I listened to a recent webinar presentation he did where he suggested using 20% of the ATR of 10 or 20 trading days as 'A' value. MBF responded to a question on ACD that, as Mav74 notes, it should be used as a bias and "you cannot use it as a buy/sell..."
Why do you tend to doubt it? Just curious. I was 20 ft away from Eric Bolling saying flat out he uses it to trade nat gas.. I can't see why he would need 'endorsement money' from Fisher . He can certainly go to any clearing house to clear his trades.
Why wouldn't Bolling say that he used it? He and Fisher are friends. I was at the NYMEX for a while, and I poked around MBF a bit. I didn't see anyone on the screens there, except for around pit, arbing the mini and ICE with the pit. If they are using the system as described in the book, then they're losing money, at least in energy, as the system hasn't been profitable for quite some time in those products.
I'm sorry Jason, you have no idea what they are doing. I have been in his office and I have met his upstairs traders. What they are doing is proprietary and they do not discuss it or publish it in a book. When you make comments like "the system hasn't been profitable for quite some time" you are assuming you know what they are doing behind closed doors. How can you possibly make that statement with a straight face? You have no idea what he is doing just as I have no idea what Steve Cohen is doing.
I just don' t get what everyone's talking about here. The book outlines a trading strategy that may or may not have an edge. The book doesn't give an exact system with defined parameters that must be followed in order to archive success. For someone to say that ACD hasn't worked lately, what does that mean? What OR are you talking about? The book never states a specific OR time that must always be used. In the book Mark give examples of people who use OR ranges from one minute to sixty minutes. Unless one is testing OR timeframes from one minute up through two hours or more, how do you know it's not working? Furthermore, his book is very unspecific when it comes to profit exits. He never says close after X number of points, or close at the end of the day. In fact, he even outlines the possibility of holding over night. He also shows how the OR range could be used for longer-term trades (1-5 days). How could anyone say ACD isn't working? Maybe someone is using a one minute OR with their own A levels as an entry point with profit exit of 5 points, or 2 * OR, or any number of exit combinations. Maybe someone is using a two hour OR with 10% ATR as their A level and exiting profitable trades based on a MA. The book OUTLINES a strategy; it does not state a specific trading program. How one uses the strategy is completely personal. How do people make blanket statements about ACD not working? I'm asking honestly. I really want to know. Did I miss something in the book?
Anchor, great post. You are not missing anything. You are one of the few on here that gets it. There are so many combinations and permutations of ACD, there are endless combinations of trades that can be taken. For someone to say it doesn't work anymore is completely asinine. That is like saying, no one is making money trading futures right now, futures trading doesn't work anymore.