Steviet's Live Trades!

Quoting Bad.hair.spray

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Hello Steve,

I ve been following your thread since I ve discovered the FF and its a very interesting read.....thanks for posting your daily trades, your thinking..your happiness at your winning and your annoyance at the losses..!!!!

I know what it feels like to have a negative month...actually I know what it feels like over and over so hang in there....

What I like about your system is its simplicity....I m a great believer that too much analysis= complete paralysis!!! I know this because I suffered from it....

I don't think you should change anything to your system you are trading in your live account.....Coz that is when the emotion sets in after a string of losses.......and we try to change things around to make it better only to possibly make things worse.....I know coz I ve done it!!!!....

Its true no one wants to take losses.....and although we love to talk about keeping emotions out etc...I think even the most professional of traders cannot do it completely.....and its understandable...if you don't want to protect your account who would...!!

The point I m trying to make before this goes into a novel length......you have planned your trade (namely your system) now its a case of trade your plan.....

You know it works for you in the past...coz U have the pip statement to prove it......at the moment it may be the market is not suited to your plan...this may be a couple of days, or a couple of weeks...just see it thru....absolutely no harm in not being in the market for a couple of days.....and if you feel you need to re-assess your system to make changes then tweak it to adapt to current market.... be out of the market when u do that.....no harm in that....(just make sure you keep posting though even a single line like..."I did nothing today !!!!)

There are things you can think about such as...trading all pairs as a team and setting dollar based profit targets, if that occurs you close all the trades and enter the next day etc...

The point being.....no changes to the system on the live account what so ever without testing it...not only back but also forward....(coz trading the left of the chart is much easier than the right!!)

Hang in there and see it thru....and I m sure your fan base will be reading with u all the way thru!!

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Quoting Maybe

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Surely it's a mistake to dwell on losing 1000 points, or whatever, this month? Be positive and concentrate on the fact that you're still way ahead overall, which statistically puts you in a better position than about 90% of the rest of us (me included)!

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Quoting Tiki Trader

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Steviet

I must agree with Isotonic !!! I have given up breaking my head over it all and thinking too much... if I can't see it in a few minutes, I move on.

My question is... if trades are stopping out when the market is choppy, then why not add some method to make pips in ranging situation...?? Right now I cannot find trades to make on any of the pairs I like because I am waiting for divergence trades to come along, and since nothing is there right now, I use some other kinds of trades to get some pips.

Or as you have said... some pips have been locked in, or in some cases you say you are getting stopped out. Why not consider taking the profit when there is some, instead of going to sleep to find things negative when you get up?? And once again, I apologize for not knowing your system... have to go back and look for it and never have gooten around to it... so I am just throwing stuff out there...

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Quoting steviet

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Yes,

There's so much to think about - I guess if I can make a better fist of the ranges then I really will have found something! My other thought was not to necessarily restrict myself to 5 pairs.

For example, once I'm in a trade at break even or in profit (like I am with UJ now for example), I could then open a new trade the next day on the most promising looking pair. The idea would be that if I have all 5 trades in this situation (I wish), I could open up to 5 more trades on other pairs. I could even have a specific rule that I would only open one of these new trades if we have a doji followed by a reversal bar on the daily - just an example. GJ a couple of days ago would have been a good example of this if I had a 'free' spot available. I wouldn't necessarily have to open an extra trade, only if I saw this particular formation which tends to have a high success rate.

In other words I would only ever have a maximum of 5 pairs open that I've not already secured a profit on.

It may be even worth looking at the charts tonight to look at opening another trade to replace the UJ that already has 116 pips locked in. What do you think? I don't want to deviate too much from my original plan but looking for ways to enhance it.

Look forward to your comments.

Kind Regards
Steve

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Quoting steviet

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Hi Tiki,

Before I start, great signature you have there

OK, yes Isotonic is someone whose opinion I respect very much, despite him looking like a chimp (oh, I thought everyone had a real piccy for their avatar )

Being a trend based system, it will always falter during ranging and choppy markets. When it ranges within a reasonable pip span, the system will still pick up winners and not do too badly. It's these whipsawy choppy markets that we've seen in the past few weeks that's a real killer.

If I could come up with a way of trading these - remember I work full-time so can't take advantage of intra day moves, then I really would have found a system & a half. I still believe that over the year I'll end up well in profit which the vast majority of traders would be happy with.

Trouble is that by coming up with some sort of choppy market system would also impact on the trend based one. Being in the market all the time does have its advantages as you catch a good proportion of the trend when it happens. After all, when do we know when it will end?

A good example is EU - it took the best part of a month to break 3050 then one bullish bar propelled it to where we are now. One would have thought that this bullish bar would have signalled a big move but oh no, EU has just found a new level to be choppy lol.

Still learning.

Kind Regards
Steve

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Quoting steviet

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Analysis paralysis - you're right, a simple system is always going to be best - I think I said it before that my charts used to look like Christmas trees but certainly less is more at least for me.

I don't want to change anything that I'm doing but would like to explore the possibilities of enhancing the system. Backtesting is a whole lot different than forward testing that's for sure - you wouldn't blink at a loss on backtseting because you can scroll to the right and see that you're back in profit a few weeks later.
Kind Regards
Steve

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Quoting Isotonic

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yes you could do what you said if you have a free slots on pairs whose profits you've locked in - or at least break even. my main worry would be about over-trading but your system means that you're pretty much running a fully invested portfolio at all times anyway!

you also run the risk of breaking your rules forward-testing though...how about doing it with a 1/10th of your usual risk? so that if you go over 5 pairs then the next is 2% * 0.1 = 0.2%? or just purely demo the additional trades elsewhere..?

btw, which pair did you have in mind tonight?

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Quoting Monaco

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Steve,

I am still enjoying reading your thread and the process your are going through.

I definitely would agree with your observation that 'less is more' when it comes to analysis.

In contemplating how you may enhance your system in the future here is a simple suggestion that would reduce the number of trades you do by more than half and keep you in trades considerably longer. It would also reduce the number of 'decision days' you have when it comes to trade entry. When looking at the pairs that you trade if a 200 day Simple Moving Average is placed on the chart and only long trades are entered when price is north of the 200 SMA and only short trades are initiated when price is south of the 200SMA that would reduce the number of trades and would keep you on the right side of the long term average. If you also used a 3 *ATR you would stay in the trades far longer as it would take price action 3 times the 'norm' to go against you to take you out the trade. Just by doing those 2 things a casual glance of the last 3 months of the pairs you trade would have probably resulted in a total of no more than about 15 trades in all. The ATR would have kept you in longer and would have prevented you from getting stopped out quickly only to re-enter and get stopped out again. Just a couple of ideas for the future when it comes to enhancing your system. I think by reducing the number of trades that you do it will become easier to determine a strategy for when to add to winning trades.

Keep going coz history tells us that the longer the period of market congestion the closer we are to a substantial trend. Looking back at last year the first couple of months were choppy and then came a good move in April.

Monaco

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Quoting Monaco

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Steve,

I am still enjoying reading your thread and the process your are going through.

I definitely would agree with your observation that 'less is more' when it comes to analysis.

In contemplating how you may enhance your system in the future here is a simple suggestion that would reduce the number of trades you do by more than half and keep you in trades considerably longer. It would also reduce the number of 'decision days' you have when it comes to trade entry. When looking at the pairs that you trade if a 200 day Simple Moving Average is placed on the chart and only long trades are entered when price is north of the 200 SMA and only short trades are initiated when price is south of the 200SMA that would reduce the number of trades and would keep you on the right side of the long term average. If you also used a 3 *ATR you would stay in the trades far longer as it would take price action 3 times the 'norm' to go against you to take you out the trade. Just by doing those 2 things a casual glance of the last 3 months of the pairs you trade would have probably resulted in a total of no more than about 15 trades in all. The ATR would have kept you in longer and would have prevented you from getting stopped out quickly only to re-enter and get stopped out again. Just a couple of ideas for the future when it comes to enhancing your system. I think by reducing the number of trades that you do it will become easier to determine a strategy for when to add to winning trades.

Keep going coz history tells us that the longer the period of market congestion the closer we are to a substantial trend. Looking back at last year the first couple of months were choppy and then came a good move in April.

Monaco

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Quoting milan47

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Hi Monaco, interesting strategy.
Do you mean to place the stop loss at ATR*3? If the ATR is about 115 pips would that mean to place the S/L at 345 pips?
Thank you.

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Quoting Monaco

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The ATR becomes a trailing stop. When trading with the daily charts the stop losses are large but orders can be sized to accomodate the 2% rule or whatever is the preferred measurement for risk. The advantages of the ATR stop is that it reduces the number of trades. The 200SMA is a simple way of further ensuring being on the right side of the market. My thoughts are that when trading with daily charts initiating new trades should be infrequent and then it is easier to see trades developing and there are greater opportunities to add to winning positions. When using a stop strategy that uses the previous day's high/low as guidance it takes just 1 day of price action to go against you and you are out of the trade and then are waiting for another 'decision day'. This works well when there is a sudden burst in price but when there is not (like this month) the result is carnage. The ATR based stop can prevent being slaughtered in months like this.

An example would be when you look at the USD/CAD, the last trade entry would have been around the beginning of November and the ATR would have closed the trade mid Feb. There were several opportunities to add to the trade. Looking at the USD/JPY pair I can see one trade that would have been entered around the end of Nov/early Dec. Again mid Feb the ATR stop would have taken this trade out and a number of opportunities to add to the trade. With the Swissy I can see one short trade from the end of Oct/early Nov that would have lasted until mid December with opportunity to add to the trade on trend line breaks. Similiar with the EUR/USD I see a trade end of Oct/early Nov with the ATR taking the trade out mid Dec and with GBP/USD most of last year was a long only trade.

Monaco

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Quoting smjones

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Steviet,

In a sence, you are already using an ATR type stop. ATR is a measure of the Average true range. So If a stop is placed at say 2 ATR It is really like saying place a stop at twice the daily range. You aready do that by placing your stop just beyond the previous day's high or low. that would equate to yesterday's range and today's range. which is very close to 2*atr.

Just my thoughts on it, Scott

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Quoting steviet

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Thanks Monaco,

I would like to test the ATR to give me an idea of how it could work with my system or not as the case may be.

On my broker's charts the ATR just shows at the bottom of the screen and not within the chart. The standard setting is 20 on my chart. I see the idea is that when the ATR hits a peak, it should indicate the chance of a current trend reversing or ending.

What I can't work out is how this relates to price or stop losses. Would you mind clarifying for me so I can do a little backtesting?

Thanks in advance

Kind Regards
Steve

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Quoting steviet

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Thanks

You've hit the nail on the head - discipline is the key to trade whatever system you find successful. I'll be sure to have a run of losers but I will stick with it through thick and thin because I know it will bring me profits long term.

Markets change over time but I believe a trend following system traded on daily charts will always return profits if stuck to rigidly as long as the money management is also right.

I aim to get rich slowly and I believe I can do it

Kind Regards
Steve

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Quoting steviet

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Thanks Monaco,

I would like to test the ATR to give me an idea of how it could work with my system or not as the case may be.

On my broker's charts the ATR just shows at the bottom of the screen and not within the chart. The standard setting is 20 on my chart. I see the idea is that when the ATR hits a peak, it should indicate the chance of a current trend reversing or ending.

What I can't work out is how this relates to price or stop losses. Would you mind clarifying for me so I can do a little backtesting?

Thanks in advance

Kind Regards
Steve

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Quoting Don4

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Steve i wouldnt change a thing,stick with what has gotten ya to this point!!! These are just trying times. If u have to, cut your risk in half or just stay out until u have a reason to get back in. u have a great system stick with it and im sure u will be back on track in no time.

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