thanks for clarifying. on forex.com mt4 and oanda, both feeds showed negative for the preceding candle, moving into positive for a valid trade.
i’ve spent hours on end backtesting, and going thru PS videos thoroughly and realistically, my returns are far less (barely double digit annualised return).
caveat is that in my backtesting, i have ignored the clean break, because it is not clear that i can assume clean breaks on 15min = clean break at 1/5mins. Also, have traded through news.
I think that is the challenge with this system. By closing off early you miss the most profitable runs. The 32R return this year is halved to 16 if you do not allow any trade past 1R. I can well believe your results if you cut them further short than that. It shows that even simple systems like this require a great deal of judgement to get the best out of them. Barely double digit as you imply would be hardly worth the risk and effort compared to buying an index fund (except recently of course!). One of the reasons I dont trade this is because I can do better with other approaches but dont forget your return is better than the majority of FX traders so probably a good base to start from
agreed. the tricky part is also that PS has always given up 5pips or so as a ‘cost of monitoring’ for each trade. these small 5 pips add up. monitoring the close means 24/5 on the lookout, and we’d need to be alert and ready to close to minimise the ‘cost of monitoring’. Further, even in a clean break, the price may fall back, ‘wasting our time’.
As you mentioned here before a couple of months back, the trades with huge Rs are those with 15 pip stop losses (by extension, the broker makes buckets also from such trades).
for the 18mths, the sharpe ratio is 0.8-1.2, so still a meaningful system. So the bottom line still is as you conclude, trading is anything but easy! Just learning this ‘dead simple’ system is hard work!
There was a losing entry at 16:15 BST on the 17th.
Entry 16315 stop 16358 stopped out at 19:30 -43 pips .
Its been a bad week for the system 7 trades 4 losers and 3 winners. Only winning day was Wednesday.
-53 pips for the week for me.
Tony can you explain the results you post. What does the R and S mean?
R is Risk Multiple (a standard way of reporting results)
S is stop
Dont expect everyones results to be the same. Diffferent brokers will give differing entries and I have previously posted the changes I have made to the system to suit my lifestyle. Last week was positive for me with no trade on friday
It may be your reliance on pips that is distorting your returns. Last week was pip negative for me (-23) but $ positive (+0.6R)
wonder what happened to PS. he has had a hoarse throat for a long time, and disappeared for quite a while.
thanks for keeping track, tony.
I just posted the pips as I didnt understand the R calculation you use. Even using R Im still down from last week -1.6R and I definitely lost money so Im trying to see if Im doing something wrong or can improve my trading.
Couldnt find the changes you have made to the system for your lifestyle but Im sticking to PS’s trading times of trading between 00:00 and 16:00 EST which for me is 05:00 and 21:00 BST.
For last week I match some of your trades (broker prices are different slightly) but you are missing others that came along within the recommended timeframe (Ive confirmed the signals with the MT4 EA as well) so assume you only trade the early part of the day. So your results will differ from mine, some weeks better and I guess some weeks worse.
Thanks for your help here Tony much appreciated any suggestions of better systems that you would trade would be welcome.
My trades for last week are
[B]13/07/2009[/B]
4H
Trend is still down so only short trades
15M
15:00 Cross over down, RSI=43 , stoch down, MACD +ve and losing value
Entry 16092
Stop 16145
Risk 53
Target 16050
Stopped out at 16:15.
-53 pips
[B]-1R[/B]
Matched to Tony
[B]14/07/2009[/B]
4H
Trend changed to up at midnight so only long trades
15M
07:00 Cross over up, RSI=63 , stoch down, MACD -ve and losing value
Entry 16266
Stop 16229
Risk 37
Target 16300
Target hit at 8:30.
+44 pips
[B]+1.2 R[/B]
Matched to Tony
16:45 Cross over up, RSI=63 , stoch down, MACD -ve and losing value
Entry 16313
Stop 16257
Risk 56
Target 16350
Stopped out at 19:00.
-56 pips
[B]-1.0R[/B]
Not matched
[B]15/07/2009[/B]
4H
Trend is still up so only long trades
15M
6:45 Cross over up, RSI=71 , stoch up, MACD -ve to +ve
Entry 16355
Stop 16302
Risk 53
Target 16400
Target hit at 7:15.
+45 pips
[B]+0.9R[/B]
Matched to Tony
11:30 Cross over up, RSI=61 , stoch up, MACD -ve and gaining
Entry 16385
Stop 16331
Risk 53
Target 16400
Target hit at 11:45.
+15 pips
[B]+0.3R[/B]
Not matched
[B]16/07/2009[/B]
4H
Trend is still up so only long trades
15M
07:00 Cross over up, RSI=61 , stoch down, MACD -ve to +ve
Entry 16376
Stop 16371
Risk 5
Target 16400
Stopped out at 7:30.
-5 pips
[B]-1.0R[/B]
Matched to Tony
[B]17/07/2009[/B]
4H
Trend up until 08:00 when it changed down so only short trades after 8
15M
16:00 Cross over down, RSI=46 , stoch down, MACD +ve and losing value
Entry 16315
Stop 16358
Risk 43
Target 16300
Stopped out at 19:30
-43 pips
[B]-1.0R[/B]
Not Matched
yes I sometimes start earlier and always finish earlier due to the time difference here. My finish is 1430 GMT
I am new to the Cowabunga System.
Can someone please tell me what criteria one uses to determine the trend of the 4 hour chart?
Also, can someone tell me what is overbought/oversold levels for the 15 min. stochastic?
Thank You Very much
Hello. these and many other questions have been responded to in this forum and Pip sufer’s videos, which are very educational. Please review them. 
Hey Don,
I have tried this strategy on the 5 min. time frame.
Unfortunately, it did not work too well.
The reason is because all you are doing is putting on a SPREAD; it is NOT an arbitrage as you might think.
If you use this strategy, it could lose money and the losses could get out of hand- there is NO guarantee that it will become profitable.
If you can make money with it, the more power to you but watch it if your loss on the spread starts getting unmanageable- this is the flaw with the strategy.
If you would like to discuss it further, feel free to email me
Good Luck,
Michael
Hello guys this morning and last Thursday there were a number of signals that happened when the price was in a sideways move. This meant that the stops were very tight as the previous swing low was only a couple of candles ago. This resulted in a couple of losing trades before the market took off and I had a winner. So with a wider stop the first trade would have run on and become the winner. In this scenario are you going back further to find a real swing low area and thus a wider stop? Or do you use another method for the stop (support etc)? Or do you just take the hit with the losses?
Thanks
yup, cowabunga has not been successful since a good run early last month. unfortunately, i take the hits anyway, though i intuitively know the probabilities are not high for a winning trade.
I am not good with selecting ‘good’ or ‘bad’ trades, and don’t want to go down the slippery road of pre-judging trades. :rolleyes:
There is little from PS lately, and i wonder how many people trade cowabunga live. I, for one, do trade live with substantial money.
me too finally.
I’ve also tried for 5m time frame and also didn’t work for me.
hmmm…
???
finally,. Is this still working out for you?
After being away from cowabunga for a while, I have focused my attention back to the system. Since I normally can trade during London and US session I can follow the system pretty closely. After closing out my current trade on Wednesday I then switched exclusively to cowabunga. I must say I did enjoy a return to the simple nature trading and a nice break from my current trading methods. My first valid signal occured on Friday for positive pips. Looking forward to the coming full week of trading, and seeing how my trade results compare with others.
Signal From Trader: MPE (2009-08-14 12:25:08 GMT):
Type: Close Signal
Signal ID: 89567
Currency: GBP/USD
Action: Buy
Lots: 3
Open: 1.6562
Stop: 1.6486
Limit: 1.6735
Close: 1.6598 (Close Price)
Profit: +108
Description:
End Signal
Remains a dependably profitable approach
Do you have a pip total? Since each lost and win is different that could make a big difference?
