Stop Hunts

#What you see

A pane below the chart. By default (Pane shows: Balance) it has a fixed scale from −1 to +1 with a zero line and dotted lines at ±0.5: the bars are the balance of the period – up in red when more short stops were hunted, down in green when more long stops were hunted – and the line is the same balance weighted by volume. With Number of hunts or Volume of the hunt candles the pane shows Long hunts (green) and Short hunts (red) as two lines, scaled to the visible candles, with the net value (short minus long) as bars around zero. Small triangles mark the hunt candles themselves – at the top of the pane for a short hunt, at the bottom for a long hunt. The legend shows, for the candle under the crosshair, the count and volume of each side, the balance and the activity.

#How it is calculated

• Swing high: a candle whose high is above the highs of the Swing: candles before candles before it and not below the highs of the Swing: candles after candles after it. It is confirmed when the last of those later candles has closed and counts from the next candle on. Swing lows work the other way round.
• Short stop hunt: a candle trades above a swing high that has not been taken yet – where short sellers keep their stops – and closes back below it.
• Long stop hunt: a candle trades below a swing low that has not been taken yet – where buyers keep their stops – and closes back above it.
• A level counts once. Once price has traded beyond it, it is used up, also when the candle closes beyond it; that is a breakout, not a hunt. A candle that takes several levels on one side is one hunt.
• Period: the last N candles, or all candles that opened in the last N hours or days (Period unit), always including the current one. Volume is the volume of the hunt candles in that period.
• Balance = (short hunts − long hunts) / (short hunts + long hunts) in the period, from −1 (only long hunts) to +1 (only short hunts); 0 when both are equal or there were none. Volume balance is the same with the volume of the hunt candles.
• Activity = percentile rank of the number of hunts in the period (short + long) among the last Activity: rank over candles candles, ties counted half: 0.9 means more hunts than at 90 % of the recent candles, 0.5 is typical, near 0 is unusually quiet.

A value only uses the current candle and the candles before it and does not change once the candle has closed. While a candle is still forming, it can become a hunt and stop being one again until it closes.

#How to read it

• Balance towards +1: price keeps running the stops above highs and getting pushed back – buyers fail above resistance, often near tops or inside ranges.
• Balance towards −1: stops below lows are taken and price recovers – sellers fail below support, often near bottoms.
• Balance and activity are normalized, so the same filter works on every market and timeframe: e.g. balance below −0.5 together with activity above 0.7 means unusually many hunts, mostly of long stops.
• Few hunts make the balance jump (one long hunt alone is −1); combine it with activity or use a longer period when that matters.

#Using it in strategies

Outputs: value is the balance (−1 to +1), as are balance and volumeBalance; activity is the rank from 0 to 1. Raw values: longCount, shortCount and net (short minus long) count hunts in the period; longVolume, shortVolume and netVolume sum their volume; longHunt and shortHunt are 1 on a hunt candle and 0 otherwise. In the Trade Setup, "Against" on value with center 0 allows longs while long stops dominate and shorts while short stops dominate; "Compare" with activity above 0.7 limits entries to busy phases, and longHunt above 0 is a trigger on the candle that took the long stops. In WickScript: use indicator "Stop Hunts" with period 24, periodUnit "hours" as sh, then for example sh.balance < -0.5 and sh.activity > 0.7.

#Settings

Open the settings with the slider icon next to the indicator (Indicators, F3). Numeric settings can be swept as Step 1 / Step 2 parameters when you run a strategy.

#Inputs

#Styles

#Outputs

These values can be used in Trade Setup triggers, filters and exits (see Trade Setup) and in WickScript.

#Use in WickScript

use indicator creates this indicator inside a script, with settings by their ID. Each output is a field of the name after as. See WickScript indicators.

wickscript 1
indicator "Stop Hunts from the list" in pane
use indicator "HUNTS" with period 50 as myHunts
show myHunts.value as line "value"