[GYTS-CE] Flux Composer

🧬 Flux Composer (Community Edition)
🌸 Confluence indicator in GoemonYae Trading System (GYTS) 🌸

The Flux Composer is a powerful tool in the GYTS suite that is designed to aggregate signals from multiple Signal Providers, apply customisable decaying functions, and offer customisable and advanced confluence mechanisms. This allows making informed decisions by considering the strength and agreement ("when all stars align") of various input signals.


🌸 --------- TABLE OF CONTENTS --------- 🌸

1️⃣ Main Highlights

2️⃣ Flux Composer’s Features

1. Multi Signal Provider support
   
2. Advanced decaying functions
   
3. Customisable Flux confluence mechanisms
   
4. Actionable trading experience
   
5. User-friendly experience
   

3️⃣ User Guide

1. Selecting Signal Providers
   
2. Connecting Signal Providers to the Flux Composer
   
3. Understanding the Flux
   
4. Tuning the decaying functions
   
5. Choosing Flux confluence mechanism
   
6. Choosing sensitivity
   
7. Interpreting the Flux for trading signals
   

4️⃣ Limitations


🌸 ------1️⃣--- MAIN HIGHLIGHTS ---1️⃣------ 🌸

- Signal aggregation: Combines signals from multiple different 📡 Signal Providers, each of which can be tuned and adjusted independently.
- Decaying function: Utilises advanced decaying functions to model the diminishing effect of signals over time, ensuring that recent signals have more weight. In addition to the decaying effect, the "quality" of the original signals (e.g. a "strong" GDM from WaveTrend 4D with GDM) are accounted for as well.
- Flux confluence mechanism: The aggregation of all decaying functions form the "Flux", which is the core signal measurement of the Flux Composer. Multiple mechanisms are available for creating the Flux and effectively using it for actionable trading signals.
- Visualisation: Provides detailed visualisation options to help users understand and tune the contributions of individual Signal Providers and their decaying functions.
- Backtesting: The 🧬 Flux Composer is a core component of the TradingView suite of the 🌸 GoemonYae Trading System (GYTS) 🌸. It connects multiple 📡 Signal Providers, such as the WaveTrend 4D, and processes their signals to produce a unified "Flux". This Flux can then be used by the GYTS "🎼 Order Orchestrator" for backtesting and trade automation.


🌸 ------2️⃣--- FLUX COMPOSER'S FEATURES ---2️⃣------ 🌸

Let's delve into more details...

💮 1. Multi Signal Provider support
Using the name of the GYTS "🎼 Order Orchestrator" as an analogy: Imagine a symphony where each instrument plays its own unique part, contributing to the overall harmony. The Flux Composer operates similarly, integrating multiple Signal Providers to create a comprehensive and robust trading signal -- the "Flux". Currently, it supports up to two streams from the WaveTrend 4D’s Gradient Divergence Measure (GDM) and another two streams from the WaveTrend 4D's Quantile Median Cross (QMC).

Note that the GDM includes 2 different continuous signals and the QMC 3 different continuous signals (from different frequencies). This means that the Community Edition can handle 2*2 + 2*3 = 10 different continuous signals.

As GYTS evolves, more Signal Providers will be added; at the moment of releasing the Flux Composer, only WaveTrend 4D with GDM and with QMC are publicly available.

💮 2. Advanced decaying functions
A trading signal can be relevant today, less relevant tomorrow, and irrelevant in a week's time. In other words, its relevance diminishes, or decays, over time. The Flux Composer utilises decaying functions that ensure that recent signals carry more weight, while older signals fade away. This is crucial for accurate signal processing. The intensity and decay settings allow for precise control, allowing emphasising certain signals based on their strength and relevance over time. On top of that, unlike binary signals ("buy now"), the Flux Composer utilises the actual values from the Signal Providers, differentiating between the exact quality of signals, and thus offering a detailed representation of the trading landscape. We will illustrate this in a further section.

💮 3. Customisable Flux confluence mechanisms

Another core component of the Flux Composer is the ability of intelligently combining the decaying functions. It offers two sophisticated confluence mechanisms: Amplitude Compression and Trigonometric. Each mechanism has its unique way of processing the Flux, tailored to different trading needs. The Amplitude Compression method scales the Flux based on recent values, much like the Stochastic Oscillator, while the Trigonometric method uses smooth functions to reduce outliers’ impact We'll discuss this in more detail in the User Guide section.

💮 4. Actionable trading experience
While the mathematical abilities might seem overwhelming, the goal of the Flux Composer is to transform complex signal data into actionable trading signals. When the Flux reaches certain thresholds, it generates clear bullish or bearish signals, making it easy for traders to interpret. The inclusion of upper and lower thresholds (UT and LT) helps in identifying strong signals visually and should be a familiar behaviour similar to how many other indicators operate. Furthermore, the Flux Composer can plot trading signals directly on the oscillator, showing triangle shapes for buy or sell signals. This visual aid is complemented by the possibility to setup TradingView alerts.

💮 5. User-friendly experience
GYTS is all about sophisticated, robust methods but also "elegance". One of the interpretations of the latter, is that the users' experience is very important. Despite the Flux Composer's mathematical underpinnings, it offers intuitive settings that with omprehensive tooltips to help with a smooth setup process. For those looking to fine-tune their signals, the Flux Composer allows the visualisation of individual decaying functions. This feature helps users understand the impact of each setting and make informed adjustments.


🌸 ------3️⃣--- USER GUIDE ---3️⃣------ 🌸

💮 1. Selecting Signal Providers
The Flux Composer’s foundation lies in its Signal Providers. When starting with the Flux Composer, using a single Signal Provider can already provide significant value due to the nature of decaying functions. For instance, the WaveTrend 4D signal provider includes up to two GDM and three QMC signals in a single direction (long/short). Moreover, the various confluence mechanisms that enhance the resulting Flux result in improved discrimination between weak and strong signals. This approach is akin to ensemble learning in machine learning, where multiple models are combined to improve predictive performance.

While using a single Signal Provider is beneficial, the true power of the Flux Composer is realised with multiple Signal Providers. Here are two general approaches to selecting Signal Providers:

Diverse Behaviours
Use Signal Providers with different behaviours, such as WaveTrend 4D on various assets/timeframes or entirely different Signal Providers. This approach leverages diversification to achieve robustness, rooted in the principle that varied sources enhance the overall signal quality. To explain this with an analogy, this strategy aligns with the theory of diversification in portfolio management, where combining uncorrelated assets reduces overall risk. Similarly, combining uncorrelated signals can mitigate the risk of signal failure. A practical example can be integrating a mean-reversion signal with a trend-following signal -- these can balance each other out, providing more stable outputs over different market conditions.

Enhancing a Single Provider
If you consider a particular Signal Provider highly effective, you could improve its robustness by using multiple instances with slight variations. These variations could include different sources (e.g., close, HL2, HLC3), data providers (same asset across different brokers/exchanges), or parameter adjustments. This method mirrors Monte Carlo simulations, often used in risk management and derivative pricing, which involve running many simulations with varied inputs to estimate the probability of different outcomes. By applying similar principles, the strategy becomes less susceptible to overfitting, ensuring the signals are not overly dependent on specific data conditions.

💮 2. Connecting Signal Providers to the Flux Composer
Moving on to practicalities: how do you connect Signal Providers with the Flux Composer? You may have noticed that when you open the drawdown of a data source in a TradingView indicator (with "open", "high", "low", etc.), you also see names from other indicators on your chart. We call these "streams", and the Signal Providers are designed such that they output this stream in a way that the Flux Composer can interpret it. Thus, to connect a Signal Provider with the Flux Composer, you should first have that Signal Provider on your chart. Obviously you should set it up an a way that it seems to provide good signals. After that, in the Data Stream dropdown in the Flux Composer, you can select the stream that is outputted by your Signal Provider. This will always be with a prefix of "🔗 STREAM" (after the Signal Provider's indicator name). See the chart below.


There is one important nuance: when you have multiple (similar) Signal Providers on your chart, it may be hard to select the correct data stream in the Flux Composer as the names of the streams keep repeating when you use identical indicators. So be sure to be attentive as you might end up using the same signals multiple times.

Also, the Signal Providers have an "Indicator name" parameter (and another parameter to repeat this name) that is handy to use when you have multiple Signal Providers on your screen. It is handy to give names that describe the unique settings of that Signal Provider so you can better differentiate what you are looking at on your screen.

💮 3. Understanding the Flux

Let's understand how the Signal Provider's signals are processed. In the chart below, you see we have one Signal Provider (WaveTrend 4D) connected to the Flux Composer and that it gives a bearish QMC signal. The Flux Composer converts this into a decaying function. You can show these functions per Signal Provider when the option "Show decaying function of Signal Provider" is enabled (as it is in the chart).

In our opinion, of crucial importance is the ability to process the quality of signals, rather than just any signal. In mathematical terms, we are interested in continuous signals as these provide a spectrum of values. These signals can reflect varying degrees of market sentiment or trend strength, offering richer information than binary signals, which offer only two states (e.g., buy/sell). Especially in the context of the Flux Composer, where you aggregate multiple signals, it makes a big difference whether you combine 10 weak signals or 10 strong signals. To illustrate this principle, look at the chart below where there are 4 signals of different strengths. As you can see, each of the signals affects the Flux with different intensities.

💮 4. Tuning the decaying functions

As previously mentioned, the decaying functions are a way to give more importance to recent signals while allowing older ones to fade away gradually. This mimics the natural way we assess information, giving more weight to recent events. The decaying functions in the Flux Composer are highly customisable while remaining easy to use. You can adjust the initial intensity, which sets the starting strength of a signal, and the decay rate, which determines how quickly this signal diminishes over time. Let's look at specific examples.

If we add 3 Flux Composers on the chart, connect the same Signal Provider, keep all settings the same with one exception, we get the chart below. Here we have changed the "intensity" parameter of the specific signal. As you can see, the decaying functions are different. The intensity determines the initial strength of the decayed function. Adjusting the intensity allows you to emphasise certain signal types based on their perceived reliability or importance.

Let's now keep the intensity the same ("normal"), but change the "decay" parameter. As you can see in the image below, the decay controls how quickly the signal’s strength diminishes over time. By adjusting the decay, you can model the longevity of the signal’s impact. A faster decay means the signal loses its influence quickly, while a slower decay means it remains relevant for a longer period.

So how do multiple signals interact? You can see this as a simple "stacking of decaying functions" (although there is more to it, see next section). In the chart below we use different "intensity" and "decay" parameters to discuss how the Flux is created.

Hopefully this helps with developing some intuition how signals are converted to decaying functions, how you can control them, and how the Flux is constructed. When tuning these parameters, use the visualisation options to see how individual decaying functions contribute to the overall Flux. This helps in understanding and refining the parameters to achieve the desired trading signal behaviour.

💮 5. Choosing Flux confluence mechanism

While we mentioned that the Flux is a "stacking of individual decaying functions", in the back-end, that is not exactly that simple. Like previously mentioned, for GYTS, "elegance" is very important. One of the interpretations is "user friendliness" and the Flux confluence mechanism is one of the essential developments for this characteristic. The Flux confluence mechanism is critical in synthesising the aggregated signals into the Flux. The choice of mechanism affects how the signals are combined and the resulting trading signals. The Community Edition offers two distinct mechanisms, each with its strengths.

The Amplitude Compression mechanism is intuitive, scaling the Flux based on recent values, intuitively not unlike the method of the well-known Stochastic Oscillator. On the other hand, the Trigonometric mechanism smooths the Flux and reduces the impact of outliers, providing a balanced approach. It's difficult to convey the workings of the Flux confluence mechanism in a chart, but let's take the opportunity to show how the Flux would look like when connecting both GDM and QMC signals to two Flux Composers with default settings, except the Flux confluence mechanism:


You can notice that the upper Flux Converter (FC) triggered two signals while the other FC triggered only one. There are more nuances, especially in combination with tuning the sensitivity and upper/lower threshold (UT/LT) parameters.

💮 6. Choosing sensitivity

Speaking of the sensitivity, this parameters fine-tunes how responsive the Flux is to the input signals. Higher sensitivity results in more pronounced responses, leading to more frequent trading signals. Lower sensitivity makes the Flux less responsive, resulting in fewer but potentially more reliable signals.

You might think that changing the upper/lower threshold (UT/LT) parameters would be equivalent, but that's not the case. The sensitivity In case of the Amplitude Compression mechanism, changing the sensitivity would change the relative Flux shape over time, and with the Trigonometric mechanism, the Flux shape itself (independent of time) would change. In other words, these are all good parameters for tuning.


💮 8. Interpreting the Flux for trading signals

Lastly, the Signal Flux gives buy and sell signals when it crosses the upper/lower thresholds (UT/LT) This can be visualised with the triangles as you may have seen in the charts in the previous sections. For people using TradingView's alerts -- these would work out of the box. And finally, for backtesting and possibly trade automation, we will have the GYTS "🎼 Order Orchestrator" that connects with the Flux Composer.


🌸 ------4️⃣--- LIMITATIONS ---4️⃣------ 🌸

• Only 🌸 GYTS 📡 Signal Providers are supported, as there is a specific method to pass continuous (non-binary) data in the data stream
  
• At the moment of release, only WaveTrend 4D with GDM and with QMC are available. Other Signal Providers will be gradually released.