With renewed interest in Anekdoten's Profitable Strategy for Struggling Traders, I am starting this thread to foster constructive discussions on the subject. This thread is for AHG method only. Please go elsewhere if you want to debate/debase AHG. (click here for: Puretick vs AHG, SCT vs AHG) This is an internet forum... Everybody is free to speak... so long as you: -- Stay on Topic -- No Personal Attacks -- No Obscenities Background information: AHG - Profitable Strategy for Struggling Traders (6,344 posts 1,305,863 views) http://elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=99283&perpage=6&pagenumber=1 [Edit] Additional information: The Price Action Journal (533 posts 117,488 views) http://elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=132170 Price Action Journal V1.5 http://elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=134042
Preamble <hr> Quote from Anekdoten: The intention of this post is to help struggling traders turn their trading around. It's my way of paying it forward and contributing to a board that consistently complaints about the lack of useful trading information. The strategy works in most trending markets but with your help we can make a great thing even better. It is by no means complete but very much functional and consistently profitable once some of the trader's skills are polished. It's simply a collection of ideas, personal experience, trial and errors, backtesting and things I put together that changed my trading around over the years. I'm open to suggestions and ideas on how to improve what I consider a very good system for daytrading the market. Particularly, the e-minis. Let's try to keep it civil and friendly as my priority here is simply to help and improve the system. It's long overdo that I do some contributions and well, tonight is the night. Hope it helps and since I designed it I will indulge myself by calling it, for now... Anek's Holy Grail v 1.0 or AHG for short. As we improve it we can increase the version number. Rest assure, it's a good working strategy for trading and has been my bread and butter for quite some time. I see no reason for this changing. Help me help you and feel free to help us help more by chipping in with ideas. I shall begin by placing the first stone...... <hr>STEP 1 THE TREND - Determine if there is a MEANINGFUL TREND present There are two types. The meaningful ones: Downtrend = lower highs, lower lows Uptrend = higher highs, higher lows The ones you should ignore (for now) because they require greater skill to consistently profit from or simply, the sideway ones: Congestion/Indecision = higher lows, lower highs (Symmetric Triangle formations) Consolidation = horizontal lows/highs As you get more experienced you can profit off consolidation by fading support/resistance but for now, stick only to the meaningful trends. Again, as you get more experienced you can profit off symmetric triangles (HL LH) because they tend to give birth to POWERFUL new trends but for now I would rather you stick to the meaningful trends. <hr>STEP 2 ONCE A TREND HAS BEEN DETERMINED HOW DO WE PLAY IT - If a MEANINGFUL TREND has been found we need a logical entry. Let's start with the UPTREND. We BUY a pullback and we are nimble with our target. Where exactly ? Well, it can be a 50% Fib retracement from the recent High to Low swing, or stochastics crossing, whatever you feel comfortable with. We take advantage of minor WEAKNESS in a STRONG TREND to get a good fill. What's your target ? It can be a few ticks below previous resistance, it can be an upper bollinger band. This is entirely up to you and only in time you will master this. You could trail the stop to ride those breakouts, all very discretionary. Stop ? Whatever would make it a lower low aka a CHANGE of trend. Now, lets talk about the evil twin, the DOWNTREND. We SHORT a pop up and again, we are nimble with our target. Where exactly ? Well, it can be a 50% Fib retracement from High to Low, Stochastics Crossing, whatever you feel comfortable with. We take advantage of STRENGTH in a WEAK TREND to get a good fill. What's your target ? It can be a few ticks above previous support, it can be a lower bollinger band. This is entirely up to you and only in time you will master this. You could trail the stop to ride those breakdowns, all very discretionary. Stop ? Whatever would make it a higher high aka a CHANGE of trend. Important, we never go against the trend. When the trend is strong we buy a pullback. When the trend is weak we short a pop up. No exceptions, don't play hero or Nostradamus. There is not a soul on earth who can predict the market consistently and what we want is consistency, so be smart about this. If STOPPED OUT, meaning, a CHANGE of a trend, we stay ON THE SIDELINES until a NEW MEANINGFUL TREND is defined and we take our stop like responsible traders. If we get faked out, so be it, plan your trade and trade your plan. Losses are inevitable and quite alright as long as we limit them to small numbers. Who is our enemy ? You got it, REVERSALS. REVERSALS stop us out. Lucky for us, they are not very common which is exactly why this strategy works. Some days will be filled with them and sadly I don't know how to overcome this. On days like this, I lose money. Surprisingly so, people call reversals all the time then you wonder why 90% of traders lose money ? We never call a top, we never call a bottom, we never say "Oh it's too high" or "It's too low", the market has no boundaries. Yes, you heard that right, NO BOUNDARIES. There are so many variables in the market it is IMPOSSIBLE to predict accurately on a consistently basis therefore the best I can do is examine what is happening NOW and try to profit from some possible volatility and situate myself in a strategic place, with patience and conviction. <hr>STEP 3 INDICATORS I'm not a big fan of technical indicators, mostly because I have no interest in using something that tells me what happened 10 years ago. Price action is all I need and when using tick/share charts I don't need to use a volume indicator. However, there are some I use for strength/weakness references, entries and exits. For example: BOLLINGER BANDS with 2.5 Standard Deviation. (I feel 2.0 gets hit far too often and distracts me with noise) When price is continuously hitting a band, pay attention. It's trying to tell you which side is stronger. If you are having difficulty identifying the current trend or suspect a reversal, the constant hitting of a particular band can provide great info as to where momentum is headed. TRENDLINES, as many as you need to determine the current trend. STOCHASTICS, a cross can be a powerful tool when you are looking for an entry in a strong trend. I like 5,3,3 but use whatever you feel comfortable with. FIBONACCI RETRACEMENT LINES, my favorite. 50% from last swing low/high and you got an excellent entry point. Problem is sometimes the trend is so strong it won't even give you your wish and you miss the fill. <hr>STEP 4 MONEY MANAGEMENT As you get more experienced, I highly recommend you use an average up approach. More on this later, until then, use the same car size on every play and for God's sake DO NOT AVERAGE DOWN unless you are just trying to get fills for your intended car size, never surpassing it. I previously stated and those that known me for a while know I advocate averaging up. I feel this is an advanced money management technique and for now I am not disccusing it to avoid confusion/mistakes. <hr>STEP 5 DISCIPLINE I'll be blunt. Trading is not for the irresponsible. Break the rules and you will eventually lose big, period. Trading will forgive you if you were wrong on a play even several ones, it won't forgive or tolerate idiocy and stupidity. All I need to say on this and you have been warned. <hr>STEP 6 CHART TYPES Longbars are evil, therefore I highly recommend tick/share charts so you can split that data and examine it with care. For the YM I recommend 75 or 89 tick charts. This differs greatly from one instrument to the other, the more volume/activity it has the greater the ticks size you will need. Use what you feel comfortable with. Bye for now, Anek <hr>
What is the best thread to understand the latest AHG version? I have read through some of AHG original thread, but from what I understand the rules have now been changed. Thanks, redduke
. STEP 1 THE TREND - Determine if there is a MEANINGFUL TREND present There are two types. The meaningful ones: Downtrend = lower highs, lower lows Uptrend = higher highs, higher lows <img src=http://elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=2189964> <hr>There are software that can label HH, LL, etc., automatically on the chart. Clicks here for the OEC code. NEW! I will attach the EasyLanguage code in the next post.
This is the EasyLanguage code to label HH/LL on the chart. Let us know how it works out for you. If you have a version for other platforms, please share it here. (118) [Edit] Do not use the browser to read the file. Right click on link, select Save As... to download the code into your computer.
Hi Tums, it's very interesting the thread you start. Most often what I see on the charts is just a noise. Very seldom I see tradeble situations. How would you comment this situation? Is it normal for the markets, or there's anything wrong with me.
Save your time and buy a copy of "Technical Analysis" by Kirkpatrick. All of this supposed AHG stuff is in there already, with a lot more useful info and better presented.
You can study Anek's chart for HH/LL entry signal examples: Green vertical denotes a long signal. Red vertical denotes a short signal. One of the longs was a loser. <img src=http://elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=1537294 width=800> (click on image to enlarge) 7395 p.s. this is an old chart. Anek does not use MACD cross over anymore.