Calculate top and bottom half of the hour

[gavin]

Hi all, I'm trying to scan for inside hourly bars on equities with the following settings:

1. Show Extended-Hours Trading session is disabled
2. Start aggregations at market open is enabled

The problem I'm running into is that I'm unaware of a way to account for #2 above in my basic test condition: high[1] < high[2] and low[1] > low[2]

The problem is, that's only valid at the top half of any hour, from XX:00 - XX:29. At XX:30 - XX:59 I need to switch over to another scan, but it would be great if there's a way to account for the current time and include all conditions in one scan. Obviously this is because I'm hacking this together by aggregating two 30m bars, and the lookback period depends on how many 30m bars exist.

If anyone has an idea of how to do this or a workaround then I'd really appreciate it!

 

[mashume]

You can calculate the half hour of the day using code like this:

declare lower;

def Y = 31556926;
def M = 2629743;
def D = 86400;
def H = 3600;
def HalfHour = 1800;
def epoch = (getTime() / 1000);
def YMD = (epoch % Y) - (epoch / Y);
def month = (Floor(YMD / M) + 1);
def Half_Hour_Index = Floor((epoch % D) / HalfHour);

def lower_half = Half_Hour_Index % 2;

lower_half will return 1 when true (when you are in the second half of the hour) and 0 when false (first half of the hour). You can then use this as a driver for which equation to use in the calculation of your study.

Hope that helps

Happy Trading,
Mashume

 

[gavin]

Thank you Mashume!

I put it all together and it seems to be working well!