Spread Translations into EFS

[eSignal_JasonK]

Hello All,

We received a question recently from a customer in another forum on how to translate the following spread calculation into EFS.

(2.5 * MSFT(change from prior close) - (dell(change from prior close).

The easiest way to accomplish this type of task is to break it down into smaller pieces and then put them together at the end.

To get the change from the prior day's close for a specific symbol you would use the close() and the sym() function to reference the current (bar 0) and previous (bar -1) day's values like below.

close(0, sym("MSFT,D") - close(-1, sym("MSFT,D")

This would be the same for DELL.

close(0, sym("DELL,D") - close(-1, sym("DELL,D")

To put it all together, you would end up with the following EFS code.

function main() {
    return 2.5 * ( (close(0,sym("MSFT,D"))-close(-1,sym("MSFT,D"))) - (close(0,sym("DELL,D"))-close(-1,sym("DELL,D"))) );
} 

Another way to do this to make it easier to read would be to assign each piece of the formula to a variable and then use the variables to perform the calculation.

function main() {
    var nChg1 = (close(0,sym("MSFT,D"))-close(-1,sym("MSFT,D")));
    var nChg2 = (close(0,sym("DELL,D"))-close(-1,sym("DELL,D")));
    
    return 2.5 * ( nChg1 - nChg2 );
}