Journal related to: Spud's MTF Stochastics

HELLO,

This will be a trading journal related to Spud's MTF Stochastics approaches.

I personally would profit and properly you too - if many of us,
who are seriously trying to get a hand on Spud's system could team up together in the beginning of the NEW YEAR.

Basic idea: why not let all of us trade the best we can

Each one of us is different - comes with personal abilities - past experiences and so on to the market.

Instead of setting up 'fixed rules - or new ideas for all' - why not let all of us trade the best we can based more or less on Spud's ideas.

Some might be more into Escalator to Pips, others more into Elastic back snaps, others like more the 5, 3,3 settings than the 14,3,3.

Some might prefer filters to avoid early entries which might turn bad - others might prefer early entries.


Compare where we are: this would be in my point the beneficial part of teaming up together.

Well, I believe each one of us tries to trade as best as we can - but if we could compare our process (NOT in a competition style but in a educational style) I would find this benefits:

e.g

* Miss XXXX might have a success rate of 95 % and her account might have grown 10 % because of sensitive chosen Unit sizes.

* My success rate could be in the same time 79 % and my account could be at 0.5 % profit in the same time.


If I could compare which trade I took and which Miss XXXX - wow I could see that somwhow not the MTF indicator idea is not ok - but that I do not have the right grasp on it yet.

If on the other hand all of us show negative signs maybe we did not get Spud's point at all - or we can conclude that something very important in his explanation is still missing. (of course it would be wonderful if Spud joins such an effort and we could also compare our trades to his).


How to do it:

What I would have in mind, that al of us who like the idea open up a

1. same size account
2. same home currency account
3. start trading at the same day
4. to keep it more simple: use only the same Pair to trade

and than each one provides a daily (or what we decide) feedback on:

1. Trades (like a transaction log)
2. Account Statement (like current Balance)
3. maybe also 1 or 2 screenshots with the Trades for easier visualisation
4. GMT Time offset - so that anyone can check for themself

So when I see that sarah2002, CindyXXXX, Spudfyre, LuboLabo, Harry123, jdcompute or who ever might join does well - I can check back how many Units they took at what time - how was the Stochastic situation ect .


I don't know who is using Spud's idea profitable and especially not to which extend (or have a transaction log I can see myself what was the situation that person took the trade ect...)



If anyone would be seriously interested - let me know.

regards MJ


PS: I got a feedback from Spud himself:

My suggestion would be as follows:


Each one who participates:

* as a start will need to be committed for about 2-4 weeks


* opens a 100000 (EURO Home currency) demo account with any preferred broker
( I will be using Oanda)


* trading will be started on Monday 19th January

* each one is required to trade his/her system based on Spud's MTF Stochastic. (Escalator to PIPs, Rope, Mechanical Rules ..... and so on ..)

personal adjustments and tweaks are encouraged as we want to find out if and to what extend the system is successful.


* to make comparisons and such easier only one currency pair EUR/USD is allowed.


* in an appropriate time (maybe daily or so) each one is supposed to post the transaction log (maybe as screen shot) or attachment, as well as Account Balance ect..


* for the time being there is no need to explain each trade or the exact setups as it should be only a way to show transparently what people can produce by trading Spud's MTF Stochastics.

Who ever wants to join please leave a message and set up your 100000 EUR homecurrency.

(you must be at least to some extend familar with Spud's MTF Stochastic teaching

http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=36574
http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=37111
http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=119483

regards MJ



PS: this is NO a competition but a way to learn from one another and show what results are possible with Spud's MTF Stochastic ideas.

It's a shame Spud can not join - but he gave us his teaching - so let's see what we can producehttp://www.forexfactory.com/images/icons/euro.gifhttp://www.forexfactory.com/images/icons/euro.gifhttp://www.forexfactory.com/images/icons/euro.gif

To make the effort worthwhile we need at least 3 committed traders otherwise I personally will not do this.

I am interested but not ready to claim I have a trading method based on Spud's methods yet. I have spend most of my time going through the Predictive thread and actually did not finish reading it all yet, when I stopped to write my indicator to make watching easier.
I need to go through his other methods and get a good feel then figure out if they are ready to trade as is.
I did not document it but think I saw a few occurrences of a predictive setup that failed. I need to record these and study perhaps why and what other tools might assist. All that will take time before I am going to commit to extensive tests with one method.
It would seem a better launching point, faster anyway for others to catch up, for folks already using such to post what works for them now, perhaps with some stats if they have them, and also perhaps what doesnt work. Then others, new comers could start with what is claimed to work and add their own tweaks to try.
Just my thoughts.

hi mooselover,

You are exactly on point. I feel more or less like you.

The problem as I see it is:

Spud did an excellent job in presenting his MTF Stochastic ideas. Which caught my attention.

But (and this is not to offend anybody at all) until now I could not verify from anybody transparently if it will really work profitable.

There seem to be a couple of people except of Spud, who say it was successful: e.g

jdcompute BUT even he moved on to a other approach: Tkpower8 ATM
snarlyjack

Walad100100



I'm no expert either: just stumbled across Spud's excellent presentation about 5 weeks ago.

I have 'no final working system either'.

So that's the reason I would like to join up with other 'new comers'
like you, to see more transparently if the MTF holds what the presentation seems to transmit.


Anyway you are more than welcomed to join - if you are seriously interested in Spud's method. (which I assume if you wrote the indicator)

Just let me know.

MJ

Has anyone heard from Spud? It appears that he's stopped posting in the forum. Anyone know why? And as for your journal, I am interested so count me in!

Hello jd,

Spud posted a couple of days ago, too busy to actively participate in this thread but will keep an eye on it. Good to have you aboard.

hi,

@ jdcompute: excellent to hear you joining us. Starting on Monday 19th

@ Merlyn: looking forward to our joined effort.



At the moment: we are 3: myself (MJ), Merlyn, and jdcompute

NOT sure about: mooselover did not hear again from him if he will join.



I got from 2 others a reply: skyline and Harry123 - they are not able to join for different reasons.

Hope some of the others still joining I sent PM to about 12 people.


Anyway with us 3 I think it will still be a great experience. Spud mentioned that he might look over our process and drop from time to time a comment.

I will post later an example of how I thought we could proceed - than we can discuss it together if this format is best.

MJ

M-j, I sent this as (1/11/2009 10:35am eastern) return email to your PM but apparently you didnt receive it!

Hello M-j,
I will share what I discover and participate when I can in ways that makes
sense. Is that ambigous or what?
I have my fingers in many different paths with forex and like many others
have taken many other paths to this point.

I have seen systems not live up to the hype, same for EAs. I am a proponent
of back testing and in lieu of automated backtesting such as with an EA
running on Strategy Tester then at least a single indicator that
consolidates all the components, or most of them if possible. It is very
time consuming manually backtesting. It is prone to human error, slight
modifications of the rules as time goes by during testing, and missed
trades. Automating the method to a single indicator can make basic
evaluation much quicker. EAs are even better for creating a much larger
sampling however I am new to writing EAs and as such they take up a huge
effort and time making it easy to get distracted with other projects and the
need to profit.

Through study and my own testing with a few EAs, they can be very profitable
for streaks of time, medium profitable overall for longer runs then have
terrible drawdowns for extended periods of time. Over the years I heard
from a few pros that a system needs a minimum of 100 trades to test it out.
I would argue from a little experience that double that would be much
better.

I have also come to the conclusion though I cannot prove it with stats that
money management choices will make a huge different in the profitability of
a system.
So this actually introduces a huge outside issue into the question of
whether a method has good value. One method may do poor with money
management A, ok with money management B, and very well with money
management C. A diffeent method may do poor with money management A and B
but excell with money managment C.
So just like social surveys, drug tests, etc, it can be a challenge to
evaluate a system when one cant fully neutralize the effects of the outside
influence, in this case money management.

I had an experience a few months back of taking a few weeks manual trades
using a proprieary indicator/method and manually went back to re trade it
with a few different money management choices. MM taught with this method
took 4 positions, scaled out, moving stop to BE +1 after the 2nd position
was closed. I went through each trade and determined net profits if all
trades were actually closed on first target, then did one on 2nd target.
That study proved it was better to scale out. In a different strategy test
I did the same analysis and it showed it was better to take all off at the
first target.
My feeble conclusion is that money management results can vary with the
entry strategy and/or with the current mkt conditions. Again this points to
the need for a larger testing sample before concluding whether a method has
value.

Per your post, if jdcompute has moved on to Tkpower8ATM, which I am not
familiar with, I wonder if his determination is of value and we should look
into that? Seems like the endless pursuit again doesn't it?
I am not after the holy grail at all but I would like a method with
consistant high win rate and balanced win size to loss size that is rather
easy to find multiple trades, preferrably multiple per day. I used
subjective terms so let me refine them. Win rate 85% would be nice, avg win
to avg loss 1:1 would be fine. Would even accept a bit larger loss size
than win size if the win rate is maintained there or higher. I have been
saying for a few years now that higher win rates are preferred because you
can determine when a system is broken much sooner. A win rate of 45% with
nice 3:1 win to loss sizes can be fine but that system may often see string
of losers exceeding 12, could even hit 20 losses in a row. And the system
may not be broken but how would you know?

Personally I dont like large stops so I have not tried to trade an hourly
system. I also realize there is proportionately more noise the faster the
time frame so chances are a system will increase loss % as you trade faster
time frames, just general rule, does not rule out possibility of a good
system running very well on very fast charts.

I put my multi stoch on a chart running an EA in Straegy Tester to monitor
it in fake real time, only the stoch matching the chart time frame would
plot correctly. I wish I understood why and how to fix that. It would make
it easier for me to do quick eval on this and other indicators.

I don't yet have a completed EA using the money management I discussed
above. I do have a proprietary version that is ex4 only.

That reminds me of one other comment I wanted to make on your plan for
testing. A bunch of people manually trading their method then sharing will
not offer a good comparison of frequency of trades because the entries were
dependent on each indidual's ability to be at their computer at each
opportunity. Another reason for auto back testing.

Just one more rambling here, I suspect that Spud's methods would be improved
with some attention paid to S/R, pivots, MurreyMath, significant moving
averages, etc. Problem there is which ones to incorporate and again I dont
have any EA that adds such things as filters to take/no take trades or
modify stops or exits based on such. There are so many choices the choice
of which ones to use becomes subjective and after the choice is made then
there is the subjectivity of how close or how far away from price will those
things matter or not matter.

I personally use weekly/monthly pivots, standard daily pivots based on 5pm
eastern as day end plus midpoints. Also have prior day's hi and low.
Recently added in Murrey Math lines as rolling look back period.
I know some people use Camarillas and also use different start time for
daily pivots, such as midnite eastern.

My daily pivot program, unlike most others out there will paint the
appropriate pivot lines for all the past days. Most that I see paint
straight lines across all past but are only painting the current days worth.
So you cannot look back and see how pivots were respected over the past. I
wrote similar for the day hi/lo and also my own version of Murrey Math, you
can see all the old Murrey Math lines rather than just the current real time
set.
I like to look at past data to evaluate signals which means having the
signals available.

Dave

all good points mooselover.

> M-j, I sent this as (1/11/2009 10:35am eastern) return email to your PM but apparently you didnt receive it!

Don't know: I enable PM but it seems not to show up to others. Did not enable email though?

> My feeble conclusion is that money management results can vary with the entry strategy and/or with the current mkt conditions.
I have also come to the conclusion though I cannot prove it with stats that money management choices will make a huge different in the profitability of a system.
So this actually introduces a huge outside issue into the question of
whether a method has good value.

Absolutely agree MM can change much - but one has to start somewhere doesn't one? I personally test at the moment 3 different new systems: Spuds is the most advanced which I test with a number of different MM.

> Per your post, if jdcompute has moved on to Tkpower8ATM, which I am not familiar with, I wonder if his determination is of value and we should look into that?

I see where are you going ;-) But I personally still think jdcompute should join for different reasons:
a. he used to be more involved in Spuds MTF so he has at least some experiences.
b. he is one who claims that Spud's methods are successful (but needs a lot of screen time) so I think it would be wonderful to see it transparently displayed. Glad he decided to join.

> Over the years I heard from a few pros that a system needs a minimum of 100 trades to test it out.
I would argue from a little experience that double that would be much
better.

Agree partially: it depends on the system - for instance I have something testing which produce about 100 trades a day - would not say it is save to draw conclusion after the first day - if you get the point.

A other new System just trades one time a day ??


> That reminds me of one other comment I wanted to make on your plan for testing. A bunch of people manually trading their method then sharing will not offer a good comparison of frequency of trades because the entries were dependent on each indidual's ability to be at their computer at each
opportunity. Another reason for auto back testing.

Agree partially with you. I'm actually very much fond that we all come with different backgrounds likings and disliking (as your large SL) and hopefully from different time zones.

This is actually the main reason why I believe we can learn from one another. If everyone would use a auto trading with exact the same settings: well no need to share as we get the same results.

But exactly the point is - that e.g. Merlyn will use a different MM and other settings than me (maybe one will even include Murrey Math lines ) and if he or any of us succeeds it shows transparently that it works.

Until now I'm just impressed with Spud's sharing but without offence - nobody showed a transparent log to prove it works (well no one has too ;-) but for me I'm not going to but a good amount live without knowing it's potential.


>I will share what I discover and participate when I can in ways that makes sense. Is that ambigous or what?
Anyway - mooselover are you interested to join us on Monday 19th or not? As this would require a demo account with 100 000 (EUR home currency) and some commitments to it at least a couple of weeks.



Also: to avoid the thread being full of unnecessary stuff only people who joined (plus Spud) will be able to post here after Thursday 15th)



MJ


BTW: If you read some of my post you will know that I'm also much into automatizing trading ;-)

hi co-traders ;-)

The next post is an example of what I had in mind we post each day:

EXAMPLE Start 100 000 EUR account one day trading based on Spud's MTF.

Today: actually a very nice day - as you can see all trades where 'quite' save.



Basically we do not need to comment much (Spud did that already much better than most of us could do ;-)

but we need all transaction with SL and TP settings ect. to produce transparent proofs.

Pictures big enough to be clearly readable.

PICTURES are GMT -5

START Balance: 100000.00
END Balance: 100583.48

Trades: 7
Profit: 7 - Loss: 0

hi co-traders ;-)

all of you who are committed to this joined effort Starting on Monday 19th I thought to make it simpler to follow each report we should always quote our previous post.

I will Post the Last example Trading below to show what I mean.


ALSO something IMPORTANT: please include in your transaction log as starting point the last transaction of the previous post - so that we really have all together -- maybe in the end of our test period we can post the complete transactions as attachments ?

MJ

PICTURES are GMT -5

THIS TRADING PERIOD

START Balance: 100583.48
END Balance: 100888.01

Trades: 12
Profit: 10 - Loss: 2

TOTAL TRADING PERIOD

START Balance: 100000.00
END Balance: 100888.01

Trades: 19
Profit: 17 - Loss: 2

hi fellow trader:


* for this joined project I will be using as broker: OANDA


* I do not claim to have much experience with Spud's MTF Stochastic as I came across it just in the middle of November 2008.

In this past 2 month I have mainly programmed an automatized Bot based on Spud's teachings - which in fact became a huge effort. I guess all together it must have been about 500 hours.

having said this I do not claim that I have absolutely understood all nor did I do enough trading to KNOW it will be profitable.

But there are good signs that it could succeed (if it should produce a good average return % I plan to go live with it in a couple of month replacing some of my exiting systems)



* from this joined effort I hope that at least one of us will be a huge success ;-) which would be enough encouragement to work further on this path of trading.

I also hope to find out that it is produces even more consistent returns than some of my other trading systems.


So Welcome to all who join me.

MJ

Greetings pippsters

I have very little to offer, as i have been trading a minimal time with stoches, have minimal understanding of them, and am technically defunct. I do know how to turn on a puter, and how to load over indicators. but that took a while for me to learn

as for the Spud system, I came across it a couple weeks ago and have not really had time to research it in depth, however i plan on doing that the rest of this week and over the weekend.

I am unsure what i would have to offer this forum as, more than likely, i would just be a 'tag along'. I would not be able to offer any technical input.

I will be loading over Spud as a trading system in FXPro as a demo.

After losing my account to some hack, I now follow firm MoneyManagement set down by my wife and experience. I chart every trade i take and analize what i could have dun differently. I believe that difference is in the Stoches. I just need to learn as i go.

I would enjoy following along (as that is about all i can do until i learn the system) if allowed.

Happy Pippin' all

what times are u looking to trade,,, EST

thanks

From 03:00 hrs, or 08:00 hrs in proper money (GMT)

Hello Chaps,

I have opened an MTF demo account with Alpari UK for the purposes of this experiment.

I have been following Spud's various MTF threads for about 18 months and have gradually incorporated the "Rope" into my trading method. For personal reasons, I care full time for my 93 year old mother, my trading times can be rather erratic so I tend to be more of a scalper, looking for Spud's 10-20 pips a day. I have no doubt that with practice, and sufficient PC time, that riding the "Escalator" would produce some very profitable trades, but that's for the future. I will try to be at my "Trading Desk" by 08:00 GMT each day to start my trading day but no guarantees.

I hope that my small contribution will help some others and go some way towards repaying Spud for all his hard work and patience.

@ macK: Thanks for your intro. You are more than welcome to join. But you understand that you will be expected to trade as good as you understand based on Spud's Stochastic teaching - having said that - that does NOT mean you have to implement everything - good example of what Merlyn said: 'gradually incorporated the "Rope" into my trading method'.

About the 'MoneyManagement set down by your wife and experience': this will surely help a great deal in getting back your losses.





@ Merlyn: > I care full time for my 93 year old mother. I just can say: RESPECT. So I guess you are also not any more in your twenties ;-)


you are properly one of the more advanced Spud followers among us (still waiting for jcomputers intro and maybe some others joining). So looking forward to see what you come up with.


Would have a question: in your profile you write: Day trader/scalper using a combination of Spud's Mtf Stochastic and Woodies CCI

To you still use this combination ? and if so - would you say it is profitable (as you posted this below about 9 month ago!!


Well looking forward: Glad to have you on board too.


MJ

screenshot... saw an opportunity off 5,15,30 and took it. I was late in closing so only got 43 pips. was unsure in exit and delayed to the cost of 24pips. (trade went 67 pips before reversing)
have tried to attach image of screenshot, but again, i am very untalented when it comes to puters... (I am a retired bookkeeper...