Length:=17;" to
> 18 or 20 in INDICATOR1, and run the exploration again to get
> the results
> for that value.  You can repeat this for as many values as
> you like.  (I copy the exploration results into Excel to do
> my summary
> statistics).

Am I on the right track here?  Thanks again Dave.

Bill