Cow vs. Duck

I have read about both the Cowabunga and the 3 Ducks systems. Since I have limited resources, I would like to follow only one of the two. The question is - which strategy is better or more profitable for short-term, day-in day-out day trading? I am on Eastern Standard Time, if that matters.

Thanks

Pipi

I’ll see your cows and pigs, and raise you three ducks.

In my opinion, the 3 ducks trading system is far superior to both of those. (It’s also entirely soundly and logically based, and has great educational value.)

I stand corrected - I meant 3 ducks, not 3 pigs lol! Thanks for the heads-up. I was in a Vietnamese restaurant yesterday and really enjoyed eating their roast pig vs. their Peking duck, hence my fixation on piggies.

I hear you … :wink:

There is actually a “three little pigs” system here, as well. Babypips caters to almost all tastes. For myself, I prefer that Beijing Duck with pancakes, hoisin sauce and spring onion …

Seriously, the Three Ducks method is worth a good look, not only potentially to trade it, but because its underlying principles are entirely sound and valid ones, and it can also be very useful as an add-on for plenty of other trading methods, too. The thread’s really long, and time-consuming, but it [I]is[/I] worth it.

And good luck!

Thanks, I thought I was having a senior moment, because I had saved a “3 Little Pigs” template which had 3 moving averages on it, so I know I wasn’t dreaming. Anyhow, I am finding this Forex business quite intriguing. When I started a few weeks ago, I surrounded myself with 3 paid signal providers, thinking there was strength in numbers, and the more expensive their services were, with their armies of highly paid analysts, the more accurate the signals I was getting would be, given their propensity to claim that they had the best Forex signals in the whole wide world. I was therefore surprised that my own nascent home-brew strategy, cobbled together from bits and pieces of SSI, GSI, Strong/Weak, Camarilla, Donchian, etc. and with a dash of voodoo economics, was doing much better than the paid signal providers. Now here comes the 3 ducks with just 1 indicator, it’s almost like heresy.

Oh well, may The Force be with me and my own experimental strategy.

well looks like you have found the secret to successful trading lol.

3 ducks is a great trade system and works well in trending markets. If nothing else give perspective on market structure. I am working on a combination of 3 ducks with the ribbon system tweaked a little to fit me and my style of trading. So far results have been mixed but I do see very good potential. Maybe I just need a dash of voodoo economics to bring this new system over the top.

Well, I tried my first duck shoot last night and it laid an egg, a 30 -pip loss. I had it synched with FXCM’s contrarian SSI (Speculative Sentiment Index) which told me that USD/CAD was ripe for a reversal towards the long side because there were 2 + short sellers for every 1 buyer. My mistake was I also linked it with FXCM’s Camarilla pivot line which was still sitting on R3 and appeared ready for a contrary bounce towards the down side. What happened was, after I entered my duck position, the 15-minute signal nosedived like a Kamikaze dive bomber and broke through the 60 SMA line while the 1 hour and 4 hour prices remained high above it. It seemed the market went with the Camarilla pivot line and spurned both the SSI and the 3 ducks. The lesson learned here is that I should not have pulled the trigger even if 2 two out of three guides are pointing up while 1 is still pointing down. Just like a jury trial, the market signals must be unanimous. Or maybe I was just unlucky - the only way to find out is to try again. Maybe the SSI, being a contrarian indicator, is at odds with the 3 ducks.

3 Ducks is based of the 4hr, 1hr and 5 min. Not sure where the 15 minute came from. Also while I will not tell you not to add things to the system to filter out bad trades. For now I would personally use the 3 ducks as designed and dont add anything to it. At least untill you get a better understanding of the system and its limitations. Such as it is a trend following system and most of the pairs I have looked at lately are range bound. This can lead to a lot of fake outs. Once you understand the system and flaws associated with the system then you can (and probably should) try to figure out how to make the system fit you and your style of trading.

The good thing about 3 ducks is it is a very flexible system and can be fitted into any existing system (generally speaking) or be used as a stand alone system or molded to fit you.

Thanks for the clarification, bobmaninc. I inadvertently picked up the wrong 15 minute instead of the correct 5 minute time frame after reading Post # 4 by Pipsicola back in 2007 thereabouts. Somehow, my subconscious mind has been brainwashed by prior readings of other authors’ works suggesting that anything lower than 15 minutes is too noisy to be of any predictive value. I am only on page 30 of the whole 272-page thread and I just got too excited and fired off the 3 ducks without so much as a demo run, putting real money right off the starting line…lol!

And I fully agree with you that trying to add a potpourri of indicators into a homogenous witch’s brew is not exactly kosher. What is funny about this forex business is one could be listening to 4 analysts from the same brokerage firm and they could be looking at the same chart and in the same time frame and yet they expect the market to move in opposite directions. For instance, the SSI says the market is going up, the GSI says the market is going down, the Strong/Weak indicator say the market is moving sideways, and the Donchian channel says it is quiet and in low-volatility mode. Add to that the totally inexplicable prognostications by different signal providers, and you end up like deer frozen by headlights, unable to decide in which direction to trade.

So my next experiment is to run multiple strategies, each on its own merit, and spread them out among different accounts between my VPS and my main PC.

Thanks again, sir, I owe you one.

And believe it or not, Lexys, I spent 5 minutes this morning trying to squash that bedbug or mosquito hovering above your nome-de-guerre. I thought it was a real bug, coming from the old country where flying insects are commonplace. I almost broke my Macbook Pro screen trying to swat it. Lol!

You’re the first person to comment on it; a friend sent it to me as .gif-file and I just reduced it to avatar-size …

Nice to see that you have read both strategy and knows the art of using of both strategy, I would like to suggest you that for scalping 3 ducks trading system is perfect and you can get the fruitful result with this strategy.

The 3 Ducks system is undoubtedly one of the best and most practical the whole forum has to offer, but equally clearly the observation above entails using the word “scalping” with a whole, new, different meaning!