Hi.
Nope. Fractals is an indicator developed by Bill Williams. Nothing special though (as he would have you believe anyway) i.e. merely an indicator that makes it easier to see high and low swing points.
There are five bar Fractals and three bar Fractals. A five bar Fractal requires that you have two successive lower highs or higher lows to the left and to the right of the signal bar. A three bar Fractal requires that you have one lower high or higher low to the left and to the right of the signal bar. But as noted: not rocket science here as you can see this on a chart anyway i.e. without the indicator (especially if your charting platform doesn’t have the indicator).
Anyway and the LONG reason I’m giving you all of this fluff:
You were mentioning the possibility of adding further positions as the trade moved in your favor and my question to you was well on what basis would you decide as to when to do this. So this just came to mind at the time. The basic idea in my head: you would add to the position (in this case i.e. USDCHF) you’d only be looking to be going long obviously. So once a Fractal has formed: you’d place a stop buy just above the Fractal and keep going. And so on and so forth. But managing your stops and risk on the ENTIRE trade is important. I’ve not thought about that but maybe it’s something you can work on. Bill Williams’ Fractal based system would have you enter at a Fractal and your initial stop would the FARTHER of the two previous Fractals. You would trail your stop based on this i.e. each time a new Fractal is formed, you’d add to the position, but then move your stops top the FARTHER of the two previous Fractals. This is a perfectly valid trading system (trend following system) in and of itself of course. But maybe an idea to combine to two???
Anyways. Just an idea for you.
The chart below is a MT4 chart of USDCHF Daily showing three bar Fractals (I don’t have Fractals on my main broker’s platform). They’re the little arrows or triangles in Silver/Grey.
As noted: using Fractals is a perfectly valid trend following trading system in and of itself and is detailed in his first book (he uses alternate methods of confirmation for the trend though). Its shortcoming (as always): doesn’t really work in a choppy market and therein lies its downfall. This being said: as long as stops etc. are implemented then not a problem.
