I’ve been running a PSAR EA for the 4 days of last week and all of this week, on 4 different demo accounts to be able to compare different strategies.
The common features for all 4 are: set to place trades from 08h15 GMT to 15h00 GMT, set to use H4 for entries, risk set on 3%, PSAR trailing stop, PSAR set on 0.035 and 0.08, move to B/E after 35 pips. I focus only on the total profit, not individual trades, so when I judge the profit is decent enough I close all trades and leave that account blank until the next day.
The strategies are:
PSAR as is, no filter, but closing manually, usually around 15h00 GMT
PSAR with D1 trend filter, closing manually as above
PSAR as is, no filter, no manual closing, running full-time apart from the time restriction for placing trades
PSAR with D1 trend filter, running continuously as in #3.
The first 2 strategies started last week well, with #1 doing best. It made about 28% return last week, but lost small amounts on all 5 days of this week. It closed about 10% up overall, courtesy of the 28% it made the previous week. Strategy 2 made 8.1% last week, but then lost on 4 days this week, making up a little today. It ended on 6.8% overall (ending balance = $1068).
Strategies 3 and 4 were slow starters, but over this week have managed to build their equity amazingly. #3 ended the testing period with 80% profit (it’s true!), or a balance of $1802 made from $1000 since last Tuesday morning. Strategy 4 closed with a ‘mere’ 51.9% profit.
It is clear that the D1 trend filter reduces profits, but it might enhance reliability in the long-term - time will tell. The 80% return made by Strategy 3 is unbelievable, and it might prove to be just that - win big this week, lose big next week. I wish I’d had real money on that one, but next week I might be singing a different tune.
I recorded total profit for #1 and #2 each hour of the trading period. There seems to be an early peak between 10h00 and 11h00 GMT and a bigger one (which is when I closed all trades most days) between 14h00 and 15h00 GMT.
Hi Alistair, the PSAR used for position entry and exit definitely works. I had a poster a few months back trying to tell me it was only for setting Stop Losses…
My EA has a trade limit (robot stops after say 3-5 trades) and a position limit switch that sets how many positions are open at one time (default 1) with logic controlling drawdown. It also utilises Equity protection so if drawdown exceeds say 0.7% it closes the position and stalls the bot. Another switch stops the robot at the end of a trend if required, which will be useful on longer TF’s. I have it running on a few different TF’s with more success on 15min +.
The Slope MA controls the PSAR by stopping the bot trading against the longer trend.
Once again with this strategy I do not use TP or SL’s. The MA change of direction (colour) and confirmation by the PSAR will close or open the position. Chart below is the EURUSD (1H) prior to the weekend.
It is not always as pretty as above and It does get tripped up by price action hence I limit the amount of total trades depending on pair volatility. This strategy is still running on a demo and has added 23% to a $1000 account (0.05 lots) over 2 weeks, although it is not active full time.
Still requires a lot of logic coding to sort the issue when price is ranging. I’m trying to get the bot to understand the length and slope angle of a trend to filter out trading during congestion.
How has your PSAR bot being going? Would you be willing to send it to me? It has some functions that are not provided with the PSAR EA I am currently using and I’d be interested in using both side-by-side to see what effect the additional functions have.
