Passing Indicator Input to another Indicator

[Harry]

If all of the above is correct and resolves everyone's queries, the remaining question is whether NinjaTrader 8's indicators should be modified with the above paragraph in mind. Our product management team is still reviewing the costs and benefits to this approach against user demand. Greg1, I have added a vote on your behalf to this request. Please bear in mind that there are other considerations, such as development of new indicators that have always had access to OHLC data at development time (as opposed to merely converting an NT7 indicator in this case). Bear in mind that the current operation is more stable, since any indicator can be passed into one of our tools, and also bear in mind the Input series exists to explicitly allow indicator inputs where those would be desirable..

There is basically no cost to adapt the indicators to work with an input series. The modifcation needed to the code can be implemented in a few hours for all 15 or 20 something indicators concerned. Furthermore there is no downside if you allow that Stochastics or the CCI maybe applied to indicators as input series.


Example:

The Stochastic RSI is a default indicator. This indicator was created by applying the Stochastics to the RSI. Basically what you do is to apply one oscillator to another oscillator.

Let us assume that we want to build a Stochastic CCI. With NinjaTrader 7 you would simply apply the Stochastics to the input series CCI, and there you go. With NinjaTrader 8 this is currently impossible. When you apply the Stochastics to any input series other than price, it returns the Stochastics - from price! This is useless. You would expect that the Stochastics is being calculated from the CCI and not from price. There is not a single argument for the current sitaution, where the indicator always returns price.

Look at your oscillators. Please explain, why you decided that

* Forecast Oscillator, Momentum, MACD, ROC, RSI & WilliamsR maybe applied to an indicator as input series, while
* Aroon oscilator, CCI, Chaikin Oscillator, Double Stochastics, Stochastics,RVI and Ultimate Oscillator may not be calculated from any input series other than price

It seems that some oscillators are more equal than others .....


Indicator Categories:

There are basically 3 indicator categories:

CAT 1: indicators that already may use an indicator as input series
CAT 2: indicators that are affected by the change in the architecture and that should be adopted to using an indicator as input series
CAT 3: indicators that require price or volume data as input

Actually there are only few indicators that belong to the third category. The only ones that I have found amongst the NinjaTrader default indicators are

- CurrentDayOHL
- Darvas
- Keltner (without option to use ATR)
- PriorDayOHLC
- Range
- VOL
- VOLMA
- VolumeCounter
- Volume Oscillator
- Volume UpDown
- Volume Profile
- VolumeZones

All other indicators should work with an indicator as input series.

Just go for it. It is easy to implement.

[aligator]

NinjaTrader_JessicaP,

Please vote me in.

The fact that this issue has been around since NT8 Beta1 and there are at least 3 related threads on this subject, a vote of interest has already been established.

Also, we have no clues as to how these votes are tracked. There are voting (poll) windows plugins that can be adopted for the forum and member can simply click a yes, no, or hell no.

Cheers!

[NinjaTrader_Brett]

We have an idea to address the issue in general with a more robust input editor, allowing you to potentially select the output of an indicator to feed into each of the input parameters of another. However we so far do not want to take the risk to introduce bugs in that area by such a large change in behavior. Hence the feature is delayed until next major release and until such time as we can finish specing and making sure that solution is what we would ultimately want to address the problem. (Don't read this as confirmation to a new upcoming feature)

Until then, downloading a third party indicator to do this or we even posted in our NinjaScript file sharing section versions of the stochastic for example to do this which can be downloaded for free for those of you wanting that functionality on some of the default indicators. Contact us at platform support at ninjatrader dot com if you would like copies.

[Greg1]

I work in the software development industry and I definitely understand the risks involved with coding changes. But, this is a feature that other trading platforms have and that existed in NT7 and doesn't appear to be natively supported in NT8. It appears that NT8 is our only choice as of May XY, 2018 if trading forex and if users are going to be forced into a platform change it would be good to not lose a major feature that was in NT7.

BTW, I did try again the ability of feeding an indicator into another indicator (e.g. take a CCI indicator with a value of 14; then apply an EMA indicator with a value of 14; you would expect to see significant smoothing which is observed in NT7; In NT8 no behavior change is noticed without doing the custom coding that Harry mentioned). I definitely understand we can all develop custom indicators and share custom indicators but having that feature as part of the native platform has some inherit benefits to the trading community IMO.

[Harry]

Let us not make this issue bigger than it is. I have just checked the NinjaTrader default indicators. There are only 14 indicators that are affected and that need to be modified:

- ADX
- ADXR
- Aroon
- Aroon Oscillator
- ATR
- CCI
- DM
- DMI
- Double Stochastics
- Parabolic SAR
- Stochastics
- Stochastics Fast
- Ultimate Oscillator
- Zigzag

I have highlighted 7 indicators out of those 14 indicators. These are the ones that are really needed.

Simple solution: I will post them here within the next three days.

[Greg1]

Thanks Harry. One other interesting thing of note is that it seems like the NT8 provided Bollinger Band study does take an input of an Exponential Moving Average (that is the only input indicator I tried thus far) and it does the smoothing behavior that also occurs in NT7.

[Harry]

Thanks Harry. One other interesting thing of note is that it seems like the NT8 provided Bollinger Band study does take an input of an Exponential Moving Average (that is the only input indicator I tried thus far) and it does the smoothing behavior that also occurs in NT7.

I have checked the Bollinger Bands. If you select an EMA as input series both the moving average and the bands are definitely calculated from the EMA that you have selected as input series.

I have already explained this behavior. Most indicators will behave as they did for NinjaTrader 7. There are only some indicators that are affected by the change in the architecture of NinjaTrader 8. I have already listed those indicators in post #20 below.

[mmaker]

I have to say this drove me to quit drinking completely when I stumbled across this a couple of months ago. I was sure I was able to program an indicator of an indicator in NT7 and to my complete surprise I was not getting the output I expected in NT8 when I tried to do this.

There are some signals I am trying to filter out and being able to do this would help a lot. Had I known this functionality did not exist in NT8 I am not sure I would have been so quick to upgrade.

When can we expect to see this rectified?

[Harry]

Please take into account: The architecture of NinjaTrader 8 is superior to the architecture of NinjaTrader 7. For NinjaTrader 7 all price series (Open, High, Low, Close, Median, Typical, Weighted) were remapped to Input, when an indicator was selected as input series. With NinjaTrader 8 is no longer the case.

Imagine you were to code a divergence indicator. A divergence indicator typically compares price to oscillator values. With the new architecture you do not need to let the divergence indicator call an indicator for comparing price and indicator values but will be able to access both price and indicator values from the code. This is a huge advantage.

There is just a few - just 14 - NinjaTrader in-built indicators that do not currently allow for selecting an indicator as input series. It is a bit a nuisance for the Stochastics, because it is often applied to other indicators. Which one do you need?

[aligator]

Let us not make this issue bigger than it is. I have just checked the NinjaTrader default indicators. There are only 14 indicators that are affected and that need to be modified:

- ADX
- ADXR
- Aroon
- Aroon Oscillator
- ATR
- CCI
- DM
- DMI
- Double Stochastics
- Parabolic SAR
- Stochastics
- Stochastics Fast
- Ultimate Oscillator
- Zigzag

I have highlighted 7 indicators out of those 14 indicators. These are the ones that are really needed.

Simple solution: I will post them here within the next three days.

Harry, Hi.

Did you you ever posted these indicators!

[NinjaTrader_ChelseaB]

Hello aligator,

Are you looking for a list of indicators that were released by NinjaTrader_Paul that change the input series to not use the ohlc of the bar but only the input series?

[aligator]

Hello aligator,

Are you looking for a list of indicators that were released by NinjaTrader_Paul that change the input series to not use the ohlc of the bar but only the input series?

Thank you ChelseaB,

I was referring to those indicators identified by Harry in Post #20 that had issues with using another indicator as input series (for example: a Stochastics of RSI).

I am not aware that Paul released a modified version of the above indicators in a new NT8 version release. Are you saying that the current default version of these indicators have addressed the issue?

Thanks.

[Harry]

Please find attached our Stochastics indicator which may applied to other input series than price. I have a chart attached that shows that you it is suited to build a Stochastics RSI with a signal line. The in-built StochRSI uses a raw Stochastics applied to a RSI(14,1). I have rebuilt it by applying a Stochastics(14,1,7) to a RSI(14,1).

[NinjaTrader_ChelseaB]

Hello aligator,

NinjaTrader_Paul has a few of these in the user app share section of the forums.

https://ninjatraderecosystem.com/user-app-share-download/stochasticsinput/

https://ninjatraderecosystem.com/user-app-share-download/stochasticsfastinput/

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[aligator]

Please find attached our Stochastics indicator which may applied to other input series than price. I have a chart attached that shows that you it is suited to build a Stochastics RSI with a signal line. The in-built StochRSI uses a raw Stochastics applied to a RSI(14,1). I have rebuilt it by applying a Stochastics(14,1,7) to a RSI(14,1).

Thank you Harry,

I have used your approach for Stochastics that you mentioned sometimes ago to write the new StochRSI. I was just wondering if all of those indicators (14) you identified above (i.e, CCI, DMI, ATR, etc.) have been modified to address the issue.

From ChelseaB's post above I get the impression that NT default indicators on your list have not addressed the issue (only Paul released 2 custom slow and fast stochastics in user app section).

Cheers!

Edit: I also note that the in-built default StochRSI is written for fast stochastics.