Code Snippets – Plot Buy and Sell Arrows in Amibroker

AFL Tutorial: Beginners

An Amibroker AFL (AmiBroker Formula Language) script-based trading system typically includes four key trading conditions: Buy (to initiate a long position), Sell (to exit a long position), Short (to initiate a short position), and Cover (to exit a short position). In today’s tutorial, we will focus exclusively on how to illustrate a Buy Signal (usually represented by an upward arrow) and a Sell Signal (commonly represented by a downward arrow) using Amibroker

The following Example discusses plotting arrows with a simple EMA crossover trading system.

EMA Crossover with Simple Arrows

Buy and Sell Rules are defined as

EMA1 = EMA( C,20);
EMA2 = EMA( C,50);

/*Buy and Sell Condition */
Buy = Cross(EMA1,EMA2);
Sell = Cross(EMA2,EMA1);

This code snippet plots a plain vanilla simple Buy(Green) and Sell Arrows(Red) and this snippet should be pasted below the Buy and Sell Trading conditions in the AFL code.

Nifty Daily – Simple Arrows

/* Plot Buy and Sell Signal Arrows */
shape = Buy * shapeUpArrow + Sell * shapeDownArrow;
PlotShapes( shape, IIf( Buy, colorGreen, colorRed ), 0, IIf( Buy, Low, High ) );
GraphXSpace = 5;

The PlotShapes Functionality is generally used to plot shapes like squares, Arrows, triangles, Circles, Digits, etc., to indicate the trading conditions visually over/below the candlesticks. However, the simple method is not preferred instead one can try plotting Block Arrows for a better user experience.

Download EMA Crossover Simple Arrows afl code

EMA Crossover with Block Arrows

The following code snippet plots a Block Arrows with Buy(Green) and Sell Arrows(Red) Signals and has better user experience when compared to simple arrow plots.

Nifty Daily – Block Arrows

/* Plot Buy and Sell Signal Arrows */
PlotShapes(IIf(Buy, shapeSquare, shapeNone),colorGreen, 0, L, Offset=-40);
PlotShapes(IIf(Buy, shapeSquare, shapeNone),colorLime, 0,L, Offset=-50);                      
PlotShapes(IIf(Buy, shapeUpArrow, shapeNone),colorWhite, 0,L, Offset=-45); 
PlotShapes(IIf(Short, shapeSquare, shapeNone),colorRed, 0, H, Offset=40);
PlotShapes(IIf(Short, shapeSquare, shapeNone),colorOrange, 0,H, Offset=50);                      
PlotShapes(IIf(Short, shapeDownArrow, shapeNone),colorWhite, 0,H, Offset=-45);

PlotShapes(Sell * shapestar, colorBrightGreen, 0, High, 12);
PlotShapes(Cover * shapestar, colorRed, 0, Low, -12);

Download EMA Crossover Simple Arrows afl code