One of the activities the attendees of the Amsterdam Dakota Workshop wanted to do is to build an ATR (Average True Range) Stop.  This stop is designed to stop out your system if the market quickly moves adversely against you.  Building it wasn't too difficult.  First, we built histories of the traded price, the high, the low and the close and called Dakota's built-in TrueRange function.  Then we calculate an average True Range with an Simple Moving Average (SMA) function, where the period is set by the user, like this:

Next, we compare the current price to the prior price +/- a user specified percentage of the ATR, deciding to stay in or go out, like this:

Script_Evaluate = STAYPAT
       'This means leave the signal as it was determined by the swarm

This creates a volatility-compensated stop that kicks you out if the market quickly reverts against your position.  Dakota users can download this stop from the Stop Section of the Downloads Center in the private Dakota / Profit forums.
 

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What you see above is 10 years of walk-forward out of sample data using a supplied bot, the Wave Oscillator Double SMA adapted with Dakota's "Equity Controller" algorithms applied to the S&P500 futures. "Cherry picked" you might think?  Well, here is the equity curves when I re-ran it 15 times under varying initial sets of parameter values:

Pretty good, I'd say.  We are in the final stages of testing and packaging and you should look for James' new add-ins available on our web site soon.
 

We've just completed the second of our BioComp Dakota Workshops, this time in Amsterdam.  Next-up is Los Angeles at the Embassy Suites North.  There are still a few seats available if you would like to join us, but time is running out!
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Attend a 2.5 day workshop led by Carl Cook, Dakota's creator.  Discover how to make the most from your Dakota investment, including how to create your own ScriptBots and ScriptStops.  Meet other users and share ideas!  We keep these workshops small and personal, so seats are limited.

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