The Simple System

Here is another version of CandleTime displayed below the last bars and no space. This should fit all charts with a shifted display.

See attachments.

Cheers,

Pip2

Snobol1, all,

Well I'm really glad my very first day with this system was up +60 pips because I was down the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th days! Today was especially tough, as nothing seemed to go as I hoped, and I sat out some of the better gains while taking some of the bigger losses. I monitored H4 charts for 12 major pairs and waited for Arrows and then sometimes I tried to 2nd-guess the action BEFORE the next bar opening, other times I waited for the next bar.

I'm really learning from my mistakes. I *think* I'm learning to make entries according to Arrows only, however, the exits I think can be done using the *formation* of an Arrow. This needs more real-time testing though to be sure. One must also give a LOT of stop-loss room, far more than the 20 pips or so I tended to give.

I just went through a chart analysis on a pair I did not happen to trade but is illustrative of the issues I ran into. Check out this USDCHF,H4 chart for about the last 10 days. It's important to study this un-annotated chart before you see the annotated chart which follows.

Observe the annotated USDCHF,H4 chart below for the past 10 days. I'm sorry it's so full of information, but I hope it will be worth it to review.

I'm in the U.S. at MT (GMT-6). The olive shaded area represents my daytime hours from 8AM-8PM. Sure I can get up earlier or stay later on any give day, but to make a trade per-the-rules, you must trade the Open price of the bar following an Arrow. Therefore you can see some Arrows occurred during "off" hours when it would be very rough to catch the proper trade time.

The vertical peach-color lines are weekends. Perhaps one would liquidate any open Friday positions, or avoid opening on Sundays, so the profit or loss over a weekend could differ from my analysis.

Item #1: Following a Down Arrow, Short-Sell on Open of the NEXT bar.

Item A: This is the weekend. If you Cover-Buy on Friday, you make a nice profit, from +20 (at market close) to maybe even +60 pips the bar before, (but you are GUESSING the bottom to get +60!).

Item #2: MAYBE I skip this Up Arrow because I'm asleep! But assuming I'm up 24 hours a day ;-) then on the first bar AFTER the Up Arrow, you Cover Buy at a slight loss around -5 pips (inc. spread). You also Buy a new lot.

Item B (Blue): You must have one heckuva big stop loss to survive this drop against your Buy, something like ~50 pips (inc. spread). If you were only 40 pips SL, you stopped out -40 pip loss!

Item #3: After a Down Arrow, next bar, you Sell at a loss of -20 pips. You also Sell a new lot. However, price moves against you from #3 to #4 about -39 pips. You barely survive the stop loss if you were -40 SL.

Item #4: Ultimately though, Buy back at a -35 pip loss. You also Buy a new lot.

Item C: Once again, price moves against you about -45 pips. If your SL is -40, you lose -40 pips. If SL is 50, then you survive and it recovers sharply upwards.

Item #5: This is an interesting situation. Price rose considerably but retraced. If you watched the Down Arrow form during the Bar before #5, you might have a chance to Sell your Open Buy position for +60 pips (the peak gain is +90 (from #4 to peak of "Item D"), but if you follow the "rules", you sell at the next open Bar. Your gain is just +40. Item D is the 50 pips you missed (unless you had trailing stops of some kind). You also Sell a new lot.

Item E: If you watch the Up Arrow form, you *might* Cover Buy for a +10 pips. However, the "rules" have you stay in the game for the next bar.

Item #6: After an Up Arrow, you Cover Buy at a -20 loss (with spread). You Buy a new lot.

Item #7: A Down Arrow forms. Next bar you Sell at a -3 pip (spread-1) loss. You Sell a new lot. (If you close for the weekend, you gain about +40). If you stay in the trade over the weekend, you keep it through Sunday night.

Item #8: Monday, you Cover Buy for +50 gain. You Buy a new lot. You keep it open through Monday night and all of Tuesday.

Item #9: Tuesday, very late (midnight) you Sell for +80 gain. You Sell a new lot and go to bed.

Item #10: Unless you Cover Bought early, without an indicator, you watch an Up Arrow form. You DON'T KNOW if the Up Arrow will persist or not until the bar closes! Presuming it doesn't change much, and the Arrow persists, you Cover Buy for a -15 pip loss at around midnight on Wednesday!

Summary of official Buy/Sell at the bar open price after every arrow, if your:
SL was 50: -5, -20, -35, +40, -20, -3, +50, +80, -15 = +72 net
SL was 40: -5, -40, -35, -40, -20, -3, +50, +80, -15 = -28 net
SL was 50, but you exited before weekends, AND anticipated arrows to close open positions early for a bigger profit. You entered positions, however, only on Arrows:
+20, -20, -35, +60, +10, -3, +40, +80, -15 = +137 net !!!

Well, +72 for 2 weeks is a net gain, but you have 3 gains, 6 losses.
And -28 loss due to -40 SL not being big enough, that sucks.
But +137 gain using a bit of 2nd-guessing on exits is perhaps best. However, that's about +14/day; good but not great.

The moral seems to be:
#1: BIG stop losses can help stay in the game. (I did NOT analyze small SL's, but this may be another way that could limit the downside better???).
#2: If you close open positions early while an Arrow is forming, you might preserve some gains. (Maybe a trailing stop would work even better???)
#3: We need some additional indicators to prevent taking what turn out to be "weak" arrows but without missing out on the big gains!
#4: To trade the system fully, you need to be awake 24 hours/day! LOL


Pips4life

P.S. to my above recent chart analysis:

1. My local time for H4 candles open/closing is actually not 8A-8P, but is instead 10A-10P, or specifically 10A, 2P, 6P, 10P (close). (MDT). I guess I can get up early at 6AM to use one more candle, but I'm unlikely to stay up until 2AM to see the late candles fully formed to trade on Open bars then.

2. I was not at all precise in my measurements of +/- pips on the chart. I eyeballed them, and assumed a 4-pip spread.

3. I don't know how to formally backtest. I'm new to MT4, so if anyone has any specific recommendations on how to backtest this method, or where to read about it, I'd appreciate it.

4. Now that we have updated TSSv1_1.mt4 code, has someone backtested it, and can the results be posted? Which pairs work best?

5. I said I averaged the +137 pip gain over "10" days, but really I should have said only 8 days, or more like +17 pips/day for this one pair. That assumes you exit early, while Arrows are forming, rather than are fully formed. Also, exit on Fridays. Also, a big 50 pip SL is assumed.

It's been a while since I've been on this thread, but if I recall, this method really works well in trending markets, not so well in ranging ones, like it seems the chart you posted above. When the market is choppy, indicators that work well on trends don't work so well--rather, oscillators and the like are more well suited.

Excellent work pips4life. You have moved us forward quite a bit in this endeavour. Backtesting could be too subjective to be accurate but it helps a bit.

Yes; the longer TF's require larger stops. I always use a trailing stop based on the rough average pips (H-L) of bars near bar 0. Stop losses are something else. I don't trust them, just like insurance companies, they're a necessary evil. You can use Parabolic SAR to place stops because that's what that indicator was designed for from my research on indicators.

In a long trend, P. SAR could act as a trailing stop because it reduces the stop as the trend progresses. Anyway pips4life, keep up the good work, we all love you for it.

Cheers,

Pip2

P.S. I did a search on Google for free screen capture software, and got 177000 hits. I checked the first hit and found the attached one. Hope you can use it. Sorry can't attach it, file exceeds Forum limit.

You're absolutely right but ranging markets vary widely and some good ranges could yield many pips while others might yield losses. If the range is narrow and choppy I would sit on my hands, especially the index finger that does all the clicking.

But if a range is wide, say 50 to 90 pips, bouncing from lower Boll Band to Upper Boll band, you will see arrows above and below the bands and those could be very profitable. So the nature of the range is important in determining if it could be profitable.

Cheers,

Pip2

Here are 2 links for software that is Free for screen captures and video capture:

Mirek's

Selection of several Freeware applications

This is from a quick Google Search.

I hope this helps.

Labrat407

Yes... I agree... Looks like a great system when Ive been playing with it.. Im more of a trader than a developer (for now)

Is it possible someone could develop an EA (Expert Advisor) to trade this system automatically? Place trades off of the 1 or 4 hour charts. Then we wouldnt have to watch it 24 hours a day.

Thanks,
-Matt

Thanks for your efforts!

I tried to backtest the indicator..

Can you see some problems with this bahavior of the indicator?

Note to in a row buy signals.. strange price offerred..

Have I missied something? We are still having redraw of alerts?

Thanks,
Serggry

(quote) P.S. I did a search on Google for free screen capture software, and got 177000 hits. I checked the first hit and found the attached one. Hope you can use it. Sorry can't attach it, file exceeds Forum limit(quote)

Here you go...I noticed that people were having questions regarding capturing their screens for uploading to tis forum. This looks like the idea solution.

This Capture Screen utility is totally free and has no limitations.

Link: http://www.download.com/CaptureScree...ml?tag=tab_pub

works on Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP, Microsoft .NET Framework

file size 8.43K

Good luck

OK, I've cut off everything from +...

Don't know why that was in there in the first place, but its gone now and the new rev will reflect that. For the moment just ignore the extra information. In fact I never pay attention to the price in the box, prices are moving constantly.

Cheers,

Pip2

Please take a look at this indicator. It may help. The problem is that it use to work but no longer does. They both compliment each other well

Here is a way to do screen capture free.
just click the print screen button
after clicking print screen then just do a paste to windows paint brush.

If you have a digital camera that came with some kind of photo software you can paste to it also.

If you have multi monitors put the cursor on the one you want to capture and then click the alt and print screen buttons at the same time and you have captured that one monitor.

hope this helps

UncleSam, that indicator will not work without the "Include" file 3Color.mqh. Please post it so that we may test this indicator.

Or tell us where to find it.

Cheers,

Pip2

Good day All TSS members

New TSS seems to work well - will submit my latest trade venture with results obtained. I decided to now test on H4 only.http://www.forexfactory.com/images/icons/icon14.gif

I'm looking for a MetaTrader 4 to download that reflects EST Time. Mine reflects GMT+7. I'm sited in GMT+6 and my brocker is EST [FXSol]. This confuses me often.http://www.forexfactory.com/images/icons/icon5.gif

Here is the link where you can get the indicators. It's at the bottom of the page. You should try working with 3C_JURX indicator. I have it on my system, but can't figure out how I got it to work.

I'll also attach a pic of the indicator on the chart.

http://articles.mql4.com/310

Here it is..

Hey marcf,

wanna ask, what indicators do u use in that chart ?
btw, thx for u'r time on this thread

Snobol1,

here is the .mqh file


This is my Entry. When an arrow appears and the Jurx indicator is in-line. You enter at the close of that candle stick. Works great on both 1 hour and 4 hours. This helps eliminate "false" arrows.