Strategies
Main Interface "Strategies" tab
Strategies (Main)
Strategies are the center of Octopi execution. Most items involved in making one can now be created within, so for this reason I will only elaborate on items specific to Strategies window, and zoom in to individual components within their own section of this manual. I won’t cover obvious items such as Strategy Name or Enabled checkbox.
Start Time End Time allows your Strategy to execute ENTRIES during the specified time windows. You can configure multiple entry execution windows, but end time does not mean it will exit! It only means that it won’t enter past the End Time and exits must be managed by either Signals/Modifications or Global Trade Sessions under Trade Policies Tab of Operations window.
YOU MUST HAVE AT LEAST ONE CONFIGURED TIME FRAME OR STRATEGY WILL NOT ENTER!
Entry Signal, Order Setup - these will have their own section, but Signal is the reason for your trade to enter and Order is the bracket order OP will use to enter your trade.
Trade Position
- Long
- Short
- Get From Entry Price is a contrarian trading single setting that will auto-determine to go Long or Short based on “Long from below, Short from above” logic. Very optional, I don’t encourage people to use this but you can.
Order Entry Type - Octopi will auto-determine order type (Market, Limit, Stop) based on Entry Price configured below, so the user does not have to.
Current Price selected under Entry Price will trigger a Market order.
Limit or Stop will be used depending on Long vs Short configured above combined with entry price relative to target.
If you want to force limit/stop order instead of Market near current price, use Current Price Entry Price field with Entry Price Offset set to nearest tick up or down field below Entry Price
Risk Management - allow setting up maximum risk calculated based on sum of order stop values. If total calculated risk at the time of entry exceeds configured parameters, the strategy will not enter.
Allow Order Trimming checkbox allows for partial entries. It will calculate risk across all configured Stops and only allow to trade the Target/Stop pair that fits under the configured risk parameter.
Example: Risk Management setting is 25, Order has 3 dynamic stops equal to ATR value.
If ATR value is currently 5, maximum strategy risk is 15, entry is allowed with all 3 targets/stop pairs.
If ATR value is currently 10, maximum strategy risk is 30, only target/stop 1 and 2 pairs are allowed to enter. Target/Stop 3 will be trimmed off.
Strategies (Plugins)
Overall, there are three types of Plugins available categorized by time of effect: Placement, Pre-Fill, and Post-Fill. Each category will work at an appropriate time only. There is a column for Available vs Active to separate which plugins have been configured for specific Strategy. You may use Add >> or << Remove buttons, as well as double-click to check and configure Actively selected plugins.
Last Target Runner - converts last configured target (dynamic, see Order Trimming above) to take a larger configured target to allow for “runner”.
Example: order configured for 5 contracts, Max Risk allowed 3 contracts to enter, this plugin will take 3rd target and change it’s value to configured plugin value.
Cancel After Time - cancels strategy entry at expiration of configured number of bars since entry request. This will work with Renko bars as well.
Cancel Trade Signal - allows to cancel placed trade before it gets filled if any of the configured cancellation signals match. You can have multiple.
Exit After Interval - configurable trade exit after N number of bars. Good for strategies that should not be in more than N bars even if target/stop wasn’t reached yet.
Trade Cooldown - Prevents consecutive entries of the same strategy for configured number of bars or time.