Donchian Channel Trading

Old m8 pabloroacho, haven’t forgotten about you. Just going to sleep on your obs and think about them tomorrow. I don’t see any reason why renko charts wouldn’t work. But donchian trading is about breakouts. IMO there are only two things that matter, price and time. Unfortunately with renko charts time can be lost and price is misrepresented. I can see pips being lost due to late signals on renko - but I could be wrong. So I think about it a bit more.

g’morning bob,

yes, we’ll have to consider money management seriously as part of the system…
in my live account i am just risking 0,25% per trade right now…

the problem will be minimizing the drawdown while still maintaining the profits…one can’t have it all :wink:

for now, i would discard the 20-10 settings as it’s clearly the weakest system (smallest profit and big drawdown)…

Morning Mike.

Like what your doing. Over 28 pair maybe even 0.25% a little high. I’m set at 0.5 on the 10 pairs I trade on the 4 hr. Got a bit more testing to do on the 1 hr but trading the 24 hr break seems to have the greatest potential. 2 x ATR seems the perfect SL. TS does seem to fluctuate from 6 to 12 maybe even 15. Thats just going to come down to the trader and maybe discretion at this point is better. Hope to set up a demo by the end of the month running a bot and we can do some forward testing.

For now I’ll stick to this project before I shift focus to other time frames.

over 28 pairs it would be 7% total risk…maybe i recalculate to come closer to 5% total risk (if all 28 pairs are getting stopped out)…i am trading it on 15min, 1h and 4h TFs…this morning i started thinking about trying also the 5min…just putting entry orders right before the london and ny session…after ny session i would cancel the remaining entry orders and start again the next day…maybe i’ll give it a try…

i like your idea of the demo with the bot, let’s see what result the forward testing brings…

ummm, what is the volume spike in the middle of the backtest? what time & date was that trade? just curious, some news event?

A picture paints a thousand words


Thats just a gap in my data. 2 days out of 2000 trading days. Hard to think that would effect the results too significantly.

G’day lads. I have set up a demo account running two bots and linked into myfxbook for all to see.

First of all the all import link Turtle Traders System by forexbob70 | Myfxbook

Now about the bots. First bot trades the 1 hr chart with a time filter. Logic is if no trades exists, open a buystop and sellstop at the upper and lower donchain break channel. SL is set a a multiple of the ATR. No TP. Orders are then cancelled, recalculated and refilled every hour (during trading) until one order gets filled. OCO. Trade management is by a stepped TS. First the TS trails immediately at the ATR multiple from the breakout DC. Second it then locks in BE at open price until the trailing DC level passes this point. The stop then trails at this level until it is hit, the order closed and it starts all over again.

2nd bot trades the 4 hr chart. Works the same trade logic but uses fib levels to define inside channel levels instead of ATR. I’ve simplified it from the one mention in an earlier post about this strategy. It has a fixed TP but now has a active TS set at these inside channel levels.

Risk is % Account Balance. For ego but also because of back testing I’ve set for 1% to keep a constant. Personally I’m expecting draw down to be 30 to 35% at this level and could easily last for 4 to 6 mths. As more pairs get added this %risk is expected to be reduced.

Settings for DC levels, trading times, ATR etc are the results of extensive back testing over the past 10 years. They’ll be a reflection of my skill as a tester. Which probably is not very good :). The past is no guarantee of the future. Time will determine the results. Initially we’ll trade the EURUSD, GBPUSD and USDJPY. I’ll add more pairs over time.

So maybe in a years time will be discussing a 200% growth in the demo account. Maybe in 6 weeks we’ll be thankful that it wasn’t a real account. Who knows? Who cares! The journey will be fun.

As normal I will make these bot available but this time I’m not giving them away. You’ll have to PM me. And don’t be disappointed if you don’t get a response. If you have contributed to this thread or the forum in general I will be happy to share. If not better piece together a good argument.

Very Interesting! DC is as old as the hills. Turtles played with this so I guess it has some merit. Only in trending markets. That being said, good money management should save the drawdown a bit. Definitely not a bad long term idea.

Good luck BB

Thanks my friend. But I do give credit to forexmike and Adrian for renewing my interest in DC. I hope they and those following get something from the process I go through. Hope to have the turtle strategy to add soon but I think I need to send the code in for people smarter than me to fine tune.

Can’t wait to see your work live. Hope that comes together soon for you.

Bob

Thanks BB. I can’t wait either. It needed to be done.

R there any good places I can lean how to back test on mt4. I want to do some back testing. Seeing what bob did has me inspired to learn.

Interesting strategy, looks pretty accurate. Will have to backtest it and forward test it.

hi bob,

looking forward to seeing how it works out in a forward test…

i was busy the last days, so i had no time to post…was also thinking about some other trading ideas…

new idea about DCs…

  • on close of candles look if there is a new high/low of DC 20, if yes, put pending order…also if there are already open positions…
  • for new open position place additional opposite order at DC 10 (that acts as SL, at least at Oanda using first-in first-out system)…no real SL used
  • position size is a fixed percentage of equity (Oanda calculates that automatically)…so it might close only parts of the open position (if in the meantime equity changed significantly) or it’s closed entirely and directly opened a position in the other direction…this could work like a portfolio-style where you only adjust position size depending on price development…

thoughts if that makes sense are appreciated…

Mike

Will have a think bro.

Well up n running. Monday had dramas. Forgot rule 1.0.1. Change the magic numbers but no harm done. Markets suffered from Mondayitize as normal and any trade triggered suffered a loss. Yesterday I hand a power outage during the Asian session. Thats never good but again don’t think it would have made a difference. Today everything running perfectly and I hope you caught the current moves on the GBPUSD n USDJPY. Profits are locked in and the account will be in the black. Hard thinking about the profits we will give up if the markets turn. Currently up 4.7%. Profits locked in at 2.4%. But then that’s the turtle way. Make your money on relatively few trades. Try n break even the rest of the time.

Going to bed now so we’ll see what happens tomorrow.

I think the results show that it is possible to profit from trading price ranges as short as one and four hours. But I can’t trade those types of ranges for lack of time. I guess if I had a robot do it for me I could do it. But the shortest I can trade manually is daily. And, if I did trade an intraday range, I would pick just one and trade other ranges longer than a day. I think the ranges between ten days and twenty weeks offer enough system diversification to overcome the problem of trading curve fitted systems. Because of that I will always trade a spectrum of systems ranging through that range.

-Adrian


Now closing the third week since that last post, USD/CHF has had three weeks with lower lows and lower highs. The stops have not moved and the trade sits largely unchanged.

-Adrian


GBP/JPY is on fire. It has moved up by about 9% since the dip below the 200 day moving average in April. It has posted higher highs and higher lows over the last three weeks. The four week channel has moved further into profitability. The ten week channel has just one more week before it will begin to move upward so long as prices stay up. This pair is at a level not seen since September/October 2008 when the financial crisis pushed it down 50% in just 5 months.

-Adrian


Yesterday, the GBP/USD broke out to a new four week high above the 200 day moving average for the first time since about a year ago. With that, my stop order was triggered and I went long GBP/USD on the 4 week channel on this trade. It also broke fresh ten week and twenty week highs to be traded as well.

-Adrian

I caught GBPJPY for real good amount of pips but I closed. GBPCAD still letting run.

G’day bro. Been into posting pictures tonight. heres one.

All seriousness, na that’s boring. Hope all been well. Don’t know if “possible” can be used right now. I think what we have demonstrated is that its probable. I still think that the only certainty lays on the daily or weekly charts. Until we gather some data forward testing to compare with our back tests I think it’s still to early to make a call. Remember the purpose of historical testing is to develop our manual systems.

Also I am having a tough time finding valid parameters on AUSUSD USDCAD and EURGBP. I’m starting to think volatility has a big part to play. It’s hard to spot on the back tests but a keen eye would notice that during periods of draw down the average lot size increased. This would be due solely because ATR is usded to determine SL and ATR is a measure of volatility. On my other bot for the 4 HR where I use a fixed SL n TP, XXXJPY pairs yields are a lot stronger. Work, work, work!

Well Mike, getting close to the end of the first week and it’s always nice to start off strong

Interesting to note how we have touched on MM. Yesterday just after New York open our equity was sitting at $11 450 compared to $10 900 of now. Would a trader smarter then me - and that’s not hard - have closed shop for the week. Adrian is an investor. He’s looking long term. We however are speculating and there is a big difference. We have to lock in profits. All that back testing means nothing if we can’t manage our basket.

Pyramiding is a successful strategy used by investors (and the turtles). IMO but there’s not much use for it speculating. It leaves us over-exposed. A new high on a candle on a higher time frame is nothing more than a DC break on a lower. And from what I understand this is what you do anyway trading multiple time frames. I don’t think there’s any advantage adding to a position on the current time frame being speculated on. With that said I do like your line of thought and am interested in results if you decide to take it further. We could differently try to add it into a bot.

Fixing of position size, I think is a personal choice. I like % balance over equity. Equity includes unrealized profits. Key word - unrealized. Also remember the turtles traded a notional balance reviewed yearly or against draw down. This in fact might be the best option for us. Back to MM again. More work ahead. Just as well we love it.