Quote from: tolega on December 13, 2013, 11:32:06 PM

Quote from: joefox on December 13, 2013, 11:25:31 PM

Quote from: tnkflx on December 13, 2013, 07:29:45 PM

Currently using following settings on MtGox:

Short EMA: 10
Long EMA: 21
Frequency: 30 minutes
Buy Thresholds: 0/0.25
Sell Thresholds: 0/0.25
Tick Offset: Anything

I always seem to make a small loss here... any idea what I might be doing wrong?

I have generally found the volatility at MtGox to cause issues with intervals less than 1 hour. Most of the time I run it at 2 hours, and FYI I use a 9/17 EMA split instead of a 10/21 in order to make the trend lines a bit more sensitive at that interval. I've seen some others use a 7/15, but I haven't really tried that.

Also, as Pablo points out: using EMA trading, about 70% of your trades will be small losses. It's the 30% of large-gain trades that will compensate you in the long term -- and EMA trading is a long-term strategy.

There are ways to minimize the small losses if you're thoughtful, keep on top of the market data, and adjust your settings once in a while. For the last two days or so, for example, the MtGox market has been VERY sideways (the EMA diffs and price fluctuations are small, and the trendlines *slightly* cross over and over again; also, the trading volumes are low). At times like this, I generally like to pause the bot and hold on to my Bitcoin; when the volumes pick up again (likely Sunday night, when China starts a new week), I will unpause it and let the bot take over. Another option would be to temporarily increase the buy/sell thresholds to keep the bot from trading.

Wouldn't pausing the bot be like restarting it? This way it is like starting from 0 all over again?

No, it is not. It does exactly what it says; pauses.

I also use this feature, in fact, am "paused" now as well. The important thing to remember is to "unpause" only when the bot is in the same status as when you paused; i.e. green if you are in, red if you are out. The exception is when you actually want to trigger the instant trade that will result from un-pausing the bot in an opposing position.