Indicator of an Indicator

[ivanov_c]

Hello I am trying to calculate Bollinger Bands for a MACD indicator signal, but I am not able to do it, Is there any specific way to calculate an indicator of an indicator?

Thank you

Ivanov

[NinjaTrader_Brett]

Hello,

Thank you for your note.

Just to clarify your trying to do this with NinjaScript correct? If so at what point are you running into issues?

If your just trying to add a bollinger band onto a MacD without custom programming this cannot be done in NinjaTrader 6.5. This would need to be done with NinjaTrader 7 as this is possible in NinjaTrader 7.

NinjaTrader 7 is in the later stages of beta testing and the public beta has been released and is available at the link below. There is no release date for NinjaTrader 7 yet. Please visit the below link for information on NinjaTrader 7 features and release information, select click here to download and input your license key. Then select download version 7 for all the information pertaining to the NinjaTrader 7 Open beta.

http://www.ninjatrader.com/webnew/download_trading_software.htm

I look forward to assisting you further.

[ivanov_c]

Yes, I am doing this on "NinjaScript" C# code, the issue is whenever I call the Bollinger indicator passing as an argumment the MACD DataSeries the calculations are wrong, so far the only way to do this is to calculate manually the StdDev for the MACD data on the same indicator, this works fine, But I am running into another issue doing another indicator that uses an Smoothed MA and I was wondering if there is any limitation calculating an indicator over another indicator.

BTW, I am using NT 7 Beta 22.

Thank you

[NinjaTrader_RyanM1]

Hello ivanov_c,

It depends on how the indicators are constructed. The bollinger is hard coded to use SMA calculations and will not use MACD unless you manually code for this.

The SMA indicator uses instead generic Input[0] to calculate, and this is why you could take the SMA of MACD value without having to code.

NinjaTrader doesn't restrict which indicators you can pass as arguments to other indicators, even if the pairing doesn't make sense.

Example:
SMA(VOL(), 14) //makes sense. You're taking a moving average of volume.
VOL(SMA(14)) //doesn't make sense but there's nothing stopping you from setting this up.

[brdnickel]

hope its ok to cut into this thread. If I am not using script...can I type in SMA(VOL(), 14) // somewhere under indicator section?

[NinjaTrader_Bertrand]

hope its ok to cut into this thread. If I am not using script...can I type in SMA(VOL(), 14) // somewhere under indicator section?

Not really type in, but you can set it up in NT7 new 'indicator on indicator' options showcased here -

http://www.ninjatrader.com/support/helpGuides/nt7/working_with_indicators.htm

[ivanov_c]

Thank you, I just found the reason why I was getting erratic data, and the Input dataseries helped me to understand this well.

I fixed the issue that caused the error on the indicator I had and now I am able to perform what I was looking for.

[NinjaTrader_RyanM1]

Glad to hear, ivanov_c. Thanks for the update.