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The DIBS Method... No Free Lunch continues

  • #11,501
  • Oct 16, 2025 10:04am Oct 16, 2025 10:04am
Two losing trades today, both on GBP.

Ups and downs, first losing day since trading with the 'hot hand of the day' method as described by Peter Crowns originally.
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  • #11,502
  • Oct 17, 2025 3:44am Oct 17, 2025 3:44am
This post is about a dilemma I have with the DIBS method that keeps bothering me.

So as you can see on the screenshot, there was a nice IB on GBPUSD that I didn't trade because GBPUSD is far behind USDJPY compared to yesterday's close, in other words the Yen is down much more on the day so I would not even look to trade this IB on GBP towards the short side.

This is according to the original rules of DIBS - always trade the strongest hand/the most trending market of the day. My issue with this is that GBP at the time was down 29% compared to the daily open at 6am GMT, whereas Yen only down 12%.

So how can we say that Yen is down more on the day? Well, Peter Crowns (as far as I understand it) used both yesterday's close AND the daily open at 6am GMT (00:00 CST) as his reference but the 'hot hand' was always calculated from yesterday's close.

Which leads me to ask... Are we taking yesterday's close as the more important reference for DIBS? If yes, than why are we even looking at the 6am GMT open?! If an instrument is down almost 30% from the 6am GMT open then what does it matter where it closed yesterday?

I read back both this thread and also the original thread where Mr Crowns posted to see if I can find a definitive answer but he never seems to have discussed this issue. It was always one or the other discussed in his posts, never the two together.

So to summarize: should we be looking at only yesterday's closing price as our reference for 'hot hand' or does the 6am GMT open also play a role (other than the direction we can take with an IB trade)?

I hope this makes sense and if anyone has an input or experience with this, I would value your contribution. Thanks.
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  • #11,503
  • Oct 17, 2025 5:53pm Oct 17, 2025 5:53pm
Quoting Erebus
This is the Mother Bar of all Mother Bars, post these charts here for future reference; where were you on the great Gold Breakout of September 2, 2025? {image} 4 months inside, look where I marked previous RSI high and where it is now, contrarians will be pleased. {image} Weekly, this is 1 year and 8 months of trend {image} Breakout on Daily {image} Also, breakout of Monday high with some 4-hour inside clues {image} Session on the day, New York does it again Will you be on the retracement, or going for more upside? ...
Update on those charts, since gold has moved so much, my broker has a high of October 2025, so far, at 4379.06 with the monthly RSI of an unheard of 96.73.

Friday, October 17, 2025 was basically the first big, down day in this mighty ascent; is it enough to turn the trend, or as the 4-Hour might suggest, simply another Buy The Dip opportunity?
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May you trade during interesting times!
It takes a lot for me to IGNORE you, but you can try.
  • #11,504
  • Oct 18, 2025 8:02am Oct 18, 2025 8:02am
Quoting MrReRaise82
This post is about a dilemma I have with the DIBS method that keeps bothering me. So as you can see on the screenshot, there was a nice IB on GBPUSD that I didn't trade because GBPUSD is far behind USDJPY compared to yesterday's close, in other words the Yen is down much more on the day so I would not even look to trade this IB on GBP towards the short side. This is according to the original rules of DIBS - always trade the strongest hand/the most trending market of the day. My issue with this is that GBP at the time was down 29% compared to the...
I remember the rules , but I had still revisited Peter's posts after a long time and by what I could see / remember , the DIBS counts 24 hr trading day from 6.00 am GMT . So yesterday's close is actually today's open .

BTW , it's very interesting to go over posts and pics with charts , that I haven't seen for 10 plus years . Memories and feelings are coming back .



I watched Joel Rensinks's webinar about the DIBS and Inside Bars in 2010 and I watched it numerous times back then .

A few points from the webinar , if I still remember correctly :

1 , ,,Hot hand,, market comes from having a bias on Daily , e.g. pre - breakouts , trendline breaks , patterns , etc .
A chart he showed was USDCHF DAILY from 2010 . Check out the pic below . I took the pic today and it looks similar to his . He had a TL there with 20 ema and said something like this :

''The market has taken out Trend line ,which means more to some traders than others . For me - I say let's stay short until proven otherwise .,,

The square was made by me , that's where he went down to 1 hrs and showed couple of examples of the DIBS after the TL broke. He was willing to sell only during all those days .If you check Peter's trades , he showed Daily in some cases as his bias , e.g. 1.8.2008 he expected TL break on Daily USDCHF and took DIBS trade on 1 hr as a trigger .

In summary , Joel and Peter had a certain bias on daily , otherwise I think they didn't trade DIBS .

This also my approach to trading . When I have a bias , then it is much easier to know what and where to expect . Watching 35 + markets would have been pretty stressful without knowing , what to wait for . Especially , if I watch 6 to 8 instruments per screen window at the time.

2 , Joel also said the way he and Peter trade the DIBS with ,,long tail,, trades is hard to trade for many traders , because 9 out of 10 trades become scratches ( BE and loses , not just loses ).

Here you can play with a win rate and RRR , it's a great tool publicly available on this website . Hope the owner doesn't mind , if I post it here .

https://due-diligence-hub.com/en/too...urve_simulator

You can figure out what kind of a win rate a trader needs to make money with your 1 : 1 RRR approach and vice versa , how big win rate a trader needs with a lower win rate and long tail trades as they aim for . Here I have to repeat , he said 9 out of 10 were scratches , not losers . Since they take 1 to 1 on a first half , I presume that there are many BE trades with this method . So the win rate wasn't not quite clear from the webinar, but I don't think it's over 40 percent ( I might be wrong ) . That's why they aim for those long term trades .

Also , it is important to say , that Joel has also other methods to trade , so might easier to go over a DIBS drawdown period , if his other methods are just making money. He also trades volatility breakouts , Daily IB's , etc .

3 , His another point was - a trader has to have a core method to trail with DIBS, Joel used 90 ema on 1 hr at that time , Peter mentioned 20 MA on daily , but on some new pictures I saw 72 SMA on 1 hr , so who knows .

I think that Joel uses 20ema for Daily IB's.

But it looks like they both use a long term target .

From Peter's post 1.5.2008 , when he took a trade :

What if this market goes up to 1.0750 or 1.1100 (66:1/125:1 return on risk) or even higher?

If you check the USDCHF trade in his post , those were previous levels on daily .



Hope it helps a bit .

99
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  • #11,505
  • Oct 18, 2025 9:38am Oct 18, 2025 9:38am
Quoting MrReRaise82
Update on 12h paper trades. Left side of the chart is MES, right side MNQ. MES knocked out the previous trade for a 35 point loss (ouch) but then a day later offered an IB to enter and produced a 27 point winner. MNQ completed a 217 point winner earlier today. Not bad for a few minutes of work each day. Plus gold kept producing winners all September and early Oct with the 12h IBs. I honestly haven't the faintest clue how long this crazy bull market gonna last but these IBs sure seem a pretty low risk way to enter as long as the trend is intact....
And I was gonna ask if you took this week's 12 hr IB on Gold. Probably you didn't as you haven't posted anything about them .

I did last Thursday open on XAUUSD , XAUEUR and XAUJPY . All with profit , though I closed XAUUSD 3 minutes before the US close , it was just a few pips from my TP. Price was already overextended even to my liking , but the rules are rules and I don't want to be smarter than the market . So I took all three and even another one formed on XAUGBP too that I skipped . I don't often take those with the US close as I'm often in bed at that time , but this time I waited . Well worth it .

Also had a loser on BITCOIN , where I waited for a Trend line break to the downside . Have always liked the pre - breakout setups . This time price triggered my order and literally just touched my stop loss and then continued in the breakout direction .
Bugger .

No big deal as it is quite common for IB stop loss to be hit like this . No wonder , Inside bar is the smallest type of PA so we use a small stop too . Which also has its advantages , when our TP is closer and now and then we can aim for those bigger R winners .

I too took the 12 hrs SP500 and NASDAQ as you did , just would like to say an important note about a resistance it bounced off of . Both pics were taken just before an order was placed as that's how I saw it at the time and had a clear bias . Was a bit late in front of my screen and SP already broke to the upside , so I had to enter for the market price , which I don't like , especially if it is caused by making a mistake .
One mistake ( late home from short shopping - got stuck ) tends to lead to another one ( the market entry ), the second mistake tends to lead to another one , etc and we can end up with several mistakes in a row , that were caused by the first one . Quite common in my case , but it's getting better .

Supports were also in confluence with 13 ema .

The mother bar of both IB's was BEOB ( Bearish Outside bar ) that I expected to fail . I think someone here presented that PA just a few days / weeks ago . BEOB tends to provide some movement to the downside and BUOB ( Bullish Outside bar ) to the upside . But in case , when I'm expecting them to fail and break in opposite direction , I call them Rubbish Outside bar and that happened .

So 3 parts of confluence apart from IB itself .

Nasdaq hit full TP for around 2.4 R , but SP ended up BE trade , though it was near profit too .

Had also a few more trades , losers and winners , but I'm not a big friend with typing and posting . So I posted just those more relevant ones .


99
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  • #11,506
  • Oct 19, 2025 3:43pm Oct 19, 2025 3:43pm
Quoting 9inety9ine
{quote} I remember the rules , but I had still revisited Peter's posts after a long time and by what I could see / remember , the DIBS counts 24 hr trading day from 6.00 am GMT . So yesterday's close is actually today's open .
What if this market goes up to 1.0750 or 1.1100 (66:1/125:1 return on risk) or even higher? If you check the USDCHF trade in his post , those were previous levels on daily . Hope it helps a bit . 99 {image}
99, thanks so much for the response and follow up. WOW, so you are saying that the 6am GMT daily open is actually the same as yesterday's close?! Jesus wept, and here I was looking at the daily candle's close as the reference for hot hand. Oh god, this implies that I was trading the system wrongly all along... Now it makes sense why I had a bad feeling about the 'double reference' of yesterday close + daily open at 6am GMT. Many times they totally contradict each other

Okay, f*ck, this is an eye opener. From here on, I will just take the damn 6am GMT open and that's that ) Christ!

I found an interesting post on Trade2win, where a poster claimed that Joel Rensink might have created the Peter Crowns alias and basically he is a salesman and not very profitable trader. Here's the link: https://www.trade2win.com/threads/do...ensink.165492/

As for the 12hr IBs.. I have not traded those, only kept an eye out. There was that BIG loss on SnP and Nasdaq when Trump tweeted so that scared the hell out of me in terms of 12hr IBs.

Overall, for the DIBS method, I am not yet looking at the daily chart for bias. That would overly complicate it for me. I purposely trade it on an intraday basis with an FTMO daytrading account. Should I switch to a swing account or trade them on my own cash account, I would definitely look at higher timeframes but for now, I just wanna trade what is in front of me.

Once again, appreciate the help, thank you!
  • #11,507
  • Oct 20, 2025 5:21am Oct 20, 2025 5:21am
Good to start the week with a winner after the disappointments of the past few trades. GBPUSD feels like the most reliable from a DIBS perspective so far.
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  • #11,508
  • Oct 20, 2025 5:39am Oct 20, 2025 5:39am
The Problem with DIBS is, that you can hardly trade it below 1 hour candles (even 1 hour is too much in my opinion) so you have very few signals and your drawdown phase can be up to 2 months. Not sure how Peter was able in the 80's, 90's and 00's to earn so much money with DIBS. I know that Larry Williams also liked inside days. When I tested it back in 2008 I was shocked how bad the outcome was.

Here a nice example what happens today in 2025 if you trade DIBS,- even on daily base
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Before you cry: That is BASF, one of the biggest Chemistry Companies in the world in September 2025 -on Daily Base! Horrible Trades on DIBS.
  • #11,509
  • Oct 20, 2025 7:32am Oct 20, 2025 7:32am
Quoting JackintheBox
The Problem with DIBS is, that you can hardly trade it below 1 hour candles (even 1 hour is too much in my opinion) so you have very few signals and your drawdown phase can be up to 2 months. Not sure how Peter was able in the 80's, 90's and 00's to earn so much money with DIBS. I know that Larry Williams also liked inside days. When I tested it back in 2008 I was shocked how bad the outcome was. Here a nice example what happens today in 2025 if you trade DIBS,- even on daily base{image}Before you cry: That is BASF, one of the biggest Chemistry...
I cry because that is BASF and not a Forex pair and not intraday

But yeah, I see your point. This post on the T2W link that I referenced earlier heavily questioned whether Peter Crowns ever existed or was just made up by Joel Rensink... I haven't found anything on Mr Crowns online but that doesn't necessarily mean he was a fake account. And, more importantly, he claimed to have traded the DIBS very selectively and through days and weeks based on those 1h IBs...

Interesting because when I did a very detailed backtest many months ago on the inside bar concept, the one strategy that came out a winner was trading IBs on MNQ with a 6 (!) RR target. If I remember correctly it only had 30% or thereabouts winrate but had a very smooth equity curve on MNQ going back years.

Losing 70% of trades is something I need to get my head around but this backtest has intrigued me ever since.
  • #11,510
  • Oct 20, 2025 7:47am Oct 20, 2025 7:47am
I see your point. I have chosen BASF because a stock like that should not move like that. I see that quite often these days. I think algos mess it up a lot. Anyway coming back to your backtest:
That is one of the hardest parts I can tell: Find a system is one thing but find a way to stabilize it over time is another story. What I did in perspective of your backtest on my main system was: I tested ALL outcomes possible, in your case would be: 1 TP / 2 TP / 3 TP etc. and in all combinations of SL possibilities which still make sense.
After that you make a "heat" map where results where most stable. Than you chose some of these "best" results and trade all of them to avoid that one is performing better than the other one. It took me 4 weeks and I think 140 hours to find out in my case what's best currently.

And yes, I talked earlier today with birdland about trend follow systems in general: The huge amount of failing trades and what comes with it: the time which can elapse before it turns green again overall is very hard to deal with. I can imagine to trade sth. like that, even with 10 SL losses in a row - but that has to be finished in one day or 2. Not a whole month. And DIB I found in my short test was not good performing under 1 hour timeframe so 2 weeks at least of losses are programmed in advance by chance for one day to come if you trade it on 1 hour time frame. That's for sure.
  • #11,511
  • Oct 20, 2025 7:54am Oct 20, 2025 7:54am
Quoting JackintheBox
I see your point. I have chosen BASF because a stock like that should not move like that. I see that quite often these days. I think algos mess it up a lot. Anyway coming back to your backtest: That is one of the hardest parts I can tell: Find a system is one thing but find a way to stabilize it over time is another story. What I did in perspective of your backtest on my main system was: I tested ALL outcomes possible, in your case would be: 1 TP / 2 TP / 3 TP etc. and in all combinations of SL possibilities which still make sense. After that you...
I know what you mean on DIBS. I am pretty much stuck on the same profits since Wednesday. Even today my second trade on USDJPY was a loss, giving back most of my profits from the GBP trade.

The concept sounds great. Trading the hot hand of the day. It's just that as you say, it doesn't seem to be working that well. Oh well, I will keep on trading it for a while and suffer
  • #11,512
  • Oct 20, 2025 9:00am Oct 20, 2025 9:00am
Done for the day, 3 trades altogether, 2 winners on GBPUSD and 1 loser on USDJPY.

On the JPY trade we were barely above the daily open but well above midnight open so I can't fault the revamped method of only looking at the yellow 6am GMT open line for reference.

All in all, a decent day, GBP saved it for us.
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  • #11,513
  • Oct 23, 2025 5:57am Oct 23, 2025 5:57am
Didn't trade the system much this week after disappointing results earlier but today finally had some decent trades on USDJPY, two winners in a row.

Miracles do happen.
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  • #11,514
  • Edited 7:07am Oct 23, 2025 6:57am | Edited 7:07am
Quoting MrReRaise82
Didn't trade the system much this week after disappointing results earlier but today finally had some decent trades on USDJPY, two winners in a row. Miracles do happen. {image}
It's not a miracle , it's knowing your method upside down and inside out .


Did you play with that Equity Curve simulator I attached the other day ? E.g. , with 55 % win rate you can still have even 12 losers in a row . How would you react to that? Would you stop trading the method after say 7 losers , even though you know you might have around 12 losers in a row?


Last year I had 9 losers in a row , but I was ok with that , b/c I knew my numbers beforehand .

Within 2 months I had a new equity high .
  • #11,515
  • Oct 23, 2025 7:07am Oct 23, 2025 7:07am
Quoting 9inety9ine
{quote} It's not a miracle , it's knowing your method upside down and inside out . Did you play with that Equity Curve simulator I attached the other day ? E.g. , with 55 % win rate you can still have even 12 losers in a row . How would you react to that? Would you stop trading the method after say 7 losers , even though you know you might have around 12 losers in a row? Last year I had 9 losers in a row , but I was ok with that , b/c I knew the numbers beforehand .
This system is nearly impossible to backtest because you wouldn't know the exact hottest hand of the day going back in time. Within a day it can change from candle to candle.

Heck, most backtesters have trouble entering intrabar which this system is based on. I couldn't get any of the AI chatbots to write a working intrabar backtest for my other inside bar systems, had to pay hundreds of euros to get a decent code.

But I digress. My issue is that I am trading this system on FTMO with a 10k challenge. Until I reach 1000 + 500 EUR profit I won't see a dime from it. So I get disheartened when I go from 700 EUR up back to 300 EUR within 2 days.

But of course, you are totally right. I am trading another system on Topstep and I know the backtest shows massive profitability over 2 years so I have more faith in that. Plus it having a 70% winrate doesn't hurt
  • #11,516
  • Oct 23, 2025 7:27am Oct 23, 2025 7:27am
Quoting MrReRaise82
{quote} This system is nearly impossible to backtest because you wouldn't know the exact hottest hand of the day going back in time. Within a day it can change from candle to candle. Heck, most backtesters have trouble entering intrabar which this system is based on. I couldn't get any of the AI chatbots to write a working intrabar backtest for my other inside bar systems, had to pay hundreds of euros to get a decent code. But I digress. My issue is that I am trading this system on FTMO with a 10k challenge. Until I reach 1000 + 500 EUR profit I...
Then I think you shouldn't trade DIBS with FTMO . It's too early .

You are actually still in a mode: ,, What can DIBS offer to me ?,, .

Judging from your posts , but only you know where the truth is .
  • #11,517
  • Oct 23, 2025 8:13am Oct 23, 2025 8:13am
Quoting 9inety9ine
{quote} Then I think you shouldn't trade DIBS with FTMO . It's too early . You are actually still in a mode: ,, What can DIBS offer to me ?,, . Judging from your posts , but only you know where the truth is .
This is me when a few DIBS trades go against me

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  • #11,518
  • Oct 23, 2025 8:15am Oct 23, 2025 8:15am
It is ok to backtest it just looking at a chart as Piter told: far from Daily (session) Open line - hot, near it - "cold"))

The problem from my point of view is the other. I backtested manually many times and very carefully. For ex. exactly September and October of 2025 are terrible for this system. I know it's subjective. But((
Just an opinion. Based on research
  • #11,519
  • Oct 23, 2025 10:59am Oct 23, 2025 10:59am
Quoting MrReRaise82
{quote} This is me when a few DIBS trades go against me {image}
LOL , funny .
  • #11,520
  • Oct 24, 2025 6:01am Oct 24, 2025 6:01am
Chickened out of this trade on EUR at break-even. Just went on too long for my taste.

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