DislikedI shall try to get to the room after work, I think it is an excellent idea for a really good method.
Reading back thru the thread, and looking at the chf/jpy loss that you incurred, I had an idea. Though I believe that losses are part and parcel of trading, I still believe that it should be possible to minimize the losses, or know when to take profits. obviously, the targets on gbp/jpy would not be the same as eur/usd in number of pips. I'd be happy with 10-12 pips on a 5M candle on the eur/usd anytime, but would really be aiming for 20-25 pips on the gbp/jpy etc
For the coders amoungst us, wonder if it is possible to make an indicator, that lists the no. of pips of each 'x' number of candles. eg. last 5 candles were of pip size (basically difference between high and low) 20, 15, 25, 12, 18. Now, since we can see that the movements seem to be around the 16-20 pip mark, it can give us an idea/bias as to where/when to take profits, or atleast bring the trade to be. I have just chosen the numbers as random, hopefully I have managed to get my idea across.
Regards,
K.Ignored
You're basically describing volatility. There's already a common indicator for measuring this called the average true range and it's built-in to most charting packages including metatrader. I've used this indicator in other systems I've tested for determining stop losses and profit targets. An example for canuck's system might be something like:
profit target = price +/- (1 x ATR)
The idea being that in periods of greater volatility you go for more pips. Good luck with your trades!