MA Crossover System that works for me

CHFJPY is a shocking pair to trade, check the recent oscillation about the 200 SMA

I generally do trade on a Friday but will usually close before the NFPs or if there is any other major news event coming up. I like to close all my trades at the end of the week so that I can have a weekend with nothing nagging at my mind. Sort of a mental health break. I do sometimes leave a trade open by choice, for example if it is already at break-even and the overall look of the trade is good. I have two trades at B/E right now, but as I'm going to be away for a few days next week and off-grid some of the time, I will close everything today.

Regarding this approach being swing trading, I guess you're right as it does take more than a day for many of these trades to work, but I prefer to treat my trades for a day as a basket and look at returns on balance as a whole. If it is around 1% for the day and it's the end of the day I'll close them then.

Here is another tool that might help you recognize Inside Bars more efficiently

And as NZDCAD was the best trending pair last week, I will cherry pick that to show what else I observe on the charts.

By the way, since the OGT Trend indicator was using 3 MA's, I thought why not emulate the great Bill Williams settings for the Alligator

Well, he used 5, 8, and 13, so we can use 8, 13, and 21 by my reasoning.

At the weekend we can be a bit silly.

What is the secret of life?

One thing, just one thing, you stick to that and everything else don't mean shit

That's great but what's the one thing?

That's what you got to figure out.



What is the secret of trading?

One thing, just one thing, you stick to that and everything else don't mean shit

That's great but what's the one thing?

That's what you got to figure out.



For me, it's the Close price after a move above or below the EMA's

Here is an example, if you did nothing else for price action, this would show you the way.

Don't believe me, please check all your charts, and get back to me.

We can use the previous NZDCAD 4-Hour again, check these 2 Close price above the EMA's




And at a longer timeframe reference, the DAILY chart, not looking back since that CLOSE

For further research on that phenomenon, I suggest to Google for Larry Williams 9-EMA strategy

We could call this the Williams, Williams & Alistair Strategy.

I ever interest if something come with the use of moving averages. I cann talk about this for hours if i can do this in my native language. In english i tend to reduce my point to less and often i forget something. So if i edit this post in future it is because i have new input here.

I am long enough in trading that i have seen so many systems based on moving averages. The use of this indicator is something like around good and bad. Before i write some more words, i let you some minutes alone withsome charts.


.. have you take some minutes? Have you deeper watch first chart?
As you can see at some point that work in different settings and styles well. BUT! If you have no clue what is the market doing right now you can use all these examples and lead you to a blind fishing.You can tune the setting all day long but you are fishing blind! I will point this in early stage before the thread is going the way.

Wish all here some good time and hope we can get valuable informations using MAs.

Greets

Michael

i use a similar strategy, i use SSL to determine trend ( bullish or bearish ) then i use EMA 8 and 21 Cross on the 4h, and i also use TMS oscillator as second trend indicator confirmation. SL and TP are set from ATR value 14 period ( 1 ATR TP , 1.5 ATR SL based on NNFX strategy). As per NNFX concept, i should use Daily TF but i'm finding H4 very good and also i'm trying to focus on certain candles like 1 in london session and 1 in NY session.

the problem is that when price is above the MA it can go down and when price is below the MA it can go up.

What is really needed is a code to bypass this

@Erebus
Please can you post the Trending Pairs indicator in the top left corner of your chart?

That's a CSM - Currency Strength Meter

Plenty of versions here on FF

I edit that one to show only 2 colors, red or green

Enjoy

The purpose of this thread

I didn't post any rules at the beginning of this thread, trusting in people's decency. So thank you all for respecting each other. I would, however, like to comment on what trading content we post here.

This thread is about using low-number MAs, for example the 8/21 EMAs I use, or similar. It is NOT about using additional indicators. The strategy works as it is and does not need improving. The purpose of this thread is to learn from each other how to get better at using the naked MAs to trade expertly.

So I respectfully ask traders not to introduce indicators or ask for them. If you do use indicators on your charts, please remove them before posting here.

Thank you.

A note on where to enter a trend

Trends have "legs". When a new trend forms, it goes on its first leg, then after some time, it pulls back significantly. Some traders call such pullbacks a "refresh". Then, most trends experience a second leg. But after that, many trends fade. The odds of a trend continuation after the second leg tend to be lower. Go and have a look at the charts - you will certainly see legs and refreshes.

So I try to enter trades soon after the EMA crossover has taken place, and will do so again at the start of the second leg. But after that, unless it is clear we have a strong trend with good entry points along the way, I will just walk away and look on other charts.

This AUDUSD chart shows two legs and then a refresh / reversal that has two legs down. For me that uptrend ended there and what comes next will be a new trend. You might not agree - in the end it doesn't matter as none of this is very precise - some of the legs and refreshes you will see on the charts look chaotic! We just need to be sure to follow the safety checks I posted previously and to use that trading tool between our ears.

Here's an example of a multi-leg trend. We could have profited from each of these. How could we know that leg 3 was worth taking? The next chart up (D1 in this case) would give the clue that we had a decent uptrend in place.

Just to emphasise that this strategy does not need to be improved, I closed today with 2.15% growth on account balance for the day. Naked EMAs only.

Hi, thanks for your posts and strategie. I am subscribed.
Could you please post your trades for learning purpuse. I will start trading next week and also post my trades.
Thanks

Here is a trade I decided not to take.

I received an EMA crossover signal on EURAUD H4. Apart from this chart just looking "spiky" (more chance of being stopped out), there is open space between the bars and the EMAs. In other words, the rubber band is stretched and price will pull back to or over the EMAs. So this trade is not ripe yet. But more importantly, the daily shows price going totally sideways. No trade here. Will check in 4 hours' time.

I have a sell stop order waiting on this USDCAD H4 chart (see chart further down).

My safety checklist:
1. Dominant trend: YES see D1.
2. S/R obstructions: NO.
3. Enter when price is close to the EMAs: YES, but not completely. I waited for price to go back to the EMAs and placed a sell stop order in case price keeps pulling back.
4. Avoid long/explosive bars: YES. The initial crossover bar was a little bit long but the 3 bars that followed are all very short, waiting in a consolidation area. I'm hoping for a breakout from this area.
5. Avoid trading into price extremes: NO, in fact on the monthly, price rejected the upper extreme on the chart and now seems to be moving down
6. Beware of "old" trends: NO (not old).

Entry
I placed a sell stop order at the base of the pullback bar (the second one in the two-bar pullback). This is in case price continues up. I would rather my entry remains un-triggered during that time.

Exit
What I describe here is not necessarily "best practice". I'm not even sure what best practice is . But it seems to work for me. If one of you can help us learn better ways of doing it, please tell us.

My normal practice is to set a 50 pips move-to-breakeven on an EA that sits on my VPS. It's active even when I'm not. That's a safety feature. I have found that by entering close to the crossover point, most trades go at least 50 pips, even if they then go the other way.

Secondly, I usually set a 100 pip target. I have found that this is a large enough target to make decent money. If it is far away it can take a long time to reach it and then stands a greater chance of price reversing and closing at B/E. I prefer to trade mostly intra-day, or just over two days.

My SL is usually just beyond the recent swing point. This means it is sometimes almost the same distance as my 100 pip target, so it's not ideal. Therefore I have adopted an emergency exit procedure to manage this amount of risk.

Emergency exits
If price goes the wrong way after triggering I don't want to lose almost the same as my target is worth, so when it gets to about 50% loss I will partially close about 25% of my trade, then if it keeps going the wrong way I will close another 25% maybe around 2/3 of the "wrong" way. And after that, I throw my hands up and let it go. But ... if price then corrects and goes on with the dominant trend (which it "should" do if I identified the dominant trend correctly), then with the remaining section of the trade I can at least win back what I partially closed.

very interesting trade!
I hope it will work out for you.
One question: do you think it at all possible that we are at the end of a downward trend move and we will either see
a) a retest of old lows
b) or the gradual formation of a HL (around were we are now)?
Probably I am totally wrong; I was just wondering if we are close to the end of a downward move.

The daily chart I posted suggests that price might bounce at the support level where my TP is, and that might end up being the end of the run. But it's done that once already, so maybe this time it will push straight through. I think there is a fair chance it will continue down. But by then I hope to be home and dry and out of the trade, so it will be on to the next trade.

The weekly, shows plenty of space to move down into. But that's not your question - where will the current down move end? I don't know. Which is why I trade short-term - in, out, take your money and move on. I have stopped trying to let my profits run as more of often than not it didn't work for me. Not sure why

I'm in this GBPJPY trade now (the USDCAD one has still not triggered). This is a useful example of the emergency exit procedure I use - I deleted 25% of the lot size a while back, and was going to close down more but when I looked again, it had recovered.

It also shows that by placing the stop at a previous swing point, a logical place, it gives extra protection than if it's just a set number of pips away. In this case that previous swing point was rather weak, not really a swing, so I went a bit further down, not quite to the next swing low, but it saved the trade by a few pips - a bit of luck is always nice!

Just realised - its Thanksgiving weekend in the USA. Markets will be very slow.