How do i identify when price action gets tight?

Sagittarius19

Hello,

I am trying to write a script to identify and buy when the closes of the past 15 seconds stay between two prices. Below is the code i have so far. I am using tick data so the time between ticks can vary. Meaning (close[0], close[1] and close[2] can all have different spans of time between them. Hence why i am using time for my entry.

Any idea how to make this work? In this particular case, i am trying to buy when the close has stayed in a 5 cent range for atleast 15 seconds.

 def next(self):

    for i, d in enumerate(self.datas):
        if (len(self.datas[i])>0):

            close  = self.datas[i].close
            price_up2 = price[-1] +.02
            price_down2 = price[-1] - .02
            
            if not position:                        
                if close_up2c > close[0] > close_down2c:
                    start_time = time.time()
                    if time.time() - start_time <= 15:
                        return
                    else: 
                        self.buy(data = d)

backtrader

The first thing is to use the actual time reference

@sagittarius19 said in How do i identify when price action gets tight?:

if time.time() - start_time <= 15:

This is the time in your PC/Laptop/Raspberry Pi, which may have nothing to do with the trading time and the speed and which the data delivers ticks/bars.

See: Docs - DateTime Management

Sagittarius19

@backtrader Got it. Thanks for pointing this out