New to these forums. I have read them for quite a while but never made an account to post until now. I am curious if anyone is able to offer some feedback on what I have been doing thus far. I have been learning to trade now for about 6 years, forex exclusively. I would say the first 3ish years are so were essentially hitting all the noob traps in terms of mentors/gurus, going through every indicator in the book, testing premade EA's, etc. All in, in regards to losses on accounts/tools/material since I started is ~$7000.00, which is at least 1 positive aspect. Fast forward to about a couple years ago, I finally just ended up sticking purely to TA in terms of candles and dropping indicators. I prefer to stick creating the strategy myself because I can't have confidence in what someone else does unless i thoroughly vet it myself. The closest to profitability I have come over trading a set strategy for months after comms has been break even(all live, forward testing). As of recently, I have modified my trading a bit, made a new rule set(no subjectivity), and tested it on an mt4 back tester running through data from october 2018-present. The only thing I of course cannot account for would be live slippage, however i took all trades on a spread that would be higher than normal. In regards to commissions, i thought the tester was set to commission in/out in stead of round trip so my commission should be double what they will be in the screenshot, so overall growth should be about ~18%. Attached will be the stats and the graph. Now I know it's not the largest sample size, but takes a while to do manually running through it so this is the information I have thus far. I was happy with the 18% growth over 6 months so i wanted to test it against more historical data. The issue I am having which killed my confidence and is leading me towards the "start changing things" mentality is the information i got running more data. I haven't yet finished this manual test, but i wanted to get more confidence so i started a back test with a start time of October 2016. I have run about 5 months so far, exact same rule set and the strategy is getting crushed. If anyone has any feedback, good or bad, please let me here it. It is something that would have to be coded(and is at the moment by someone else if not to trade at least help with back testing more data quicker than manually) because it doesn't trade often. I wouldn't be able to sit at a computer 24/7 to get the couple entries a day or every other day. On top of that, the win rate is terrible, something which i mentally wouldn't be able to handle. It seems to be edging profits out over time just above the cost of trading. Looking for realistic advice (aside from quitting lol). Thanks in advance.
Since you are charting, "what" are you doing in charting, trendlines, counter trend patterns, charting patterns, timeframe, MAE, MFE, and stats are no answer. Are you scalping, day trading, overnight?
The manual back test was on m15 eurusd. The signal is based on price getting to a specific area every time and then taken on a candle pattern around that area. No trend lines or anything that could be considered subjective from 1 person to another is used. Trades remain open day to day if they need to be but this didn't happen often as the max range I had on an exit was 20 pips. So best/worst case scenario that was hit, otherwise an exit was taken sooner. Some signals occur close to rollover, so when a signal is given, depending on the drop in volatility as it is nearing end of day, it may range into the next day until an exit is given or tp is hit. Trades are never held over the weekend. In regards to MAE and MFE, unfortunately the backtesting software i used doesn't plot it. I have max drawdown on every trade i took before it eventually came back to its exit, so i calculate the MAE, but i would need to manually go back and look at every trade for the average MFE. Edit: Avg trade length was 78.29 min I will go back through all the trades calculate the MAE and MFE later today
Just tried going back to do this and the save file for that session isnt allowing me to scroll back to the start of my session on an m1 time frame. I won't be able to get that data as i will only be able to get the general move in my favor from entry on the m15 scale and not from a smaller scale so my manual calculation won't be accurate. I will make sure to get this information in future tests . Also if anyone has a back tester that provides more detail on replay trades please let me know. I have been using soft4fx which is great, but it does lack useful information at the end like MFE, MAE, sharpe ratio, etc.