STD-Filterd, R-squared Adaptive T3 w/ Dynamic Zones [Loxx]STD-Filterd, R-squared Adaptive T3 w/ Dynamic Zones is a standard deviation filtered R-squared Adaptive T3 moving average with dynamic zones.
What is the T3 moving average?
Better Moving Averages Tim Tillson
November 1, 1998
Tim Tillson is a software project manager at Hewlett-Packard, with degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science. He has privately traded options and equities for 15 years.
Introduction
"Digital filtering includes the process of smoothing, predicting, differentiating, integrating, separation of signals, and removal of noise from a signal. Thus many people who do such things are actually using digital filters without realizing that they are; being unacquainted with the theory, they neither understand what they have done nor the possibilities of what they might have done."
This quote from R. W. Hamming applies to the vast majority of indicators in technical analysis . Moving averages, be they simple, weighted, or exponential, are lowpass filters; low frequency components in the signal pass through with little attenuation, while high frequencies are severely reduced.
"Oscillator" type indicators (such as MACD , Momentum, Relative Strength Index ) are another type of digital filter called a differentiator.
Tushar Chande has observed that many popular oscillators are highly correlated, which is sensible because they are trying to measure the rate of change of the underlying time series, i.e., are trying to be the first and second derivatives we all learned about in Calculus.
We use moving averages (lowpass filters) in technical analysis to remove the random noise from a time series, to discern the underlying trend or to determine prices at which we will take action. A perfect moving average would have two attributes:
It would be smooth, not sensitive to random noise in the underlying time series. Another way of saying this is that its derivative would not spuriously alternate between positive and negative values.
It would not lag behind the time series it is computed from. Lag, of course, produces late buy or sell signals that kill profits.
The only way one can compute a perfect moving average is to have knowledge of the future, and if we had that, we would buy one lottery ticket a week rather than trade!
Having said this, we can still improve on the conventional simple, weighted, or exponential moving averages. Here's how:
Two Interesting Moving Averages
We will examine two benchmark moving averages based on Linear Regression analysis.
In both cases, a Linear Regression line of length n is fitted to price data.
I call the first moving average ILRS, which stands for Integral of Linear Regression Slope. One simply integrates the slope of a linear regression line as it is successively fitted in a moving window of length n across the data, with the constant of integration being a simple moving average of the first n points. Put another way, the derivative of ILRS is the linear regression slope. Note that ILRS is not the same as a SMA ( simple moving average ) of length n, which is actually the midpoint of the linear regression line as it moves across the data.
We can measure the lag of moving averages with respect to a linear trend by computing how they behave when the input is a line with unit slope. Both SMA (n) and ILRS(n) have lag of n/2, but ILRS is much smoother than SMA .
Our second benchmark moving average is well known, called EPMA or End Point Moving Average. It is the endpoint of the linear regression line of length n as it is fitted across the data. EPMA hugs the data more closely than a simple or exponential moving average of the same length. The price we pay for this is that it is much noisier (less smooth) than ILRS, and it also has the annoying property that it overshoots the data when linear trends are present.
However, EPMA has a lag of 0 with respect to linear input! This makes sense because a linear regression line will fit linear input perfectly, and the endpoint of the LR line will be on the input line.
These two moving averages frame the tradeoffs that we are facing. On one extreme we have ILRS, which is very smooth and has considerable phase lag. EPMA has 0 phase lag, but is too noisy and overshoots. We would like to construct a better moving average which is as smooth as ILRS, but runs closer to where EPMA lies, without the overshoot.
A easy way to attempt this is to split the difference, i.e. use (ILRS(n)+EPMA(n))/2. This will give us a moving average (call it IE /2) which runs in between the two, has phase lag of n/4 but still inherits considerable noise from EPMA. IE /2 is inspirational, however. Can we build something that is comparable, but smoother? Figure 1 shows ILRS, EPMA, and IE /2.
Filter Techniques
Any thoughtful student of filter theory (or resolute experimenter) will have noticed that you can improve the smoothness of a filter by running it through itself multiple times, at the cost of increasing phase lag.
There is a complementary technique (called twicing by J.W. Tukey) which can be used to improve phase lag. If L stands for the operation of running data through a low pass filter, then twicing can be described by:
L' = L(time series) + L(time series - L(time series))
That is, we add a moving average of the difference between the input and the moving average to the moving average. This is algebraically equivalent to:
2L-L(L)
This is the Double Exponential Moving Average or DEMA , popularized by Patrick Mulloy in TASAC (January/February 1994).
In our taxonomy, DEMA has some phase lag (although it exponentially approaches 0) and is somewhat noisy, comparable to IE /2 indicator.
We will use these two techniques to construct our better moving average, after we explore the first one a little more closely.
Fixing Overshoot
An n-day EMA has smoothing constant alpha=2/(n+1) and a lag of (n-1)/2.
Thus EMA (3) has lag 1, and EMA (11) has lag 5. Figure 2 shows that, if I am willing to incur 5 days of lag, I get a smoother moving average if I run EMA (3) through itself 5 times than if I just take EMA (11) once.
This suggests that if EPMA and DEMA have 0 or low lag, why not run fast versions (eg DEMA (3)) through themselves many times to achieve a smooth result? The problem is that multiple runs though these filters increase their tendency to overshoot the data, giving an unusable result. This is because the amplitude response of DEMA and EPMA is greater than 1 at certain frequencies, giving a gain of much greater than 1 at these frequencies when run though themselves multiple times. Figure 3 shows DEMA (7) and EPMA(7) run through themselves 3 times. DEMA^3 has serious overshoot, and EPMA^3 is terrible.
The solution to the overshoot problem is to recall what we are doing with twicing:
DEMA (n) = EMA (n) + EMA (time series - EMA (n))
The second term is adding, in effect, a smooth version of the derivative to the EMA to achieve DEMA . The derivative term determines how hot the moving average's response to linear trends will be. We need to simply turn down the volume to achieve our basic building block:
EMA (n) + EMA (time series - EMA (n))*.7;
This is algebraically the same as:
EMA (n)*1.7-EMA( EMA (n))*.7;
I have chosen .7 as my volume factor, but the general formula (which I call "Generalized Dema") is:
GD (n,v) = EMA (n)*(1+v)-EMA( EMA (n))*v,
Where v ranges between 0 and 1. When v=0, GD is just an EMA , and when v=1, GD is DEMA . In between, GD is a cooler DEMA . By using a value for v less than 1 (I like .7), we cure the multiple DEMA overshoot problem, at the cost of accepting some additional phase delay. Now we can run GD through itself multiple times to define a new, smoother moving average T3 that does not overshoot the data:
T3(n) = GD ( GD ( GD (n)))
In filter theory parlance, T3 is a six-pole non-linear Kalman filter. Kalman filters are ones which use the error (in this case (time series - EMA (n)) to correct themselves. In Technical Analysis , these are called Adaptive Moving Averages; they track the time series more aggressively when it is making large moves.
What is R-squared Adaptive?
One tool available in forecasting the trendiness of the breakout is the coefficient of determination ( R-squared ), a statistical measurement.
The R-squared indicates linear strength between the security's price (the Y - axis) and time (the X - axis). The R-squared is the percentage of squared error that the linear regression can eliminate if it were used as the predictor instead of the mean value. If the R-squared were 0.99, then the linear regression would eliminate 99% of the error for prediction versus predicting closing prices using a simple moving average .
R-squared is used here to derive a T3 factor used to modify price before passing price through a six-pole non-linear Kalman filter.
What are Dynamic Zones?
As explained in "Stocks & Commodities V15:7 (306-310): Dynamic Zones by Leo Zamansky, Ph .D., and David Stendahl"
Most indicators use a fixed zone for buy and sell signals. Here’ s a concept based on zones that are responsive to past levels of the indicator.
One approach to active investing employs the use of oscillators to exploit tradable market trends. This investing style follows a very simple form of logic: Enter the market only when an oscillator has moved far above or below traditional trading lev- els. However, these oscillator- driven systems lack the ability to evolve with the market because they use fixed buy and sell zones. Traders typically use one set of buy and sell zones for a bull market and substantially different zones for a bear market. And therein lies the problem.
Once traders begin introducing their market opinions into trading equations, by changing the zones, they negate the system’s mechanical nature. The objective is to have a system automatically define its own buy and sell zones and thereby profitably trade in any market — bull or bear. Dynamic zones offer a solution to the problem of fixed buy and sell zones for any oscillator-driven system.
An indicator’s extreme levels can be quantified using statistical methods. These extreme levels are calculated for a certain period and serve as the buy and sell zones for a trading system. The repetition of this statistical process for every value of the indicator creates values that become the dynamic zones. The zones are calculated in such a way that the probability of the indicator value rising above, or falling below, the dynamic zones is equal to a given probability input set by the trader.
To better understand dynamic zones, let's first describe them mathematically and then explain their use. The dynamic zones definition:
Find V such that:
For dynamic zone buy: P{X <= V}=P1
For dynamic zone sell: P{X >= V}=P2
where P1 and P2 are the probabilities set by the trader, X is the value of the indicator for the selected period and V represents the value of the dynamic zone.
The probability input P1 and P2 can be adjusted by the trader to encompass as much or as little data as the trader would like. The smaller the probability, the fewer data values above and below the dynamic zones. This translates into a wider range between the buy and sell zones. If a 10% probability is used for P1 and P2, only those data values that make up the top 10% and bottom 10% for an indicator are used in the construction of the zones. Of the values, 80% will fall between the two extreme levels. Because dynamic zone levels are penetrated so infrequently, when this happens, traders know that the market has truly moved into overbought or oversold territory.
Calculating the Dynamic Zones
The algorithm for the dynamic zones is a series of steps. First, decide the value of the lookback period t. Next, decide the value of the probability Pbuy for buy zone and value of the probability Psell for the sell zone.
For i=1, to the last lookback period, build the distribution f(x) of the price during the lookback period i. Then find the value Vi1 such that the probability of the price less than or equal to Vi1 during the lookback period i is equal to Pbuy. Find the value Vi2 such that the probability of the price greater or equal to Vi2 during the lookback period i is equal to Psell. The sequence of Vi1 for all periods gives the buy zone. The sequence of Vi2 for all periods gives the sell zone.
In the algorithm description, we have: Build the distribution f(x) of the price during the lookback period i. The distribution here is empirical namely, how many times a given value of x appeared during the lookback period. The problem is to find such x that the probability of a price being greater or equal to x will be equal to a probability selected by the user. Probability is the area under the distribution curve. The task is to find such value of x that the area under the distribution curve to the right of x will be equal to the probability selected by the user. That x is the dynamic zone.
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