2 posts tagged with "grid trading"

Blending grid and scalping approaches​

StepGridScalp takes Gunbot's classic StepGrid strategy a step further by blending disciplined grid trading with dynamic scalping and strategic support buys. This unique combination means you can efficiently trade spot markets through rapid intraday price movements as well as deeper market dips, all within one cohesive, automated strategy.

Instead of manually switching strategies or constantly adjusting settings, StepGridScalp automatically evaluates market conditions in real-time. It adjusts your position sizing, entries, and exits accordingly, helping you stay profitable while reducing the need for constant oversight usually needed in fast-moving markets.

Grid Trading with a Scalping Twist​

At its heart, StepGridScalp relies on the familiar grid trading model, buying assets at set intervals as prices fall and selling them at higher intervals as prices recover. This ensures your trades consistently achieve profits after covering trading fees.

What makes StepGridScalp special, however, is its added scalping capability. When bullish momentum kicks in, your bot will execute quick, opportunistic trades designed to capture profits from short-term price jumps. Additionally, it places limit orders strategically at medium- or long-term support levels identified by Gunbot’s built-in trend detection, giving you a powerful tool for managing downturns.

Capturing Momentum with Dynamic Scalps​

When Gunbot detects rising bullish momentum, StepGridScalp actively seeks scalping opportunities. These trades are smaller than typical grid trades but timed perfectly around short-term market dips, such as when prices momentarily fall beneath key indicators like EMA10.

These quick trades utilize ultra-tight trailing stops, protecting your profits without risking them due to market volatility. StepGridScalp continuously recalibrates these scalp trades, ensuring each entry and exit remains optimized for current market conditions.

Smart Accumulation at Support Levels​

Alongside quick scalps, StepGridScalp strategically positions larger limit buy orders at important support levels identified through Gunbot’s trend analysis. These buys happen at points historically proven as strong support, lowering your overall average entry price.

This smart accumulation approach allows you to confidently navigate deeper corrections, turning market downturns into opportunities rather than setbacks.

Unified and Intelligent Trade Management​

StepGridScalp manages all your trades as a unified position. It calculates profitability against a common break-even point, ensuring that each trade genuinely contributes to your bottom line after accounting for fees.

The strategy automatically prevents unprofitable partial sells, ensuring every executed trade adds positive value to your portfolio.

Tuning StepGridScalp to Your Needs​

Despite its advanced mechanics, StepGridScalp remains easy to customize. Key parameters allow you to quickly fine-tune the strategy to your trading style and risk appetite:

• Adjust your standard trade sizes easily with the Trading Limit.
• Fine-tune your scalping trade size using the Scalp Trading Ratio.
• Set the aggressiveness of your support buys with simple Support Buy Ratios.
• Choose automatic or manual grid spacing through the Step Size parameter.

Adjusting these simple settings lets you comfortably manage risk, increase profitability, and easily adapt to changing market conditions.

Making the Most Out of StepGridScalp​

To maximize your results, here are some practical suggestions:

Try starting with very low trading amounts, and using a fairly unrestricted setup. This keeps your risk super low, while you can observe the strategy behavior.

Regularly check your scalps and support buys, making slight adjustments based on your personal observations.

Keep an eye on market volatility - if it changes significantly, adjust your grid spacing accordingly to avoid unnecessary losses. Moving to higher timeframes can also be a solution to reduce activitity in uncertain market situations.

Accurately configure your exchange fees in Gunbot. This small step is essential for ensuring profitability calculations remain accurate, especially when scalping.

Conclusion: A Complete Strategy for Diverse Markets​

StepGridScalp effectively merges structured grid discipline with responsive scalping and smart support-level trading. This blend offers a versatile and powerful trading solution capable of adapting seamlessly to various market environments.

With StepGridScalp, you can confidently participate in different market phases - slow accumulation periods, sudden bullish spikes, or sharp downturns - all managed within a single, reliable strategy.

If you want to simplify your trading approach while maximizing your returns, StepGridScalp offers the perfect combination of consistency, flexibility, and performance.

StepGrid: Turning Volatility Into Structured, Fee-Aware Profits​

Grid bots have been around for years, but most of them share the same weakness: they buy and sell at fixed price intervals without caring about the actual cost of the position that is building underneath. When the market comes back up, a classic grid may close parts of its bag at a loss because the bot never looks at fees or at how many units remain.

StepGrid was designed to fix that flaw. It keeps a running “unit cost” line that represents a full-position break-even, including trading fees, and it refuses to hit the market below that line unless a slice of the position can be closed at a genuine profit. In practice, this small upgrade changes the entire character of a grid. Profits are harvested earlier, losing partials disappear, and the trader gains a predictable exit—even when the grid has stacked twenty or forty buys during a deep drawdown.

How StepGrid Thinks About a Trade​

The moment StepGrid fires its first buy, it stamps that execution price as a reference. From there it watches both directions:

• Downward: Each time price falls by one grid step, the bot checks that it still has room under MAX_BUY_COUNT. If so, it spends another TRADING_LIMIT.
• Upward: When price rises by one grid step, the bot arms a trailing sell. If the trailer finishes above the calculated unit-cost line, the bot can unload part or all of the bag.

Because unit cost is recalculated after every fill, the break-even line keeps sliding lower while the position deepens. Eventually the market will revisit that line. When it does, StepGrid has two options. If the move is sharp and a full close is cheaper than fees, it sells everything. If the move is hesitant, it can sell a fraction—provided PROTECT_PARTIAL_SELL confirms that the slice alone is green.

Choosing a Step Size​

Most users leave AUTO_STEP_SIZE set to true. The bot then measures Average True Range over the last ATR_PERIOD candles, multiplies it by 1.5, and compares the result with two times the fee percentage. The larger of those two values becomes today’s step. The advantage is obvious: when volatility expands, StepGrid widens its ladder. When the market goes quiet, steps tighten and more trades fire.

Manual spacing still has its place. Event traders often disable auto stepping, enter a STEP_SIZE that matches the expected headline move, and turn ENFORCE_STEP on. Enforcement forces every buy and sell to respect those exact levels, which keeps position size predictable in news-driven spikes.

Position Sizing and Capital Risk​

Grid strategies live or die on exposure management. StepGrid makes that explicit by linking three parameters:

1. TRADING_LIMIT – the capital per buy.
2. MAX_BUY_COUNT – the maximum number of buys.
3. KEEP_QUOTE – the amount of quote the bot must leave untouched for fees or withdrawals.

Multiply the first two and you know the worst-case bag size. That figure should sit well below your total account—ten to twenty percent is a common ceiling. Raise MAX_BUY_COUNT because you fear a long winter and you must lower TRADING_LIMIT to keep risk constant. The math never changes.

A Typical Cycle in Practice​

Consider a trader who runs USDT-BTC with a two-thousand-USDT account, a TRADING_LIMIT of 1000 USDT, and MAX_BUY_COUNT set to twenty.

• Phase one: The market dips five percent. StepGrid logs three buys, each at a fresh low. Unit cost has moved down with the bag and now sits roughly two percent under the first order.
• Phase two: Price finds a floor, drifts sideways, then rallies. As soon as it has climbed a full step, the bot arms a trailing sell. Volatility is still high, so the step is wide; the trailer finishes well above fees.
• Phase three: The trailing stop hits and closes one-third of the position—an amount chosen automatically by the bot because the bag is already in profit territory.
• Phase four: Unit cost recalculates. With fewer coins left, it rises a little. Price pushes higher again and this time the bot sees that a full exit at break-even plus fees is within reach. It sells the rest. The cycle ends green and resets.

During that entire sequence the trader never touched a button. The only manual decision was where to put TRADING_LIMIT and MAX_BUY_COUNT on day one.

When to Change the Defaults​

Most StepGrid setups work out-of-the-box, but three scenarios often require tweaks:

• Extremely tight spreads with maker rebates: Lower MIN_VOLUME_TO_SELL so the bot can realize tiny gains without tripping exchange minimums.
• Illiquid altcoins: Turn ENFORCE_STEP on. This reduces the chance that a thin order book drags a trailer into a worse-than-step fill.
• Long-term accumulation: Disable SELL_ENABLED or enable FOREVER_BAGS. StepGrid will buy dips forever and never calculate a full exit, effectively dollar-cost averaging with grid precision.

Backtesting: Proof Before Money​

Gunbot Pro owners can replay trades with BF_SINCE and BF_UNTIL. Deep testing builds tick-level candles so StepGrid behaves as if it were live. Two passes—one in a trending month, one in a ranging month—are enough to check whether your parameters keep drawdown inside plan and still let the bot exit profitably. If the backtest shows prolonged underwater periods or too many skipped sells, the first levers to pull are wider step size and a lower maximum buy count.

Final Thoughts​

StepGrid will not outperform every strategy in every market. No robot does. What it offers is transparency and predictability: you always know your worst-case size, your dynamic break-even, and the exact rules that fire each order. That clarity is rare in grid trading and it frees the operator to focus on the higher-level decision—picking the pairs and deciding how much capital to commit. Get those calls right and StepGrid will handle the rest, one step at a time.