Automating EMA Golden and Death Cross Signals with Alerts
Article OctoBot
Summary
The tutorial shows how to automate a moving average crossover strategy by pairing TradingView alerts with OctoBot automations. A short-term exponential moving average crossing above a longer-term average creates a buy signal; crossing below creates a sell signal. The example uses BTC/USDT, a 5-minute chart, and EMA lengths of 9 and 21, while noting that longer time frames may generally be more suitable for this approach.
The workflow configures one buy automation and one sell automation, then links them to alerts that fire once each bar closes. In the example, the buy uses half of the USDT balance and the sell exits the BTC balance with market orders. The tutorial provides setup instructions and illustrations, but no backtest, performance data, transaction cost analysis, or risk controls. Results will depend on the chosen market, timeframe, EMA settings, execution, and alert reliability; the document presents the strategy for education rather than as evidence of profitability.
Key ideas
- A Golden Cross occurs when the short-term EMA crosses above the long-term EMA, while a Death Cross is the downward crossover.
- The example uses EMA lengths of 9 and 21 on a 5-minute BTC/USDT chart.
- TradingView alerts configured for bar close trigger corresponding OctoBot buy and sell automations.
- The sample buys with half the USDT balance and sells all BTC using market orders.
- The tutorial supplies no evidence of profitability or backtest results.
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Full text
# Automating a TradingView Death and Golden Cross Strategy --- title: "Golden Cross Strategy" description: "Learn to automate a Bitcoin Death and Golden Cross Strategy using TradingView alerts and OctoBot with paper or real trading on any exchange." sidebar_position: 2 --- # Automating a TradingView Death and Golden Cross Strategy With this tutorial, you will learn how to trade with Death and Golden Crosses using two <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/ema.asp" rel="nofollow">Exponential Moving Averages</a> (or EMA). The concept is to: - Buy when the short term EMA crosses up the long term EMA. This is a <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/goldencross.asp" rel="nofollow">Golden Cross</a> and is usually a bullish sign. - Sell when the short term EMA crosses down the long term EMA. This is a <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/deathcross.asp" rel="nofollow">Death Cross</a> and is usually a bearish sign. ## 1. Automatically identifying Death and Golden Crosses ### 1.1 Select your traded market First, we want to visually see our Death and Golden Crosses. Let's go to <a href="https://www.tradingview.com/?aff_id=27595" rel="nofollow">TradingView</a> and select the trading pair, exchange and time frame we want to trade. <div style="text-align: center">  </div> For this tutorial, we will trade BTC/USDT on Binance using the 5 minutes time frame. Of course, any other value would also work. Note: Trading on Death and Golden Crosses is usually more profitable on longer time frames. In this tutorial the 5 minutes time frame is only meant as an example. ### 1.2 Add the EMA indicators Then we will add the Exponential Moving Average indicator twice: 1. Once for the long term EMA 2. Once for the short term EMA <div style="text-align: center">  </div> ### 1.3 Configure the EMA indicators Click on the `Settings` of both of your EMA indicators and set the `Length` value according to how you wish to configure your Death and Golden Crosses. <div style="text-align: center">  </div> In this example, we will use the following values: 1. `21` for the Length of the long term EMA 2. `9` for the Length of the short term EMA Note: you can also configure the `Style` of those EMA to make them easier to visualize on the chart ### 1.4 Visualize the Strategy Death and Golden crosses happen when the long and short term EMA are crossing. We can now easily see what it would look like. <div style="text-align: center">  </div> Our strategy is ready, the only remaining step is to create an OctoBot to trade when those crosses happen. ## 2. Creating OctoBot automations to buy and sell ### 2.1 Create a TradingView OctoBot Let's open a new tab and go to <a href="https://www.octobot.cloud/dashboard" rel="nofollow">OctoBot cloud</a> to start a new TradingView OctoBot <div style="text-align: center">  </div> **[Start a bot](https://www.octobot.cloud)** For this tutorial, we will start a bot on Binance. If you are unsure about how to start a TradingView OctoBot, check out the `Create your TradingView OctoBot` section of the [TradingView trading tutorial](../tradingview-trading-tutorial#1-create-your-tradingview-octobot). ### 2.2 Create your BUY automation When a Golden Cross happens, we want our OctoBot to buy. For this tutorial, we will buy using 50% of our portfolio's USDT holdings. <div style="text-align: center">  </div> ### 2.3 Create your SELL automation When a Death Cross occurs, we want our OctoBot to sell. For this tutorial, we will sell all of our portfolio's BTC holdings. <div style="text-align: center">  </div> Note: in this tutorial, we are keeping things simple by using market orders, selling everything at once and having only one type of BUY and SELL automation. Since there is no limit the the automations you can create, you customize this strategy as much as you want by creating other BUY and SELL automations. ## 3. Binding automations to trigger on Crosses Note: the following steps are assuming that you already configured your TradingView Alerts webhook URL. If it is not the case, please follow the [Configure the webhook URL guide](../tradingview-trading-tutorial#25-configure-the-webhook-url). ### 3.1 Buying on Golden Crosses Open the connection panel of your BUY automation and copy its automation identifier. <div style="text-align: center">  </div> <div style="text-align: center">  </div> Going back to your TradingView tab, create a new alert <div style="text-align: center">  </div> <div style="text-align: center">  </div> In this alert, pay attention to: - Select `Crossing Up` as wall as EMA 9 and 21 as Condition: this is our Golden Cross. - Select `Once Per Bar Close` as Trigger to check for Golden Crosses on each candle close. - Give a meaningful name to your alert to easily identify it later on. - Replace the full Message value by your BUY automation identifier from the OctoBot tab. Great ! Your TradingView strategy will not send an alert triggering your OctoBot BUY automation when a Golden Cross is identified according to your EMA settings. ### 3.2 Selling on Death Crosses Similarly to the Golden Cross configuration: 1. On your OctoBot tab, open your SELL automation connection panel. 2. On the TradingView tab, create a seconds alert to identify Death Crosses and configure it to trigger your SELL automation. <div style="text-align: center">  </div> In this alert, remember to: - Select `Crossing Down` as wall as EMA 9 and 21 as Condition: this is our Death Cross. - Select `Once Per Bar Close` as Trigger to check for Death Crosses on each candle close. - Give a meaningful name to your alert to easily identify it later on. - Replace the full Message value by your SELL automation identifier from the OctoBot tab. ## The strategy is ready And that's it ! We just created an EMA Death and Golden Cross strategy on TradingView and automated its trading using OctoBot. Everytime a Death or Golden cross happen on TradingView, our OctoBot will buy or sell BTC accordingly.   Of course, you can use this configuration to trade any pair(s) on any exchange using your real funds or risk free with [simulated funds](../paper-trading-a-strategy). **[Start your TradingView OctoBot](https://www.octobot.cloud)** We hope this tutorial was clear enough. Please let is know if there is something we should improve. :::info Warning: The strategy presented in this tutorial is only meant for educational purposes and is not financial advice. :::
Shown in full with attribution under the source's licence. Licence: GPL-3.0
This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.