Is it possible to use the indicators in Backtrader without Cerebro or strategies?

I would like to currently notify myself of any possible buy/sell signals that I would then check manually. I would be doing this programmatically to be able to analyze many markets and exchanges at the same time.

I simplified the example so it's really easy to read and follows most of the conventions that the Backtrader's samples also take.

Here's the simplified code with the same problems as above. Why does this happen?

from __future__ import (absolute_import, division, print_function, unicode_literals)

import datetime

import backtrader as bt
import backtrader.feeds as btfeeds
import backtrader.indicators as btind


def run():
    cerebro = bt.Cerebro(optreturn=False)
    StrategyContainer.register(SMA_CrossOver)
    cerebro.optstrategy(StrategyContainer, strategy_index=StrategyContainer.indices())

    data0 = btfeeds.YahooFinanceCSVData(dataname='../../datas/daily-PEP.csv', fromdate=datetime.datetime(1997, 1, 1), todate=datetime.datetime(1998, 1, 1))
    cerebro.adddata(data0)
    cerebro.adddata(data0)

    # run
    results = cerebro.run()


class StrategyContainer(object):
    _strategies = []
    @classmethod
    def register(cls, strategy):
        cls._strategies.append(strategy)
    @classmethod
    def indices(cls):
        return range(len(cls._strategies))
    def __new__(cls, *args, **kwargs):
        strategy_index = kwargs.pop('strategy_index')
        obj = cls._strategies[strategy_index](*args, **kwargs)
        return obj


class SMA_CrossOver(bt.Strategy):
    pass


run()

I mean new Backtrader developers, not developers in general. I'm still struggling to get something that I would call basic running, namely running multiple strategies on multiple markets and comparing the results of the strategies. This use case is what brought me into Backtrader.

I get the same problem if I switch optreturn of Cerebro from the default of True to False.

It might be in backtrader or more likely in my code. Any ideas?

Okay makes sense now. Kind of weird that you still can access a broker, that's not active at all, can be confusing.

I don't know the size because I use order_target_percent.

If I do cerebro.broker.getvalue() before and after a cerebro.run(), I get:

• No change in value (i.e. 10000) if using optstrategy.
• Change in value (e.g. 15000) if using addstrategy.

Is there an underlying reason for this? Is it to simplify things when using addstrategy?

Yes, that's what I'm asking.

@vbs yes this does basically what I would do: check every order and see if it's already executed and if it is, use that.