June 18

9 comments

Equity Curve Indicators

By Jeff Swanson

June 18, 2012

EasyLanguage, indicator, TradeStation, Video

The following two indicators are written in EasyLanguage and can be used in TradeStation and most likely, Multicharts. Presented here are two simple indicators to help you visualize your trading system open equity and daily equity. More importantly, the Open Equity Indicator has the ability to send you email notifications when a new position is opened, a current position is closed and upon the close of each bar. Email messages are designed to be sent for intra-day trading systems for those rare occasions when you must be away from your computer for short periods of time.

Daily Equity Curve Indicator

This indicator displays the “Daily” equity of any trade. Unlike the Open Equity Curve Indicator (see below) this indicator will keep a daily running total of your P&L. By default a green plot indicates a positive P&L and a red plot a negative P&L. This indicator does not take into account slippage or commissions. Furthermore, this indicator does not access your real trading account. It’s simply the theoretical equity curve of your system. The colors of the plot can be changed to your liking.

Open Equity Curve Indicator

This indicator displays the “open” equity of any trade. By default a green plot indicates a positive P&L and a red plot a negative P&L. This indicator does not take into account slippage or commissions. Just as the other indicator (see above) it does not access your trading account to get this information. It’s simply the theoretical equity curve of the trading system. The colors of the plot can be changed to your liking. This indicator also has the ability to send you email notifications. This feature is described below.

Email Notification

The Open Equity Curve Indicator also has the ability to send an email message when any of these events takes place:

  • Bar Close
  • New Position Opened
  • Current Position Closed
  • Number of Contracts Changes

When the email feature is activated, an email message is sent to any email address informing you of the number of contracts you have open and the open equity value. An email message is sent at the close of each bar. For example, on a 5-minute chart, every five minutes you will receive an email. If for some reason you stop receiving email messages you may want to call TradeStation to check your live account and/or to take your account flat. The email notification feature is designed to alert you when there maybe potential internet problems with your trading platform. However, it is highly recommended you never leave your trading system unattended.

Below is an image of the Equity Curve Open Indicator. You can see the first three inputs deal with the color of the equity curve plot. The next two inputs indicate the times when email alerts should be sent. In this example, email alerts will be sent between 7:45am and 11:05am Central.

The “Alerts” tab must also be configured properly in order to take advantage of the email alerts feature. For a more complete description on how to enable this feature, please watch the video near the bottom of this article.

Below is an example of the type of email message which will be generated and sent by the Open Equity Curve Indicator. In this example a new position has been opened. You can see on the Info: line it states a new position has been opened with one contract.

TradeStation : Chart Analysis Alert for @ECM12 by Intraday Open Equity(Green,Red,White,true,Yellow,Black,745,1105,”Contracts”,”Closed Equity:”)
Info: — OPEN TRADE — 05/29/2012 08:40 Contracts1 Closed Equity:262.50 Open Equity:0.00
Source: Intraday Open Equity(Green,Red,White,true,Yellow,Black,745,1105,”Contracts”,”Closed Equity:”)
Occurred: 5/29/2012 8:35:00 AM
Price: 1.2523

If you have any suggestions to improve this indicator, please leave your ideas in the comments below.

Jeff Swanson

About the author

Jeff has built and traded automated trading systems for the futures markets since 2008. He is the creator of the online courses System Development Master Class and Alpha Compass. Jeff is also the founder of EasyLanguage Mastery - a website and mission to empower the EasyLanguage trader with the proper knowledge and tools to become a profitable trader.

  • Your Download links for the TS equity curve indicators(eld,TSW), is not working. Are you planning on updating the link? I would like to test.
    thanks,
    r

  • Is there a way to have the indicator track the max equity that the trade held instead of what the equity is at the close of the bar?

      • Yes, I’ve seen the Trade Recorder, but from what I understand it only has the MFE on a per trade basis, and I was trying to see it on a per bar basis. I would like to see if there is a pattern in equity of the trades my system generates. Unfortunately I am still a very amateur coder and have not been able to find the right syntax to modify the original code to do what I would like.

  • Is there a way to format the email message so as to exclude the Source, Occurred & Price data at the end of the email

  • {"email":"Email address invalid","url":"Website address invalid","required":"Required field missing"}

    Learn To Code & Build Strategies
    Using EasyLanguage. 

    >