Top 5 tips and tricks for your DBot trading strategy

[alanvito1]

Learning a new skill is always about figuring out the basic functionality first. But once the basics are sorted, the next step is to discover shortcuts and additional features to upgrade your experience.

In this blog, we will go through the top 5 tips and tricks that can significantly improve your DBot journey.

1. Don’t miss the blocks’ context menu
   When you attach different blocks with various functions together on DBot, they will work together to run your trading strategy. However, each block has its own context menu.

Get to the context menu by right-clicking on an individual block, and access the following functions:

Block’s Context Menu on D Bot – Deriv's Trading Bot

Each one of these functions is fairly self-explanatory and can be quite handy if you need to change specific blocks. Some functions are disabled for certain blocks due to their specifications. For example, you can’t duplicate the mandatory blocks because you can only use them once.

2. Take advantage of the Notify block
   Placing the ‘Notify’ block with every significant step of your strategy will help you stay in touch with your trades. For example, you can get an instant notification when your trading bot buys a contract. You can also set notifications to inform you when your preferred market price is available or what price a contract was bought at.

6.1. An Example Notification on D Bot with The Notify Block

Moreover, this block leaves messages in your journal that can be very useful when you are debugging your strategy and looking for mistakes to correct. To make the debugging process even easier, you can filter the messages in your journal to notifications only.

6.2. Using Notifications to Debug D Bot’s Trading Strategy

3. Clean up your workspace with the function block
   The ‘Function’ block is a great way to clean up your workspace, as it serves as a placeholder for other blocks. For example, suppose you are setting up the Bollinger Bands strategy we discussed in our How to use technical analysis with Deriv’s trading bot blog post. With the ‘Function’ block, you can replace all the blocks under the Purchase conditions with just a single block.

Here is how you can do it:

1. Select the ‘Function’ block in the ‘Custom functions’ subtab of the ‘Utility’ tab and drag it to your workspace.

6.3. Function Block on D Bot – Deriv's Trading Bot

2. Assuming that you already have a Bollinger Bands strategy set up, take all the contents of the ‘Purchase conditions’ block and drag them into the ‘Function’ block. Rename ‘do something’ to ‘BB strategy’.

6.4. Function Block on D Bot – Deriv's Trading Bot

3. Go back to the ‘Custom functions’ subtab, where the new ‘BB strategy’ block has been created. This block will contain all the Purchase conditions contents that you have just inserted into the Function block.

6.5. Function Block on D Bot – Deriv's Trading Bot

4. Select the new ‘BB strategy’ block, and drag it into your ‘Purchase conditions’ block and collapse the ‘Function’ block. Now, all you have left is 2 tiny blocks representing your entire Purchase conditions parameters:

6.6. Function Block on D Bot in Purchase Conditions Block

4. Save and load your strategy
   Whenever you are working on DBot, it automatically saves up to 10 strategies in temporary storage. To retrieve them, click the ‘Import’ icon in the top left corner menu and select the ‘Recent’ tab.

6.7. Save Your Strategy on D Bot – Deriv's Trading Bot

Save Your Strategy on D Bot – Deriv's Trading Bot (2)

These strategies are accessible until you clear your browser’s cache or until the new ones replace them. To store your strategies permanently, you can save them on your local device or Google Drive by selecting the respective tabs.

5. Use ready-made strategies
   One of the easiest ways to start trading with DBot is to use a ready-made strategy. Deriv offers 3 pre-built strategies, all of which can be used for trading right away or customised according to your preference.

To access the strategies, click the ‘Quick strategy’ red button in the top left corner of your workspace, select the strategy you prefer, and set the required parameters.

Ready Made Trading Strategy on D Bot – Deriv's Trading Bot

Conclusion
The 5 tips we covered are the most common our traders use, but DBot offers many more blocks and features that you may find useful for your strategy.

Log into your demo account to discover them all and master your DBot skills with your own or pre-built strategy – the unlimited virtual funds give you plenty of room for practice.