VSA

[chimpy]

Steve,

The original thready does have a PDF explaining all about the indicators, the the inspiration comes form the tradestation tom williams suite of indicators of which you can information by searching it.
In any event VSA really has a life of its own (a bit like elliot waves) so your research would be better applied to the classical texts and understanding rather that specific implementation - the pdf might help with that though. See also the volumespreadanalysis channel on youtube has loads of videos

[Steve0001]

I saw the PDF file already (I actually previously found it on my own somewhere else on the internet while trying to figure out what VSA was). To put it bluntly, I found it to be long-winded, chaotic, and to contain a fair amount of seemingly extraneous material, meanwhile not telling me what I really want to know. In short the PDF presents unnecessary barriers to the casual reader like myself who is trying to gain a simple understanding of VSA and decide if they want to know more about it and/or maybe want it on their charts (and to understand what the indicator is showing them - I still do not have a complete definition of precisely what defines the "no demand" - and why the indicator draws it on my chart and then much later decides that it was wrong). And no, I don't really want to watch a 20 minute video explaining to me something I can read in 2 minutes (if I had a printed version).

I am really not trying to complain. Rather, I am intrigued by the potential for VSA and I think other people should be / would be also - if presented with a comprehensible introduction. I would have presented the basic argument for the most basic VSA including some of the rationale. I would have included the defining requirements for a "no supply" and for a "no demand" and how to recognize them on a chart. Same for a "squat" (which I still do not know what it is) etc. Only then would I have gone on to explain to the interested reader some of the finer points and additional details about how to successfully use the indicator.

Even after reading the PDF, I still do not know if I should be interested in the other indicators in your other thread, as it doesn't explain what they are or do. Am I correct in assuming the indicator in this thread is a lua translation of "VSAc BAR DOTS.mq4" ? (and that the deficiencies I see in it originated in the mq4 version?) How about VSAc BAR TEXT SIGNALS.mq4 ? How about VSAc MULTY VOLUME HISTOGRAM.mq4 ? How about VSAc ROUND NUMBERS.mq4 ? How about VSAc WSD HISTOGRAM.mq4 ? Should I be interested in those (or are they unnecessary / rarely used fluff?)? If I read a brief explanation and saw screen shots of those in action, I might have a better idea of whether I am interested or not (I suspect other readers also).

So, yes, I am interested in VSA, but what I find (seemingly everywhere I look) is a lot of lightweight discussion or poorly written or not so concise discussion (or both or all three). Meanwhile, it seems the indicator in this thread is not working properly and yet it hard for me to check it since I still do not have a rigorous definition of ND/NS requirements (or at least the intended requirement for the indicator).

Steve0001

[chimpy]

Steve0001,

I cannot speak for the functionally of the volume indicator on this thread as previously mentioned. My post was to draw yours, and the hard working volunteers at fxcodebase's attention to the previously mention VSA thread, to save them time coding, if possible..

>>And no, I don't really want to watch a 20 minute video explaining to me something I can read in 2 >>minutes (if I had a printed version).

Remember on this site nobody is trying to sell you anything. IF there were a 20 minute video that gave you a good summary of VSA I would consider that quite merciful, even if 3 hours in fact.

You can go through hundreds of the indicators posted on this site and you wont find much discussion of the ins and outs of volume or how to read a stochastic or how to trade (occasionally you will if you lucky but that's a total bonus)

Luckily you have videos online and elsewhere (some you have to pay for and some for free) that give you a good education on the subject for maybe 15 hours work. I always like to watch them 3-4 times plus some supplemental reading maybe your looking at 150 hours work in total, then you can start mastering the subject.
Considering what a law student has to do in 4-5 years and you have the potential to make more money than them. 150 hours sounds a pretty good deal to me.
Sure, I recognize you might know all the above, having put in similar work on other areas of finance. I have literally spent thousands of hours reading book after book and watching videos. Some I did waste my time, others gave me more.

You may indeed find a good summery of VSA out there, I have never bothered to look and I just made use of the in depth material that is available already. If you find a good summery then post it for others to see.

And as for "And no, I don't really want to watch a 20 minute video explaining to me something" I would take that and be grateful because ,its less time than it probably took you to write the message above and/or reply to this one.

good luck

[Robbo44]

Hi Apprentice,
Please can I request a non-repainting version of this indicator if possible

[Apprentice]

Can you specify the algorithm?

[Steve0001]

Hi Apprentice,

I became interested in VSA (and this indicator in particular) when I came across this thread a few weeks ago. From the limited reading I have done about VSA, I learned that (1) there are several variations of the same basic strategy (varying rules) and that (2) most proponents of the strategy seem to have a hard time specifying it in a concise, well-defined set of rules. I see from earlier posts that this indicator is the result of your hard work translating a user-supplied indicator from another programming language (which had no documentation). All this makes it a challenge to understand exactly what this indicator is doing - and to understand why some no-supply or no-demand indications get erased upon redraw.

I started having a look at the LUA file to analyze what it is doing, but it is (as you note) long and tedious and difficult to completely understand every detail. Disclaimer: I don't know LUA very well, but years ago I wrote quite a few programs and subroutines in C and C++ (I know LUA is somehow related C / C++), so LUA doesn't look totally alien to me.

My understanding of this VSA implementation is incomplete, but this is what I THINK: It looks for no-supply / no-demand candidates by looking at the last 3 completed candles (and also the still-open candle). (1) It looks for the most recently completed candle to have less volume than either of the previous two candles. (2) It looks for the most recently completed candle to have a smaller range than the previous candle (spread or range = high minus low). (3) It looks for the most recently completed candle to show signs of reversal (like having a wick) [I refrain from "spelling out" the exact conditions; they are somewhat complicated]. (4) Further, it looks for the current (incomplete) candle to be the reverse color (compared to the most recently closed candle). If all these conditions are met, the most recently completed candle can be identified as a "no-supply / no-demand candidate" and marked accordingly on the chart (providing a timely signal to traders), but (5) it still needs to be confirmed by the close of the current candle (which is still open). I suspect this is where the re-paint issue arises - when the current candle temporarily shows a reversed color and gets a tentative NS/ND label, but finally closes the wrong color (the same color as the previous candle - which was the no-supply / no-demand candidate) and the indicator fails to erase the tentative NS/ND label which failed to be confirmed. Many people wait for a current candle to close and provide NS/ND confirmation; others look simply for the current candle to engulf the candidate NS/ND (while not yet closed). One way to test this hypothesis would be to make it mark with a different color any NS/ND candles which are the most recent candle (and see if those tentative marks are the ones that are wrong and disappear on re-draw). Those most recent candles seem to be the ones that get labeled with the 'Plot(LT,period,"NoDemand")' and 'Plot(HT,period,"NoSupply")' lines in the indicator code.

When looking at historical data in the chart, the indicator analyzes all sets of four consecutive candles in the chart.

This implementation of VSA does some things I find odd, like testing whether the VSA candidate is a zero-body doji (Is it really significant if a candle close is exactly equal to its open, as opposed to being a pip or a few pips different?). I am still sifting through it, but it also seems to look for candles meeting the same conditions (or almost the same conditions) which are NOT zero-body dojis (so why bother with the zero-body doji / NOT zero-body doji test, if that is true?). I will have to have a closer look at it. It has also occurred to me that we could try to improve on the reversal candle tests if we didn't like them or thought we had a better idea (but any such indicator should be clearly identified as a variant; I am still interested in experimenting with the best VSA algorithms).

I also suspect the code could have been written much more compactly using loop structures and thereby also be much easier to understand (I see lots of at least superficially repetitive code).

Steve0001

[Steve0001]

I should add to my previous comments this: I didn't say anything about the "squats" indicator because I haven't looked at it yet - partly because it doesn't seem to appear on my charts when I run it (so either something is wrong or they don't appear that often). I still don't even have a good definition of a "squat."

[Robbo44]

Can you specify the algorithm?

Hi Apprentice,

I'm not sure what the algorithm would look like as I don't have a coding background. My issue is that whenever I reload a chart the original VSA 'dots' seem to disappear from where they were earlier.

Is it possible for the indicator to draw the dots without them changing when I reload the chart?

Regards

[Apprentice]

Compatibility issue fixed.
_Alert Helper is not longer needed.

[Steve0001]

Hi,

I wonder if it would be possible to create a "dashboard" which displays the VSA indicator for any number of selected currency pairs and for several time frames? What I have in mind is to create a table which lists a red or green (or no) dot for the current candle and also for the two (immediately) previous candles. It would summarize at a glance the most recent VSA results for all selected currency pairs and whatever time frames are of interest (without the user having to click through many charts or deal with a large number of alerts).

It may also be useful to include "squats," perhaps as an alternative to VSA (so you could select whether you want the dashboard to show VSA or squats).

Attached is an example of how one might display the data (but use dots instead of numbers).

Many thanks!

Steve