MACD strategy on Deriv: what the MACD bots wait for

MACD, short for Moving Average Convergence Divergence, measures the gap between a fast moving average and a slow one. When the fast average sits above the slow one, the latest ticks have been higher than the older ones, and MACD is above zero. A MACD strategy on Deriv usually waits for one moment: the MACD histogram crossing zero, the tick where that gap starts moving in a new direction. BinaryTick has free bots that trade on MACD on Rise / Fall and Asians, with every period and filter on the card before you press Run bot.

How MACD is worked out

MACD is built from exponential moving averages, or EMAs. An EMA is an average of recent ticks that gives the newest tick the most weight. A 12-tick EMA gives each new tick a weight of 2 ÷ 13, about 15%, so it follows the price closely. A 26-tick EMA gives each new tick about 7%, so it moves more slowly.

From those, MACD makes three readings:

1. The MACD line is the 12-tick EMA minus the 26-tick EMA. Above zero, the fast average sits above the slow one.
2. The signal line is a 9-tick EMA of the MACD line: a smoothed copy of it.
3. The histogram is the MACD line minus the signal line. Above zero, the MACD line sits above its own recent average, so the gap between the two EMAs has been widening upwards lately. Below zero, it has been widening downwards.

Take one moment on Volatility 100, read from Deriv's ticks. The 12-tick EMA was 673.51 and the 26-tick EMA 673.38:

The MACD line rose from 0.10 to 0.13 while the signal line stayed at 0.10, so the histogram moved from zero to above it. The bots count that as a crossover upwards: a reading at zero or below followed by one above zero. The MACD line has moved above its signal line. Readings are rounded to the market's decimal places, two on Volatility 100.

The 12, 26 and 9 tick periods are the standard settings, and they are the defaults in Bot Builder, where the MACD Array block returns the histogram, the MACD line or the signal line. The BinaryTick bots use that same block and read the histogram.

How often the histogram crosses zero

More often than the word "signal" suggests. We pulled 940 Volatility 100 ticks and counted over the last 890 of them, so that even a 100-tick average had enough history. In those 890 ticks the histogram crossed zero 78 times, about once every 11 ticks. A histogram that crosses zero and then crosses back a few ticks later is common, so most MACD bots add a second check.

The usual check is a longer moving average. A crossover upwards only counts if the price sits above that average, and a crossover downwards only if it sits below. With a 50-tick EMA as that check, 46 of the 78 crossovers agreed with it. The length of the trend average changes the count only a little:

The MACD bots on BinaryTick

Every bot below is free, explains its rule under How it works on its card, and lists every number it uses under Settings. All of them use the 12, 26 and 9 tick periods by default.

Bots that trade the crossover. These buy on the tick the histogram crosses zero: from zero or below to above it, or from zero or above to below it.

• MACD Cross Sniper is a Rise / Fall bot on Volatility 100 with a 5 tick contract. When the histogram crosses above zero and the newest tick sits above a 50-tick EMA, it buys Rise. When the histogram crosses below zero and the tick sits below that EMA, it buys Fall. It is in the Longer scans group.
• MACD Momentum Gate trades Rise / Fall on Volatility 50 (1s), also with a 5 tick contract and a 50-tick EMA check. It adds one more filter, a Histogram threshold: the new histogram reading has to be at least that far from zero, or the crossover is skipped. The settings section below shows what the default does on its market. It is also in the Longer scans group.

A bot that trades a growing histogram.

• Asian MACD trades Asians, which settle on the last tick against the average of the contract's ticks. It buys Asian Up when the histogram is above zero and higher than a tick ago, and Asian Down when it is below zero and lower than a tick ago. A histogram moving away from zero says the drift is building, which suits a contract that pays on the last tick finishing beyond the average. Over all 940 of those Volatility 100 ticks, that held on 346 of them, so it trades often. It is in the Quick entries group. The Asians bots guide explains how Asians settle.

A bot that uses MACD as one check among three.

• Confluence Gate trades Rise / Fall on Volatility 100. It buys Rise only when three readings agree: the newest tick is above a 30-tick EMA, RSI is at 55 or higher, and the MACD histogram is above zero. Fall needs all three the other way. RSI is a 0 to 100 score of how one-sided the recent ticks have been; the RSI strategy guide works it through.

The settings that matter

The three MACD periods. 12, 26 and 9 ticks by default. They are called Fast period, Slow period and Signal period on MACD Cross Sniper and Asian MACD, Fast EMA period, Slow EMA period and Signal EMA period on MACD Momentum Gate, and MACD fast period, MACD slow period and MACD signal period on Confluence Gate. Shorter periods make the histogram react sooner and cross zero more often, so the crossover bots trade more. Longer periods smooth it, so it crosses less. Keep the slow period above the fast one.

Trend period. On MACD Cross Sniper, how many ticks the agreeing EMA covers, 50 by default. The table above shows its effect: a shorter average agrees with more crossovers. The card's pace note says to shorten it to trade more often. On MACD Momentum Gate the same setting is called Trend EMA period.

Histogram threshold. On MACD Momentum Gate, 0.02 by default. The histogram is measured in the market's own price, and Volatility 50 (1s) trades at around 200,000, so its histogram moves in whole points. At 0.02, the filter lets every crossover through: over 940 ticks, 42 crossovers agreed with the trend EMA, at a threshold of 0.02 and at 0 alike. Raise it to filter out the weaker ones:

If you move the bot to another market, set the threshold against that market's price. On Volatility 100, at around 670, the histogram is usually a few hundredths from zero, so a 0.02 threshold would filter there.

Stake, limits and martingale. These bots ship with a 1 USD stake, a 2.1x martingale with a 5 USD max stake, a 10 USD take profit and stop loss, and a stop after 4 losses in a row. On Rise / Fall and Asians a 1 USD win paid 1.95 USD when we checked. Untick Use martingale for a flat stake. The martingale guide explains the ladder, and the stop loss and take profit guide every limit.

Building your own MACD bot

Open any of these bots with Edit in Bot Builder to see the MACD Array block and the rule around it. You can change the periods, read the MACD line instead of the histogram, swap the contract or add a check of your own, all with blocks and no code. The Bot Builder guide walks through the editor.

Run one now

Open Asian MACD and run it on your demo balance first. It trades often, so within a short session you will see it buy both sides as the histogram grows above and below zero. For a bot that waits for the crossover itself, try MACD Cross Sniper, and shorten its Trend period to 20 if you want it to trade more.