Hi Dale, just wanted to give a quick update on my volatility system trades. Still holding on to the original AUD/JPY trade, by the looks of the chart an obvious downtrend has been in place for several weeks now (the trade was entered 27 days ago) and the SAR point is getting closer and closer to the price, so a reversal may be coming up in the next week possibly. Right now it is at about +450 pips, it's been as high as +700 or so. USD/CAD was in the red a bit but is now approaching the entry price again, it is back above 1.0200 so far today. GBP/JPY is still a bit away from entry (long) but the decreased volatility in the last few days is bringing the SAR point closer, it was around 202.00 for today. Gold is VERY close to a short entry, which makes me a bit nervous since it has been in such a long uptrend for so long. Even using a multiplier of 3.0 (I normally use 2.8) it will be within a dollar or two of a short entry, we'll see what happens today.
Finally got around to testing my SI spreadsheet by using the figures from the book, and everything looks good. I think starting tomorrow I'm going to start following it and entering small trades with the following: gold, gbp/jpy, aud/jpy, and maybe usd/cad. I believe you said earlier that it seemed to work best with the 1 hour timeframe because of the increased volatility compared to the 1970s when the book was written... do you still feel this way? If so I may only follow gold and gbp/jpy because the constant data entry will make it harder to follow more instruments. Also, I was wondering: do you think that using more than one system at the same time on the same instrument is okay? Obviously gold is very high on the CSI and is a good instrument to trade, but do you think using the volatility system, the TBP, and SI is too much? I reckon that the TBP system is still okay because it is pretty much an intraday system and doesn't require a lot of directional movement to work well. If the SI is used on a 1hr timeframe it would appear to be a shorter term system too, and the volatility system an obviously longer-term system. Based on this, I don't see any harm in following all 3 at the same time, but if you get conflicting information among the systems you could have a problem.
How is the "simple little system" working out lately? Are you using a 1hr timeframe with that as well? Also, when you mentioned above a "filter" for the system as a 7 period ema of the H+L+C/3, was that for the "simple little system" or the SI? I am a bit confused as you were discussing both in that post and also combining them together in some way.
Anyway, I am enjoying my short break from school as it is giving me more time to spend on trading, next term is looking to be a bit more demanding as I am taking 3 finance classes, but we'll see how it goes.
Hope things are going well for you this week.
-Nick