Find out How to Set-up the Gunbot StepGrid Strategy in this Step by Step Simple Guide
The new Gunbot V.23 Stable version is out, and a new strategy for you to earn more. Take advantage of this new price action trading method included in all Standard, Pro, or Ultimate Gunbot Editions.
Suppose you want to make money in crypto trading in the long run. In that case, your trading strategy must give you an edge because without an advantage, even if you have the best risk management, discipline, and psychology, you’ll still be a losing trader.
And this edge is what the Gunbot StepGrid strategy gives you!
Gunthar’s legendary “Gunbot the Way I Run it” article that we haven’t see since Gunbot V11 is out again. Gunthar got inspired one more time and took the time to explain how he runs Gunbot.
This time he and Pim tuned a unique strategy and named it “The Gunbot stepGrid Strategy,” this strategy follows the main principles as the SpotGrid strategy.
The StepGrid strategy capitalizes on the predictability of the crypto markets, following the price range only without any other trading indicator.
Before we begin, let me give you three remarkable facts about “Price Action.”
- Price action trading is about understanding the imbalance between buying and selling pressure so you can identify trading opportunities and make a profit.
- As a price action trader, price is king, and everything else is secondary.
- Price action trading is not only a strategy but a structure for trading in different market conditions.
The strategy logic is simple: BUY when the coin price goes down by “x” amount of price value (for example, $500) and SELL when the price goes up by the same “x” value.
For example, the bot can buy $250 worth of bitcoin every time the price drops $500 in value and sell $250 worth of bitcoin every time the price rises $500 in value.
Math calculation based on the above example:
- $250 worth of bitcoin at a price of 34k is equal to 0.00735394BTC
- 0.00735394BTC sold at 34.5k is equal to $253.67
- Net Profit 1.46%
If you don’t want to run out of money, you have to calculate your TRADING_LIMIT based on your wallet balance and consider the price of bitcoin as if it would have dumped a lot.
Here’s how to calculate your TRADING_LIMIT based on your Total Balance:
Divide the price by the step and then divide your Total Balance by the result, like this: Wallet Balance/(price/step)
For example: With a wallet balance of 10k USD and a bitcoin price at 35k, a “STEP” of 500 dollars would give you 142 dollars max of TRADING_LIMIT
The idea is to keep some balance to cover if Bitcoin drops by a lot, so, regardless of how much the bitcoin price goes down, you can keep running your bot without running out of money.
Keeping Gunbot running means you will be able to trade continuously, taking advantage of the perpetual swinging of the USDT/BTC pair.
Gunbot StepGrid Strategy Keypoints
- Calculate your Trading Limit so you never run out of money, or your bot gets stuck because you got useless bags.
- Run this strategy only on coins you consider spendable “money.” In other words, don’t go for “Super-Shitcoins” 🙂
- If you run out of money because you didn’t calculate your TRADING_LIMIT with the above formula, do not add more funds to your balance. If you’re in a position, the bot will start selling at a loss because this strategy doesn’t consider BREAK EVEN unless the price is above your BREAK EVEN price.
The automatic trailing from the SpotGrid strategy family is now available on the Gunbot StepGrid strategy, too, on both buy and sell orders. Pim developed a system that would adjust your STEP automatically as the pair swinging range contracts or expand.
The crypto trading bot strategy calculates the STEP value automatically, no need for any unique settings. It continuously watches that specific pair volatility and adjusts the STEP internally to fix the price action and trade.
If you want to run manual steps, set AUTO_STEP_SIZE: “false” and enter a STEP_SIZE price value. However, trailing is hardcoded for buys and sells in the step grid. It starts trailing every time a step reaches the target.
With ENFORCE_STEP, instead, you can make it respect steps when trailing. It also supports Keep_Quote.
I did my best to explain his Guntharish, but if you want to read the original article, please check Gunbot V23 the Way I run it by Gunthar on BitcoinTalk.
Gunbot Step-Grid Strategy
The Gunbot stepGrid strategy is an advanced price strategy that triggers a “BUY” or “SELL” signal when the price moves above or below your defined step.
You can choose between two-step size options — Auto and Manual, while the trailing price is fully automatic and takes place on every step, either up or down.
Step-Grid is a simple but effective trading strategy. The idea of this strategy is to trade small price movements.
Even if you’re in an overall losing position, the strategy will still make you money by taking advantage of small price increases and sell portions at higher rates than their comparable buy orders.
Unlike most other Gunbot strategies, this strategy has only a few options and doesn’t use confirmation indicators. The step grid method behaves this way because it only needs to confirm that the price has moved in a particular direction.
StepGrid Trading Behavior with Auto Step Size
The “Step-Up” and “Step-Down” are placed close to the last order rate. But if the pair has never traded before, the reference price for the steps is the pair’s price when you started running the strategy.
When the price moves down one step, it automatically starts buying, trailing, and places a buy order for 1x the “Trading Limit” as soon as the trailing finishes.
When the price moves up one step while below break-even, it automatically starts selling, trailing, and places a sell order when the trailing finishes. Below break even, each sell order is 1x the “Trading Limit” in size.
The behavior is the same when the price is above your break-even, but the order quantities can exceed 1x the “Trading Limit.” If the price reaches a complete step above break even, it will sell that bag right away.
When the price increases enough to reach the point where the next buy step is above break-even, the buy step acts as a stop in profit for positions bigger than 4x the “Trading Limit.”
Gunbot will buy again when it reaches the next purchase or sell step, and you’re in no position.
The bot will continue to accumulate until it reaches the “Max Buy Count” or when it runs out of available funds. Every new buy order will lower the break-even price.
Managing your balance is critical for your success with the Gunbot StepGrid strategy. Make sure you can afford the intended number of buy orders.
The following trading targets are constantly visible on your Gunbot GUI charts. Remember that the target lines keep moving all the time, and they represent the current targets.
How to Create a Gunbot StepGrid Strategy
On your Gunbot GUI, click on the “Strategies” tab to create a new strategy, name it, and select stepGrid as your BUY and SELL methods, then click “Create.”
Gunbot StepGrid Strategy Basic Settings
Here are the three step-grid strategy basic settings:
Trading Limit: This is the amount of Base currency you want to invest per buy order.
On the USDT-BTC pair, a trading limit of 100 means that you want to invest $100 every time it creates a new buy order. Always make sure you’re trading limit value is higher than the Minimum Volume to Sell.
Min Volume to Sell: The value you add here will set the limit of your sell orders. You should set it to the minimum tradeable size according to your chosen exchange.
Gunbot won’t sell if your Quote coin value is lower than your defined amount. The bot will ignore small untradeable balances.
Max Buy Count: Limits how many buy orders are allowed. Setting a max buy count of 999 means that the bot will do 999 buy orders in a row. When you reach the specified maximum, the strategy will go into “Sell Mode.”
There are a few more settings that you can optionally use with this strategy, described below.
Gunbot StepGrid Strategy Supplemental Settings
Here are a few extra settings you can implement with the step grid strategy.
Auto Step Size: When you switch it to Enabled, it will use automatic step size for your BUY and SELL orders.
Auto step size attempts to determine the steps that work. When you’re not in a position, the auto step size is smaller than when you’re in a trading position. When disabled, you can set a manual step size instead.
Step Size: This is the manual step size of your BUY and SELL orders.Sets a manual step size, and the value represents a price. Setting 100 on USDT-BTC makes the bot trade each time the price moves by 100 USDT.
Enforce Step Size: When you enable this setting, it will restrict BUY and SELL trailing to step size.
When enabled, the price trailing cannot trigger trades at rates lower than the current step size. This StepGrid setting ensures a minimum distance between orders.
Stop After Next Sell: To stop trading a pair after the position closes.
The bot will not place buy orders when there is no balance left to sell when this setting is enabled. Averaging down the current position continues, and partial sell orders do not make the bot stop afterward.
Period: This is the time frame you wish to trade; it sets the chart interval. The default period is 15. Make sure only to use supported period values.
SMA Period: You set how many candles you want to use to calculate the strategy support and resistance levels.
The default to calculate support and resistance is 50 candles. This strategy uses support and resistance to determine suitable trailing ranges.
ATR Period: How many candles Gunbot will use for calculating the Average True Range (ATR)
ATR is used to determine the auto step size; the default is setting is to use a 50-period ATR. Using lower values might cause the step size to swing too fast.
Keep Quote: This setting allows you to hold some of your earned crypto and not trade with it.When you set a “Keep Quote” value higher than 0, Gunbot will hold your set amount when the next sell order happens.
Extra stepGrid Parameters
You can set Buy and Sell “enable” or “disable” in the pair override section, and if you enable “Watch Mode,” the bot won’t buy or sell.
You don’t need any other settings for the StepGrid strategy. All the system requires to function correctly is written above. If there is any change, this article will reflect the newest info.
Again, feel free to check the Gunbot wiki if you have any doubts.
Autoconfig Controller for the stepGrid strategy
FREE stepGrid Controller: Autonomous Spot Trading Strategy by Boekenbox
Pim has uploaded a dynamic version of the Step-Grid strategy preconfigured using Autoconfig.
Your download will include many pre-made configurations for you to use in spot exchanges like Binance, Huobi, Kraken, Kucoin, and Gunthy Mex. All you have to do is add your Gunthy wallet in the config js file and choose how many pairs you want to trade.
Once you set it up, the autoconfig controller will start scanning for volatile pairs and adding them automatically. Then the bot will trade with them using the native stepGrid strategy.
The stepGrid controller monitors what’s happening in the crypto market. If, for example, a currency is doing poorly, it will replace it with a better-performing one so you can always make the most profitable trading with the best-performing pairs of your chosen exchange.
You can trade multiple base currencies with ease. The Step Grid control will automatically prevent the overlap between pairs, so you can deal with them even if they are present in different markets—for example, USDT-BTC, USDT-ETH, BTC-ETH, etc.
The StepGrid controller supports USDT, BUSD, USDC, USD, EUR, BTC, ETH, BNB, and you can compound your “Trading Limit,” keep reserve or increase the (TL) trading limit. This method also includes Stop Loss as a risk management choice.
All that and much more is available for you to download for FREE from the Gunthy Marketplace. Click here to Download your copy of the StepGrid strategy controller.
Pointers You Should Keep in Mind when using this Gunbot Strategy:
- Due to how compounding operates, it is difficult for the bot to combine trades with different limits on the same account.
- Be aware that manual trading on the same account with the same base currency can lead your strategy to behave unusually.
- Remember that this strategy works with Stop Loss, so when a stop-loss is used in this setup, it can sometimes lead to lost sell orders.
- Note that trading behavior might become unpredictable in shallow volume markets. To keep the trading behavior in check, use the “force step size” option using the stepGrid strategy.
- The included AutoConfig jobs must handle all pairs on the exchange.
Extra Warning Notes:
This is an excellent opportunity for a financial lesson! 🙂 Always keep some of your funds in reserve. It is good to be wise and prepared for any future market surprises.
Here’s a tip: Try to keep the number of pairs you buy to a minimum. This way, your bot will process your pairs faster and more frequently.
Don’t freak out if you see a lot of pairs being added to the strategy. This is OK because Gunbot won’t trade all of them, don’t worry, that’s how the autoconfig controller is expected to behave.
Gunbot stepGridHedge Strategy
The Gunbot Step Grid Hedge strategy is still in its beta testing phase and is currently available to trade on the futures market. To use the stepGrid Hedge strategy, you need to be running the Gunbot “v23.1.2 beta” build or newer.
StepGridHedge Logic and Expected Behavior
The (SGH) strategy uses the same order triggers as stepGrid does on spot markets but differently.
Imagine the stepGrid strategy trading futures longs. When it encounters a sell step below the average entry price (which would cause a loss on the long side), it will execute a trade on the short side.
The same principle works on basically any situation the step Grid can encounter. It fires an order in the direction that is either profitable or will not incur a loss by firing the order.
Additionally, some “not configurable” methods prevent DCA orders from trying not to accumulate too much too fast.
The stepGridhedge strategy gets more profitable once it has time to accumulate positions bigger than a number of your Trading Limit (TL), which it will close in many parts – ever further away from your average entry.
Long periods of sideways trading are the main enemy of this strategy because there is a risk of accumulating too much around similar prices.
How to configure the trading pairs on the Gunbot stepGridHedge strategy
The short pair is only there to collect data and visualize trades. The settings for the “short” trading pair are to make sure it never trades.
The long pair does the actual trading on both sides. Always make sure to have the short pair before the long trading pair.
There is no GUI strategy editor yet for the stepGridHedge strategy, so start by setting both the short and long pair on your config.js file, as you see in the picture below.
As you see in the image above, the settings are based on a 500 USDT test wallet with no other pairs active. So use that as a reference so you can adjust your settings based on your wallet size and preferences.
“TRADING_LIMIT“: Add a numeric value in USDT. This TL is the regular amount per initial or DCA order. The first few orders can sometimes use 1.5x or 2x this amount.
“MAX_BUY_COUNT“: This is the maximum position size (measured in TL) per side. Bot won’t add more to the position if this threshold is reached.
“MAX_UNHEDGED“: This is the maximum unhedged position size, the imbalance between long and short. For example, if the “long” is 20x your TL and the short is 5x your TL, there is a 15x TL (Trading Limit) unhedged. Bot won’t add more to the position if this threshold is reached.
“STOP_AFTER_CLOSE_LONG“: Set to true, but it doesn’t open a new long after closing one.
“STOP_AFTER_CLOSE_SHORT“: Set to true, but it doesn’t open a new short after closing one.
Other stepGrid specific settings like manual step size also work precisely the same way as on the stepGrid strategy for spot trading.
There’s one caution with order sizes on Bybit, the min order size is rather big and makes it hard to estimate how much TL a position currently is.
For example, if ETH is trading at $3000 and the minimum order size is 0.01 ETH in value, then a trading limit of $31 or $35 will both result in buying 0.01 ETH.
This makes MAX BUY COUNT and MAX UNHEDGED parameters a bit imprecise when trading with a trading limit close to the minimum order size. You can see the current counts in the console logs.
Again, the Gunbot stepGridHedge strategy is in beta. You won’t be able to use it with the stable release yet. Keep coming back to check for new info to be released as the strategy gets updated.
Gunbot StepGrid Strategy Conclusion
This Gunbot strategy gives you a chance to profit from the market predictability by following the price range only without any other trading indicator.
When you use price action to time your entries and exits, you’ll be faster than someone who relies on indicators.
Here are some benefits of a Price Action Strategy
- The price will always give you an objective view of the market.
- There’s no need to be stuck doing fundamental or news analysis because all you care about is the price.
- You don’t need to use trading indicators, only “Price.”
- You can time your entries and exits easier.
- You have a structure to trade in different market conditions.
- As long as you calculate your “Trading Limit” correctly, it would help if you didn’t run out of funds and kept trading continuously. (unless BTC goes to Zero) 🙂
Very Important: Remember to calculate your Trading Limit! Leave some room to give you enough buying cushion. Or set a pair with low TL to run for a couple of weeks to get a feeling of how many buys to expect because if you miss a step and add more base later, it will sell the missing step at a loss.
If you want to change your Trading Limit after a while, do it when you don’t have a bag you need to sell.
Last but not least, DON’T FORGET: This is not trading advice. My advice is, Do Not Trade with your Food Money, Never Trade what you’re not willing to lose, manage your risk, keep calm, and Gunbot.
That’s it for now, but don’t forget to check this article from time to time, as some of the Gunbot StepGrid strategy parameters may change over time.
Do you want to Trade with Gunbot successfully? Get it Now, so you can Profit!