[EDIT]
I'm working hard on implementing native trailing stop losses! Follow this PR: https://github.com/askmike/gekko/pull/2429
[/EDIT]

Stop losses are a very big part of trading successfully, whether it is automated trading or not. Gekko currently does not support proper stop losses (unless users implement those themselves in their strategies, which is far from ideal) due to the complexities around different exchanges API capabilities (most do not support native stop losses at all).

Now Gekko v0.6 is out I am planning to enhance Gekko Broker with proper stop losses while giving strategies a way to include stop losses when giving advice. I'm working on Gekko Plus where I am taking Gekko to the next level and I feel this has to include proper stop losses.

What is a stoploss?

A stoploss is an order designed to get out of a position that might turn the wrong direction, limiting risk. Imagine you are using Gekko to trade on USD/BTC and your strategy sees an opportunity to buy. It will trigger a buy advice and Gekko will gladly buy BTC with your USD. But what if your strategy turned out wrong and the price of BTC tanks? With a stoploss you can limit your potential loss to say 1% by automatically selling the BTC once the price drops 1%. Stop losses are not perfect: If there is a small dip in the price you will sell, even though the price might go up after.

Why are there currently no stop losses?

There are two big reasons for this:

1. Up until recently Gekko had a lot of limitations in the communication between strategies and the module responsible for executing (simulated or real) trade orders at the exchange. Gekko v0.6 introduced a new event system that allows for bi-directional communication needed to update the strategy in case a stop loss gets executed.
2. Not all exchanges support stop losses natively, in cases exchanges don't Gekko needs a way to offer them (by watching the price and trading whenever it hits X). Since v0.6 Gekko comes with a library that can be extended to support this: Gekko Broker.

What will Gekko support in the future?

I haven't fully figured this out yet (which is why I am posting this thread). But this is what I am currently thinking:

- introduce the concept of triggers such as:
  - stop loss (create an order when the price goes AGAINST your direction).
- trailing stop loss (same as above the the price trigger will move with the price, slowly securing more profit).
  - take profit (create an order when the price goes IN your direction - and you want to secure your profit).
- allow for strategies to specify how to execute the trigger, such as:
  - market order
  - sticky order
  - limit order

There is already a "tradeCompleted" event which can be extended to include information about what caused it (an advice, a stoploss or takeprofit trigger). As for now triggers can be passed along with "LONG" (buy) advice signals as to end a roundtrip early (before the strategy adviced to "SHORT" (sell)).

I'm still thinking about this execution part, I might split this design into two phases: first with only triggers and second with more order types.

What do you think?

  Screenshot 2018-07-06 at 93614 PM.png (Size: 64.47 KB / Downloads: 16) I just installed Gekko on a Win 10 machine following the instructions from the YouTube video on the "Install Gekko on Windows" page (which differs considerably from the instructions on that page). Everything appeared to install properly and Gekko opened in my browser, but when I went to the Local Data tab and attempted to import data, the drop-down menus under Market don't appear until after reloading the page and then are blank and impossible to populate. The drop-downs under the Backtest tab work fine, but without local data are useless. I tried installing Git manually as I saw recommended in another forum post for Win7, but that changed nothing. Still the same problem. Thanks.

Hello all,

I am hoping somebody can help me out by drafting an example strategy, that just shows how to use gekko-broker to make partial orders; i.e. to signal "buy with only 10% of portfolio." Unless I misunderstand, I believe that this should now be possible, with v0.6 and gekko broker, but I don't understand yet how it would be implemented.

Thanks in advance for any assistance, I'm sure others will benefit from this as well!

--Henry

Hey all,

I'm attempting to use the run-ga-parallel.js script but after running it for a while I don't get any results. I can see in terminal that its changing the parameters with each run, and the epochs are stacking up, but it always returns "profit 0$" at the top and this at the bottom...

Quote:Other metrics of global maximum:
Global maximum so far:
false

I started gekko being a butthead and going straight for the windows install since the windows 10 seemed a bit lengthy, I come to find out I need bash support for running xFFFFF strategies. I get the ubuntu but still have node.js and im having trouble adding  api keys on the new process can any point me in the right direction and help me firgure out if my ip is banned since i tried to run two different gekkos from the same ip?

I installed Gekko 0.6.1 on my Raspberry Pi but I'm unable te get the webinterface running.
I installed all the files via git (from the installation instructions) and edited the config-file in the web/vue/public dir.
This file is exactly as it was when in version 0.5 that was working great.
Is there any more configuration to do?

The error I get is when Gekko is running and I browse to the webinterface (on port 3000) is: 
Disconnected
Something happened to either Gekko or the connection. Please check the terminal where Gekko is running or your network connection.
This message is shown when the UI is unable to open a websocket connection with the Gekko Server.

This is my UIconfig.js file:

const CONFIG = {
 headless: true,
 api: {
   host: '0.0.0.0',
   port: 3000,
   timeout: 120000 // 2 minutes
 },
 ui: {
   ssl: false,
   host: '192.168.1.221',
   port: 3000,
   path: '/'
 },
 adapter: 'sqlite'
}

if(typeof window === 'undefined')
 module.exports = CONFIG;
else
 window.CONFIG = CONFIG;


Any help?

Set up using mfi and macd it has more profitable trades than losses, however the losses are very big. this during a bearish market. Need help with setting a percentage stop loss.

Hello,
 I am trying to install Gekko on Windows 7.  Off of the bat i noticed the code shown below wasnt pointing correctly to what I downloaded.  I had to path to "gekko-develop" in the file path.

Hello, can someone explain me what is the difference between check and update methods inside strategies code?
This methods look pretty similar to me. Thanks.

Hey all,

  I'm sure someone out there has already done this, or perhaps Gekko will eventually acquire the ability to do this.  For now though I've whipped up this little program that will generate binance-markets.json for you.