Last month I had a pretty good run with my trading system which relies a lot on the MACD indicator. Recently though I’ve found it really difficult to trade. Price movements seem to be much more random than calculated. Bad US reports come out and the dollar strengthens… It all seems kind of random to me, but does anyone else feel like we’re currently in a more difficult trading environment than in previous months?
MACD is a trending oriented indicator. It will do well when the markets are directionally consistent, but like all trend oriented approaches, will not do well in ranging or choppy markets.
I’m aware of that but is there any particular reason why the market seems to be trending far less predictably on 15 - 1h timeframes than in the recent past?
The markets are extremely thin in Aug. All it takes is one large order to skew the trend especially using short TFs. A good month to take vacation and look over the list of all the things you wanted to do this summer!
Trend trading in the day timeframe is always a challenge because of event driven volatility. We’ve had a lot of different influential news items of late, with reactions no doubt furthered by dobro’s noted thin markets.
Bama,
MACD aside, I’m glad I’m not the only one a bit perplexed by market movements. As a fellow newbie, I figured it was just my lack of economic know how ("~)
Dobro,
I might take note of your advice (",)
There are several articles on August being one of the worst (July being the other) months for trend trading. google it for the URL. This August has rated as a really bad one, I saw an article recently on one of the other blogs about it. Perhaps it’s a good time to hone those scalping skills…
August has to be the worst month for trading.
so don’t worry if you’re making no profits!
Well, that’s certainly welcome reassurance guys. August has been bonkers! Had a great start then along comes August and it just feels that the market is intentionally working against every tool or system I use!
Glad to hear this is not the norm… No more trades for me this month but still following the markets.
Roll on September! Happy trading (",)
This month was rather a mess in the world economy really. JPY pairs went nuts after the news.
No indicators really will work during the time really because lots of unexpected sudden moves occur. One of the best teachings in trading says that a good trader knows when to play and when to rest.