4 Hour Strategy (MACD)

A trade I did today taking on that long tail on the 4H. It did go +30 and then I put stoploss at -40pips. I was quite surprised to see my stoploss being hit when I got home. I really trusted the odds that it will produce some pips.

Isn't it best to take long trades when macd is +0? MACD was showing there was still bearish momentum in play.

Yes, the pin on 14000 round number was tempting, but seeing the diverging 8 / 21 ema with USDCHF nudging through 10500 I stayed aside. The last time EURUSD was at these levels was July 2009, so it's difficult to pick just where demand is...

When I received the second signal via email I was surprised to see you did not move your stoploss to breakeven after +30 pips...at the end of the day it was a counter trend trade. Cheers

If he had been home I'm sure he would have.

Watch out for a TC forming on GBPUSD 4H and triangle breakout...still an hour and a half to go, though...

Hi!

Is anyone making a living with this system?

Hmmm. not making a living but I'd say adding to my account balance.

This would be a difficult task with this method because the actual high probability set-ups only occur several times a month and it's best to follow only two or three pairs a the most. With any method discipline is the key.

The lower timeframes where you have a few entry points per day per two or three pairs might be better suited to making a living from. It's hard, very hard, to rely on a mortgage payment, car payment, retirement funds, etc. from a few trades per month. I'd say that 99% of the people on the FF here do this for additional income and not full time.

EU needs to fill the gap with the 8 for me, $ Yen needs to clean itself up.

Do you know how to use Piviot calculater in metatrader 4
Where we should download it.
Please reply to [email protected]

I've been looking at trying to make the 4 hour method a little more mechanical; a look for only longs, look or only shorts, or no trading indicator. I've been trying to code an indicator that according to how the moving averages are lining up and what the MACD is doing, to paint a green bar for long entry areas, a red bar for short entry areas, or no bar for no trades. There is still some tweaking to do and a little explanation but it is very straightforward. I think Fib #'s and trendlines would still have to be part of it, more on that later. Here are a few charts that show the indicator, might make it a little clearer. I'll post more on this later. Pay no attention to the open trade here, that's a forward testing scalping EA demo that is failing miserably....

Hi all,
this is my monthly "ping" for the 4h MACD thread: I'm always silently here and lerning.
Palmer, feel free to share .mq4 file of your indicator if you usually do that: I feel more confident with coding activity then forex trading...
In any case, thanks for the job: it will be an aid to cut off some rookie wrong decision.

cheers,
andy

andy: I will post it here and plug it on the website as well. I'm running the indicator right now and and as we speak I just noticed something that I have to change...

Give me a day or two.

Hi Palmer/C

Looking very interesting, can't wait.

I am also taking a fresh new look at Phillip's system trying the longer time frames now concentrating more on price actions than indicators. Luckily for his signals, helping a lot.

Looking forward to your posts.

Hi Palmer,

Very much looking forward to trying your indicator to supplement what is already a great system!

OK....

BullBearSlideV1.0

Here's the logic:

- A red bar (look for short entries) is drawn when the MACD is below the zero line AND the 8ema is less than the 21ema AND the 21ema is less than the 89sma AND the 8ema is less than the 89sma AND the current high is less than the 21ema.

- A green bar (look for long entries)is just the opposite....AND the current low is greater than the 21ema.

- No bar is drawn (black) when one, out of all, of these conditions are not met...Oddly enough, this might be the most important...here's why:

When there is no bar draw this can mean that there is no rhtyhm = the moving averages are not lining up per the method OR this might be a break in the current rhythm where a trend continuation is developing.

Chart 1
Look at the current run and the break in the red color bars, between the red vertical lines. This is a break in the rhythm where a re-entry could be developing. At the end of the chart you see no bars being drawn (black) because price is continually above the 21.

Chart 2
Between the red lines, lots of black and a few blips of red and green here. The moving averages are not lining up per the rhythm yet. This is where you sit on your hands.

How do you determine if one of these first red or green bars is the start of the rhythm???? Take a look at the one MACD level that is plotted, +/- .15
For the most part, it looks like when a new green/red bar is shown AND the MACD level is greater than .15 (with a green bar drawn for the BullBearSlide) or the MACD level is less than -.15 (with a red bar drawn for the BullBearSlide)...things might be a little more 'valid' for a probable start of a new trend developing.

This is pretty much the same as the RhythmStrength indicator that owenkenobi posted some time ago, see the website for more, but draws a bar for this. I'm a visual person and it's easier for me to see it vs. think about it.

This should work for both 4 digit and 5 digit brokers. Again, it's Version 1.0 so let me know what you think...

If for some reason the plotted bars look thin, select the indicator and set the width to 3...

Edit: The +/- .15 level for the MACD applies to the EURUSD...need to look back at other pairs to see if that level shows the same.

Hi Palmer,

How do you make MACD turn green when it starts to turn up from bottom?
I'm still trying to learn this technique.

Regards,
Lewis

wuming.

This is the MACDv102 or v103 indicator that irusoh put together for us. You can download it from the website, check my signature and navigate to the Method -> tools -> indicators link. The color change is built into the indicator.

It's alos in this thread somewhere....somewhere.

Great job Palmer !
It's a simple and straight logic; It will be very useful to give me discipline too... yeah... I'm lacking discipline since school years !!!
Just my professional bias: I think there's no need to specify the condition ema8 < sma89: if ema8 is less than ema21 and ema21 is less than sma89 sure is also ema8 < sma89...

cheers,
andy

Thanks andy. Yeah, the 8 doesn't come into play too often being <> but every once in a while there is spike where things get out of wack.

The 200 and 365 were not taken into account because they lag too much.

Once of my main thoughts with this is if you trade the lower timeframes, 1 hr, 30 min, maybe 15, too only be on the side that the 4hr is showing.

Here's one...

Sold at 5951 on the IG Markets platform. Little late on the 4hr entry but got in with a smaller timeframe nonetheless..