İndikatör N-day Breakout

In a message dated 2/26/00 6:47:50 AM Central Standard Time,
jcob3@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
Help needed for formula wizards.
I have coded the entry for the n-day breakout system from Perry Kaufmann's "Trading Systems and Methods" as:
ENTER LONG:
n:=20;
nhigh:=Ref(HHV(H,n),-1);
HIGH>nhigh AND CLOSE > Ref(CLOSE,-1)
I would like to be able to vary "n" using a volatility multiplier like this one taken from Chande's "The New Technical Trader",
Stdev(C,20)/Mov(Stdev(C,20),5,S),
so that, ultimately "n" will equal
20*(Stdev(C,20)/Mov(Stdev(C,20),5,S)).
So far so good, but when I try to implement this into the ENTER LONG Formula
I get the following error message.
"This variable or expression must contain only constant data.", referring to the "n" in the "nhigh" formula.
n:=20*(Stdev(C,20)/Mov(Stdev(C,20),5,S));
nhigh:=Ref(HHV(H,n),-1);
HIGH>nhigh AND CLOSE > Ref(CLOSE,-1)
After pondering this I thought that maybe it was because the "n" needed to be a whole number for this particular formula; after all, it must be difficult to select a highest high value for a fractional day. Therefore, I altered the formula thusly:
n:=int(20*(Stdev(C,20)/Mov(Stdev(C,20),5,S)))
I was willing to accept that the program would round every decimal down. Unfortunately, I received the same error. This makes little sense to me since I can simply put n:= opt1
for as many days as I want and the formula works just fine.
Any help with this little conundrum will be greatly appreciated.
Jeff

Re: n-day breakout system
· To: metastock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
· Subject: Re: n-day breakout system
· From: Kevin243@xxxxxxx
· Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 18:41:39 EST
· Reply-To: metastock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
· Sender: owner-metastock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
In functions like HHV, etc. Metastock language requires a constant for the length of the function. You need to look at the LASTVALUE() function for using as a constant in the HHV function. Try the following code.​

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