The Wisdom of Art Cashin, and More StrategyDesk Tips

March 19, 2007 at 10:00 pm by Will

This morning I overheard Erin on CNBC speaking to Art Cashin who, along with Rick Santelli and Bill Seidman, make up the bulk of CNBC’s real wisdom all rolled into their few minutes per week of exposure.

Erin: So word has it that private investment is buying much of the subprime mortgage paper at pennies on the dollar. Is that evidence that the problem is correcting itself?

Art: Well, Erin, vultures are needed in any ecosystem…

StrategyDesk Formula-Writing Tip of the Day:

Be aware of the difference between the high of the last 30 minutes and the high of the last 30-minute bar.

StrategyDesk’s Bars are clock-dependent (for lack of a better term). Its 30-minute bars go from 0900-0930, 0930-1000, etc. If you use the Bar[High,30,1] formula at 0945, you’ll get the high for the 0900-0930 period, no matter what happened from 0930-0945.

If you want the true “high for the past 30 minutes” at any point in the day, say from 0915-0945, use the PriceRangeChannels function instead, as in PriceRangeChannels[Upper,30,0,1].

And remember the infuriating formula in the so-called Syntax Guide that goes like this

Bar[High,90]*(Bar[Hour,90] = 9) + Bar[High,90,1]*(Bar[Hour,90] = 11) + Bar[High,90,2]*(Bar[Hour,90] = 12) + Bar[High,90,3]*(Bar[Hour,90] = 14) + Bar[High,90,4]*(Bar[Hour,90] = 15)

StrategyDesk’s 90-minute bars appear to go as follows:

  • Bar 1: 0930-1059 EST

  • Bar 2: 1100-1229 EST

  • Bar 3: 1230-1359 EST

  • Bar 4: 1400-1529 EST

  • Bar 5: 1530-1600 EST

That’s right- the last “90-minute bar” is only 31 minutes long.

Anyway, from that little bit of detective work I’ve decided one error in the above formula is that the “12″ in Bar[Hour,90] = 12 should actually be a “13″. I’m pretty sure there’s a problem with the “15″ statement as well, but I’m too tired tonight to think any farther into it… more work to do here.

Update: Upon further review (and after a few hours’ sleep), the formula stands as written by AMTD. They right, me wrong. What I failed to observe last night was that the Hour part of the formula stands for the hour in which the current bar begins, and since the 90-minute bars (by my own description above) begin at 0930, 1100, 1230, 1400 and 1530, we do indeed only need statements for the hours of 9, 11, 12, 14 and 15. Dang. Happily, this realization cleared the cobwebs up enough that I can now construct various time of day formulas. Check my Formula Reference Page for updates.

6 Comments

  1. jaybird said,

    March 20, 2007 @ 4:05 am

    so is this formula the one for the first hour? i’m still confused about the bars and which to put in. thanks

  2. Will said,

    March 20, 2007 @ 7:00 am

    jaybird- No, this one is from the only “time of day” hint AMTD gives us in their “documentation”, and the fact that it doesn’t seem to work as advertised is one of the questions I’ve been trying to sort out — however, it is the starting point for the Opening Range formula we’re pursuing. I’ll post that one in the comments below your original question in the other post when I can get it sorted out (got in late last night and am headed back to work right now, so haven’t been able to work on it). Hope to have something for ya soon, though. Thanks.

  3. LP said,

    March 20, 2007 @ 7:07 am

    Gotta love that Art…he’s one of the few straight shooters on that show…eveyone else is just a wall street puppet

  4. BNJ said,

    March 20, 2007 @ 8:20 pm

    Heh, yeah, that one took me a while to figure out. At first I was convinced that the SD example was fubar, but I finally figured out their approach, although it was quite a forensic exercise.

    Based on the same techniques, I built this formula for “the high of the first 30 minutes.” You’d think it’d be easier….

    Bar[High,30] * (Bar[Hour,30]=9) * (Bar[Minute,30]=30) +
    Bar[High,30,1] * (Bar[Hour,30]=10) * (Bar[Minute,30]=0) +
    Bar[High,30,2] * (Bar[Hour,30]=10) * (Bar[Minute,30]=30) +
    Bar[High,30,3] * (Bar[Hour,30]=11) * (Bar[Minute,30]=0) +
    Bar[High,30,4] * (Bar[Hour,30]=11) * (Bar[Minute,30]=30) +
    Bar[High,30,5] * (Bar[Hour,30]=12) * (Bar[Minute,30]=0) +
    Bar[High,30,6] * (Bar[Hour,30]=12) * (Bar[Minute,30]=30) +
    Bar[High,30,7] * (Bar[Hour,30]=13) * (Bar[Minute,30]=0) +
    Bar[High,30,8] * (Bar[Hour,30]=13) * (Bar[Minute,30]=30) +
    Bar[High,30,9] * (Bar[Hour,30]=14) * (Bar[Minute,30]=0) +
    Bar[High,30,10] * (Bar[Hour,30]=14) * (Bar[Minute,30]=30) +
    Bar[High,30,11] * (Bar[Hour,30]=15) * (Bar[Minute,30]=0) +
    Bar[High,30,12] * (Bar[Hour,30]=15) * (Bar[Minute,30]=30)

  5. Will said,

    March 20, 2007 @ 9:11 pm

    BNJ - So with the Bar[Minute,30] you’re specifying to the minute when the bar starts so you can distinguish between the 1100 and 1130 bars, for instance… Simply Awesome! Looks like we’ve just about got this “period-x high” thing whipped!

    If we ever need the first 10-minute bar’s high (what, 36 different statements?), and then use it as part of a larger formula where we have to repeat it a few times, I guess we’ll end up testing the limits of how many characters long a StrategyDesk formula can really be…

    Oh, and as of tonight I’ve finally knocked out a fully-functional “Hammer” formula, and it was way hairier than I expected- check it out in the Formula Reference Chart. Also I’ll add your “first 30-minute high” formula. Thanks so much for it!

  6. Dinosaur Trader said,

    March 22, 2007 @ 10:50 am

    Great witty comment by Art.

    And I agree with your assessment of Rick Santelli. But I must admit that sometimes, I have no idea what the heck he’s talking about…

    Slow trading day…

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