Initial Market Analyzer questions

[CSharpTrader]

Hi all. I'm excited to be starting out with NT. I've been learning C# for about two years, trying to make my OWN trading app. Then I found NT. Doh!!

A couple of initial questions could get me a long way, although I'm sure the answers are out there somewhere. They pertain to Market Analyzer.. my hope is to load a list of 1000 symbols +/- into it, and generate real- time alerts (in the traditional definition of the word) based on my coded setups (Indicators in NT speak, I think).

My first alert I'd like to code is an return to a simple moving average, where the moving average is uptrending, and the past n bars all had lows over the sma line.

1) Would I be better off using indicators as alerts, or filters for this purpose?
2) Both alerts and filter conditions seem to expect an absolute value... I don't yet see how you would apply that to symbols of various prices. Using my first alert example, how would I enter this in the value field for the trigger in an alert, or filter? (close price within .001 percent of sma line)
3) If I have multiple indicator columns to screen for setups, would they all have to return "true" to appear in the grid? If so, how can I run multiple scans at one time?

I'd appreciate any help in getting started. I'm thrilled to see a .NET based app that looks so user and CODER friendly. By the way if my perspective or approach is off and there is a better way to accomplish this using different tools, please say so.

Thanks in advance.

[NinjaTrader_AdamP]

CSharpTrader,

Welcome to the forum and thanks for your interest.

1) Would I be better off using indicators as alerts, or filters for this purpose?

This is up to you really, the filters would make such a long list more readable, and you could do both.

2) Both alerts and filter conditions seem to expect an absolute value... I don't yet see how you would apply that to symbols of various prices. Using my first alert example, how would I enter this in the value field for the trigger in an alert, or filter? (close price within .001 percent of sma line)

With the market analyzer you can only compare to numerical values, so you would need to setup your indicator to output some numerical value you expect and want to compare to.

3) If I have multiple indicator columns to screen for setups, would they all have to return "true" to appear in the grid? If so, how can I run multiple scans at one time?

You set this up yourself basically, you can change the behavior sort of however you want really depending on how you setup the filters.

[CSharpTrader]

Thanks, a little clarification if you could...

Thanks for the response. If you could clarify my question #3 though... a better way of asking it may be, if I have multiple indicator columns, would "false" values in one column keep instruments filtered out of the Market Analyzer, even if they were true for other columns?

A little guidance would be great, if you can see the way I'm trying to use NT... market scans of many symbols, using many "setups" I'll call them... but I don't know if they should be indicators or strategies. To that point... if they were strategies, can I run multiple strategies at one time, each one scanning multiple instruments, and generating alerts, or is that only done in the Market Analyzer? By the way I only want to generate the alerts initially, not place orders, yet.

[NinjaTrader_AdamP]

CSharpTrader,

You create the filter yourself so it would behave how you want it to behave. You would need to link the filter to every column that you are using. The market analyzer doesn't automatically filter out true/false.

I would actually suggest using an indicator to make it simple. You could return 0 if your conditions aren't satisfied, or 1 if they are, then create one filter if you want behavior like you described.