Hello all, I am running a system (Ninjatrader) I designed by myself since 3 months and I am very pleased with the results. My approach is described best as inatraday trend following. Entry criteria is price action with some filters, but nothing fancy. What bothers me, is, that my system does good on index futures (NQ, TF, YM, FDAX) but not so good on currency futures and I don't know why. Because of the way I designed it, it is very hard and time consuming to track and analyze the trades. So in reality I have no clue why it's not working in currency futures. If my underlying assumptions about the market are not compatible with the currency market, then I am fine with it. I just want to know. Is there someone who can shed some light on it? Please educate my, it really bothers me. Thank you very much!
Could it be indexes are strongly trending, and currencies tend to be more more mean reverting in nature?
Trending and mean reverting is always a matter of timeframe. A market who is currently mean reverting on one timeframe can be trending on another and vice versa.
currency futures have big spreads compared to something like Tickmill, you might want to trade spot instead
The major currency futures have one tick spreads @cvds16. It is misleading to say those are big spreads.
Could it be because index futures have a positive bias and currency is neutral? Are you long more than you're short?
Why should one system across all asset classes? Some traders need to apply one system for ES and then a totally different one for NQ/RTY, etc. If you have a system that works on indices then just trade that and not force it on other groups. That is just my advice. What I find interesting that your system also works on FDAX. This is because it has a higher volatility than NA indicies. Are your results real or simulated?
In order to develop another system I want to know why my current one isn't working on currencies. Then I can build on this knowledge and try another angle. I don't know why but my system works equally good on FDAX an NQ. Results are from live trading. Maybe the reason is that my signals are based on price action.