that s cos the traders with big accounts buy low and sell high, like new low for the day or for the week or new high etc, and i d bet that if u place volume on ur chart u d see volume increasing but price isn t able to make new lows in this case. they are using the selling pressure of the common traders to buy cos they need to get filled on some large orders and they don t want to mark price up against them. that s also when u most ussually get
the fake break of ranges, recent lows etc…
as for braket trading, it does work imo but on a larger scale, not ur day to day basis.
How are you getting on with this strategy, Tom? Have you made anymore adjustments?
I have been considering trying it on demo as my live account has slowed down for the time being with the volatility making my stops too wide for my risk (with minimum position sizes).
No further major adjustments @PhillR thanks, though perhaps more ready to avoid the counter-trend entry order rather than simply mechanically set two bracket orders. I’m also avoiding trading anything except GBP/USD using this strategy.
The strategy is making consistent profits and its possible these have been unusually large due to the wider daily ranges we’re seeing during the virus situation.
1 Like
That’s encouraging to hear you are still making consistent profits from the strategy still, thanks for the update!
I’ve been able to add a further 3 months’ worth of backtesting results using a demo account, so I now have statistics for this variant of the Big Ben strategy for the last 11 full months.
After Month 2 the strategy’s equity at month-end has never been negative. The overall net result is +94r over the 11 months: r is of course the risk per trade. I use the same r per every trade, its a fixed % of the account capital, so r can be varying numbers of pips from trade to trade but always represents the same %. Its easy to see what a nice return this review suggests.
Looking forwards to Monday. Have a nice weekend meanwhile.
1 Like
Another Big Ben week completed. Not trading this tomorrow as its a UK public holiday (nor Monday next week for the same reason).
A decent return this week of +2r for the week, net +3r for April. I thought at first yesterday (Wednesday) of not taking the trade as the 0700 candle was suddenly so wide, but it was not out of proportion to those during Tuesday’s London session so I let the orders run.
Have a good Easter all.
Minor update which might be of interest - as UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is now discharged from hospital after covid-19 infection, this might be very positive for the GBP tomorrow even though London banks will be mostly not open for trading as its a holiday here, so I will now be trading the Big Ben tomorrow morning.
The week is over for my Big Ben trades. Monday and Tuesday did nothing special, Wednesday made appr. +10r, yesterday and today were double losses at -2r each. So the net for the week is +6r.
Very happy with that, and with progress for April so far - net gain is +9r.
Have a good weekend all.
Hello tommor, after reading through your post i am confused on what the strategy became. Please tell me if i got this right!
GBP/USD
30 MIN TF
ON the 0700 candle if “in size”
Risk 1% each order, 2% total
Long order on top SL+1 pip on bottom of the candle and opposite for short.
TP manually close at 2pm, no other TP targets? Might get out earlier if impacting new are on the calendar.
If one order is opened, do you cancel the other or leave it? Thanks 
That’s about it @woosher. I leave the opposing order until I close the opened trade at 2pm. No TP targets.
Its very possible TP’s and trailing stop-losses and moving the stop to b/e etc. might add something to this but I wanted a set and forget strategy. There are two things I do know however - its a lot of work to backtest a strategy which already makes so much profit; plus whenever I have tried to move my stops in these trades I have always always either been stopped out or missed the profit potential.
1 Like
That’s another Big Ben week finished for me, and it was a loser this time.
Doesn’t often happen but with a maximum of only 5 days on which to play once, its bound to occur. Monday, Tuesday and Friday were double losers, Wednesday and Thursdays were zero days (Wednesday was a no-trade day and Thursday, made a small profit, but it was less than 1r). That should be my last Monday of BB trading, as the day statistically has such poor prospects owing to light trading volumes.
Still, April remains another winning month so far, at +7r net.
Have a great weekend (far as that is possible inside your house 23 hours a day…).
Hi Tommor, I’m thinking about starting to demo trade this on Tuesday, just confused where the 0700 candle is. Is it two hours before London open?
No, its the 30-minute candle from 0700-0730 UK time. The London Stock Exchange opens at 0800.
Actually, its very possible the 0630 candle or 0730 candle might work just as well, or even the 0700-0800 1-hr candle, I just haven’t trialled them so I can’t honestly eliminate them. Its worth playing around with the details.
1 Like
April is finished: it was a bumpy day but ended in the money eventually. The month was another winner. I will post up net results tomorrow / at the weekend.
This now makes 12 full months of backtesting and running this strategy. I’ll post up a summary of the year’s statistics soon as well. As a taster I can say April has been the 5th consecutive profitable month…
All the best.
April threw up some interesting challenges on a day to day basis with some unusually wide 0700 candles and my realisation that statistically Mondays are the worst performing days of the week.
However, the overall result was never in real doubt and the net gain for the month was +11r. This is fine, the average monthly result being +8r and the average gain in winning months being +14r (the average loss in losing months is -8r).
April was the 5th consecutive profitable month and the 9th profitable month in the last 12. The total net gain over the 12 month period just ended is +104r.
Going forwards I am dropping Mondays’ Big Ben trades and of course this month has 2 UK Public Holidays - so no trading next Friday 08/05: the other is a Monday anyway, the 25th (which is also a US public holiday).
All the best.
Interesting to see Greg Secker has just pout out a clip on Youtube describing another variant of this strategy - he calls it the Breakfast Breakout Strategy.
Some important differences from my own approach -
his strategy trades the FTSE100 index
because of this, price before 8am is not helpful: he uses the 0800 H1 bar to set the buy/sell range
there is only one trade per day - the opposite order is cancelled as soon as the first is triggered
the TP is the same as the 8am bar range
Unfortunately he doesn’t go into detail about what unusual-sized ranges would exclude a trade for that day but I get the impression the strategy would be cancelled for the day when the range is unusually wide.
I did trade this variant a few years ago but never found the win rate reliable enough. I clearly remember in the first 2 weeks of one month getting 8 winners out of 10 trades. Then in the next 2 weeks 10 losers out of 10 trades. Win rate is key if you only have a 1:1 r:r.
No Big Ben trade tomorrow Friday 08/05 - UK public holiday.
Rough start to May? Currently sitting at -7.36R (including my positions that closed today). I haven’t traded Mondays or the bank holiday Friday.
Are your results similar for May so far, Tom?
Yes, similar here. This is a tough one alright…
I did some back testing from the start of Jan 2020, setting a TP @ 7R seemed to net slightly better results alongside closing positions @ 2pm. It was catching the main move on the odd day that price moved quickly in 1 direction, as quite often the price would move back closer to entry before 2PM. Anything less than 5R seemed to hurt the results overall.
I need to go back further to see if setting a TP still helps overall, or if it is only working currently with the increased volatility.