hi tonymand
why is is that the cowabunga indicator sometimes indicates an UPTREND when the 62 and 78 EMA indicate a DOWNTREND and vice versa? which is correc in those instances?
thanks
hypnos63
Hi every body,
I want to post letting all of you know I Found a great feed back method and I thank PipSurfer for sharing his system. We all know the clarity20/20 of hindsight in tradable markets and in life.
Wazzuvius, you mentioned last week you were interested in screen shots of the zup indicator(which is the only indicator you really need).
So, when Wazzuvius mentioned this I remembered reading in the zup material that screen shot are the best type of feed back. I new this already although had not really explored it use.
I found, through my Gmail account on google, That they have Google PICASA2. Picasa2 allows you to view pictures and organize them for upload to google web albums for public or private viewing(with or without password). The really cool part is when you have the screen shots on your hard drive and your viewing them in Picasa2 you can scroll through your screenshots, if you have a roller scroll button its even better. When you scroll though your screen shots it is like a little movie of the market movements.
I have uploaded pretty many screen shots of imrans system and those that have the Zup73 and zup73/zup71 tpl there aswell.Many of you probably already do this, but, I have learned a thousand time more in a few days than I have in weeks and I want to share how cool Picas2 is and want to share it with all of you so you too can see what I mean by little movie.
I especially think this movie style feedback vital to learning Zup because once the market move forward you can not recreate what the Zup does.
If you do try checking out my web albums you will have to get Picasa2 and you might have to get a gmail email account And you can scroll through this screenshots faster if you download the screenshots. I realize you all might already have similair programs to scroll through pics I just want to share what I learned.
I have screenshots of 5m-Imrans, 5m,15m,30m,60m,240m,daily and weekly(one or two) charts screenshots of GBP/JPY and gold there. I tried to keep the screenshots consistant but there not all perfect. But, there are some incredible feedback here.
Thanks everybody
Pipimintpatie AKA MoneyJunkie
want to add that if anyone trys to get gmail and they tell you that you need a invite to gmail just private message me and i will try to invite you. I have never invited any one and i donāt know if they require an invite now a days but if they do i 'll get you in there if I can.Thanks again everyboby.
Also, you can set picas2 to search specific locations or folders when it is on.Itās like picas2 was made with screenshots and traders in mind,hence, picture viewing.When I take a sceen shot and save it, when picasa2 is on, a little window shoots out from the edge of the screen notifying picasa recieved the photo or screenshot. Just want to mention that with the Zup indicators,I noticed that even if there is no pattern being diplayed that almost every sigle time the price touches key ratios to previous prices that the price instanly changes directions. I have been able to enter trades way ahead of time and I use Imranās system as comformation. The 15m and 30m with the Zup are very powerful regarding there ratios. In a very short time with proper feedback like what Iām sharing now you wil instantly recognise thes ratios as you becume farmilair withem and the key ratios are highlighted automatically by the zup. Go slowly through my screen shots and you will see how powerfull these ratios are and trust them and you will be in trades that will blow your minds.
āWhere feedback flows, intelligence growsā
-Pipimintpatie/MoneyJunkie
Dont know Hypnos but the EA will be based on the original MAs not the ones you are using so I wouldnt be surprised if there are differences
Hello,
I couldnāt find the Cowabunga EA v5, could you tell me the posting number and which thread so I can go try it out? Thanks.
Hi there everyone! 
Quick question about stochastics, what is considered trending down/up for this system? For example, today at 7.00am GMT (GBP/USD), both stochastics lines were going up, but the 7.15 candle was a big bearish candle so the fast stoch line reversed direction and crossed the slow line, pointing down. However, the slow line was still going up slightly. Is this enough to be considered ātrending downā or does the slow line need to be going down as well? Basically, could I open a short position or not?
Iāve attached a couple of images, stochastics at 7.00 and 7.15am. Fast line is blue, slow is red:
Thanks
I trade the daily time frame. I gave the Cowabunga a limited trial, figuring that if it worked on a lower time frame it should work even better on the daily, as there relatively less noise. Because as a trend trader I wouldnļæ½tleave home without the ADX, I included it just for kicks. And in fact the Cowabunga worked quite well, as you can see from the chartļæ½4 winners and one loser. However, I noticed a couple of things, one of which would have prevented the loser.
In the chart, green arrow denote entries, either Long or Short, and red arrows denote exits. The thick trend line shows the direction of the trade. Entries are mandated by the Cowbunga criteria of EMA 5 crossing 10, RSI above or below 50 as appropriate, and Stochastic rising or falling as appropriate.
First, the Stochastic seems to be superfluous. On each of the 5 trades it gave a go-ahead, even on the loser on 2007.10.15. If EMA 5 has crossed the 10 and the RSI agrees, the Stochastic will usually rubber-stamp the deal.
Not so the ADX.
On the Long entry, 2007.06.19, ADX has crossed upward above 20, the +DMI is dominant and the DMIs are diverging sharply. All is well.
Notice that I ran a Fibonacci Extension on the mid-trend retracement and set a Take Profit at FE 100, and the trend peaked there. I did this on all 4 winning trades and it always worked. If the 100 level had not been hit I would have exited on a turndown of ADX from a peak or on EMA 5 crossing back over 10.
On the Short entry, 2007.07.27, ADX has turned down from a relatively high value, and the -DMI has angled sharply up to meet the sharply falling +DMI. All is well.
On 2007.09.05 the Short entry taken because EMA 5 had crossed below 10, RSI is below 50, and Stochastic is falling. However, ADX is <20 and the DMIs have been whipsawing. All is not well. And indeed the trade turned in the wrong direction, hit the stop, and lost 316 pips. Note that the Stochastic, which is the methodļæ½s momentum oscillator, did not worn of this bad entry.
On occasion 2007.10.15, when Stochastic would have kept us from going Long on a 5/10 cross, so would the sub-20 ADX and whipsawing DMIs. The subsequent Long entry would have been confusing, since 5 had already crossed 10 without an entry, but ADX comes to the rescue. On 2007.10.29 ADX has swooped beneath both DMIs and risen 4 points (our usual criterion), +DMI has crossed above _DMI and they are angling apart. Stochastic, however remains pinned. It appears that for this application anything Stochastic can do, ADX can do better.
On 2007.10.15 a Short entry is mandated by an EMA 5\10 cross, an RSI slightly below 50, and a falling Stochastic, although the wimpy RSI position might give pause. We see that ADX has turned down from a high value and the rising -DMI is angling sharply toward +DMI but has not actually crossed it. ADX-wise we are technically still in Bear territory. This is a judgment call. Notice the Bear divergence shown on ADX and Price, less convincingly on RSI, and not at all on Stochastic. This means that a fairly large decline is probably in the offing and should tip the scale toward an immediate entry.
On the daily time frame at least, the method would seem to benefit from replacing Stochastic 10,3,3 with ADX/DMI 14. Incidentally, this would give us an all-Welles Wilder trading method.
But wait, thereļæ½s more. Because the RSI measures the averages of the up closes and down closes, it is a rather crude instrument, and this is evident on the chart. RSI often wavers almost to 30 and almost 70 when there is actually no trend, and so it is rather ambiguous when used on quick-changing mini-trends. If you automate it you will get a lot of false signals. Because the DMI and its derivative the ADX measure directional movement relative to true range, they are finer in their representation of trend and momentum. They rarely give a false reading. In truth, the RSI can also be dispensed with.
But this good news is also the bad news. The ADX/DMI contains a lot of information, but the elements must be integrated in order to realize their potential. Have the DMIļæ½s been whipsawing? How far apart are they, and at what angle? How high is the ADX, and how steep? Are the peaks diminishing uniformly or raggedly? And so on. For this reason, it is not very feasible to automate the indicator in a high-confidence way. It must be read intuitively. And you must insert a Fibonacci Expansion every time there is a retracement, in order to get good exit points.
So where does that leave us? With Price, EMA 5 and 10, and ADX/DMI 13, which are to read manually. If you trade the daily time frame, you will have to actually look at the chart once a day. Hmmm. When you look at it that wayļæ½
That is not to say that I am not extremely impressed with the Cowabunga track record. I just canāt stay at the computer to trade 15-minute charts, and my post merely described my first cut at adapting Cowabunga to the Daily time frame. Of course, I donāt really know what Iām talking about because I havenāt studied the method via the excellent Blog. But I intend to. I will try to use Cowabunga on the Daily after I get my sea legs. Or possibly on the 4-hour. I donāt quite know what time frame to use for trend verificationāweekly or monthly, will have to cast around. Will probably add ADX 13 to the mix for emotional support, then follow trades on the Blog and try to emulate the reasoning on the Daily. I donāt even know yet if anyone has applied Cowabunga to the Daily, going to rummage through the posts. Anyway, Iām very impre3ssed with babypips.com and particularly with the effort that must go into the Cowabunga blog. These lessons are priceless.
Hello
How can I know whether to place my exit on the nearest 50 or 00 price or to place it at the same amount iām risking?
Take a look at todays chart:
As you can see i got a short signal at 01.30 ET. Entering at 1.9607 and since i was only 7 pips away from the nearest 00 or 50 level i decided to go for the same amount I was risking, 29 pips. I put my initiall target at 1.9578.
The price didnāt make a clean break here, the candle that broke the 578 level closed at 1.9585, so i cancelled the trade and took my profit. After that however, the priced dropped below 1.9550. Had i put my target at 1.9600 (where the price made a clean break), and then moved it on to 1.9550, i would have gained 57 pips instead of only 22.
So, my question; how am i supposed to know when to put the target at the 00 or 50 level, and when to put it at the same amount of risking
One of the things you just have to accept about trading is that all exits are always unsatisfactory. If you donāt catch the very last pip in a move, your human nature will nag you about it, and if the result is negative or breakeven, youāll be disappointed in that too. Proper trading is painfulā¦ just like proper weightlifting, marathon-running, etc. That said, one thing you can do about the way this trade worked out for you is to stop making your exits all-or-nothing. Consider breaking your exits into stages. Had you exited half your position at the first target and moved your stop to the original entry on the remainder, you would have easily caught the rest of those pips. Now, you have to consider also that you could easily have ended up with an even smaller profit had that breakeven stop gotten hitā¦ but such is the nature of what we do. Any yahoo can enter a good trade. One of the several things that distinguishes a professional from the amateurs is how they exit. You can overly complicate the exit just like anything else. The first thing to do, as I said earlier, is to accept that no matter how you exit any particular trade, there would have been a more profitable exit. The next thing is to pick an exit strategy that is simple, but not so simple as youāre currently using. A 2-stage exit such as the one I mentioned should be more than good enough for trading in the 15m frame. Itās easy to calculate and simple to execute. Take care and Happy Trading!
Thanks for the input and tips
hi,
quite new to trading. been using ur setup on demo but lost a few virtual $. painful though not real. however my 4H period does not give corect timimg on the chat. i wonder if this is the reason behind the loss.
kindly update this blog often so we newbies cld stand up too.
Does anyone happen to have cowabunga results since the last blog entry by PipSurfer? What was the pip tally for Jan and how has it been doing so far this month?
I think you people are selling yourselves short (NPI) when you enter a trade and set an arbitrary target. I would look for a logical target such as a measured move. Only if I couldnāt find one would I depend on an arbitrary rule.
I ran a Fibonacci Expansion from the top of the previous wave, which Iāve labeled Wave and where I placed a X, to the bottom of the wave, where I placed another X, then to the top of the retracement wave, which Iāve labeled Wave B and where Iāve placed another X. Actually, I offset the bottom of Wave A to the left so that the Fib Expansion, shown in light green, would not run past the area of interest, but the result is the same. The Fib Expansion then "measures where Wave C is likely to end, at FE 100, at FE 100.
And lo, price hit that target before retracting slightly. Why does it do this? Because a lot of traders are looking for a measured move, so it tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In entering short on a wave down, I would look for an applicable Fib Expansion (MT4, click Insert, Fibonacci, Expansion), and Iād set a Take Profit at that level or slightly short of it. Then Iād try to let the trade run to that point.
Nevermindā¦ just found it out
I also think using fib extensions for targets are very useful, albeit outside the rules of cowabunga. I havenāt backtested the inclusion of extensions with cowabunga but i know how useful they are in trading my other methods.
I tend to work off an hourly chart fibbing the previous days range to identify support/resistance areas between the 38.2 and 61.8 levels, coupled with longer term fibs across daily, weekly and monthly TFs. This provides enough market flow information to make sure trades are with the trend/flow and I guess wouldnāt be too far off the 4hr trend chart cowabunga uses. I use the 38.2 extension for target purposes, if you are trading with the trend/flow this level is invariably hit once there is a test and break of the dayās fib levels resuming price action in the direction of the trend.
Using the 15min cowabunga rules to identify entries with the flow of the market but holding and sometimes building the entries as price makes itās way to the extension targets over a day or two (sometimes longer), could be a useful variation on the existing rulesā¦but I stand to be corrected; I havenāt tested the idea thoroughly yet.
ā¦as an example against todayās action, the first chart represents the 4hr cowabunga chart (itās hourly and has transposed EMAs). The 4hr trend is down, weāre looking for shorts today off the 15 min. The first chart also shows todayās range so far, fibbed to give an idea of likely resistance on the current retrace, which price has already banged up against twice.
Notice the 38.2 fib extension @ 1.9307. The 2nd chart is the recent 15min entry chart and could well signal an entry short soon. The profit target would be set to 9307 (or thereabouts) and the initial stoploss set to last swing high (as per cowabunga rules) @ just above 9420.
Until the 9307 target is hit (or trade stopped out) leave alone and add valid 15min entries as they ariseā¦but not beyond 12pmEST each day, as per cowa rules.
EDIT: NOTES/IDEAS only, i havenāt backtested this. Usual disclaimers apply 
A cowabunga short was triggered around the time of the post below which stopped out for -27.
Fibbing yesterdayās range suggests longs today, at odds with cowabungaās 4hr trend chart which still indicates shortsā¦the fibs indicate a counter trend bias which iāll exploit on the next valid cowabunga 15min setup, as long as price holds above the long fib level (c9450)ā¦the target for longs being 9555.
ā¦the news already delivering yesterdayās fib target, almost to the pip - i wasnāt in the move, thereās always next time. Now waiting for a pullback and a nice clean cowabunga long setup, if theyād be so kind 
