Book Image

Python Algorithmic Trading Cookbook

By : Pushpak Dagade
Book Image

Python Algorithmic Trading Cookbook

By: Pushpak Dagade

Overview of this book

If you want to find out how you can build a solid foundation in algorithmic trading using Python, this cookbook is here to help. Starting by setting up the Python environment for trading and connectivity with brokers, you’ll then learn the important aspects of financial markets. As you progress, you’ll learn to fetch financial instruments, query and calculate various types of candles and historical data, and finally, compute and plot technical indicators. Next, you’ll learn how to place various types of orders, such as regular, bracket, and cover orders, and understand their state transitions. Later chapters will cover backtesting, paper trading, and finally real trading for the algorithmic strategies that you've created. You’ll even understand how to automate trading and find the right strategy for making effective decisions that would otherwise be impossible for human traders. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to use Python libraries to conduct key tasks in the algorithmic trading ecosystem. Note: For demonstration, we're using Zerodha, an Indian Stock Market broker. If you're not an Indian resident, you won't be able to use Zerodha and therefore will not be able to test the examples directly. However, you can take inspiration from the book and apply the concepts across your preferred stock market broker of choice.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)

Momentum indicators – stochastic oscillator

The stochastic oscillator is a leading momentum indicator. It is also called STOCH for short. STOCH compares the latest close with the recent trading range. Fast K is a ratio and has a value between 0 and 100. Fast K can have haphazard movement, and hence it is smoothed using a moving average, which is the slow K. Slow K is further smoothed using another moving average, which is the slow D. Values of slow K over 75 indicate an overbought condition, while values below 25 indicate an oversold condition. When slow K crosses above slow D, it is considered a buy signal. Similarly, when slow K crosses below slow D, it is considered a sell signal.

The formula for computing STOCH is as follows:

MA stands for moving average, and can be either SMA or EMA. For this recipe, we have used SMA. This formula needs three time periods: one of them is n and the other two are the time periods of the MAs. The range over which we analyze data is defined by...