Hello everyone,
I want to ask for some input on my current research to make sure that I am on the right track and not losing my mind.
After many attempts I realised discretionary trading just isn’t for me I decided to use a systematic approach and build some strategies that I would trade manually. The strategies will be based solely on Price Action with no indicators, news or releases taken into account for now. I am looking at the 15 min intraday timeframe.
1 Types of strategies:
I took 2010 and looked at every single day in an asset and found the following strategies can be applied during the European session:
7:00 to 10:00
European open breakout (to the downside or upside)
First retracement of previous breakout (up until 10:00 AM)
Slow grind (up or down) - days with low range (not the best as it ca can also be a slow grind with no clear direction)
10:00 - 12:00
Continuation of the initial breakout is very risky and many fake breaks occur (to be mainly avoided)
Reversal of the initial breakout (prefered) with the final target being the opening price.
12:00 - 14:00 US Comes in:
Continuation or break of key levels in the original direction
14:00 - 15:00
Usually time to sit still and do nothing
15:00 - 17:10
Entering on a retracement if a clear direction is visible from US open.
2 Strategy analysis
For each one of the strategies above I take all the days when the strategy worked and compare them with the days when it didn’t work; I then try to find the the difference in price action and also check lower time frames.
Some of the differences can be new lower highs to indicate a change in a downtrend and a sequence of green candles on 1 min and 5 min.
This part is very time consuming!
3 Strategy test
I created an excel file where I can input the exact details of my strategy (once finished) and it will calculate total trades, wins, losses, everything and then optimise as needed. I plan to run these on data from 2011 to 2015.
4 Trading test
Once a strategy has been optimised I will trade it on historical data with Forex tester (not the best but couldn’t find a better alternative). I have an archive of live news and i can see how well i can implement my strategies in a “live” conditions and also how releases and fundamentals will affect them.
5 Going live
I will further optimise if needed but if I all goes well I will move that strategy to live markets and trade only that strategy.
The only problem is that this process is really long but in my mind it makes sense. Sometimes I feel I making no progress at all and that I am just wasting my time; other times I have a breakthrough that motivates me to go further.
In the end I want to look at one day in IF and THEN terms; if there’s a strong open to the upside between 8:00 and 10:00, between 10:00 and 12:00 I can do A or B or nothing and so on for each part of the day.
Of course other parts like correlations, risk on/off theme, market mood and volatility matter but I am starting with the basics.
I would love to know what you think about this and your ideas and suggestions.