I have developed a system and it suddenly became a good one when I added a [U]trailingP[/U] stop of [U]2 points[/U]. When I then added a spread of 2 pips I go bankrupt with a starting capital of 10.000. When I move the trailing stop to [U]2.1 points[/U], suddenly my system generates a profit of 286% in 13 months or so.
Can any of you smart guys explain me how this is possible? I don’t understand it. I really don’t.
And what with slippage? If I get a little bit of slippage I go bankrupt…?
How are you differentiating between “points” and “pips”, in your post above?
2.0/2.1 pips is too small a stop-loss to be realistic, for spot forex.
Are you asking about spot forex, or something like commodity futures (in which “points” are divided into “ticks”)?
If your stop-loss is within the stated spread (if a broker would even allow that?!), then trades will be stopped out “by definition”, perhaps? Have you actually looked at charts, and seen what’s going on, or are you depending on outputs from some kind of automated backtesting software, without actually seeing what it’s doing and how?
I’m talking about futures, dax. My stoploss is now 2.5 points and it should work great (backtest says…). I looked at the chart what happened, not all of the trades, but it seems to work well. Thanks for your response!
Ah, thanks - that makes sense. (I thought your context [I]sounded[/I] like commodity or index futures, but the “dear Forextraders” bit made me doubt it). Yes, 2.5 points isn’t so unreasonable for index futures, of course, and is a commonly used stop-loss for intraday trading of instruments like ES, NQ and so on. Good luck with it!
I’m sorry about that. The dear Forextraders was to be friendly against you people, since I think most of you here trade forex. I hoped forextraders would also want to help a futurestrader ;-). Thank you very much for your response, and now I feel more comfortable about the result. If it works like it does in the backtest, I’ll be very happy The dax has a tick rate of 0.5. And ES 0.25 if I don’t make a mistake. So there is a difference though. I will test it further first… Have a nice day/night.
The dax has a tick rate of 0.5. And ES 0.25 if I don’t make a mistake. So there is a difference though. I will test it further first… Have a nice day/night.