Why Donchian channel breakouts are the simplest strategy: The strategy I described in the first post is actually an advanced version of DCB. My bad. Here is the basic Donchian channel breakout strategy : Buy the n-day high, short the n-day low. Eight words. That's it. Can you describe MA crossover strategy in 8 words or less? Hell no. Can you describe the ORB strategy that simply? No way. Anything else? (Coin flipping is not a strategy.) Nope. Case closed.
So why didn't you just entitle the thread "Donchian channel breakouts are the simplest strategy" and take it from there?
Bad setup on my part. Or maybe I just wanted to see how "elite" traders actually thought about basic stuff. I mean if we can't objectively determine what the simplest strategy is ... Or maybe I'm just wrong. Entirely possible there's something simpler that hasn't occurred to me. I'd like to see it if it's out there. I think a lot of traders are just unfamiliar with the name Donchian channel, despite its antiquity as a trading method. They've heard of moving average crossovers, DCBs not so much. But remember: the Turtle trading system didn't use MA crossovers, it used DCBs for a reason.
The four-week rule, an early popular form of DCB, dates back at least to the Sixties. I can't find a definitive date when Richard Donchian first published his strategy(s) but he started trading in the Forties.
Wyckoff predates that and he's a lot simpler, though I wouldn't consider even him to be "antiquity". Homma, maybe.