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Beginners & Help / Introduction to a basic gain with trailing & dollar cost averaging configuration
« on: February 03, 2021, 10:54:00 PM »
Introduction:
Hello! I’m Goblin an amateur crypto nerd for the last four+ years. I’m the same Goblin from the ArsTechnica Openforums as well the Monero community. I’ve been a miner, node operator, staker, day trader, & blogger across my crypto history. I started using Gunbot back around version 8 or 9 and still find it to be the most worthwhile investment for making profits in the industry. That’s to say, putting the same amount of money into Gunbot will yield you more profits and safeties then putting it into mining, yield farming, or staking.
It’s because of this that I’m a believer in Gunbot, I want to see its continued success and development. We have a small but tight community, everybody is very helpful, and you should not fear joining us in the official Telegram groups. It’s where you’re going to find the most interaction, discussion, and meaningful conversation. Not to mention direct interaction with the staff, resellers, and market place contributors.
02/18/21 Update: It’s become important to note that I am not staff. Also, I do not have my own group or channel; I’m merely a user who hangs out in the official ones. I cannot grant you access to the official telegram groups; you’re going to need to request this from your reseller. You can find a list of the official groups here. Beware of anyone trying to sell you something, request account information, or even interact with you directly. The staff will not contact you first. I will not contact you first. I’m posting here to create a blog styled educational experience for new comers, that’s the end of it. Just be safe, use your head, and happy trading!
Disclaimer:
Hey I’m not a financial adviser. I don’t work for any large firms. I don’t have a background education in this. I’m a retarded autistic monkey on the same level as the guys over at r/wallstreetbets. In the last four years I’ve at times lost over twenty thousand dollars in my enthusiastic love of crypto. I have literally gone homeless and lived in a car over making bad decisions when it comes to life as a full time cryptonaut. (twice)
If you’re going to get into this for a career or even as a major part of your financial capabilities then take caution, do not play with more then you can risk. Markets crash, the losses always come faster then the gains, a dollar earned will be a hard painful journey but a fortune lost will come in the blink of an eye. If you want to keep waking up comfortably in your bed then never play with your rent / mortgage / survival money.
Intention:
The reason for this post today is to share how to setup the bot in the same manner that I run it. It’s also to encourage community interaction to create a better more profitable setup that we can all benefit from. I know there is more to be gained then how I’m currently trading though as I’m not a markets / scripting wizard. This comes purely from years of literally trying every possible way you can configure the bot and seeing what works and what doesn’t.
That said this morning I was reading the official Telegram group chat and noticed people discussing the profitability of the very popular Grid strategy for spot trading. I have been thinking about moving over to it a lot lately and comparing earnings. It’s even gained a place in the newest versions of the bot by default so it must be pretty damn good. I read one person saying they were doing $100 in profit a day with $20k to work with. Another person said they were earning about $25 a day with $5k. I’ve personally got about $5k I’m working with at the moment and I’m doing $100+ per 24 hours on good days and $25+ on slow dreadful days.
I brought this up in the chat and was asked to post up my settings here and in the market place. I even had a nice little conversion with Pim (@boekenbox) the creator of Grid. The thing is, Pim and others are much more experienced traders then I am. My settings have been working out lately but have major flaws that do not work in all situations. I’m honestly not sure how lucky I’ve been lately compared too actual long-term sustainability. Grid looks to be good all around and is probably the better option. Though in the name of profits for everybody I’m here posting today. With any luck, we’ll all make more money through open discussion & collaboration.
Config Settings: (only changed settings listed)
- Buy Method: gain
- Buy Level: -10 (discussion below)
- Sell Method: gain
- Gain: 0.25 (discussion below)
- Trading Limit: 200 (depends on how much you have to work with)
- Min Volume To Buy: 11 (gdax specific setting)
- Min Volume To Sell: 11 (gdax specific setting)
- Funds Reserve: 1
- Period: 1
- Medium EMA: 60 (almost doesn’t matter anymore)
- Fast EMA: 30 (almost doesn’t matter anymore)
- Double Up Enabled: on
- DU Cap: 0.2
- DU Cap Count: 12 (depends on how much you have to work with)
- DU Method: 0.5 (will change with autoconfig)
- DU Buydown: 0.5 (will change with autoconfig)
- TrailMe Buy: on
- TrailMe Buy Range: 0.05 (will change with autoconfig)
- TrailMe Sell: on
- TrailMe Sell Range: 0.05 (discussion below)
- TrailMe DU: on
- Market Buy: on
- Market Sell: on
- Market DU: on
- Delay: 0 (in your exchange settings)
Settings Discussion:
These settings are made in an attempt to ride every single wave of the market as it ebb and flows. I mainly try to hit the sub percent trades but wanted it to move with the market as much as possible. This is why I use trailing instead of a set gain amount. Now you might ask, why are you still using gain over just setting up TSSL. That’s because I’ve experienced issues over numerous versions when using TSSL with other trailing settings turned on. This is probably thanks to my lack of understanding of how one setting works with another and not the program itself. That said, everything works as I expect when I just use gain as a base then enable additional settings on top of it.
I think the reason I’m seeing such good returns compared to grid is simply because of the trailing activity. My average trade return is $1.7 though goes from $0.25 all the way to hero trades of $10+. It has a pretty extreme range as it’ll get out of a market as soon as the tides start traveling in the opposite direction but still benefits from large spikes when they occur. Let’s talk about a couple settings in particular. Buy Level, this is set at -10 so that it basically disables EMA protection. A couple versions back you use to be able to set this at 0 to disable it, as still noted in the Gunbot Wiki TSSL example description as a “pure tssl”. Though somewhere down the line this changed and a setting of 0 just became zero percent below EMA instead of turning it off.
This has caused me a lot of trouble for a while now but when looking into Grid I noticed he was able to use -10 to effectively do the same thing. Now for people wondering why this is important. This allows for you to profit on the way up instead of waiting for the markets to cross back down below your EMA. This makes A HUGE DIFFERENCE to your earnings. Normally you’d be sitting through bull runs as there just wasn’t a good deal to be had as the price will always be above your EMA lines. This allows you to keep purchasing and profiting no matter what the market is doing. I mean there’s only two options right? It’s either going to continue going up after a purchase which means you’re going to make money or it’s going to go down which will allow you to buy more at a lower price. Why would you want to stop making money on the way up? When I look at people’s screenshots from Grid, this is half the key to success IMHO.
This is why I wrote ”almost doesn’t matter anymore” as a note in my above settings as we’re effectively disabling it. Though I still like the settings as they are so I can watch trends live in the client. Now let’s talk about the Gain setting. This is set to 0.25 though I’ve often ran it at 0.1. The reason for the increase is we’re using a trailing on sells of 0.05 which will run downwards past your sell at line as long as it doesn’t also cross your breakeven line. This means in actuality at worse you’re going to sell for 0.2 percent profit. That’s actually some considerable head room as you can run at half that (a setting of 0.15 or 0.1) and be able to duck out of markets sooner. SIDE NOTE: If you’re wondering why you’d want to do this it’s because dumping your heavy bags and resetting your position at a small profit is often better than watching the markets tumble into the darkness while you’re still holding. If you empty out then your funds are free & the drop is nothing but a great opportunity to start the buy cycle again.
So back on track, the problem I run into is I’m doing market trades on Coinbase Pro currently and they have expensive trade fees. (currently paying 0.2% taker fees!) Plus their market order price guarantee is +/- 10%! Which when put into practice means while running at a really lean setting of say 0.1 I’ll occasionally spit out trades that I lose money on. They’ll show up anywhere from -$0.005 to like -$0.25. @_@ As you can imagine, I’m not here to lose money I only want to make it. By upping it just a bit to 0.25 it accounts for this slippage and I’ll never see a negative trade. I might only make a couple cents sometimes, but it’s at least always profitable while remaining extremely agile. Thanks to trailing you’re rarely ever going to be trading off at this small amount it’s just important to preserve as much ability as you can in getting in and out of markets.
Now let’s talk about those tight buying and selling percentages. I’ve done a lot of testing and find the bots default 0.5% to be waaay to loose for this application. I’ve even spent a lot of time trying 0.25 & 0.1. The objective of having a flowing sub percent machine gun trader is hitting each up and down as soon as the market even looks the opposite direction. Having settings of 0.05 will trigger on the same exact market moves as 0.1, you’re just getting more profit as you bought & sold earlier in the direction change. Remember I’m trying to fire off hundreds of trades a day so if I’m only making say 0.2% profit on a trade then the difference between buying/selling at a trailing of 0.1 vs 0.05 is huge. That actually doubles your profit as you’re walking away with 0.2 instead of 0.1. It’s all about min maxing to the best of the bot’s ability.
This also helps with your reentry into a market after selling off. Ideally it would go down so you can say you’ve sold at the peak and are looking for the next dip to buy. Though if it continues to go up, you’re going to have to purchase again and buying as close as to where you last sold off is the best option. The gap between your exit and entry points on the charts is just lost profits in this case. These settings will dump your heavy bags at profit then reset your position almost instantly if that where to happen. Yes, sometimes you sold out just to see it buy again as the markets continue to fly upwards. You didn’t know if the market was going to go further up or down, it made an emotionless decision to make you money while there was money on the table and that’s why you bought this program.
Another beneficial side effect of having the bot setup this sharply is it’s a dip hunter. Anytime you see swings in the market where there is a high level of volatility it’ll grab at the very bottom of dips even if they only existed for a mere second of opportunity. I’ve got a whole collection of screenshots in a folder called “epic dips” just because they make me smile and serve as a reminder that I’m on the right track with setting up the bot. Now let’s talk about Trading Limit, DU Cap, & DU Cap Count. This is modelled after Gunthar’s post from waaay back in version 11 called ”The Way I Run It” in which he shows how buying smaller amounts on the way down works better then direct 1:1 double ups.
Yes 1:1 will average the distance between your last and new purchase exactly half way between the two but it gets to be insanely expensive really quickly. I don’t have unlimited funds so when the markets keep dropping I need a way of slowly lowering the bar for reentry. 20% buys don’t spend a lot of money at first. The first few rounds are basically there to increase your bag size while the market quickly decides which direction it’s going again. If it shoots back up then great you made a little bit more then you would’ve as you cheaply picked up additional coins while the opportunity was there.
If it starts going down then not to worry you didn’t spend too much yet. Though as the market continues to drop over an extended period of time you keep buying with increasingly bigger orders to where you’re slowly overriding your initial purchases. I generally shoot for a DU Cap of 12 and that’s just the sweet spot I’ve personally identified with my own level of investment. I start with $200 buys so that while playing the sub percent market I can atleast make a dollar of profit with the middle ground 0.5% gain. This means if I don’t do any DU purchases there’s still enough in hand to make a little bit of profit. $100 buys were too little, $300 buys became too big through the DU process. Not to mention on the lower end with some coins like BTC I couldn’t actually submit a DCA order of 20% as the amount was smaller than my exchange would let me place resulting in an order error. (thanks to my reseller @Leeview for catching that)
The other big factor in picking these numbers is I need to run a handful of markets so that when some of them are having a slow or painful day the others can remain fruitful. In actuality if I’m running even just five markets, I cannot afford to pay for all of them if 12 DCA orders are placed. I’m being greedy and utilizing the idea that generally only one or two is having a really bad day so I can use funds from the other markets that aren’t hurting to better secure their positions for reentry. This is one of the downfalls of my particular financial situation as I’m dancing the line here. If we go through a crash of a cycle with all markets down eventually one or two of them will get caught up not being able to complete 12 full rounds of dollar cost averaging. Now as some markets come back, these other troubled markets will finish their DCA rounds though it’s a burden on your newly freed bags for sure. Given this rarely happens, I make more doing this dance then not but it’s far from ideal.
I further manipulate the situation with an AutoConfig file that is as simple as one could write a script. It’s not advanced wizardry like you see from other packages on the marketplace. We’ll cover that in the next section.
AutoConfig File:
Code: [Select]
{
"DURange-Fast": {
"pairs": {
"exclude": "",
"include": "-",
"exchange": "gdax"
},
"filters": {
"ducount1": {
"type": "smallerThan",
"ducount": 3
}
},
"overrides": {
"TRAIL_ME_BUY_RANGE": 0.05,
"DU_METHOD": 0.25,
"DU_BUYDOWN": 0.25
},
"clearOverrides": false,
"schedule": "*/10 * * * * *",
"type": "manageOverrides",
"debug": false,
"enabled": true
},
"DURange-Normal": {
"pairs": {
"exclude": "",
"include": "-",
"exchange": "gdax"
},
"filters": {
"ducount2": {
"type": "biggerThan",
"ducount": 2
},
"ducount3": {
"type": "smallerThan",
"ducount": 6
}
},
"overrides": {
"TRAIL_ME_BUY_RANGE": 0.05,
"DU_METHOD": 0.5,
"DU_BUYDOWN": 0.5
},
"clearOverrides": false,
"schedule": "*/10 * * * * *",
"type": "manageOverrides",
"debug": false,
"enabled": true
},
"DURange-Slow": {
"pairs": {
"exclude": "",
"include": "-",
"exchange": "gdax"
},
"filters": {
"ducount4": {
"type": "biggerThan",
"ducount": 5
},
"ducount5": {
"type": "smallerThan",
"ducount": 9
}
},
"overrides": {
"TRAIL_ME_BUY_RANGE": 0.1,
"DU_METHOD": 1,
"DU_BUYDOWN": 1
},
"clearOverrides": false,
"schedule": "*/10 * * * * *",
"type": "manageOverrides",
"debug": false,
"enabled": true
},
"DURange-LostInSpace": {
"pairs": {
"exclude": "",
"include": "-",
"exchange": "gdax"
},
"filters": {
"ducount6": {
"type": "biggerThan",
"ducount": 8
}
},
"overrides": {
"TRAIL_ME_BUY_RANGE": 0.25,
"DU_METHOD": 2.5,
"DU_BUYDOWN": 2.5
},
"clearOverrides": false,
"schedule": "*/10 * * * * *",
"type": "manageOverrides",
"debug": false,
"enabled": true
}
}AutoConfig Discussion:
What this file does is simply check your markets DU Cap Count every ten seconds. It then changes the Trail Me Buy Range, DU Method, and DU Buydown depending one what range out of four it falls into. The first is fast, this says you just exited a market and are looking to get back in, ready to snap some coin up and get rid of it like a machine gun. It contains three rounds of dollar cost averaging at very sharp purchase levels. This is great when markets aren’t fluctuating a great deal as it lets you buy the tiny dips then get rid of them at profit over and over.
The next range is called Normal, it keeps the same Trail Me Buy Range but extends the Method and Buydown by double. This stops the bot from rocketing through your DU Caps and money when things are just starting to go downhill. By doubling the distance while still maintaining such a sharp range you’re saving yourself twice the buy ins. This occurs for another three rounds.
After that if things continue to go down, we’re now in the Slow range. This really slows down how often you’re purchasing those dollar cost average rounds by upping the Trail Me Buy Range to double what it was before, now at 0.1. It also doubles the Method and Buydown again to 1.0. It’s important to notice how we’ve dulled the edge a bit so the market has to start coming back a little bit more before it’ll trigger a purchase, it also has to travel at least a full percent (twice the distance) before it can happen. This also occurs for another three rounds of dollar cost averaging.
Then finishing it up, if all hope is lost on a market it’ll be put in the Lost In Space range. This is for the last possible rounds of dollar cost averaging I can afford, the real big purchases. I want the largest range of possible distance down before making these buys to help lower my reentry point. There for the Trail Me Buy Range is changed to a huge 0.25 while the Method and Buydowns are increased to over double at 2.5. Normally I see considerably more traffic down then 2.5% as the 0.25% trail range doesn’t accidently trigger until the markets are actually coming back. It’s a very dull setting and wouldn’t work for the normal machine gun sub percent trades I’m trying to make all day but once you’re this far out from profitability and down deep into the DCA dungeon you’re playing a very different position.
It’s not the Dynamic DCA script you find on the market place but it remains dynamic using the built-in trailing system from the bot. We’re basically just changing the behavior of how we want that trailing system to work into four different categories. Like I said before, it’s drop dead simple. It works well, though I’m sure this is one of the areas more experienced traders / scripters could increase profitability.
Dollar Cost Average Excel Calculator:
I created a very simple excel file to help me determine what the proper levels for initial purchases & dollar cost averages should be. You can simply enter your initial buy in, how much you want to double up per round, & how much your trade fees are then it’ll do the rest. It’ll conveniently plot out twenty rounds for you to look at. It has three separate calculators on the same page so you can easily play with the settings and compare them without having to take screenshots or write the results down.
Now I generally find I rarely need rounds 9-12, which is why they’re the lost in space rounds. So however much you can start out with and still get to round 12 while maintaining the total amount of markets you wish to run is the correct number. Example as per what I’m running at time of posting. $200 buy ins @ 20% DCAs means by round 12 I’m holding a staggering $1800 bag. This would be if it bought the perfect amount each time which rarely happens, most the time it’s slightly less but plan ahead.
Given I’m working with about $5k in funds right now this means I cannot even afford three markets to be round 12 fucked. As per the dance we talked about above. Given this rarely happens I can afford to send one or two markets to round 12 so that it can prep for a much better reentry point.
I’ve uploaded a copy of this simple excel calculator to google for you to download: here
Simple Things to Earn More Money:
If you’re planning on going down the route I have here and running a sub percent machine gun bot then it’s all about paying as little in transaction fees as possible. This not only allows you to take home more money but it allows your bot to get in and out of markets faster, making it more agile. You want the lowest bar possible to reentry and Coinbase, even their Pro side, isn’t the place for this.
I’ve done north of 500k in volume this last cycle already. They change your trading fees based on levels depending on how much volume you’re pushing. Though even on a good month I’m probably not going to push a million+ on this little amount of money I’m working with. Which means I’m stuck at 0.1% maker fees and 0.2% taker fees. This is too high and costing me an arm and leg while machine gunning sub percent trades. I’ve paid over TWO GRAND in fees so far this cycle alone.
A quick look around an exchange listing shows Binance offering an entry level 0.075% fee for both making and taking. That would more then cut my fees IN HALF. I’d have made $1000+ more by just taking my business over there. Which at the time of posting I have actually gone through all the account creation processes to do so and have been waiting for the last level of account verification forever.
It goes to show that where you do business is just as important as how you’ve setup the bot. Find a quality exchange that is going to appreciate your Gunbot. Don’t forget to lockdown your account access, API, and whitelist your bot’s IP. Do every additional security enhancement possible. We live in a time where Gunbot accounts are a generally a good target so protect yourself.
Conclusion:
End of the day this configuration has provided pretty good returns since it's last iteration. I’ve been seeing $25 on terrible days, averaging $100 plus on normal days, and I’ve seen as high as $200 on monster days. That’s with $5k total to work with. Though in all honesty I could just be getting extremely lucky as the markets have been very kind lately. It’s not hard to make money when everything is bull popping off booming and zooming.
The real test of a bot setup is how it handles bad days, back-to-back bad days, into bad weeks. How much you profit over a month, a couple months, into a year. I don’t have that data right now as I’ve been dicking around with the settings a lot lately to arrive where I am currently. I’ve been using this bot for years trying to develop the perfect settings to play every possible hand throughout the day. I want it to be super human and often I’ll challenge it by sitting for twelve hours with my markets open doing it by hand.
It can beat me most the time but I’m also not a great trader, I think and process situations differently than it does. My human brain goes for larger more profitable trades while it’s over there consistently winning over and over at the tight game. It’s emotionless and that’s the beauty. Even if I’ve not got it perfectly dialed in, it works while you sleep, while you’re out with your kids or on a date, it’s making you money while you’re not thinking about markets. That’s well worth the cost of the license.
As for what you should run. I’m not sure. I still think Pim’s (@boekenbox) Grid package for spot trading is worth trying. I read today that he’s implemented dynamic gain adjustment and that’s probably going to really be the winning feature that will bring in more profits than what I read earlier this morning. This entire wall of text post was created on the grounds I was seeing better returns machine gunning trades out in this fashion then grid users were making. To explore how that was happening and hopefully offer some education to the community that we could then in return collaborate on for a better all-around configuration across the board.
Remember, I am an amateur, Pim is not. My settings DO NOT handle massive market drops well at all. The only things you can do while running my config is set a stop loss to get your bot back on track once you’ve maxed out your funds via dollar cost averaging or… sit around and wait for them to come back someday. Holding. If you’ve got considerably more resources then me then you could always expand the range at which you can run DCA purchases. There’s probably a range around 20 that you’d never really lose sight of the markets and stay trading all the time. I’m not able to test that and have decided playing more markets is the solution to sustained profits.
Ultimately thanks to the times we find ourselves in (see: covid), I have bills and have to live my life on top of what the bot is bringing in. I literally eat at times thanks to the bot. So while I’m slowly trying to build my wealth back up and be able to expand what the bot can do other people can probably come right in and test a lot of variables I can’t afford to yet. I assume users providing settings packages like Pim are in a much better position then I am to advise you on how to trade. Though hopefully the time I’ve spent today creating this post will give some of you out there a lesson in using the bot and succeeding. This is worth your time, do not give up if you’re having trouble finding the profits. Come talk to us in the official Telegram groups or post here on the forums!
Cheers everybody, thanks for reading.
‘Goblin
(@TheWhiteGoblin on Telegram)
NEW VERSION POSTED! Keep scrolling down to the second post or click this link: https://forum.gunthy.org/index.php?topic=4362.msg16653#msg16653
THIRD VERSION POSTED! Keep scrolling down for a while or click this link: https://forum.gunthy.org/index.php?topic=4362.msg16687#msg16687
