This part of the forum is dedicated to the holy grail, the ultimate trading system that will generate only winning trades. The experienced traders here know there is no such system but that if followed to the letter many forex trading systems would make money.
A system with a strike rate of 50% and a risk reward of 1:2 will be profitable over a fixed number of trades again and again. The problem is that most new traders don’t know what’s right for them. Trading profitably elludes most new traders for a long period of time and not because of the lack of a profitable system but because of their inability to follow the systems they have found.
To remedy this somewhat I have a simple idea. Here is what I want you to do…
Find a trading system that you like the look of, that you feel you could follow, that fits in with your available time.
Write down the rules of this system on a piece of paper and put it somewhere prominent near to the place where you trade.
Make a personal commitment to yourself to take 100 trades strictly in accordance with that system. If you deviate from the rules laid out in your system even for a second you have failed the challenge. You must be strong through the times when you have a series of losing trades, this is the time you will feel most like ‘tweaking’ your system but it is a fatal flaw in your mindset.
Record each trade on a spreadsheet or piece of paper until you have completed 100 trades and stand back and look at your results.
If after 100 trades of following your system to the letter you have not made a profit all you have to do is find another system and do the whole thing again. I am convinced though that if you can just stick to one system for 100 trades you will more often than not make a profit.
Once you have completed this challenge post your results here and let us know roughly what system you used.
I think this will be a much better method of finding the holy grail than random people posting systems with their big claims of huge gains per day.
It will be great to hear your results. If you can honestly say after 100 trades that you didn’t deviate from your system at all then I’ll be very impressed.
How do you propose one does that…by scrolling back through a chart and then going forward? The problem I find with that is that we see the finished bar and not it’s intra-movement. By that I mean a bar can open along with any indicators and you wait for your signal, so just for example …a moving average cross over. During the bar the MA can actually cross and then uncross before the bar is finished, so one might have gotten into a trade based on that false signal that wouldn’t be known by looking at that same bar sometime later, so live results may not be as good that backtesting this way may otherwise indicate.
Using an EA?..not everyone can make one.
If using a simulator, well I only know of one that I use, and it won’t let you flip between timeframes, or if an indicator uses another timeframe, it won’t function properly if at all.
There’s a good answer to that above but I’ll add a bit more…
You’re slightly missing the point. The idea is that you have a fair idea about the profitability of your system before you start but the reason most traders struggle to make a profit is due to a lack of consistency in following the system.
Commiting to trading 100 trades using whichever system you are using will not just find out exactly how good that system is (in fact that’s just a by product of this exercise) but it will also prove to yourself that you can follow your system and you can make money consistently as a trader.
As you are a senior member here I would assume you’re already a profitable trader and so have no need for this thread but I’m sure it will be more useful for newer traders. RD
OK, OK you’re right I don’t have a need for this so I’ll leave you to it I’ll just say this though “the reason most traders struggle to make a profit is due to a lack of consistency” = dangerous fallacy.
PS Sweetpip, if your system is non-discretionary, it’s testable. I didn’t say it was easy!
So what is the reason most traders aren’t successful consistently? You’re not going to say that it’s just a question of having the right system and yet discipline in consistently following the system isn’t required?
In short, because most systems have the same expectancy as coin-flipping; and no amount of money or risk management can change that.
Then, newbies come along and try to follow them, and but something (instinct) keeps telling them, ignore that trade, bend the rules for this one, resulting in lost opportunities, berating yourself for impatience and a whole host of other trading ‘sins’. If you listened to your instinct, you’ll find you were onto something in the first place - that being - as you suspected - the system is rubbish.
Develop a good system and discipline comes without trying. And stay away from Mark Douglas
I’m not quite so pessimistic as you, I think that a lot of well thought out systems would yield a profit if they were followed correctly. What about candlestick patterns at strong support and resistance? I wouldn’t say that a system based on that would be no better than coin flipping.
I can see what you are saying to a degree, there are a lot of rubbish systems out there but the basic fact remains that the reason a lot of potentially profitable systems don’t produce a profit is because they’re not followed. This thread aims to address that by making a trader make a commitment to trading following the rules of the system. If it’s a rubbish system you’ll know in the end, if you never follow the system consistently over a number of trades then you will never know if it is or isn’t a profitable system. System hopping is the worst thing that you can do, find a system and stick to it is fairly basic but good advice.
Backtesting will only ever tell you if that system would have been profitable in the past. With that information you can then trade it forward with positive expectancy but if you haven’t got the discipline to follow your system going forward your backtesting would make no difference, you still won’t make a profit or you’ll doubt your system after the 5th loss in a row or whatever.
Triphop, maybe you can suggest a system that new traders should follow for 100 trades. If you’ve done the backtesting and are trading live profitably then any new traders reading this can save a lot of time by following your example and trading your system with positive expectancy.
Think or know? I’m not pessimistic - I enjoy trading. But having tested and designed hundreds of system, I also know 99% of them are doomed to failure, regardless of whether you follow the rules or not. The exceptions are discretionary systems, where discretion is the winning ingredient. Can’t teach that in a hurry.
Pin bars/exhaustion spikes whatever you want to call them, on 1H or 4h or daily at S/R will give you a small edge. I’d toss the rest.
I disagree. You need to get a market understanding. No better way than trying dozens of different systems.
The system I’ve developed is never for publication or sale (if you knew the investment/work to get it to where it is, you’d understand). But if you’re going to pick someone elses, make sure it’s got some market logic to it. Of the non-discretionary ones - google one night stand. Still works. Of the discretionary ones, Jacko’s good over at FF, NickBs strat looks solid (though never traded it) and BRV & James16. But remember they’re the tip of the iceberg. The best stuff is unpublished - ie, after that, you’re on your own.
Well we agree on the sort of system that would work at least…
It’s a shame we can’t agree on my basic premise which is that switching from system to system before you’ve even given a system the chance to show itself as profitable is a bad idea.
At least we’ve managed to discuss it in an intelligent manner and whoever reads this after us can make up their own minds from your well thought out opinions and mine.
No disagreement really - switching systems as a means of proving profitability is nuts, true. But it’s useful to get your head around the market which to be fair, isn’t what this thread is about.
And yet that’s the key…
RD