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Baseconfig - Selling


Trading isn't complete without selling your investments, hopefully at a profit. Cryptohopper offers several tools that can help you sell automatically, configured in the "Selling" part of your Baseconfig: Trailing Stop-Loss, Sell based on Strategy, Stop-Loss, Auto Close, Shorting, and sell signals from Signalers.

With the sell based on strategy, Take Profit, Trailing Stop-Loss, and Auto Close, it matters which one is triggered first. They can be used simultaneously, and the setting that is met first will sell the position. As an example, it is possible to use the following settings:

(Example)

  • Take Profit: 10%
  • TSL: 1%
  • AutoClose: 7 days

When you enable "Sell based on strategy" in the Base Config, it results in a sell order when your strategy's requirements have been met before the other sell features are triggered. This feature only checks your strategy settings. Selling based on Auto Close could still trigger a sell when the position has not been sold by one of your other sell settings within X period. When “Sell based on strategy” is enabled, your positions might get sold with a loss.

Stop-Loss will only sell positions when they are in a loss and can be used to prevent losing more on a trade. The last thing that could trigger a sell is your Signaler. When subscribed to a Signaler, it is possible to select "Sell signals" and "Signal configuration" in the Signal config. If you see different trading results than configured in the base config, these two settings could be the reason as you can receive sell signals from the Signaler.

Sell Settings#

Set a Take Profit, choose between Market or Limit orders, and decide how long a sell order can be active before it's canceled.

A detailed explanation of every configurable field:

Take Profit At

This is one of the easiest automated selling tools. Enter the percentage profit you want to make on a position before selling it automatically. Whenever your coin goes above this percentage, your Hopper will place a sell order.

Order Type

There are several order types based on your strategy. Do you want to create limit or market orders by default? A limit order is a buy/sell order for a specific price. You can set this to whatever price you want. When the current coin price matches your desired price, your order will be filled. In a rush? Market orders help to get your order filled immediately as it will fill the first orders shown in the order book for buying or selling. It could be expensive in illiquid markets, so watch out.

Max Open Time Sell

When your Take Profit, Stop-Loss, or whichever setting you use to sell with is triggered, a sell order is placed on your exchange. You decide how many minutes the order stays open with the "Max Open Time Sell". Setting a short max open time sell may help your Hopper to try again quickly, but it could result in your order only being partially filled

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Sell Strategy#

Most of you use strategies to purchase assets, but you can also use them to sell! Technical traders use their indicators to inform their trading decisions, and so can you. Enable "Sell based on Strategy" and your Hopper will also follow your strategy's sell signals. If you enable this, your positions will be sold when your TA strategy signals to sell.

Note: With this setting enabled positions could be sold with loss.

The other configurable option is "Hold assets when new target is the same". If your Hopper is trying to sell a coin, but your TA strategy indicates that your Hopper should buy that coin instead, your Hopper will not sell your current coin even if it reaches your chosen take profit percentage or TSL.

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Stop-Loss#

The Stop-loss is not a tool to make a profit but rather to minimize losses. It may feel counter-intuitive to use it, but it's vital for any trader! For example, if 60% of your buys are positive and 40% negative, then your Stop-Loss will help filter out the bad buys. If you don't use a stop-loss, then you will end up with what we call "bags" - positions in a deep loss that you should've sold earlier.

A detailed explanation of every configurable field:

Enable

Do you want to use a Stop-Loss on all your positions? Enable Stop-Loss orders. Your coins will be sold with a loss if they go lower than the configured percentage.

Stop-loss percentage

Now it's time to think how much a position needs to go down before your Stop-Loss should kick in. Enter as a positive number. For example, if you want to sell your coins when the price drops below -2.5%, you would enter 2.5 here.

Sometimes, people feel that their Stop-Loss didn't trigger properly. Before filing a ticket, ensure that the Stop-Loss percentage is filled in, and that no config pools are active. (These override your Baseconfig).

The Stop-loss will adhere to your base-config setup. Decide if you want to use Market or Limit orders for your Stop-Loss. Remember, a Limit order won't always be filled in the event of a currency depreciating too quickly. You can adjust this under "Sell Settings".

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Trailing Stop-Loss#

Trailing Stop-Loss is by far our most popular feature. It's a feature that's useful for practically every type of trader.

The Trailing Stop-Loss automatically adjusts your stop-loss when the price goes up. Whenever the price goes down again, your TSL (Trailing Stop-Loss) will fire and sell your position. This is an ideal way to follow an upwards trend and to prevent selling too early. Manual traders utilize this feature, as well as semi-automatic traders, and full auto-traders.

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Let’s go through the possible configurations:

Enable

Toggle the enable button to activate the TSL on new orders.

Trailing Stop-Loss percentage

Your Hopper will try to sell if your coin price drops by this percentage. Your Hopper will keep tracking the price up until it drops by the percentage you configured, after which your Hopper will sell the position. One "catch", your TSL needs to be armed. How do you arm your TSL? Read below:.

Arm Trailing Stop-Loss at

You might not want to fire your TSL immediately. For example, you may want your transaction fees to be covered first. Let's say you configure 1% as your "Arm percentage". Your TSL will be armed when your position hits 1% profit, after which the Hopper will sell the coin when it drops as much as you have configured in the "Trailing stop-loss percentage".

Use Trailing Stop-Loss only

This setting is for those who love this tool, and only want to use the TSL for selling. When enabled, this setting will disable the Take Profit and only use the trailing stop-loss to sell a position.

Reset Stop-Loss after failed orders

When enabled, this setting will reset the trailing stop-loss after a trailing stop-loss sell order is cancelled. Orders can be canceled when they're not filled, and they're open longer than you've configured in the "Max Open Time Sell" in your sell settings. You can also enable Market-Orders if you don't want orders to fail. This is often more expensive though.

Only sell with profit

When enabled, this will check if the position is being sold with profit when trailing stop-loss is triggered. If trailing stop-loss would sell a position with a loss, then the sell order will not be placed.

Troubleshooting the TSL

When using the TSL, make sure to set either a high Take Profit, or enable "use Trailing Stop-Loss only". The Hopper will always sell with whichever setting allows it to sell first.

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Auto-Close#

You may want to close (sell) positions automatically after a given time. This is often used by merchants and miners, who want to synchronize positions and automatically exchange them for another (stable) currency.

You can enable it and decide how long it should take until your positions should be closed (sold).

Watch out when you enable this setting, because all your positions will be sold after the time you've configured. Even if they're in a loss.

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Shorting#

A way to make up for a loss-making position is our Short and Trailing Stop-Short feature. It's an exciting feature for traders that are looking for an alternative for their traditional stop-loss.

Shorting is the practice of making a profit while the price of an asset goes down. Our way of shorting is a little bit different than "traditional" shorting. Our shorting is more like a buyback function. When you expect a position to make a more significant loss, you initiate a Short, and your bot will sell the position. When you think the price has reached its bottom, you consolidate your short and directly buy back the position.

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So how do you configure shorting? And what if you want to start using Trailing Stop-Short (TSS)?

Let's go through the possible configurations:

Reset position after closed short

If you enable this, your position will reset its profit percentage to 0% after its short is closed and the position is repurchased.

Restore position after short

When enabled, the open position's original settings are restored when a short position is closed, and the position is opened again. Think of the Stop-Loss and Trailing Stop-Loss settings, for example.

Automatic Shorting

This will enable your Hopper to open short positions automatically, which is ideal if you want to replace the Stop-Loss with shorting.

Max open short positions

This setting controls the number of maximum open short positions your Hopper may have. The more open short positions, the longer it will take for your Hopper to check these positions.

Open short based on strategy

When this setting is enabled, short positions will be opened when your strategy signals a sell. This will override the “sell with strategy” setting. Configure your strategy in the "Strategy" section in the buying part of the Baseconfig.

Close short based on strategy

When enabled, short positions will be closed when your strategy signals a buy. Configure your strategy in the "Strategy" section in the buying part of the Baseconfig.

Always short instead of sell

When this is enabled, short positions will be opened when an open position gets sold with profit, autoclose, Stop-Loss, or Trailing Stop-Loss. This could be an ideal strategy to prevent losses while making a profit sooner when you've repurchased.

Shorting percentage profit

Under this setting, enter the percentage of profit you want to make on each short. Whenever a short position is over this percentage, the short position will be closed.

Remember: you don't make actual profits with our Shorting, since it's a buy-back tool. The "Percentage Profit" refers to the losses you've prevented. For example, if the price dips 10% when you've initiated your short, your short will show a 10% Percentage Profit.

Use actual profit

When enabled, the actual profit calculation is used for percentage profit calculation and for the trailing stop-short.

This means that your short will calculate the Percentage Profit compared to the buying price, instead of how much you've saved by shorting.

Trailing Stop-Short

This is how you enable the Trailing Stop-Short (TSS). You can automatically stream with the TSS and let it ride the downward trend while closing automatically when the price starts rising again.

Trailing Stop-Short percentage (Only when Trailing Stop-Short is enabled)

Determine the trailing stop-short percentage, for example, 1.5 (%). If the currency goes up 1.5% or more from the moment the trailing stop-short was armed, then it will open a new position. It's like a reversed Trailing Stop-Loss! How cool is that!

Arm trailing stop-short at (Only when Trailing Stop-Short is enabled)

Determine the Arm trailing stop-loss percentage, for example, 3%. If the currency goes down with 3% or more, the hopper starts trailing the currency downwards. If the currency goes up by more than 1.5% (your trailing stop short percentage) from its lowest point after the currency got armed, it will open a position.

Use Trailing Stop-Short only (Only when Trailing Stop-Short is enabled)

When enabled, this will disable the take profit percentage and only use the Trailing Stop-Short to close a short position.

Auto close Shorts within time (Only when Trailing Stop-Short is enabled)

If enabled, the Hopper will automatically close short positions after X time.

Close Shorts after X time open (Only when Trailing Stop-Short is enabled)

When this is enabled, short positions will be opened when your strategy signals a sell. This will override the “sell with strategy” setting.

Auto remove Shorts within time (Only when Trailing Stop-Short is enabled)

If enabled, the Hopper will automatically remove short positions after X time.

Remove Shorts after X time open (Only when Trailing Stop-Short is enabled)

To use this setting, select the timeframe after you want short positions to be automatically removed.

Do not buy back on loss

When enabled, short positions will be removed instead of repurchased when the signal comes in to close the position, and the short position has not made any profit.

You've sold your position back for your quote currency, so with a stable quote currency, this shouldn't give any risks.

Ignore max open positions

When enabled, your hopper will ignore the max open positions number when a short position is closed and bought back. Please note: this does not allow for opening more short positions through automatic shorting, and is only about closing the already shorted positions.

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Keep in mind that shorting won't buy new positions when buying is disabled on your dashboard.

Examples of short trades Now you should have an idea of what all our shorting features can do, but having some trading examples will make it easier to understand how the mechanisms work. The following shorting configuration is used for shorting trades on Bitvavo.

The first thing that is enabled is "Automated shorting", meaning that when the shorting settings' requirements have been met, a shorting position will be opened in Cryptohopper. This is called an open short position and is only visible in Cryptohopper's Dashboard, not on the exchange. The next setting is "Max open short positions", and it is set at 20 positions. Keep in mind that when funds are reserved for your short positions, these funds are not available to open regular trades. If you configure a high number for this setting, it could result in no new regular positions being opened due to the reserved funds. In the long term, this could stop your bot from trading.

"Open short based on strategy" has also been configured. When your strategy signals a sell, a short position will be created on Cryptohopper, and funds will be reserved. "Close short based on strategy" means that when your strategy signals a buy, an actual order will be placed on the exchange with the previously reserved funds. This is called "closing a short".

"Always short instead of sell" refers to all selling features. When enabled, short positions will be opened when an open position gets sold with profit, autoclose, stop-loss, strategy, or trailing stop-loss. "Shorting percentage profit" is the profit percentage needed before a short position will be closed, meaning that you will buy back the same amount of the coins for 5% less. Next to the "Shorting percentage profit", you can also use "Trailing stop-short". Trailing stop-short will trail the profit percentage downwards. When the short positions have reached the "Arm trailing stop-short at" percentage, it will close the positions when it has gone up more than 1.5% since its lowest point. In this example, it means that 2 settings can close the short, either when the price goes down by 5% or when the short position's price has gone up more than 1.5%, since the "Arm percentage at" of 3% has been reached. The advantage of using Trailing stop-short is that you will buy back the coin after it has reached its lowest point, and that won't be taken into account when using "always short instead of sell".

If you don't want to reserve funds for too long but want to keep trading a specific coin, you could use "auto close short within X time". To ensure you will always have funds available to open new regular trades, you can also remove short positions, meaning that the funds won't be used again to open the same position.

When using "Auto close shorts within X time" or "Close short based on strategy", you could enable "Do not buy back on loss" to ensure you don't pay more for the same amount you previously owned of this coin.

BCH: Always short instead of sell

The original position of BCH was opened by meeting the regular strategy settings of the Base config. It was sold when the stop-loss requirements were met with a loss of 7.94%; this resulted in the opening of a short position in Cryptohopper.

There is only 90 seconds between the sell that was triggered by the stop-loss and the closing of the short. The profit made on the buy quickly passed 5%, and an order was created.

GNT: Open short based on strategy

The strategy of the base config opened the original position. It soon met the profit requirements, the position was sold, and a short position was opened. The second time the Hopper bought GNT, the rate was almost exactly the same as during the first buy, but since the Hopper kept tracking the coin, it quickly made another 2.2% profit by buying back GNT.

NANO: Trailing stop-short

The shorting process can continue as long as your "remove short after X time" or "Do not buy back on loss" has been triggered. The example above shows that NANO kept being bought and sold with a profit. Afterward, the short position was open for too long, and it was removed, stopping the shorting process.

It is recommended to use shorting first in a paper trading hopper to experience how the different settings impact your trading.

DCA#

Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA) is a tool to get rid of bags (loss-making positions), as well as a great strategy to have a better buying price over a longer period.

Beginners can use DCA to invest over a longer period gradually, i.e. you invest $1,000 in every 30 days for five months. If prices at the end of each month were $100, $90, $80, $70, and $95, your average asset price would be $85.5. If you invested the full amount initially, you would've paid $100 per coin.

Some use DCA as the "Martingale technique", which you use when a position is in a deep loss. The assumption is that a crypto price will rise eventually, so if you keep doubling your investment, your average buy price will be lower, and you will make a profit sooner when the price rises again. You do need deep pockets for this technique, as you will need to keep doubling down on your investment.

dollar cost averaging dca

DCA doesn't have many configurable options, which makes it an easy tool to set up.

A detailed explanation of every configurable field:

Order Type This allows you to set limit orders or market orders. Limit orders are orders that are set for one price. This will be the actual price in the case of DCA. Market orders ensure that the order will get filled, often for a higher price.

DCA after X time open Select the timeframe after you want to create DCA orders for positions. This is brilliant if you're a beginner and want to accumulate Bitcoin (or another coin) over a longer period.

DCA max retries The maximum of DCA orders that may be created for a specific coin. The count is reset after every successful sale of a DCA order. Watch out for setting this number too high, as it could result in even higher losses (in the case you're using it as a tool against positions).

DCA set percentage Configure the percentage the price must fall after you want the DCA feature to place a new order. When the average price falls this percentage, a trigger will be placed to create a new DCA order. Enter a positive number, for example, 4.5 (%). You can use this as an alternative for Shorting or a Stop-Loss. Be aware, this can be expensive.

Important: Whenever a new position is created/merged after your DCA order, your position needs to go down with the configured DCA percentage again before it triggers again. It may happen that your DCA successfully finishes its action later than configured, due to a limit order that isn't filled. Consider using market-orders or systematically offering a higher bid on your order (offer more than the asking price).

DCA buy immediately Select if you want to trigger the buy immediately when the configured percentage loss hits or just let the DCA feature buy it when your strategy signals a buy for the coin. Watch out - when this is enabled, the Hopper will buy without using any strategy and could buy at an unfavorable time.

DCA Order Size Last but not least, how big should the orders be? The bigger the order, the "better" your new average buy price. However, this could also enlarge your losses if the price dips even further after you've used DCA. There are 3 options you can choose from:

  • Double down will open a DCA order with the same amount as you have in all open positions for a specific coin,
  • Triple down will open a DCA order twice as big as all your current open positions of a particular coin,
  • Or custom percentage, depending on your needs.

Get the latest information about your DCA when clicking on the "view" button of a position.

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How is DCA calculated when positions are merged?

The current average rate is calculated by combining the costs and amounts, which have to be divided. Since DCA merges all existing open positions, the calculation could involve multiple costs and multiple amounts.

Let’s say you bought Bitcoin when the price was at $10.000. The price dips to $9.000, so you repurchase it. If you combine your total spending and divide it by the number of coins you've bought (2 in this case), you'll have your average buy price. $10.000 + $9.000 = $19.000. Divide $19.000 by the 2 Bitcoins you've bought, and you get your average buy price: $9.500.

If you've enabled automatic DCA based on a percentage, this means if your new DCA position dips the amount as you have configured in the "DCA set percentage", it will DCA again and create a buy order.

Example of DCA

In the Base config for DCA, you can tell the Hopper after what percentage loss the Hopper should perform a DCA trade. The percentage calculation for "Current profit/loss" of DCA is based on the weighted average of all your open positions of a specific currency, excluding your reserved positions.

Note: since we show you a manual DCA first, don't get caught up in the automated DCA settings shown at the bottom of the 2nd screenshot. We will explain the automatic DCA settings later.

In the following OKB example, we show you how DCA is calculated and executed. The OKB example consists of 2 open positions. Keep in mind that the calculations' results slightly differ from what you see in the screenshots, due to the constant changes in prices on the exchange. First of all, it is essential to know the current average rate, which can be found by clicking on "info" and then on "DCA".

You can calculate the “Current average rate” by combining the costs and amounts, which have to be divided by each other. Since DCA merges all existing open positions, the calculation could involve multiple "costs" and "amounts," as shown in the OKB example below.

Costs: 0.9253356 + 1.755 = 2.6803356 BTC Amounts: 1691.13 + 3000 = 4693.13 OKB Tokens 2.6803356 / 4693.13 = 0.000571119

Current average buy rate = 0.000571119

0.000571119 correlates with the amount shown in the screenshot above.

We will now show you how we get to the -4.15% loss that is shown in the DCA tab. Calculation of "Current profit/loss": = ((Current rate / Latest average buy rate ) 100) - 100 = ((0.00054768/ 0.000571119) 100 ) - 100 = (0.959* 100 ) - 100 = 95.9 - 100 = -4.1 %

The current last rate is 0.00054768 and can be found when clicking on "info" next to an open position.

Next, we will manually create a DCA order by clicking on "Action" and then on "Create DCA order".

As you can see, the Trigger of the new buy order is Manual DCA. The DCA buy amount is double the amount we already owned, which we configured in our DCA settings using "Triple down". The new buy order of OKB and the current OKB positions have been merged into one new position. The new average Result after the DCA is -1.42%.

Now, let’s look at what you need to let the Hopper perform DCA trades automatically.

Important: For the positions that have opened a DCA trade already, the configured DCA percentage needs to be subtracted again from the current loss percentage shown. In our example, it means the following:

Current profit/loss: -1.42% DCA percentage: 1%

Minimum requirement for current loss of the next (2nd) DCA trade: -1.42% - 1% = - 2.42%

For our OKB example, the next automated DCA trade will happen when;

  • The "Current profit/loss" is -2.42% or lower.
  • Buy immediately is disabled. Therefore, a buy signal of your strategy is needed.
  • The open time of the newly merged position should be at least 5 minutes.
  • Since we have 3 retries of DCA configured, the hopper can perform DCA another 2 times.

Calculation of the next DCA rate

For this explanation, we will exclude all other DCA settings to show you what the next DCA rate will be. Our example will show what the average BTC rate per OKB token must be before a new order can be placed.

The screenshot above shows that there is a difference of -0.11180119 BTC. Value: 7.70701057 BTC Cost: 7.81881176 BTC

When you divide the Value by its Cost you can see that we get the "Current profit/loss" percentage: = ((Value/Cost) 100 ) - 100 = ((7.70701057 / 7.81881176) 100 ) - 100
= ( 0.9857 * 100 ) - 100 = 98,57 - 100 = -1.4299%

Value needed for the next DCA trade = = ( Cost / 100 ) (100 - Needed Current profit/loss)
= (7.81881176/ 100)
(100-2.42) = = 0.0781881176* 97.58 = 7.629596

The price per OKB Token comes down to 7.629596 / 14073.39 = 0.0005421292 BTC

Reset DCA Would you like to reset the values of DCA? Click on "Info" next to the open position, then on DCA and click on "Reset DCA for".

Troubleshooting DCA

Are you experiencing any problems with DCA? Here are some questions to help you resolve most issues with DCA.

  • Do you have enough allocated amount (BTC) to double or triple up?

  • Is the hopper enabled? Is buying enabled?

  • Has the configured time passed? If so, is your token hitting the percentage (%) loss? This percentage is calculated from the moment a position is created. When a position successfully performs a DCA action, it will have to dip your % loss to hit again.

  • Do you have a config pool enabled? Maybe you have different settings in your config pool.

  • Do you have triggers that disable buying?

  • If your DCA not buying immediately, was there a signal from your strategy for the currency?


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