That is something I will seriously look into. This is a very interesting approach. Its recently occurred to me a lot of profitable strategies implement different metrics and theories, yet each pinpoint many of the same market turns. Its similar to a collection of artists who each paint a different perspective of the same object. While each perspective or facet may be incomplete to describe the totality of the object/event, their individual interpretation is enough to adequately *communicate* the true object being portrayed. I'm sounding like Jack Hershey here (a good thing? I briefly drew s/r horizontal lines on the graph under the 'always in' paradigm you described above, as you suggested. Its funny, because many of those same turning points, ie "ONE OF THOSE LINES WILL WORK" correspond exactly to the time windows where my strategy piles it on. Many of them. It seems a lot of turning points exhibit technical similarities that can be measured from many different angles; yet each measurement likely sufficient in itself to hit a number of those points to churn out $$. Your running circles around me. Sage advice. One of my limitations is full time work. Which explains why i trade systems exclusively. During my early period of studying the market, I never would've even flirted with the idea to trade trendlines - too unscientific, i thought. But trendlines work great. Trading the bounces, fades, multitude frame. Very lucrative stuff. But im a novice programmer and profitably exploiting trendlines requires a powerful program beyond my engineering ability or the human brain. I trust the market will throw me enough curveballs to keep me on my toes. If one strategy lacks, another will have to be made to compensate. Necessity is the mother of invention. Its a labor of love, though. Like you, I love studying the markets. Mass human psychology manifesting itself in price action. Its great.
Achilles28...your one kewl dude...do you use the 1...2....3...Hershey trendline approach?.. Mr. Hershey taught me the most kewl way to plot volume with lines instead of histogram...(sad there is no volume quotes to speak of in Forex, but PIP count is an interesting concept ) But my "Futures" trading days have been over for a long time...and I no longer use Investor R/T Charting... Michael B.
Thus your rank concept born Its similar to a collection of artists who each paint a different perspective of the same object. While each perspective or facet may be incomplete to describe the totality of the object/event, their individual interpretation is enough to adequately *communicate* the true object being portrayed.
Thanks man! I use the Hershey patented 1.2,3 for exits. I had a dumbluck ephineny moment a few months back when i realised my intraday breakout trades wern't just a nice session move, but the introduction to a nice MULTIDAY move. I bumped up the time frame and couldn't beleive what was staring me in the face. Nice 15 to 20 R trades instead of 6-7 R trades. You know those points you mentioned, "ONE OF THOSE LINES WILL WORK EVENTUALLY"? Once you get one of those, try bumping up the time frame a couple fractals (i prefer bouncing up to the hourly from the 15 or 10 min), let that sucker run. Perhaps you are alreay doing this, but go about it differently! I dont know When I realised this, it really hit me that this what the pros meant when they say, 'let your winners run'. Of course, its all proportionate to the time frame. To answer your question, I played around with exits for a long time. First with takeprofits (suck), then candlestick formations, then iterative successions of custom formations etc. Finally, I read a few of Jacks threads, took a look, and realised trendline breaks for exits worked great. Really well. Coding them is hard. So my strategy is really entry (systematic, exit discreationary). But its real easy Give wifey a kiss for me, bro!
Oh yea, i forgot to address your volume/pip counting. I looked at that too!! pip change / time. Momentum as a proxy indicator to volume. Interesting. I use something similar to this, but not quite similar. Check out acrarys and stephen46's work on 'autocorrelation' or 'serial correlation' or dependency? Lots of gold in there too. Its all about catching the trend. I posted a couple threads on the forex boards asking cme currency traders about the parallel between good spot fx moves and cme currency volume. I would bet dollars to donuts theres a good relationship there that could be used at least as a money management filter (good volume on solid indicator = + trade size). I haven't checked it out yet. If I ever trade interbank (someday), I imagine HNW clients can access their banks volume stats, which im sure they keep. Even if its incomplete, it should be representative enough most of the time to better hone a system on the winners.
Speaking of Gold....and Oil.... It is interesting to find the instrument that is leading the other instruemnt for the session...it rotates! I posted a couple threads on the forex boards asking cme currency traders about the parallel between good spot fx moves and cme currency volume
As an aside, do you ever wonder why currencies trend better then indices and equities? I'm thinking economic cyclicity of the markets. First, a trader identifies the business cycle (recovery, shrink, depression, boom etc) and then trade a strategy synchronous with that business stage. Of course its all 20/20 hindsight, but the economy has been churning out nominal growth with high inflation (money supply + energy double whammy). Hence, equities and indices tread water = range trading = counter trend strategies work best. Were the indices treading water during the tech boom of the late 90's early 2000? No way. Just a pet theory.
Many people disagree with me about the destruction of the ES and its shrinking ranges...(YM and ER2 are better ranges to trade with smaller value per tick). I beleive the increase of computers trading against computers is partially behind the shrinking range of the ES.. Michael B.
Im still refining it for higher prob entries. What would work great is the hershey nexus of time fractals to identify big trending days as opposed to not. I haven't been able to perfect that yet - correctly projecting the intersection of the long term and medium term to see if it actually works.