stable/docs/faq.md

# Freqtrade FAQ

## Beginner Tips & Tricks

#1 When you work with your strategy & hyperopt file you should use a real programmer software like Pycharm. If you by accident moved some code and freqtrade says error and you cant find the place where you moved something, or you cant find line 180 where you messed something up. Then a program like Pycharm shows you where line 180 is in your strategy file so you can fix the problem, or Pycharm shows you with some color marking that "here is a line of code that does not belong here" and you found your error in no time! This will save you many hours of problemsolving when working with the bot. Pycharm also got a usefull "Debug" feature that can tell you exactly what command on that line is making the error :) 

## Freqtrade common issues

### The bot does not start

Running the bot with `freqtrade trade --config config.json` does show the output `freqtrade: command not found`.

This could have the following reasons:

* The virtual environment is not active
  * run `source .env/bin/activate` to activate the virtual environment
* The installation did not work correctly.
  * Please check the [Installation documentation](installation.md).

### I have waited 5 minutes, why hasn't the bot made any trades yet?!

#1 Depending on the buy strategy, the amount of whitelisted coins, the
situation of the market etc, it can take up to hours to find good entry
position for a trade. Be patient!

#2 Or it may because you made an human error? Like writing --dry-run when you wanted to trade live?. Maybe an error with the exchange API? Or something else. You will have to do the hard work of finding out the root cause of the problem :) 

### I have made 12 trades already, why is my total profit negative?!

I understand your disappointment but unfortunately 12 trades is just
not enough to say anything. If you run backtesting, you can see that our
current algorithm does leave you on the plus side, but that is after
thousands of trades and even there, you will be left with losses on
specific coins that you have traded tens if not hundreds of times. We
of course constantly aim to improve the bot but it will _always_ be a
gamble, which should leave you with modest wins on monthly basis but
you can't say much from few trades.

### I’d like to change the stake amount. Can I just stop the bot with /stop and then change the config.json and run it again?

Not quite. Trades are persisted to a database but the configuration is
currently only read when the bot is killed and restarted. `/stop` more
like pauses. You can stop your bot, adjust settings and start it again.

### I want to improve the bot with a new strategy

That's great. We have a nice backtesting and hyperoptimization setup. See
the tutorial [here|Testing-new-strategies-with-Hyperopt](bot-usage.md#hyperopt-commands).

### Is there a setting to only SELL the coins being held and not perform anymore BUYS?

You can use the `/forcesell all` command from Telegram.

### I want to run multiple bots on the same machine

Please look at the [advanced setup documentation Page](advanced-setup.md#running-multiple-instances-of-freqtrade).

### I'm getting "Missing data fillup" messages in the log

This message is just a warning that the latest candles had missing candles in them.
Depending on the exchange, this can indicate that the pair didn't have a trade for the timeframe you are using - and the exchange does only return candles with volume.
On low volume pairs, this is a rather common occurance.

If this happens for all pairs in the pairlist, this might indicate a recent exchange downtime. Please check your exchange's public channels for details.

Irrespectively of the reason, Freqtrade will fill up these candles with "empty" candles, where open, high, low and close are set to the previous candle close - and volume is empty. In a chart, this will look like a `_` - and is aligned with how exchanges usually represent 0 volume candles.

### I'm getting the "RESTRICTED_MARKET" message in the log

Currently known to happen for US Bittrex users.  

Read [the Bittrex section about restricted markets](exchanges.md#restricted-markets) for more information.

### I'm getting the "Exchange Bittrex does not support market orders." message and cannot run my strategy

As the message says, Bittrex does not support market orders and you have one of the [order types](configuration.md/#understand-order_types) set to "market". Probably your strategy was written with other exchanges in mind and sets "market" orders for "stoploss" orders, which is correct and preferable for most of the exchanges supporting market orders (but not for Bittrex).

To fix it for Bittrex, redefine order types in the strategy to use "limit" instead of "market":

```
    order_types = {
        ...
        'stoploss': 'limit',
        ...
    }
```

Same fix should be done in the configuration file, if order types are defined in your custom config rather than in the strategy.

### How do I search the bot logs for something?

By default, the bot writes its log into stderr stream. This is implemented this way so that you can easily separate the bot's diagnostics messages from Backtesting, Edge and Hyperopt results, output from other various Freqtrade utility subcommands, as well as from the output of your custom `print()`'s you may have inserted into your strategy. So if you need to search the log messages with the grep utility, you need to redirect stderr to stdout and disregard stdout.

* In unix shells, this normally can be done as simple as:
```shell
$ freqtrade --some-options 2>&1 >/dev/null | grep 'something'
```
(note, `2>&1` and `>/dev/null` should be written in this order)

* Bash interpreter also supports so called process substitution syntax, you can grep the log for a string with it as:
```shell
$ freqtrade --some-options 2> >(grep 'something') >/dev/null
```
or
```shell
$ freqtrade --some-options 2> >(grep -v 'something' 1>&2)
```

* You can also write the copy of Freqtrade log messages to a file with the `--logfile` option:
```shell
$ freqtrade --logfile /path/to/mylogfile.log --some-options
```
and then grep it as:
```shell
$ cat /path/to/mylogfile.log | grep 'something'
```
or even on the fly, as the bot works and the logfile grows:
```shell
$ tail -f /path/to/mylogfile.log | grep 'something'
```
from a separate terminal window.

On Windows, the `--logfile` option is also supported by Freqtrade and you can use the `findstr` command to search the log for the string of interest:
```
> type \path\to\mylogfile.log | findstr "something"
```

## Hyperopt module

### How many epoch do I need to get a good Hyperopt result?

Per default Hyperopt called without the `-e`/`--epochs` command line option will only
run 100 epochs, means 100 evals of your triggers, guards, ... Too few
to find a great result (unless if you are very lucky), so you probably
have to run it for 10.000 or more. But it will take an eternity to
compute.

We recommend you to run between 500-1000 epochs over and over untill you hit at least 10.000 epocs in total. You can best judge by looking at the results - if the bot keep discovering more profitable strategies or not. 

```bash
freqtrade hyperopt -e 1000
```

or if you want intermediate result to see

```bash
for i in {1..100}; do freqtrade hyperopt -e 1000; done
```

### Why does it take so long time to run hyperopt?

#1 Discovering a great strategy with Hyperopt takes time. Study www.freqtrade.io, the Freqtrade Github page, join the Freqtrade Discord - or something totally else. While you patiently wait for the most advanced, public known, crypto bot, in the world, to hand you a possible golden strategy specially designed just for you =) 

#2 If you wonder why it can take from 20 minutes to days to do 1000 epocs here are some answers:

This answer was written during the release 0.15.1, when we had:

- 8 triggers
- 9 guards: let's say we evaluate even 10 values from each
- 1 stoploss calculation: let's say we want 10 values from that too to be evaluated

The following calculation is still very rough and not very precise
but it will give the idea. With only these triggers and guards there is
already 8\*10^9\*10 evaluations. A roughly total of 80 billion evals.
Did you run 100 000 evals? Congrats, you've done roughly 1 / 100 000 th
of the search space. If we assume that the bot never test the same strategy more than once.

#3 The time it takes to run 1000 hyperopt epocs depends on things like: The cpu, harddisk, ram, motherboard, indicator settings, indicator count, amount of coins that hyperopt test strategies on, trade count - can be 650 trades in a year or 10.0000 trades depending on if the strategy aims for a high profit rarely or a low profit many many many times. Example: 4% profit 650 times vs 0,3% profit a trade 10.000 times in a year. If we assume you set the --timerange to 365 days. 
Example: freqtrade --config config_mcd_1.json --strategy mcd_1 --hyperopt mcd_hyperopt_1 -e 1000 --timerange 20190601-20200601 

## Edge module

### Edge implements interesting approach for controlling position size, is there any theory behind it?

The Edge module is mostly a result of brainstorming of [@mishaker](https://github.com/mishaker) and [@creslinux](https://github.com/creslinux) freqtrade team members.

You can find further info on expectancy, winrate, risk management and position size in the following sources:

- https://www.tradeciety.com/ultimate-math-guide-for-traders/
- http://www.vantharp.com/tharp-concepts/expectancy.asp
- https://samuraitradingacademy.com/trading-expectancy/
- https://www.learningmarkets.com/determining-expectancy-in-your-trading/
- http://www.lonestocktrader.com/make-money-trading-positive-expectancy/
- https://www.babypips.com/trading/trade-expectancy-matter