I’m looking for a very basic custom indicator, that would produce an alert or visual indication when there has been a break of price, above or below the last “x” number of price bars. Something that would also work on multiple timeframe charts as well, e.g. Daily, 30 minute, etc, in MT4. Can anyone help with this?
Thanks Bucks, much appreciate your reply. I have just been doing some research for the last while and it looks like what I’m after is the Donchian Channels indicator.
Also I am just finishing up a book I’ve been reading, The Universal Principles of Successful Trading by Brent Penfold. It’s been a very helpful book for me, and I got the idea of looking further into the Turtle method from there also. Cheers 
My pleasure! Yes, the turtles traded indeed with the Donchian breakout rules. What I’ve heard the rules won’t give you much winners anymore, but you could modify it slightly and it might become highly successful!
I’ve been looking into a breakout strategy the past couple of weeks and this keeps coming up in discussions about the Turtles. Why do people say the system doesn’t produce winners anymore?
It seems to me as if saying trend trading a breakout strategy doesn’t work anymore. Would you agree with that? I ask because I want to know if I should be wary of considering this type of strategy, even if it isn’t based strictly on the Turtles methodology.
Thanks,
Matt
Well, there is another strategy now which trades against the original rules which is called turtle soup. Point is, usually if a strategy is very successful and public, it will decrease in performance. Because if more trade it then also more others trade against it. Result is the market adapts. That’s what markets do. Makes sense?
The strat could however be still tradable with longer periods or other changes. Anyways, to really be safe, make some tests. Back- and/or forward tests for some years and min. 100 trades. That’s the only way imho to be sure if a strat gives an edge or not and to get faith in a strat. Without this faith you would probably stop trading it after a few losses anyways.
So, in short develop or change a strategy, test it and if it shows what you are looking for then go live. If not, rinse and repeat.
Thanks for the quick reply.
Another question I’ve had about the turtles method is that for such a professional endeavor, the system was dead simple. Do you think the market has changed such that it really takes a complex entry/exit strategy to compete; a system that has many rules to be able to adapt to or avoid certain scenarios?
Everything I’ve read says that simple is best.
I’ve got 2 other systems I’m using at the moment, want to make the Turtle my 3rd system. Agreed it will need something more to give it an edge, but haven’t done much research yet. Anyone actually trading something like the Turtle Donchian channels?
Simplicity is king. I agree. You’ll see that with simple trendlines you can build an edge without anything else. Just trendlines. Simple. Simple however doesn’t mean unique or easy. Even with trendlines there are a million of possible strats, depending on mm, rm, entry, exit, etc.
I don’t use the turtle strat, but as I said, it could be successful. Particular with longer periods before a breakout. Plus it might need some other ingredients to make it more successful. Anyways, even the turtle traders said it’s not the best system actually what you can get. It was at that time for sure a great system, because the creators invented a new method for mm.