stepgrid
A grid like strategy that trades when price moves more than a defined step size. You can choose between using auto step size or setting a manual step size. Price trailing is completely automatic and happens every step up or down.
The idea of this strategy is to trade every meaningful price movement. Even while below the overall break even price of a position, it will still take advantage of small steps upwards to sell parts of a bag at rates profitable compared to their corresponding buy orders.
TIP
This strategy is a bit different than most other AILidex strategies: there are just a handful configurable options, confirming indicators are not a thing.
Trading behavior
When you run stepgrid with auto step size, this is the kind of trading behavior to expect:
Default stepgrid settings. Each arrow is an order: green = buy, orange = sell
Let’s break down what actually happens:
Steps up and down are placed around last order rate, in case the trading pair has never traded before the reference price for steps is the price the pair had at the moment the strategy started running.
If price moves down a step, it automatically starts buy trailing and places a buy order for 1x ‘trading limit’ as soon as trailing finishes.
If price moves up a step while below break even, it automatically starts sell trailing and places a sell order when trailing finishes. Below break even each sell order is 1x ‘trading limit’ in size.
If price is above break even, the behavior is the same but the order quantities can exceed 1x ‘trading limit. If price reaches a full step above break even, it will close a bag at once.
If price increases enough to reach the point where the next buy step is above break even, the buy step acts as stop in profit for positions bigger than 4x ‘trading limit’.
When in no position, the bot will buy again when either the next buy or sell step is reached.
The bot will continue to accumulate until max buy count is hit, or when it run out of available funds. Every new buy order will lower the break even price.
Balance management is very important, make sure you can afford the planned number of buy orders.
The easiest way to start running stepgrid is by not owning any of the coins it is about to buy: starting with an existing balance is not recommended.
TIP
The next trading targets are always visible on the chart.
Keep in mind the targets lines are moving over time, they represent the current targets.
How to create a stepgrid strategy
Using the advanced strategy editor: create a new strategy and select stepgrid as buy and sell method.
Essential settings
To use stepgrid, there are just three essential settings:
Setting Description
Trading limit
The amount to invest per buy order.
On an USDT-BTC pair, a trading limit of 20 means that every buy order is for 20 USDT. Always make sure that trading limit is set higher than min volume to sell.
Max buy count
Limits how many buy orders are allowed.
Setting a max buy count of 999 means that the bot may do up to 999 buy orders in a row.
Min volume to sell
To ignore tiny balances.
Set this to the minimum order size of the pair, to make the bot ignore small balances that cannot be sold.
There are a few more settings that can optionally be used with this strategy, described below
Additional settings
There are a few additional settings you can use with this strategy.
Setting Description
Auto step size
Enables using automatic step size
Auto step size attempts to determine steps that just work.
When not in a position, auto step size is smaller than when in a position.
When disabled, you can set a manual step size instead.
Step size
Sets a manual step size
Manual step size for buy and sell orders.
Value represents price: setting 500 on USDT-BTC makes the bot trade each time price moves 500 USDT
Enforce step size
Restricts buy and sell trailing to step size
When enabled, price trailing is not allowed to trigger trades at rates less then the current step size. This ensures a minimum distance between orders.
Stop after next sell
To stop trading a pair after the position closes
When enabled, no buy orders are placed when there is no balance left to sell.
Averaging down of the current position continues, partial sell orders do not make the bot stop afterwards.
Period
Sets the chart interval
The default period is 15. Make sure to only use supported period values. The trading settings editor suggests valid values for the selected exchange.
SMA period
How many candles are used for calculating support and resistance levels
By default 50 candles are used to calculate support and resistance. In this strategy, support and resistance are used to determine appropriate trailing ranges
ATR period How many candles are used for calculating ATR (average true range)
ATR is used for determining auto step size.
By default it’s set to use a 50 period ATR. Using lower values might cause step size to fluctuate too fast.
Keep quote
Keep a number of units when selling
By setting keep quote at any number above 0, this number of units will be held back when the next sell order happens.
Protect partial sell
Keeps track of buy history
Prevents partial sell orders from being fired at rates where there is no remaining buy volume below it, and would cause a loss.
This relies on AILidex having the full order history for the current position, for example it cannot work when you deposit funds and use stepgrid to sell them.
TIP
Other parameters
Buy and Sell enabled options can be set as pair overrides. Watch mode is respected.
Besides settings mentioned on this page, no other strategy setting has any effect on stepgrid.