Thank you so much for making this post. It is possible to learn some important lessons from this post.
I think it is possible to move easily in trading if you can keep yourself away from emotions. I always trade with a target that can bring me 10% profit per month. So it is better to maintain a journal and trade.
So today I made alot of progress integrating my indicators together.
I’ve made some nice tweaks to the code, so instead of my confirmation indicators being below and directional, it’s greying out the candle body when there is no confirmed trend.
I’ve also added a label for the ATR value as this is the main thing I use ATR for when working out my SL and TP values.
The Red banded areas are low volume (data taken from the 4hr chart).
Unfortunately the trades I put on the other day all very quickly turned around and went to Stop losses or close to, so we’ve had a quick turn around in fortunes.
Will have to keep working to get my Backtestable TV strategy ready so I can backtest a load more settings and see if there’s anything I can use to improve the system long term.
For now, my previous backtesting and Demo showed real promise, so I’ll continue and see where it goes.
Doesn’t look the prettiest at all right now!
For anyone interested in the updated combined indicator it’s here;
I’ll work on turning the same into a strategy from here on
So things still going quite well.
I’m enjoying the routine, exercise first thing after dropping the kids at school, spending a couple of hours on trading related activities, couple of hours after lunch doing housework, projects, hobbies etc, then a couple of hours with the kids after school before bed.
Trading at 8 PM for 15/20 mins (will be back to 9PM after the UK Clocks change this weekend).
So trades wise, just plugging on at the moment, not making any changes at the moment but simply following the process and seeing where it takes us. Gathering data, dealing with the emotions, getting used to the process and making it routine at the goals at the moment, and that is successful so far.
With regards tradingview algo, I’ve been making some really good progress combining all my indicators and tidying up the code. I believe I’m ALMOST happy that it’s got all the functions I need.
Once this is ready, I’ll start working converting it to a backtestable strategy. As my combined indicator has lots of selectable options, for the baseline, exit, confirmation, volume and ATR’s including Type and lengths I can use it to optimize the strategy own timebases and pairs with tens of thousands of combinations.
I do believe the strategy has an edge, I’ve just got to prep things to make life easy to improve it!!!
So little bit of chillout time this evening as the boys were being good.
Decided to do a little more coding after sorting out my new home made fermenting chiller/warmer for my homemade wines.
I tidied up some code, and then added actual Takeprofit and Stoploss Prices calculated and displayed on the chart, so when my indicator shows an Entry it’s an even quicker process to setup the positions.
Also things are going my direction again with the Equity, so it’s feeling good…
AND… I never checked the account balance deliberately once between trading last night and today.
So all in all 110% at the moment.
I might not be that much closer to my Aston Martin, maybe just closer to a Big Mac meal, but I’m definitely working on becoming a trader.
Whoa. Now THAT is cool.
Don’t get me Started on my wines… the thread isn’t big enough
I’m not very knowledgeable about wine, but I do like it. I like malbec and sweet wine. What is that a rosé?
I’m not trying to digress for too long, but do you have a vineyard? Do you buy your grapes from a vineyard? Do different corks affect the fermentation? How long do you keep the bottles sealed for? How important is humidity?
Uh oh. I may have just opened Pandora’s box…
ha ha ha
I’m not that far into it. I made fruit wines, just a variety of store bought fruits.
Prune and Banana was one of my favorites so far!
You making hooch, bro?
Only the finest in 30 miles lol
Prison hooch.
So nothing exciting to note at this point.
I’ve spent about 10 more hours over the weekend coding my Strategy Backtester for tradingview.
Made some really good progress, but still alot to go.
I made a few little tweaks to me Combined Indicator I’m using for the trading, the main one being I changed the text at the side of the screen that tells me my TP and TSL prices. I’ve made it change to Red when there is a Short Entry that meets my rules, and Blue when there is a long.
It litterally takes 3 mins to flip through all pairs now at 9pm!
On the live trades front, we’re still in profit, which is better than loss, BUT it’s a little annoying to see a drawdown from the top we had by as much as we have.
The quicker I can get my strategy tester running and shake down my settings further the better on that front.
Until then though, it’s all systems go, stick to the process and see it through.
Ok so today was an interesting day to say the least.
On my normal trading front, I’ve not really done anything.
There were a couple of Stop losses, a couple of take profits and that’s about it.
Yet again the actual process of checking the trades, checking the news, taking new trades was a painless fine art.
The interesting thing that happened was after my GF and I went for a walk to the lighthouse this morning.
I had received a response from someone who I’d reached out to, to be involved in the beta testing of an EA.
The EA is based loosely on NNFX type principles, but it has means to auto optimise settings, and also some advanced risk management settings via equity curves etc
I’ve been included in the Beta, and have started using an MetaTrader 5 account and a demo with Pepperstone.
Only done maybe 3 hours or setting and optimising so far but if the backtest is to believed I’m blown away.
Will keep playing this this for a few weeks then I plan to implement a demo of it and just leave it to run for a few weeks while I’m away offshore and see what the results are.
I’m going to keep pushing on with my TradingView manual stuff in the mean time.
Chris
Again nothing really exciting to report on my manual traded algo, still pushing on.
Still in profit and gathering data slowly.
I’ve been messing about and optimizing the MT5 EA and I’m blown away at the backtesting results at this point.
I’m hoping to deploy it into demo soon and see how it performs forward rather than back testing.
Good job! I’d like to see how it turns out. Keep going!
Not like i understand anything I read on that script (being a newbie and all), but well done for the effort you have put into this journey.
Cheers man!
So I’m going to start breaking my journal entries into 3 parts from now on, to make things easier…
Personal Aspect
So I’ve spent most of my trading time this last 2 1/2 weeks since I’ve been home working on the processes rather than spending time trading.
That’s not to say I’ve not been trading, but I’ve been focusing on the next steps, the improvements, rather than looking at my balance between trading times etc.
I sit down to carry out the trades at the same time each night, but I don’t go back on in between now, and I don’t check the app. I trust the process. It’s actually quite liberating and relaxing.
I’m definately looking to see what I can improve and how I will get there.
Tomorrow I start the journey back to the Oil Rig for my 3 weeks away. I’ll spend some time while I’m there working on both the Manual Trading AND the EA side.
Mechanical Manual Trading
So we’ve closed a month out, and I’ll be honest I’m feeling partly delighted, partly disappointed.
I said I’d take the account balance on the first weekend of every month, rather than the equity, this is a fairer way I believe.
So the current standing is £1007.62. This is 0.76% up from the start of the month.
We’ve also gone over 100 trades now.
At peak we were at a balance of 1080, so it’s quite a DD from the peak, also the equity peaked at something like 1140. I believe current equity is about 1040.
It shows that there is still quite a lot of volatility in my equity curve, BUT that’s something I’ll be attempting to address through my strategy testing in tradingview, and a review of all the closed trades in my logs.
Certainly nothing giving me great concern at this point.
I’ll have some time to work on coding my TradingView strategy tester over the next few weeks, once I have this ready, it should give me much more scope to backtest new indicators and settings in my strategy.
EA Auto Trading
This has been my major focus this last week.
I had to find a decent MT5 compatible broker, one regulated by the FCA in the UK.
I was hoping Oanda (my current broker were going to have a date for this, but they only currently offer it in Japan not the US or Europe. They say this is coming soon but won’t commit to a date).
I’ve settled on Pepperstone.
So I’ve joined the Beta for the Quantside EA, and have been shaking it down and learning both the EA and MT5 this week. This has been great and I’ve been talking to the programmer and giving feedback.
I’m VERY impressed by the functions of this EA, and have been focusing more on learning HOW to do things, rather than creating a specific Algo at this point.
One of the things that makes me want to relinquish control of at least part of my trading it an EA is continuity. if I can have the trades run in my absence, it allows me to become more flexible with my work.
Ideally once I get my trading making consistent profits, I’d like to leave my full time position, and move to agency working and also go back to studying Computing.
Specifically I’d like to incorporate Machine learning and AI into a degree in computing.
I already program robots (Oil Drilling machines) as part of my job. I’d like to prepare myself for the next generation of equipment in industry, but also could maybe make my own EA with a machine learning element.
So progress wise, I’m going to continue working with the developer and see if there’s any input and help I can give, then once it launches for full release I’ll purchase the lifetime access and deploy it with real money.
I’d also like to deploy a more stringent risk managed version of the Algo into a Prop Firm such as the 5%ers and see if I can grow my investment pot that way.
I’ve been researching about Optimizing and Backtesting. Some very good info can be found here.
Cheers as always, Chris
Hi Chris,
I thoroughly enjoyed reading your posts since I commented about a month ago. It seems you have come a very long way with EA and programming. That is something I contemplated doing (and may still have an interest in) until Crypto came along and has been in bull territory now for all the time I have been participating (10 months). Some even say the crypto bull market will end on 28Sep2021. I hope it never ends.
Anyway, the reason for my post, other than to congratulate you for your tenacity, is to enquire about your experience with Trading View and to ask which flavour did you subscribe to? I have been using the charting but from within Coingecko, and have produced some pretty basic charts such as the word doc attached (for XRP moon trip yesterday). Not sure what I want to be able to do with regards to charting but since you know I started my career with Schlumberger, you will know that I will not shy away from data acquisition, processing and interpretation. To date, for the last 8 months, I have used no leverage with crypto - and that is because I have treated it like an investment, not a trade. From April onwards, I intend to allocate 25% of our crypto portfolio value to trading, and start using 2:1, then 4:1 leverage. Nothing crazy, but I will probably want to look at crypto trading entries and exits on the top 300 cryptos, if not more. So I was fascinated to see that you had created a TradingView template with some automatic TP and SL calculations based on entry value.
Please let me know what you have subscribed to (Pro, Pro+, Premium) to create your charts. It may push me to make a decision. Thanks again for your journey journal. Best of luck in the next 3 weeks offshore.05Apr21 XRP before breakout.docx (353.8 KB)
