Routing

Routes are how you define which symbol to trade, in which time frame, at which exchange, and which strategy to use.

Routes are located at the routes.py file in your project.

Basic syntax

You must implement at least one route. Here is the basic syntax:

(exchange, symbol, timeframe, strategy)

Working example:

from jesse.enums import exchanges, timeframes

routes = [
    ('Binance', 'BTC-USDT', '4h', 'TrendFollowingStrategy'),
]

In this example, we're telling Jesse to trade BTC-USDT using TrendFollowingStrategy strategy at Binance exchange in 4h time interval.

TIP

Instead of writing '4h', you could write timeframes.HOUR_4. This is optional but helps to prevent misspelling string.

Available timeframes:

MINUTE_1 = '1m'  
MINUTE_3 = '3m'  
MINUTE_5 = '5m'  
MINUTE_15 = '15m'  
MINUTE_30 = '30m'  
MINUTE_45 = '45m'  
HOUR_1 = '1h'  
HOUR_2 = '2h'  
HOUR_3 = '3h'  
HOUR_4 = '4h'  
HOUR_6 = '6h'  
HOUR_8 = '8h'  
HOUR_12 = '12h'  
DAY_1 = '1D'  
DAY_3 = '3D'  
WEEK_1 = '1W'

Trading multiple routes

You can trade more than one route at the same time. The routes variable is a list, so we can put multiple routes in it:

from jesse.enums import exchanges, timeframes

routes = [
    ('Binance', 'BTC-USDT', '4h', 'TrendFollowingStrategy'),
    ('Binance', 'ETH-USDT', '15m', 'MeanReverseStrategy'),
]

WARNING

The exchange and symbol pairs must be unique.

That means you CAN trade BTC-USDT at the same time in both Binance and Bitfinex; but you CANNOT trade BTC-USDT in Binance on both 1h and 4h timeframes at the same time.

Why? Because exchanges support only one position per symbol and we want to keep it simple.

Using multiple time frames

You can use multiple time frames when writing strategies.

A typical example might be to use the daily time frame to detect the bigger trend of the market, and the hourly time frame to detect the smaller trend.

TIP

This is a common feature that professional traders use in their manual trading. However, in algorithmic trading, it gets tricky because of the Look-Ahead Bias (opens new window). This issue is completely taken care of in Jesse.

All you need to do is to define extra candles. The syntax for extra_candles is the same as routes except no need to define the strategy name at the end.

For example, if you're trading 4h time frame, and using 1D time frame in your strategy, this is how your routes must look like:

from jesse.enums import exchanges, timeframes

routes = [
    ('Binance', 'BTC-USDT', '4h', 'TrendFollowingStrategy'),
]

extra_candles = [
    ('Binance', 'BTC-USDT', '1D'),
]

WARNING

You may be thinking why not just define few extra routes and leave them be; whether or not using them. That would work; however, Jesse goes through expensive calculations to make extra candles work without the Look-Ahead Bias (opens new window); hence, you will be facing longer backtest simulations.