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Living in China, trading for a living 18 replies

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  • #261
  • Oct 20, 2025 9:30am Oct 20, 2025 9:30am
Quoting Noisy
{quote} I'll start backtesting your suggested approach tomorrow, though. That is, trading with the Renko chart on GBP/USD M30 during the first few hours of the London FX session opening. Since we haven't identified any clear entry and exit rules yet, I'm hoping to find my own idea to test.
I did not suggest Renko on a 30m chart, but Renko on a tick-by-tick chart, as you can get, for example, with ProRealTime.
  • #262
  • Edited 1:01pm Oct 20, 2025 12:25pm | Edited 1:01pm
Quoting medici
This is a bit unfair, I think. There's plenty of help available here, but you have discarded almost all of it.
Then let me put it this way: Help, yes. But so far, I haven't been able to extract anything effective from this help for myself and my goals. That's why I said "effective" help. So yes, maybe I’m not smart enough to solve this for myself. No trading partner here. All I’ve learned so far comes from my own research. I’m self-taught by all means.

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There are ethical and legal reasons for why universities don't teach these things. There are at times companies that try to teach people the things you are asking for. A bit more than a decade ago a company called the Day Trading Academy taught all relevant things that people need to know to successfully day trade, and they taught a profitable strategy.

Yes, I understand. As I said, it's difficult.

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For long term success in trading you need to develop the skills to independently develop and trade your own strategies, and to modify your approach when markets change.

This is one of the reasons why I consider the ORB approach promising and sustainable, as it relies on a repeatable occurrence of increased volatility at the opening of the markets. If you look at a chart with a tick volume indicator, you'll notice that if you draw a vertical line to the opening, the volume there is always among the highest 99% of the time no matter if you look at a date 30 years ago or today.

Unlike a trend-following or mean-reversion approach, this is an approach where the long-term direction of the market plays a less important role, and it's all about profiting from short-term volatility.

I don't know exactly what a "swing trading" approach is. I'm basically only familiar with these types of trading: breakout, trend-following, mean-reversion, news, and arbitrage trading.

In the end, I don't care, but as you say, it would be nice to find something that works and where the "edge" doesn't disappear due to general market regime changes (bear/bull markets) or periods of lower or higher volatility, and you can start from scratch.

Maybe one needs to have some sort of diversified portfolio of different types of trading strategies of different types to realize that, maybe one robust one is enough, idk.

I noticed many CTAs, Hedge Funds are having a hard time producing profits in mostly non-trending markets these days.

Personally I don’t like to put myself in a box (e.g. the trend is your friend) so I only trade with the trend
(which is only possible to see in hindsight anyway - unless you have a crystal ball).

So I would probably classify myself more like a trader looking for a mathematical/statistical driven edge where after 100 trades executed to X clear rule resulting in X clear minimum profit. I couldn’t care less about trying to predict the next market regime shift, crash or whatever going to happen in the future. All I’m interested in is making a certain minimum profit in a consistent way doing the same thing every day.
  • #263
  • Oct 20, 2025 6:05pm Oct 20, 2025 6:05pm
Trading for a Living - By Dr. Alexander Elder

Inserted Video


its what you do according to your own beliefs that matters .

...
Honesty is a very expensive gift. You wont find it in cheap people.WBuffett
  • #265
  • Oct 21, 2025 2:52am Oct 21, 2025 2:52am
Quoting medici
{quote} I did not suggest Renko on a 30m chart, but Renko on a tick-by-tick chart, as you can get, for example, with ProRealTime.
That's right. I forgot that Renko charts aren't based on time. So, of course, it makes sense to apply them to real-time data to avoid any delays in displaying the bricks. I've never used ProRealTime before, but I just had a quick look. They support direct trading with three partner brokers. For trading with a remote prop trading provider (because the lack of own capital), however, I would need a different solution.

I would like to execute trades with the same platform where I get my signals displayed / used for charting. I think there are also tick charts for MetaTrader 5 now and some indicators for it to get a Renko Chart, which might be even better, since this platform is also offered by prop firms and a majority of brokers.
  • #266
  • Oct 21, 2025 6:22am Oct 21, 2025 6:22am
Summary of my current results of the ORB system.

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  • #267
  • Edited 9:18am Oct 21, 2025 8:56am | Edited 9:18am
Quoting medici
{quote} I did not suggest Renko on a 30m chart, but Renko on a tick-by-tick chart, as you can get, for example, with ProRealTime.
Hello Medici. Unfortunately, I can't get a Renko chart on 1-tick real-time market data yet. ProRealTime requires a subscription for that (even for Forex symbols). TradingView does have Renko, but not on tick data. MT4/5 doesn't have full-screen tick charts or Renko chart layouts, except for custom indicators.

I'll find a solution, though. Preferably for MetaTrader would be good, since I'm already very used to the platform; my brokers and most of the prop firms I'm considering offer it. It also allows for automation.

Edit: Maybe that helps, but it also seems to have the disadvantage that you wouldn't be able to trade directly from the Renko chart.

"The main difference is in the way the charts are displayed. The indicator version presents the renko chart as an overlay on top of a time-based chart enabling “on-chart” trading. The generator builds and updates the renko chart on an MT5 Custom Symbol. Custom symbols are not tradable in MT5. You would need to place and manage your orders on a time-based chart while analyzing the renko custom symbol."


How do you use and trade with Renko, and with which broker?

Edit: Here's even a commercial algo/bot based on Renko for MT5, but ready-made EAs (even if the variables and logic can be customized) aren't useful in your opinion anyway.
  • #268
  • Oct 21, 2025 11:02am Oct 21, 2025 11:02am
Quoting Noisy
{quote} How do you use and trade with Renko, and with which broker?
I mostly use my Tradovate account or prop firm accountd using Tradovate. I typically use stop entries, either with entry one tick above the Renko brick about to be formed, or using a moving average or SuperTrend to define the stop entry level.
  • #269
  • Oct 21, 2025 11:28am Oct 21, 2025 11:28am
Quoting medici
{quote} I mostly use my Tradovate account or prop firm accountd using Tradovate. I typically use stop entries, either with entry one tick above the Renko brick about to be formed, or using a moving average or SuperTrend to define the stop entry level.
Thank you. Will test it tomorrow
  • #270
  • Oct 21, 2025 1:30pm Oct 21, 2025 1:30pm
Quoting medici
there is no cash open in XAUUSD, so it doesn't even fall under the category of ORB strategy. And the current XAUUSD correlation with the equities open is a recent thing, likely due to portfolio rebalancing by large investors.
I found this an interesting hint and took a closer look at gold. According to a short backtest from the beginning of the year to the end of summer, the ORB approach would have performed well. Perhaps the correlation to stock indices, which should be rather negative in the long run, plays a less decisive role, and that the ORB approach, which uses the same opening times/breakout ranges as I do with the indices, also predominantly exhibits increased volatility/expansion?

I'll backtest gold again tomorrow over a longer period of the last three years. I'm surprised myself why gold seems to be performing better than the stock indices it's intended for.
  • #271
  • Oct 23, 2025 12:51am Oct 23, 2025 12:51am
Quoting Noisy
{quote} I found this an interesting hint and took a closer look at gold. According to a short backtest from the beginning of the year to the end of summer, the ORB approach would have performed well. Perhaps the correlation to stock indices, which should be rather negative in the long run, plays a less decisive role, and that the ORB approach, which uses the same opening times/breakout ranges as I do with the indices, also predominantly exhibits increased volatility/expansion?
There are several good reasons for why you should give up your ORB fantasy, the most obvious one being that it's well known that market makers have done their best to eradicate whatever profitability that it may have had for US stock indices.

A more fundamental one has to do with the type of strategy it is - one that tries to predict, or profit from, rather large patterns (such as the patterns you speculate on in the italicised quote above). They are not the best choice for small people like us when it comes to generating dependable income.

Then what it is? Linda Bradford Raschke put it briefly and succinctly: "I believe that only short-term price swings can be predicted with any precision." See https://www.quantifiedstrategies.com/linda-raschke/

Which is what Thtpro and I have tried to promote.

And one of the followers of this thread has taken that to heart and implemented a version of what I proposed that boasts an unleveraged annualised return of 33.2% with a maximum drawdown over 5 years of 0.78%. Profit factor of 2.86. Leverage that a bit and you got just what you asked for.

Now that's automated backtesting, which can be spurious, and would need some forward testing. Still it points to what you could and should be doing instead of fantasising about ORB.
  • #272
  • Oct 23, 2025 1:59am Oct 23, 2025 1:59am
Quoting medici
{quote} ... And one of the followers of this thread has taken that to heart and implemented a version of what I proposed that boasts an unleveraged annualised return of 33.2% with a maximum drawdown over 5 years of 0.78%. Profit factor of 2.86. Leverage that a bit and you got just what you asked for. ...
Sounds great. Is that strategy public? Where should one start reading in order to learn more?
  • #273
  • Oct 23, 2025 4:16am Oct 23, 2025 4:16am
Quote
Which is what Thtpro and I have tried to promote.

Yeah I've tried to insinuate that the markets are not random and from that you can time the market and devise strategies around those concepts - If there's structure to the markets, then you'd expect swings to operate in a manner that isn't random and the SMALL stuff builds into BIG stuff

I've only shown the simple swing file strategy that Gann and Livermore used which incorporates the 123 method

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I believe that only short-term price swings can be predicted with any precision.

You can't do every swing, but some of the bigger swings can also be predicted - definitely in the SP500, the forex markets are a little harder because they will always operate within high and low ranges

Then you just foster some sort of approach to take advantage of the swings - What I showed was the least favourite method, It's then up to the trader to refine

The trick is knowing what's coming, it gives you a massive edge or if you don't know what is coming (I know how this sounds!) then having a high probability expectation of what "could/should" happen - then when you SEE it, you can trade it

Let me show you a few things:

EURUSD projection model - We have a 15+ year model of what the EURUSD should do, it won't be exact, it will be there or thereabouts - the key points are the LOWS, showed be another decent one to trade in 2030

PS - This is PLANETARY cycles - It's pretty undeniable the syncing!

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SP500
- When the composite projection line gets low in the Indicator window - its a BEAR market low - so we (I) have a tool to project bear markets, which is always preceded by the HIGH in the Indicator, so I have one hell of an edge over 99.999% of all the traders in the world

Again this is PLANETARY

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This "model" runs from 1900 and is the DJIA - I have the projection all the way out to 2100 - It is 85-90% accurate, but there's a leeway of +/- 6 months, which obviously is no good to trade from, but its to show things aren't random - That MEANS, in that model projection to 2100, I have the highs and lows of massive significance for the USA markets

Very few of you, will take the charts below and compare as to what the DJIA actually did - that's the difference and of those that do, most of you will see the dates are out by a year and dismiss it as being wrong - the model is a model, nothing more, but its a highly accurate model

Take the expected high in 2006, it came in 2007 - Wrong, but the model CALLED the bear market expectation

This model is just STATIC cycles compromising of 16 different cycles that correlate to the USA markets

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If when reading this, the old light bulb goes one, go back and read my post on page 2 of this thread - the thread creator has dismissed them as having no meaning, how wrong is he!

Notice in the DOWN section of the model, when it ENDS, its often the best time in history to just buy and hold

As I've said before - most of this information is out there in trader land, apart from the 1st 2 charts, which a friend and myself worked on to produce, credit to Henry

The key is knowing what's going on and working out how to position yourself for those times - then you don't get shocked and panicked

I've shown multiple examples of predicting price swings of significance - Linda just hasn't spent the hours required to working it out or if she has, has chosen for whatever reasoning not to mention it - I doubt she's spent the time, but it can be done as I've shown

As I've said in prior posts, the markets are playing out to the tune of the planets and those planets cause traders to move price in combination with TIME in a dimension that is higher than 2D, which we are forced to view in/on - there's NOTHING you can do to alter this and its why its catching out lots of would be traders, so you HAVE to devise methods to exploit the TRENDS

The only way you prove to yourself what is possible and what is not is to test test test and test some more

Anyway, you don't need to know that stuff in order to trade successfully or profitably - it helps massively, but you don't need it

All you need is a method that works, repeats and that you can exploit
  • #274
  • Oct 23, 2025 4:26am Oct 23, 2025 4:26am
Quoting medici
{quote} There are several good reasons for why you should give up your ORB fantasy, the most obvious one being that it's well known that market makers have done their best to eradicate whatever profitability that it may have had for US stock indices. A more fundamental one has to do with the type of strategy it is - one that tries to predict, or profit from, rather large patterns (such as the patterns you speculate on in the italicised quote above). They are not the best choice for small people like us when it comes to generating dependable income....
Hello Medici. I don't get free real-time data from Tradovate, but I opened a simulation account with NinjaTrader. The desktop platform also offers Renko charts. It seems, the underlying time frame here cannot be adjusted so that I could set it to 1 tick to see the bricks forming in real time (if necessary at all).

Here is my chart for GBP/USD (futures). The brick size is set to 6, as suggested in your previous post based on the AI responses.

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The "dark blue boxes" represent my personal possible manual trading time window of 8:00-12:00 UTC. That is, the first four hours after the London session opens. The two additional horizontal white lines mark the high and low of the only brick that appears during the available trading time for today. Yesterday there were 6 bricks in there.

High: 1.3353 Low: 1.3347 (6 ticks)
  • #275
  • Edited 5:32am Oct 23, 2025 5:00am | Edited 5:32am
Quoting Noisy
{quote} Hello Medici. I don't get free real-time data from Tradovate, but I opened a simulation account with NinjaTrader. The desktop platform also offers Renko charts. It seems, the underlying time frame here cannot be adjusted so that I could set it to 1 tick to see the bricks forming in real time (if necessary at all). Here is my chart for GBP/USD (futures). The brick size is set to 6, as suggested in your previous post based on the AI responses. {image} The "dark blue boxes" represent my personal possible manual trading time window of 8:00-12:00...
I don't use NT, but I've heard mixed reviews of their Renko implementation. Some people buy 3rd party implementations instead. Can't comment from my own experience. But your chart looks good to me by comparison with mine. See below, with what seems like the trade of the month in your time slot, 8 a.m., a couple of days ago highlighted with a yellow line.

BTW, one way of getting a data feed for Tradovate is to buy a prop firm evaluation. Apex currently offers 80% discount, so a 25k account would be $33.40.
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  • #276
  • Oct 23, 2025 5:29am Oct 23, 2025 5:29am
Quoting medici
There are several good reasons for why you should give up your ORB fantasy, the most obvious one being that it's well known that market makers have done their best to eradicate whatever profitability that it may have had for US stock indices.
I don't want to deny that this is an approach familiar to the evil market makers. However, I'm less interested in outsmarting other market participants and more interested in finding a strategy/system that can sustainably achieve a repeatable minimum return within the timeframe I need.

You haven't yet proven that the ORB approach no longer works and isn't profitable. On the contrary, you even initially sent me links to such systems and referred me to academic studies that indicated this is a strategy that still holds up. This shows once again why I haven't really made any progress for years, because you can ask 100 people on the Internet and get 200 different answers without any facts. Since the current ORB system I'm using at least doesn't cost me any manual chart time, I'll keep it running on my server, and we'll see how the results develop over time. I'm currently +9.3% in profit, which I think isn't bad for 32 days.

Quote
Then what it is? Linda Bradford Raschke put it briefly and succinctly: "I believe that only short-term price swings can be predicted with any precision." See https://www.quantifiedstrategies.com/linda-raschke/

I've read a lot of Linda Raschke's work and watched a few videos in the past. I can't quite identify with her style. Firstly, she's a manual, discretionary chart trader (which I actually try to avoid as much as possible), and secondly, there are too many contradictory statements in her work. I haven't been able to find any clear and proven profitable trading strategy of her that I could implement repeatedly and that would produce the desired results.

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Which is what Thtpro and I have tried to promote.

I can't see the connection right now. I feel overwhelmed by all the information here, which is why I've repeatedly argued that this isn't really helping me make any tangible progress, instead of just a lot of theory and cherry picked examples/charts.

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And one of the followers of this thread has taken that to heart and implemented a version of what I proposed that boasts an unleveraged annualised return of 33.2% with a maximum drawdown over 5 years of 0.78%. Profit factor of 2.86.

Where can I find this? I haven't seen where such a system was presented here, along with the corresponding backtest data.

Quote
Leverage that a bit and you got just what you asked for.

Yes, if I knew what it was I could test it.
  • #277
  • Oct 23, 2025 7:38am Oct 23, 2025 7:38am
Quoting medici
{quote} I don't use NT, but I've heard mixed reviews of their Renko implementation. Some people buy 3rd party implementations instead. Can't comment from my own experience. But your chart looks good to me by comparison with mine. See below, with what seems like the trade of the month in your time slot, 8 a.m., a couple of days ago highlighted with a yellow line. BTW, one way of getting a data feed for Tradovate is to buy a prop firm evaluation. Apex currently offers 80% discount, so a 25k account would be $33.40. {image}
Thanks. I've only been getting more involved with futures in the last three months. I don't have any trading experience in that market. Prop companies are an option for me anyway due to my lack of capital, but without a trading plan (apart from the ORB system), it's of no use to me. I took the liberty of editing your chart. What about the 18 signals I marked there (if they had been valid)? So those would all have been "false" signals/losses?

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  • #278
  • Oct 23, 2025 8:42am Oct 23, 2025 8:42am
Quoting Noisy
{quote} Thanks. I've only been getting more involved with futures in the last three months. I don't have any trading experience in that market. Prop companies are an option for me anyway due to my lack of capital, but without a trading plan (apart from the ORB system), it's of no use to me. I took the liberty of editing your chart. What about the 18 signals I marked there (if they had been valid)? So those would all have been "false" signals/losses? {image}
Not sure I understand your markings, and in any case I can't provide personal tutoring to large numbers of anonymous people online.

I've received a good number of PMs with requests for assistance, and I don't have the time to help everyone.

Besides, if you are going to make it as a trader you need to have the skills to take a trading idea and develop it into something that works.
  • #279
  • Oct 23, 2025 8:53am Oct 23, 2025 8:53am
Quoting medici
{quote} Not sure I understand your markings, and in any case I can't provide personal tutoring to large numbers of anonymous people online. I've received a good number of PMs with requests for assistance, and I don't have the time to help everyone. Besides, if you are going to make it as a trader you need to have the skills to take a trading idea and develop it into something that works.
I tried to mark all the entry signals which potentially led to losses following the idea of buying or selling on a brick of color change above or below the moving average on your chart.
  • #280
  • Oct 23, 2025 9:05am Oct 23, 2025 9:05am
Quoting Noisy
{quote} I tried to mark all the entry signals which potentially led to losses following the idea of buying or selling on a brick of color change above or below the moving average on your chart.
Very well, but I am not going to engage in that level of discussion. This is the kind of development work you need to be able to handle on your own. Some have evidently been able to do it brilliantly. Do you have what it takes to make it as a trader?
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