could you start a thread and thoroughly explain your system? maybe you could enter it in the contest if it’s that good.
was this during all these ulgy days?
@Sith Jawa, may I ask you if this rule applies only for indecision candles or for any candle?
When there is more than one signal in a row (ie you enter a trade based on a 4 hour signal, and than the next four hour candle also produces a signal), and the second signal is opposing the first signal (ie the first signal says buy and the second one says sell) than you use both 4 hour periods as a filter to determine whether or not the opposing signal is valid, (you use the combined 8 one hour candles from both signals), to do this, the second signals close must break the high of all the previous candles closes (if looking to buy), and the second signals close must break the low of all the precious candles closes (if looking to sell), If the signal does not pass the filter, ignore the signal (no trade)
Thanks
Yes I will do my best. I may not be able to do it until the week after next as I am on vacation next week. May post some but not sure.
To be honest I only caught the tail end of the bad days on Wednesday and then continued through today. I don’t mind leveraging my whole account because it’s just 1 pair and I’m guaranteed to never loose more than 25 pips. I did backtest this over the past several weeks with amazing results. It’s so simple that even a child can do it which is perfect for my simple mind. Lol. I hope it continues to work and everybody makes big pips.
Sorry guys. I am not trying to take over this thread with my own system. I will try and get my own thread started.
It is relevant to this thread as it is a variation of SJ’s method, but just a little simpler. Thanks to SJ who inspired my idea. Hope it can continue to be profitable. Can’t get my hopes too far up.
I was thinking about what sith jawa said in an earlier post about morning or Evening stars being basically an indecision (or pinbar) over at least 3 candles, so what’s the difference between these formations over than how long they take to form? And what about say over 5 or 10 or whatever candles that, say, open at a certain price, falls then turns and rises back up to somewhere close to where the first opened? Obviously the only factor that’s different is how long it takes, so more candles to make this formation, so my question is basically what difference does it make how long it takes to make what is called and indecision candle that is essentially just a drop (or rise) in price and then a rise (or fall) back to a similar level? Just a question I had in my mind that I thought was somewhat relevant to this thread!
Especially looking for siths thoughts on this as its to do with market psychology and if I’m right in saying is why this system is based on.
@kbforex: that is exactly right, a very good morning star, unfortunately right ebfore it was an eving star, and then another morning star after it aha, that market…
@Parrhesia42: When I had flat take profits and stop losses I would determine my risk at the start of the week and use it for each trade, noe because of the dynamic ATR settings it cant do that, but I do set a cap on the range of settings, meaning I have a minumim lot size and a maximum lot size but thats just my preference
@medisoft: that only applies to indecision candles 
the other filters so far have no filter for multiple signals
@traderjosh: Offshore brokers dont have to abide by CFTC rules and regulations, that means we can hedge, have high leverage, and dont have to abide by FIFO rules either it doesnt get in trouble because the U.S. Cant do anything about it as they are offshore
Feel free to develop your idea here before you open a thread, aha I dont care, I mean we are all here to trade the best we can and find the best way to do so, I would LOVE to hear any more ideas you might have and maybe I can help backtest them as well, Whatever I have in the system is the most optimum way I have found so far to trade, but if a trailing stop would do better I would definitely trade that way
That being said I have thoroughly backtested multiple trailing stop settings and I never found one to be optimum in all markets:
Pros:
Very Simple to Use
Very Few Losing Trades
In trending markets without opposing signals you will make a banks worth of pips
Cons:
In ranging markets they are inneffective
Your profit potential will always be a trailing stops worth of pips away from the actual optimal take profit
How far back have you backtested it? On how many pairs have you backtested it? How many trailing stop settings have you backtested on multiple pairs?
Another thing to note is trailing stops are impossible to accurately backtest as you cannot see the market as it is moving and you can’t accurately find out if it would’ve been stopped out or kept going on many trades, as well as this in very volatile markets you might get stoppd out instantly before the trade goes your way, I know many people use ATR trailing stops I think ATR x .5 is the norm
Another thing to remember is the risk you use per trade is very key to CONSISTENT trading success, if you lose two trades in a row leveraging your whole account you will be a t a HUGE drawdown, heck even if you lose one you’ll be hurting, and what if this happens in a ranging market where you might only make 10-15 pips per winning trade? I believe in using high risk but only when you have numbers and adaptibility to back it up Remember that using high risk will equal high reward, so the vast success may be more due to luck and high risk rather then consistent success of that rate
One thing to remember as well is as I said before the goal of this system is to trade as optimally as possible in all market conditions, and there are a number of market specifc optimizations that can be made, but that would require too much human interpratation for my liking
@everyone: Since some of you dont want the system to change too much I have only change to make
Directly after an evening or morning star if there is an indecision candle that has an opposing signal, ignore it!! through months of backtesting I haven’t seen one instance where the indecision candles direction has been correct
right now, the filter is only for indecision candles. I think SithJawa is seeing if it should be applied to other signals, like stars.
@juicypips: great question :D! Basicly an indecision candle shows the indecision in the market at a turning or continuation point, at the points in price we take the data we have and determine where it is MOST PROBABLE price will go by using the close to close idea
But with stars what we have is a formation that takes atleast 3 times as long to from, meaning right off the bat we have more data to use in our guess, secondly unlike indecision candles where we basicly guess where we think the price will move with stars we have confirmation that the price will move that way! Because we see the trend in place, the indecision, and then we enter after the direction change is CONFIRMED, rather then just making an informed guess
So what makes them stronger signals than say 6 full bodied candles where the first three drop in price and the next three rise to somewhere near the open of the first? (I’m just curious )
@juicypips: Because at that point we would be trading in the middle or towards the end of the change in trend, meaning the entry would not be as safe and our pip targets would not have a high chance of being reached
A star gets us in the moment the direction change is confirmed
The idea is really nice and simple. Tested only for a random day or 2 and it worked quite well. As it is just one simple rule + trailing stop it should be rather easy and quick to get an EA for this method. I think programming this EA would be faster than backtesting 
Maybe you can find someone and report the results. If its constantly profitable we would need an EA anyway because its constantly on 1h chart and takes therefore much more time.
I don’t quite get your idea, traderjosh, do you mind putting a detailed post, some of us are kinda simple minded (me)
and yes, EAs make backtesting much faster, but I see SJ’s point about trailing stops not working for backtests.
Yea absolutely I see what you mean, I guess it all boils down to probability! Its less likely that a formation formed over that many candles will keep going in the direction of entry as price would have already moved quite a few pips in that direction by that point!
Yes I will go into detail a little later. I am extremely busy here in the ratrace of life and work. Maybe if get a chance I will explain better tonight what I am doing. Tj
I see what you’re saying, TJ, about having a bit more margin since 25 pips would be half of 50 pip SL, which is what GJ averaged this week, so to risk 5%, would be double the lot size, but the amount of profitable trades and their respective profit in pips would need to have good Risk to Reward ratio. I don’t think I would go more than 5% risk of account on any single trade.
That would be great. Any further ideas to expand upon in this thread are a benefit to everyone who has been following.
For all of you discouraged with SJ system, Just take a look at some of the weekly charts and you will see that it was a strange directionless week. It was an entire indecision week. G/J and A/J were both inside bars on the weekly chart. I don’t even think they made half the pips of the previous week on both pair.
Just trying to keep things in perspective here.
I’m curious. Do you know what happens to candles when we are not in daylight savings time? Sith Jawa, did you backtested the strategy on a non DST week?
I’m going to add the ignore of IC after stars to my trading.
Thanks.
(Update: Please check the bottom of post)
Ok Guys here it goes.
Very simple strategy.
I am simple minded so I am going to try to explain this in simple terms.
This works on any pair that has pretty good movement (G/J for me)
This is a variation of SJ’s method.
- When a 1hr candle closes (and the close is lower than the 3rd previous candles close before it) then we go short.
- When a 1hr candle closes (and the close is higher than the 3rd previous candles close before it) then we go long.
SL and TP are as follows
- When trade is made place a 25 pip trailing stop.
- I have found in backtesting that if it reverses 25 pips then it is more than likely a true reversal.
- There has been a lot of extensive study on how true reversals are confirmed if there has been a 20-30 pip retracement from an extreme price point. (see the thread started by [B]relativity[/B] called: What really turned my trading around) In fact I wish relativity could weigh in on this and give his thoughts.
- You are only out of the trade if either: Your trailing stop has been hit or The candle formations now have changed direction and it is time to go the other way.
-If your trailing stop is hit you simply stay out of the market until the current 1hr candle closes and go with whatever the current signal is.
-This is not hard to backtest even with a trailing stop because we are using only 1hr charts so you can usually see if there was a 25 pip reversal from the extreme price points.
-Now I am going to tell you how dumb and illiterate I am using MT4. I don’t even know how to use an EA properly, much less make one, somebody else will have to do that and then show me how to use it. 
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So now lets play devils advocate? What if the signal says go Long however [B]recent[/B] momentum is moving Down? To be honest I don’t know the answer, maybe somebody can give their ideas. I may have like a 3 pip rule if momentum is going the opposite direction.
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They say to never put all your eggs in one basket but I have to disagree in this case.
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My opinion is you should only trade one pair of your choice
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After all, You are in the market 95% of the time anyway so you might as well put your leverage in one trade.
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Remember you are never going to loose more than 25 pips on a single trade.
Please guys, give me your input and lets not get sidetracked from SJ’s full method. He has traded this for a long time with results and I have only traded this for 2 days.
The good news is I almost doubled my live (small) micro account in those two days.
Update Update!! Unfortunately this isn’t as cut and dry as previously thought. Further backtesting has revealed a necessary filter: When taking a trade the previous candle close must be in the directiion of the trade. So (for instance) if the signal says go long but the candle close is down do not enter the trade.
My thougths are that this must be heavely backtested, in various scenarios. It feels to me like an observation of a trending market, but has holes that must be checked with backtest.