Parabolic SAR - that's all!

[daxm]

Hello,

daxm:

Thanks for ‘fielding’ the question BUT I have to say that I have seen it too i.e. if Parabolic SAR is penetrated at ANY time during the day (period???) and you have the ‘facility’ to ‘refresh’ your charts (and if you don’t then the ‘refresh’ would be done when you logout or disconnect and then login and connect again) it CAN ‘change places’ or ‘jump’ from one side to the other depending on you charting package or broker. That’s why the ‘classic’ way would be to wait until the daily bar closes and base any trading decisions on Parabolic SAR AT THAT MOMENT. The problem is, of course, that this requires discipline for the simple reason that an hour later Parabolic SAR may get penetrated AGAIN in the opposite direction and it takes a lot to ‘stick to the indicator’ when you just know that you have another 23 hours of ‘nail biting’ to go before you’re able to act.

Thats a good point. My software (GFT) doesn’t paint a PSAR until the closing price.

[dpaterso]

I’ll be honest with you: that’s the way it is SUPPOSED to be. Even MT4 ‘suffers’ from this problem (as a matter of fact with MT4 you don’t EVEN have to ‘refresh’ it just ‘paints’ all by itself)!!!

[mule]

Actually - it made me think of a cartoon / drawing that I saw years ago:

It was a picture of a frog about to be eaten by a Pelican. The frog is already in the Pelican’s mouth but his arms are around the throat of the Pelican and the caption is ‘Never Give Up’! If anybody else has seen this drawing please let me know and if it is on the Internet give me the link - it would make an ideal avatar for me.

Here ya go:

[dpaterso]

That’s the one!!!

Thanks.

Edit:

(Actually: I appreciate the thought but didn’t want to appear as ungrateful for your trouble. Someone found it last year and I have it ‘pinned up’ near me so that I see it everyday, but thanks anyway, nice thought).

[mule]

@dpaterso

That’s the one!!!

Thanks.

Wow, you’re fast. Do you live on babypips.com?

[dpaterso]

No (well yes I suppose).

It keeps me from ‘messing with my trades’!!! Kind of a ‘win-win’ situation!!!

[mule]

LOL
I totally understand…my fingers are itching to close out my trades whenever they show the minutest profit, it’s taking all of my self-discipline to leave them alone until the psar changes direction

[mule]

(Actually: I appreciate the thought but didn’t want to appear as ungrateful for your trouble. Someone found it last year and I have it ‘pinned up’ near me so that I see it everyday, but thanks anyway, nice thought).

Heh, I didn’t think of checking the date when you actually posted the question

[fischerb]

I’ve been testing the icycloud system which is a permutation of parabolic SAR but uses bollingers as an entry decider. you have to try to avoid this in a protracted ranging period but so far great results on just about every currency but you need patience to find the trades as it’s done on a 4H TF and there are not that many trades in a day! It’s better for those that dont live in front of a terminal like me. it’s ok for after hours type trading i guess but the principles still apply. dont exit before the dot reverses! difficult to do when you have a profit of say $2000 showing…

[brendonvdh]

just finished reading the entire thread
took me over 2 weeks!!

(pat on th back)

so… where to next … hmm

[dpaterso]

WELL DONE!!! (And thank you. I hope you’ve learned something that will ‘stand you in good stead’ should you choose ‘this path’).

[mule]

Well.
I guess it’s a bit soon to draw conclusions after 24 hours of this system, but I went long on EUR/CAD, USD/CAD, USD/JPY and AUD/USD yesterday, and am now hovering around $1000 profitwise. Most exciting

(Note to self: This is a monitor, not a TV set. Stop watching the damned thing!)

[mule]

I hope you’ve learned something that will ‘stand you in good stead’ should you choose ‘this path’).

Well, [B]I[/B] definitely have
I have a question though. This is probably a very stupid question, but I’m still pretty much lost most of the time.

When you set the parabolic SAR options, which parameters do you fill in?
I’ve used the default:

Are these the settings that you use?

[mule]

Hmmm

Realised that you were using Delta, and downloaded a demo to see what’s what.
Now the weird thing is that I get discrepancies between the PSAR on Delta and the account I was using before, GlobalTrader.

For instance on the EUR/USD daily chart:
In GlobalTrader today’s PSAR is 1.4861
On Delta it’s 1.4874

Also I can’t figure out how to change the parameters on GlobalTrader to match those on Delta.

Makes me nervous, but on the other hand I’m still making profit, so I suppose it’s all good

[dpaterso]

Hello,

OK, well first, you have the default parameters shown which is quite right.

Second: you will probably NEVER find Parabolic SAR having the same values at any two brokers i.e. the slightest discrepanices in price, the different timezones, etc. etc. etc. will all play a part.

Just a word of warning (not to dampen your spirits or anything like that) but be careful with Parabolic SAR on it’s own. It has a very bad habit of letting you build a nice profit over a couple of days and then something happens (like a news event) and all your profits MAY go ‘down the toilet’ although, having said that, it’s not really something that you should worry about i.e. if you’ve chosen to follow Parabolic SAR ‘to the letter’ (and I believe that if you’re going to use this indicator then that’s the only way) then that just has to be acceptable to you sometimes.

[daxm]

Hello,

OK, well first, you have the default parameters shown which is quite right.

Second: you will probably NEVER find Parabolic SAR having the same values at any two brokers i.e. the slightest discrepanices in price, the different timezones, etc. etc. etc. will all play a part.

Just a word of warning (not to dampen your spirits or anything like that) but be careful with Parabolic SAR on it’s own. It has a very bad habit of letting you build a nice profit over a couple of days and then something happens (like a news event) and all your profits MAY go ‘down the toilet’ although, having said that, it’s not really something that you should worry about i.e. if you’ve chosen to follow Parabolic SAR ‘to the letter’ (and I believe that if you’re going to use this indicator then that’s the only way) then that just has to be acceptable to you sometimes.

I agree with you Dale.

Just remember though that PSAR is best used in a trending chart and not when a chart is relatively ranging or flat. PSAR will eat you alive there.

[mule]

Whoa, weirdness…I had replied to your post yesterday, but my reply seems to have been eaten.
LOL, or maybe I hit the back button instead of the submit button or something, I was a bit blurred around the edges.

Hello,

OK, well first, you have the default parameters shown which is quite right.

Second: you will probably NEVER find Parabolic SAR having the same values at any two brokers i.e. the slightest discrepanices in price, the different timezones, etc. etc. etc. will all play a part.

Ah thanks, that set my mind at rest

Just a word of warning (not to dampen your spirits or anything like that) but be careful with Parabolic SAR on it’s own. It has a very bad habit of letting you build a nice profit over a couple of days and then something happens (like a news event) and all your profits MAY go ‘down the toilet’ although, having said that, it’s not really something that you should worry about i.e. if you’ve chosen to follow Parabolic SAR ‘to the letter’ (and I believe that if you’re going to use this indicator then that’s the only way) then that just has to be acceptable to you sometimes.

I’ve noticed
I was doing great for two days, my equity was hovering at around $1000 profit (after having peaked at more or less $1800), then 2 positions got closed out at a loss of about $700.
To save my account from annihilation (I’d started off testing this system with a balance of only $1200) I then resorted to closing the one position that had the most profit, and am now trading only 1/10th lots to try and get my usable margin to a more acceptable level.

I do intend to follow the system to the letter though, as soon as my account is liquid enough to allow it. I started off pretty haphazardly and didn’t really record what I was doing, much to my regret. I’m now going to start taking regular screenshots and post them on my blog to study and analyse the system properly.

[daxm]

I do intend to follow the system to the letter though, as soon as my account is liquid enough to allow it. I started off pretty haphazardly and didn’t really record what I was doing, much to my regret. I’m now going to start taking regular screenshots and post them on my blog to study and analyse the system properly.

I think that what Dale and I are trying to say is that the PSAR system works in a trending market AND if you can withstand huge profit/loss swings. With only $1200 to invest you are setting yourself up for disaster.

[mule]

I think that what Dale and I are trying to say is that the PSAR system works in a trending market AND if you can withstand huge profit/loss swings. With only $1200 to invest you are setting yourself up for disaster.

I see this thing.
Learning a lot though, I’ll get there

[ozfxtrader]

Hi Dale

Iread with interest the other night your SAr trading system/strategy. I have since been unable to find it to reread it. Please advise the page number so I can have another look as I am very interested in what you had to say.

Regards

OzFxTrader