Hi MCRotter,
If you have only 500 pip growth and only 2 positions working for you, then obviously you havent grasped the concept. You should have at least 10-15 of them by now. I suggest you extract Graeme's posts read them all and create a book from them. Please dont use any other summary, written by other people. You should create your own. Then you need to spend some months reading it and trying to understand it. You need to create your own interpretation of the method. This is very important. After reading it many times you will feel convinced than you have to try it, because you read it so many times and you find every word logical. Then you experience the urge to test it. Then buy software and test it for 10 years. Test it for 10000 trades. Figure out how it performs when market is ranging. Use worst conditions.
Just pick a simple entry method like engulfing/inside(outside)bar method and use it on 15h, 30h, 1h, 4h depending on your availability. Set it to BE after 1-2 bars in your direction. It will die soon and many others will, but you will keep creating and setting to BE. At some point some will survive. Please add always also in the other direction, in case trend change you will be positioned early. Especially during range periods bevor knowing you are dealing with a range, it is important to position your self in time.
At some point you will notice you have like 30-40 positions (if 15m entry method), or 10-15 (if H4 or H1 entry method) and you have already 2000-3000 pips unrealized profit overall. You can close half of them (the shorter) if some Weekly/Daily major swing low/high is reached or some other reason like big engulfing on HTF or you feel you have enough growth and want to balance your equity curve.
And you keep trading and adding new legs in both directions. If market turns in direction of left trades (after or before retrace) without hitting SL, every position could grow to thousands of pips. If market turns and gos back all the way and hit them on BE, thats ok, you will be positioned from the other side of the market and you will have as big positions as they were before the market turned. So let them die.
One thing i learned a lot from backtesting is that multiple combined variables (looking for confluence) stop your growth heavily, because to grow your position you need to participate. If you are waiting for 5 things to align: 1. you cannot participate all the time 2. Even if all your parameters match, probability is close to a flip coin, because the market is universal and neutral doesnt care about your rules and predefined variables.
I remember Warburg saying following about the market supports my theory as well:
http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...44#post3928844
http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...51#post3927651
About your question if the method works, i can tell you than i back tested many entry methods with long time growth and all were profitable. You can even trade without chart, just by writting down the close price of last month, week,day, 8h, 4h, 1h and taking decisions based on the current price in relation to these closes.
Just an example of the downtrend on EU which started around May, you should have at least 40-50 surviving sell positions and at least 20000-25000 pips unrealized profit.
This trend was so good, that it didnt give much buy signals. I was selling like crazy and still i am. Not all trends are as good as the EU these days. I remember i had a losing streak of 50 in a row some years back. Graeme would say now: "Can you handle that??"
I can tell you you can and you should! Because these 50 loses (about 2000 pips) i recouped in one diversification. Just 4 weeks later i closed the majoritiy of my positions at the monthly weekly swing low and added 7500 pips to my balance. I left 8 position open (about 2500 unrelized profit). Unfortunately they died on BE months later, but i didn't really care. I even didn't notice because i was busy adding new positions all the time.
I hope i could help a bit
TRD
If you have only 500 pip growth and only 2 positions working for you, then obviously you havent grasped the concept. You should have at least 10-15 of them by now. I suggest you extract Graeme's posts read them all and create a book from them. Please dont use any other summary, written by other people. You should create your own. Then you need to spend some months reading it and trying to understand it. You need to create your own interpretation of the method. This is very important. After reading it many times you will feel convinced than you have to try it, because you read it so many times and you find every word logical. Then you experience the urge to test it. Then buy software and test it for 10 years. Test it for 10000 trades. Figure out how it performs when market is ranging. Use worst conditions.
Just pick a simple entry method like engulfing/inside(outside)bar method and use it on 15h, 30h, 1h, 4h depending on your availability. Set it to BE after 1-2 bars in your direction. It will die soon and many others will, but you will keep creating and setting to BE. At some point some will survive. Please add always also in the other direction, in case trend change you will be positioned early. Especially during range periods bevor knowing you are dealing with a range, it is important to position your self in time.
At some point you will notice you have like 30-40 positions (if 15m entry method), or 10-15 (if H4 or H1 entry method) and you have already 2000-3000 pips unrealized profit overall. You can close half of them (the shorter) if some Weekly/Daily major swing low/high is reached or some other reason like big engulfing on HTF or you feel you have enough growth and want to balance your equity curve.
And you keep trading and adding new legs in both directions. If market turns in direction of left trades (after or before retrace) without hitting SL, every position could grow to thousands of pips. If market turns and gos back all the way and hit them on BE, thats ok, you will be positioned from the other side of the market and you will have as big positions as they were before the market turned. So let them die.
One thing i learned a lot from backtesting is that multiple combined variables (looking for confluence) stop your growth heavily, because to grow your position you need to participate. If you are waiting for 5 things to align: 1. you cannot participate all the time 2. Even if all your parameters match, probability is close to a flip coin, because the market is universal and neutral doesnt care about your rules and predefined variables.
I remember Warburg saying following about the market supports my theory as well:
http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...44#post3928844
http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...51#post3927651
About your question if the method works, i can tell you than i back tested many entry methods with long time growth and all were profitable. You can even trade without chart, just by writting down the close price of last month, week,day, 8h, 4h, 1h and taking decisions based on the current price in relation to these closes.
Just an example of the downtrend on EU which started around May, you should have at least 40-50 surviving sell positions and at least 20000-25000 pips unrealized profit.
This trend was so good, that it didnt give much buy signals. I was selling like crazy and still i am. Not all trends are as good as the EU these days. I remember i had a losing streak of 50 in a row some years back. Graeme would say now: "Can you handle that??"
I can tell you you can and you should! Because these 50 loses (about 2000 pips) i recouped in one diversification. Just 4 weeks later i closed the majoritiy of my positions at the monthly weekly swing low and added 7500 pips to my balance. I left 8 position open (about 2500 unrelized profit). Unfortunately they died on BE months later, but i didn't really care. I even didn't notice because i was busy adding new positions all the time.
I hope i could help a bit
TRD
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