As described elsewhere in the documentation, quantstrat models orders. This function is the default provided rule function to generate those orders, which will be acted on later as they interact with your market data.
ruleSignal(mktdata = mktdata, timestamp, sigcol, sigval, orderqty = 0,
ordertype, orderside = NULL, orderset = NULL, threshold = NULL,
tmult = FALSE, replace = TRUE, delay = 1e-04, osFUN = "osNoOp",
pricemethod = c("market", "opside", "active"), portfolio, symbol, ...,
ruletype, TxnFees = 0, prefer = NULL, sethold = FALSE,
label = "", order.price = NULL, chain.price = NULL,
time.in.force = "")an xts object containing market data. depending on rules, may need to be in OHLCV or BBO formats, and may include indicator and signal information
timestamp coercible to POSIXct that will be the time the order will be inserted on
column name to check for signal
signal value to match against
numeric quantity of the desired order, or one of 'all'/'trigger', modified by osFUN
one of "market","limit","stoplimit", "stoptrailing", or "iceberg"
one of either "long" or "short", default NULL, see details
tag to identify an orderset; if one order of the set is filled, all others are canceled
numeric or name of indicator column in mktdata, default NULL, see Details
if TRUE, threshold is a percent multiplier for price, not a scalar. Threshold is converted to a scalar by multiplying it with the price at the time of order entry (i.e. the scalar will not change if the order is updated, as in the case of a trailing stop), then it is added to the price just like a scalar threshold.
TRUE/FALSE, whether to replace any other open order(s) on this portfolio symbol, default TRUE
what delay to add to timestamp when inserting the order into the order book, in seconds
function or text descriptor of function to use for order sizing, default osNoOp
determines how the order price will be calculated, see Details
text name of the portfolio to place orders in
identifier of the instrument to place orders for. The name of any associated price objects (xts prices, usually OHLC) should match these
any other passthru parameters
one of "risk","order","rebalance","exit","entry", see add.rule
numeric fees (usually negative) or function name for calculating TxnFees (processing happens later, not in this function)
price method for getPrice provided by quantmod, see Details
boolean, puts entry Rule processing on hold, default FALSE
rule label, default '', added by applyRules
the order price to use, will overrule any mktdata lookup as well as chain.price (see below), meant to specify eg. a stop-loss price that is unrelated to the fill price (see chain.price)
the price that the parent order got filled for, used to pass to children in the order chain, will overrule all mktdata lookup, only meant for internal use really, default NULL
timestamp time-in-force; either a time stamp, or a number of seconds, or 'GTC' / '', 'GTC' and '' both meaning 'Good Till Canceled'; order expires if still 'open' at this timestamp, default is ''
pricemethod may be one of
will use the 'ask' price if you're buying and the 'bid' price if you're selling, crossing the market at the time of order entry to attempt to set an aggressive price to get the trade.
which will join the 'bid' price if you are buying or join the 'ask' price if you are selling, passively working to make liquidity at the prevailing market price without crossing the market at time of order entry
will create a pair of orders for both bid and offer, modeling
market making activities by having orders on both sides.
This will then create an Order.Set, and use the threshold to set the prices for these orders.
orderqty should be either numeric, or one of 'all'/'trigger'. 'all' can only be used with order of ruletype='exit' or 'risk', and will close the entire position. 'trigger' can only be used with ruletype='chain' and is exactly identical to 'all', except that the actual transaction is suppressed, and can be used to kick in a new order chain.
If threshold is not numeric or NULL it should be the name of an indicator mktdata column holding the threshold values.
If orderside is NULL, the function will attempt to calculate the side from the current position
(if any), the order quantity, and the order type.
If prefer=NULL then getPrice will grep for a column
name including "price" then "trade" then "close". If none are found, the
function will stop with an error message: "subscript out of bounds, no price
was discernible from the data". getPrice is attempting to
make a reasonable guess about the most likely 'price' the user might want,
though in practice this may lead to unexpected results. It is often more
prudent to specify prefer than to leave it to the default search order.