Wow Graviton!
Just found your thread and already you have 16 pages. Interesting about the 15 pip ladder. I thought it was 30-40 pips. I was doing 30 on the Cable today and wasn’t working for me as the PA just wasn’t moving that far before retracing a bit. 15 would propbaly work better. I’ll give it a try.
Graviton - thanks for a great thread!
Regarding your 5 lot position sizing;
At another +15 pips we close lot #1 for 30 pips profit. Move lot #2 SL to capture +15 pips. Move lot #3 to BE and enter lot #4 with a 15 pip SL. We have now captured 30 pips profit and removed all risk from the trade.
Isn’t that the same as moving the stop losses for lot #1 to +30, lot #2 to +15, lot #3 to b/e and leaving the new lot #4 at -15? If we close and reopen, aren’t we paying spreads for nothing?
Is the following table what you described?
Price Lot Entry Stop Risk
Total Lots = 1
100 #1 100 80 -20
---
-20
Total Lots = 2
120 #1 100 100 0
120 #2 120 100 -20
---
-20
Total Lots = 3
140 #1 100 120 20
140 #2 120 120 0
140 #3 140 120 -20
---
0
Total Lots = 4
160 #1 100 140 40
160 #2 120 140 20
160 #3 140 140 0
160 #4 160 140 -20
---
40
Total Lots = 5
180 #1 100 160 60
180 #2 120 160 40
180 #3 140 160 20
180 #4 160 160 0
180 #5 180 160 -20
---
100
I thought
if PA bounced off SR and will go against? He may lose his profit
On the other hand 12 candles are not that much hmm
I think I can answer for Graviton here, although I could be wrong.
What I do know is that his R:R is 1:2, so he risks 1 for every 2 reward. Your table there is showing a 1:1 RR.
If you factor in the R:R of his lots system, it would be -
Price Lot Entry Stop Risk
Total Lots = 1
100 #1 100 90 -10
---
-10
Total Lots = 2
110 #1 100 100 10
110 #2 110 100 -10
---
0
Total Lots = 3
120 #1 100 120 20 <-closed and 20 profit kept
120 #2 110 110 10
120 #3 120 110 -10
---
20
Total Lots = 4
130 #1 100 120 20 <-closed and 20 profit kept
130 #2 110 130 20 <-closed and 20 profit kept
130 #3 120 120 10
130 #4 130 120 -10
---
40
Total Lots = 5
140 #1 100 120 20 <-closed and 20 profit kept
140 #2 110 130 20 <-closed and 20 profit kept
140 #3 120 140 20 <-closed and 20 profit kept
140 #4 130 130 10
140 #5 140 130 -10
---
60
You would then continue to run the last two lots to 20 pips profit each, netting a total of 100 pips, while at the end the risk is still only 10 pips.
Or run it at 15:30.
Now, is this just the same as running 1 lot up to 100 pips and continually moving the SL to BE at every significant point (ie, where you would open a new lot)? I don’t think it is, as the price would have to go up to 100 pips above the intial entry. With this system, the price only has to go up to 70 pips above the initial entry (those numbers are based off of a 10:20, and of course would change for a 15:30 or a 20:40).
The spread? Well, 5 lots trading on say a 2 pip spread pair, would mean a total of 10 pips gone to the spread. Even adding that to to 70 pips would mean a total of 80 pips needed with the 5 lots system, as apposed to the 102 pips needed for the single entry (100 pips profit target plus the spread).
So, the 5 lots proves to be more profitable at a ratio of 80:102, or 8:10.2,
I hope my maths is correct there 
Yes, you would still have to look for your entries manually. I know no way of automating that.
cordite,I am still thinking about this method. Does it looks to you like “set and forget”. does it? I will try to use it on H1 chart tonight 
Even though I’m always saying I trade price, not time, there is something to be said for the time value of your margin. After a period of time tying your margin up in a trade that just is not performing just does not make sense. You do have to give your trade time to develop, and in a slow market that could be hours if you are trading a H1 timeframe, but we paint pretty pictures in our head about what a trade is supposed to do. A good trade to me will move in my direction soon after I enter it and keep moving that way at least long enough for me to move my sl to be. a bad trade will go a little negative and either stall a little negative or keep going negative. There is nothing wrong with exiting what you consider to be a bad trade in my system. I just exited one on usd cad for this very reason. This is the gut feel of trading that I find so hard to mechanize. Of course there will be retracements in the course of even a very good trade, but that’s not the case we are talking about. We are talking about a trade entry that has stalled, tying up margin and not conforming to that pretty picture we have of a good trade. Anytime a trade does not follow your plan for it, consider exiting it and finding one that will follow your plan. That’s the way I usually handle this situation. So I guess I agree with that post.
Of course if you knew the trend would continue the optimum would be to put 5 lots on at the beginning and ride it to the end, just paying spread one time. But you can never know that with certainty in advance. So to guarantee we get some profit out of the trade, I pull 30 pip chunks of profit off the top and put on 15 pip’s of risk on the bottom as long as it continues. But note that once you hit BE on the first lot you have really taken all the risk out of the trade and there is nothing but profits the rest of the way. Never re-introduce risk to your capital in a trade once you have removed it.
Yes, you will pay spreads to use this system, but you are winning those spreads, so you are paying for them with profits, not trading capital. That makes a big difference. As long as you are pulling 30 pip chunks of profit off the top, in a sense, spreads don’t matter. You are using profits to make more profits. Cutting losses short and letting profits run. Good trading, in my own humble opinion.
Tymen has approved this 5 lot position trading as a reasonable alternative to his two lot system. His only comment was it depends on the trend continuing, which is the whole basis of MTFTT. No trend, no profits, so do your trend analysis throughly. Don’t take trades that don’t look as though they have a nice long trend ahead of them. Stick to H1 and H4 timeframes. M30 is a minimum that I have mixed results on. As always, throughly test in demo before going live. I recommend at least three months of demo testing before going live.
Happy Trading
I’ve discussed the nasty ways to get more trades at the expense of more stopouts. I can’t say I’d recommend any of them. You can try them in demo if you like, but I’d never risk real capital on any of them.
Here is the cleanest way I know to get more trades with more stopouts. This deviates from Tymen’s system and I’m sure he would have questions about it. Here, we add another inner set of Bollinger Bands to our chart with the setting of 20 periods and only 1 standard deviation. Just give them a different color so they will stand out as different. Then if you are convinced you want to make an entry, but the PA never quite penetrates the outside band, use Tymen’s BB DNA entry system with the inside BB for entry.
In theory, this should yield about twice the number of trades with only 15% or so more stopouts. This should only be used in conjunction with MTFTT and every trick in the book should be used to protect capital.
I have only had a short time to test this system, but it looks close to performing according to theory, twice the number of trades with 15% more stopouts. I am testing it in demo right now, and as always, I insist you test this, or anything that deviates from Tymen’s tested system, in demo for three months before going live with it.
Happy Trading
Sorry to be a pain, but if you close one lot at +30 and open another at -15, you might as well have just moved the stop of the first to +15. same risk, same reward, one less spread.
NB, read my post above. It shows that even with the spread included the total amount of pips you have to aim for to achieve the same result is reduced because of the overlapping nature of the 5 lot system.
Given that then, would you consider ever using more than 5 lots, should a trend be so strong that you hit all 5 of your normal TP in, say, 8 candles?
I can’t see any reason not to personally, but am I missing something?
I do agree that exiting a trade if it feels like it is going against your picture is a wise move if done correctly, as looking at the historical charts using this entry method, the successful trades always go straight into a trend, without any kind of real retracement. In that respect, the SL could be seen as a kind of final ultimate stoploss to protect you from power outtages, computer failure etc (Tymen has an exact term for that kind of stoploss but the name escapes me)…
I guess it’s in the fine tweaking that a system moves from theoretically workable to practically workable and enjoyably profitable.
cordite - your table with lots =2 should show a -10 risk.
lots =3 should show risk +10
The risk is the difference between your entry and your stop.
If you just entered a 2nd lot at +10 and kept moving the stops up you’d do just as well.
hi guys
been following Tymen`s thread and now i have descovered this one
i must say that Graviton is doing a great job.
keep up the good work
NB, I think you’re confused about how it works.
You arn’t closing a trade then re-entering, you are overlapping trades.
That’s why my lot = 2 has a risk of -10 (at least if I understand your table rules correctly).
You enter a new trade when the previous lot is half way towards it’s take profit, so in the case of LOT = 2, then the first lot is showing a profit of 10 pips, so you enter a new lot. This makes two lots currently being traded, the 1st which has a risk of 0 as it is set at BE, and the 2nd with a risk of -10 because that is the stoploss.
Then as LOT 1 makes it’s TP of +20, so the 2nd LOT gets set to BE, and a third LOT is entered (because LOT 2 is now in +10 profit). And so on, and son on…
So to recap, these are overlap trades, not back to back trades. if they were back to back you would be quite correct in your statement that the cost of the spread makes it an ineffective system. By being overlap, the spreads are covered and it is more efficient.
I hope I’ve explained it correctly.
Yes, It’s called PCI stoploss. Power, computer, internet. That and quick reversals are really the only reason I run a stoploss. I try to exit trades before sl as soon as I see it’s not going to work. But I always have one.
I can’t say this will work for you. If it does, great! I prefer to take my profits off in chunks of 20, 30, 40 pips at a time. It works for me. I took off 220 pips in small chunks today, Would I have stayed with those trades when I was already 100 pips ahead and the market was tanking? Once stopped out would I have gone back in for another 120 pips?
When I make 220 pips in a day, I’m not worried about spread cost. I’m worried about not losing it back. If that costs me a bit more in spread, I’m happy to pay it.
Graviton, Any chance of a quick wrap-up on how your trades worked today?
Sure. Today was one of those wild days. I was trading in the chat room with several other people from this and Tymen’s thread. I think just about everyone was winning, so we were having fun. I had been short GPBUSD, EURUSD AUDUSD and long USDJPY. I entered at the open of the NY session and was up about 200 pips by the close of the London session. I then lost 50 pips back in a quick market reversal. My open positions all stopped out. Fortunately I was running very tight stops at the time. Then the bottom dropped out of the EURUSD right after the NY close and I made 70 pips back. Apart from the quick nasty retracement after the London close, everything went according to the pretty picture in our collective heads.
I won’t post on this again… but if you close 20 pips of profit and enter another position with 10 pips of risk, you could have just moved your original order’s stop up by 10 and achieved the same thing minus the extra spread. Surely we can agree on that.
If you just entered a 2nd lot at +10 and kept moving the stops up you’d do just as well.
I’m not suggesting this as a strategy. Just that it would have similar expectancy to cordite’s example.
I like the idea of getting 5 lots on while only risking 1 stop. That’s genius Graviton and I’m grateful for your inspiration.
I had 4 lots on GBP/USD short last night. Incredible pips. Compare that with my previous strategy which was to put on 1 lot, take 1/2 off the table at first target and let the rest run. The risk/reward difference is not just out of sight, it’s off the planet!