MJ- Test Journal 2011

hi,

To tackle some of the main issues I encountered!!

Over the couple of years since I started with Spud's MTF-Stochastics (http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?p=4448528) I have encountered 2 main problems.

1. At times (actually a good number of times) my entry was 'just bad' (still the Win/Loss Ration was good but it has always bothered me a lot)

2. Quite often the trade did not run to it's projected Profit Target.


Well, I compensated for that by turning to very small TFs. When I had my automated trading system running I used 10sec charts and upwards.
For manual trading M1 and upwards.


An important point to mention is: that for most of the time I mainly used different combinations of MTF-Stochs - and paid no real attention to: Price action, Support/Resistance - whatever else .........

More recently I have started again looking into my two main points of concern mentioned above. (one of the reason is that for the time being I want to trade manually and the 1 min takes a lot of screen time - summer is also approaching

Anyway, over the last month/weeks I have put together a new approach (new for me) which in-cooperates more emphasis on Support/Resistance, Trendlines ....

There will be a big change for me: I will be testing on higher time-frames (this goes even against some of my points I made a couple of month ago - so quite a change for test purpose).

Mainly I will test to take trades of the H4, H1, M30 (well will see how this goes as I'm not used to such).

To compensate for less frequent trading opportunities I will try to consider 31 Pairs.

Update: reduced them to 17 based on broker spread and Daily ATR

#"--Major Main--"
"EURUSD",
"USDJPY",
"GBPUSD",
"AUDUSD",
"USDCHF",
"EURJPY",
"EURGBP",
"EURCHF",

#"--Major Other--";
"AUDJPY",
"GBPJPY",
"GBPCHF",
"GBPCAD",
"EURCAD",
"EURAUD",
"CHFJPY",
"CADJPY",

#"--Minor Main--";
"NZDUSD",



_______________________________

This will be manual trading.

Just finished to put all together and hopefully start next week.





__________________ACCOUNT

20110307-20110311: +0,35%
20110313-20110318: -1.7%

This will be a deviation of pure Spud's MTF Stochastics but for anyone interested my stochs settings:

All DPeriod=1 I do not use them at all

order of numbers (KPeriod, Slowing,DPeriod)

Stoch1: 10,1,1
Stoch2: 20,1,1
Stoch3: 100,3,1
Stoch4: 20,3,1
Stoch5: 10,5,1

All on one indicator window.

Even though the stochastic approach with very low TF was quite ok and produced many trades and a reasonable Win/Loss ration it had a number of other issues for manual trading (automated is a bit of a different story).


1. I like to have a plan for each trade - but on the small TF I could not properly follow it through when trading manually.

2. which affected manual and automated trading on such Low TF was the SL distance.
Which was often significantly higher than the TP (it's ok if the Win/loss ration is high enough)
but still I hope to address this with this new tests.

3. On such Low TF it is difficult for manual trading to plan each trade properly ( like calculating Variable Trade size ect.. - was not a problem for the automated system.) So one easily ends up to use just some generalisations (which are good enough)



Having said that there is one thing I sometimes find funny when people talk about Profit/Losst (included me at times)

As if a trade which gives 63 PIPS Profit or Loss --- is more important than a trade which gives 6 Pips Profit or Loss

If each trades SL/TP targets where the same % the outcome is the same.

In that regard I still prefer the smaller TF because of the huge amount of short moves over each trading day.



Anyway - below some general plans I have to start with.

At the begin of this test phase my plans are as following (might change them as I test):


1.
AIM:
still 5% per week. This will probably often not met which is ok (but hopefully end each week in profit) - anyway I still like to have some aim.

2.
Main Trading Time:
As I'm more of an intra-day trader I do not like to enter a trade too late in the day.

Mainly: London session. (first 3-4 hours)
After that: mainly managing of already open trades till they close.

Though some trades might be open over night (e.g. trades from H4)
At times I might also open trades later e.g. in the case that I had no trade for that day (have to see how it goes)

If possible try to avoid trading on Friday all together and call it an early weekend.
This will mainly depend if I have reached my aim for this week. (that's one of the reason I like to have some aim)

3.
No double exposer.

Meaning: If there are 5 trade opportunities I will open multiple trades with such consideration.

Option1:
No same currency twice: meaning EUR/USD , AUD/JPY is ok
but USD/JPY USD/NOK is not allowed.

Option2:
Same currency is allowed put only if the total order-size is relative
reduced.

only e.g.: Each trade has max Loss of 2% of Account.

If there are two similar good trading setups: I might open USD/JPY and USD/NOK (but the total max Loss is also 2%)

Option3:

In case there was a previous open trade e.g. EUR/USD and a new trading opportunity comes e.g. USD/JPY I may enter into the new trade also if I could offset my risk on the first pair: EUR/USD by taking a partial Profit or move the SL to Break Even or something like that.

4.
From a stochastic point of view:
I will mostly trade 'Elastic' setups.

(Of course: an 'Elastic setup on a higher TF is most of the time a normal break of the overbought/oversold area in Lower TFs.)

5.
Each trade will be planned:
before entering a trade there will be a trade plan containing items like:

EnterPrice: (must not be to the exact pip)
SL: if and when SL is set to BE or trailed must not be defined beforehand but is more part of the ongoing trade management.
TP: ( very often I will scale out of a trade with multiple TP)
UnitSize:
TimeScope: a rough idea what is the longest time scope I want to be in the trade. ( this will have to develop over the time of testing what is reasonable for this approach.)

6.
MoneyManagement:
For the first test phase there will be no special MM applied. Each trade will use a 3% MAX Risk base on the Current Balance.

(exception: Point 3 Option2)



Finally this are no rules set in stone and in the beginning I might mess up even one or the other time.

But it is good to have some plans to guide for the test phase.

hi,

I have put together a small Trade Planner indicator. Nothing special - I saw somewhere something similar in an excel sheet and used something similar in a fully automated trading system.

Anyway: it's not tested as it is weekend - but I guess it should be ok.


Fill in a couple of data and it will plot some calculations of interest.

Note: I use Oanda so I have Units instead of Lots.

Calculations are mainly based on Oanda's Profit calculator: http://fxtrade.oanda.com/account/profit-calculator/

(Closing Rate - Opening Rate) * (Closing {quote}/{home currency}) * Units

Point to note: this is NOT 100% correct.

Reason: because at the time of trade planning (or Trade Entry) the final Closing Price for Quote/AccountHomeCurrency can not be known.

I use the best available option: the last bid price at the time of calculation.

(also there are some other small issues (e.g. I only use Bid Price but at times it would be correct to use the Ask Price.)

In my old automated system I did this all ok - but as I use MT4 only for Chart plotting it's good enough for me (really it's very close and most of you will anyway use lots and in this case there will be much more deviation as you can not fine tune your UnitSize.


As always there is no warranty - but it's free for you to use.

As the say: take care you might loose all your money

I did some more work on the TradePlanner indi.

Maybe I should note that I use for test purpose the MT4 Terminal from 'M I G BANK's MT4 ' (no advertisement - I just downloaded it last week because I heard they have a very reliable server and also offer quite a lot of Pairs)

I might switch to the one from Oanda - but there are 2 things which bother me:
I do like the charts time corresponding to my local time (Frankfurt) or at least to London Time.
I also did not probably figure out how to display the charts correctly without the weekend data on MT4.


Some of the CHANGES for the indi:

-Added a 3. TP option,
-more checks for input data.
-adjusted slightly the layout

Note to Error Alerts: most of them explain themselves

There is at least 1 which might be worthy to mention:
< NO QuoteHomeCurrency_BID Price >

This is happening when the indicator can not get any Price for the Pairs Quote/AccountHomeCurrency which is needed for the calculation as mentioned in the post above.

I do three different checks before giving up. But after that fails you get the mentioned ERROR Alert.

updated the TradePlanning Indicator to v. TradePlanning_mj_v1.03.mq4

Change: small change as it plotted RewardInPips even though the TP % was zero.

I guess it's over for today. I got a bit sidetracked by comment of 'pmullin86'
http://www.forexfactory.com/showpost...4&postcount=13 about the Sunday candle.

As I use a couple of indicators related to this I had a new look at the code: well now I rethink what I plan to do.

At the moment I feel I will go with changing most of the code so that in daily indicators the Sundays will be just skipped.


Well, I did only a small trade which does not qualify for this Journal +0.5 %. (Better a plus than nothing

There will be an other day.

I skip trading today - the night was too short as I changed most of my code.

Start Balance was 1000,- EUR for this test account.

Also not a prober trading day for me: but I did a small trade for + 0.291% on my Account for this Journal.

looking into M30_CADJPY trade on a break to the upside if it happens in the next couple of Bars. A bit of a warning is the current H1 Candle.

The trade did not develop in the time scope I hoped it would.

I close it just above BE - don't like to have it open over the news especially because of the Spread increase at Oanda. Already 10 pips

Probably not much trading today - still need to get some setup issues fixed.

Finished the Test Account for this week with: +0.35%.

Not great but there are two positive points.

It's a plus even though just a very modest one.

And more importantly I got many things of my setup better organized - which will reduce my work/screen time in the future.

looking for something along the lines of the trade planner: setup from the H1.

Just got filled as I posted the above.

I decided to go for not the whole 3%: reason is as this longer TimeFrame trades something very new to me - I would love to first build a couple of positive results.

Also notice that The TradePlanner calculation is not absolutely exact: as I trade on a other platform as well as it does not include the spread - but it's good enough for my purpose.

Hope it will work out as the SL is not too far away. Anyway, I'm looking for other setup and let this run for a while: otherwise my Scalper nature takes over and I might be tempted to break my rules

Well, SL got hit.

Today most of the pairs moved in the Asian session a bit too much for my liking.
And the next 3 days I won't be able t trade around London session.


So this week will not be very good - for my new test run.

For next week I reduced my Pairs to watch based on the daily ATR and my broker spread.

To 17 Pairs. I reflect that change in the first post