Strategy is mysteriously crashing TradeStation

March 16th, 2021, 01:08 PM

I have a strategy that I am testing in multiple different markets to see which market it works best in. Unfortunately after about 6 - 12 hours I get a message from TradeStation that it needs to shut down. One of the pop up windows at this time informs me that an invalid argument was supplied. I will include a slightly modified version of the code because I suspect that I must be doing something wrong even though the code compiles okay.

Code

// Long Entry
If MarketPosition = 0 And MagicHappens() Then
	Buy ("Entry_L") PositionSize Contracts Next Bar Open;

// Stop and Target
If MarketPosition <> 0 Then
Begin
	SetStopPosition;
	SetPercentTrailing(PercentTrailFloor, PercentTrailPerc);
	Setstoploss(StopLoss);
End;

Does anyone know what I am doing wrong? I suspect it might have something to do with the way that I am exiting the trade.

Some hours later...

So I thought that I might need to call SetStopPosition for each Set statement so I modified the code thusly and it is still failing as before. Please see below.

Code

// Long Entry
If MarketPosition = 0 And MagicHappens() Then
	Buy ("Entry_L") PositionSize Contracts Next Bar Open;


// Stop 
If MarketPosition <> 0 Then
Begin
	SetStopPosition;
	Setstoploss(StopLoss);
End;

// Target
If MarketPosition <> 0 Then
Begin
	SetStopPosition;
	SetPercentTrailing(PercentTrailFloor, PercentTrailPerc);
End;

March 18th, 2021, 06:41 PM

You actually don't need to check for a marketposition before setting your stop conditions that you have. You can just do the below without the if statement.

Code

// Long Entry
If MarketPosition = 0 And MagicHappens() Then
	Buy ("Entry_L") PositionSize Contracts Next Bar Open;

SetStopPosition;
SetPercentTrailing(PercentTrailFloor, PercentTrailPerc);
Setstoploss(StopLoss);

No need to SetStopPosition before each statement though.

You can also use SetProfitTarget if you do not like the performance of your Percent trail. Or use the percent trail as a way to lock profits if your target is not reached.

I don't see anything in the original post though that should throw an error. My guess is something funky is happening in "MagicHappens()".

March 18th, 2021, 08:19 PM

ShadowFox

You actually don't need to check for a marketposition before setting your stop conditions that you have. You can just do the below without the if statement.

Code

// Long Entry
If MarketPosition = 0 And MagicHappens() Then
	Buy ("Entry_L") PositionSize Contracts Next Bar Open;

SetStopPosition;
SetPercentTrailing(PercentTrailFloor, PercentTrailPerc);
Setstoploss(StopLoss);

No need to SetStopPosition before each statement though.

You can also use SetProfitTarget if you do not like the performance of your Percent trail. Or use the percent trail as a way to lock profits if your target is not reached.

I don't see anything in the original post though that should throw an error. My guess is something funky is happening in "MagicHappens()".

I took the MagicHappens() function out and just made it a simple closing price crossover, because I thought the same thing but it is still failing. I will try all your recommendations and post the entire code here if that does not solve it.

Thanks,
-Ez

April 20th, 2021, 12:05 PM

Try replacing SETSTOPPOSITION to SETSTOPCONTRACT......just for testing purposes.
Also, you should be tracing the code using the PRINT statement.
Send the Traces to a file.

Strategy is mysteriously crashing TradeStation

Discussion in EasyLanguage Programming

Strategy is mysteriously crashing TradeStation