May 14 -23 2008, 10 losses in 13 trades
tonymand, how do you calculate your performance results? in your recently posted table, you note r 1.0 for the 2nd trade on the 5th of march. this would be 69 pips (meaning tp at 1,4237). how did you come to this result? the highest spike i have is at 1,4232. since this may vary from broker to broker my question is: how does this exit correlate with the system’s rules? (how could you actively manage the exit, while you were not actively trading the system?) what do i misunderstand? great work, i also want to keep track…
best regards
This is the trade as I recorded it. Its a short not a long. I have previously on the thread gone through some of the changes I made to the original system which arent that major. I use a system of price alerts from alertfx to manage a trade and also have a Dell 9 inch computer sat next to my TV chair so a trade can usually be managed in real time. If I miss an entry eg because of work I will record the trade in my log based on the defined rules I have
thanks for your response! after rereading this thread i still don’t understand why you took a short trade. i assume, you made some changes in order to improve the “lagging 4hr trend” as you wrote somewhere here. (if this is the case) could you please specify your changes on the system?
sorry for asking so much… feel free to tell me, when i should stop bothering you…
Is the Cowabunga system still effective?
Another loss today (60 pips), not only are the trades losing but they hardly even try to move towards the take profit. I would say that roughly half of the trades this month moved 20-30 pips against the trade within a minute of the entry. Hopefully this is just temporary.
Simpler than that - its an error! You are right the H4 is still clearly up
that’s what i just wrote. i am having the exact same doubts and tonymand (who is here much longer than me) answered them by referring to his track of the system’s performance.
I understand and respect the accuracy of the system over the long term, I have been demoing the system for several months (unfortunately I went live at the beginning of this month) but this losing streak is worrying me slightly. To be honest it is not necessarily the losing streak that concerns me the most, it is the 50+ pip candles that are occurring right before the entry of the trade. I do not have any statistics but it seems like these are occurring more often than usual, and these large candles are creating poor quality signals.
Let�s look at the last trade, the GBP/USD traded in roughly a 50 pip range for two hours, during this period the moving averages got very close together. A large 46 pip candle occurs crossing the moving averages and creating a poor signal. Hopefully I am completely wrong in my analysis and this is just part of the system, but the short periods of volatility seem to have a negative effect on the system.
First post on this forum for me so firstly i would like to say hello to all & thanks for sharing all your thoughts & analysis. I have been trading the cowabunga live since jan this year, after following the results for some time on the blog. I had a great start but the recent poor results have been tough putting me almost back to where i started. Apart from last fridays 100 pip gain i have not had a profitable trade for about 3 weeks.
Plus another loss this morning on the 11.30 GMT candle.
Pipsurfer has done a great job putting this system up on his blog & helping novice traders like myself out by sharing his knowledge, so full credit to him. However his notable absence during this recent poor run of results leaves me wondering if he simply sees the current price action as unfavourable for the cowabunga & therefore stays out.
Personally i still have faith in this system as it has a proven track record stretching back more than 3 years including last quarter of 08 when volatility significantly increased.
However with a bit more insight & knowledge we may be able to avoid these bad runs. That will only come with time & experience
Good luck to all with the next one
WCF I think you are right with the long candles creating the signal , almost everytime i get one of these i get a losing trade. We need to learn to spot these bad signals and stay out
What you refer to as bad signals occur when the 15 min is running counter to the H4 trend like now or when the retracements are deep causing a lot of stop outs. The whole point of posting the system is to show what results are obtainable with a mechanical approach and tweaking it too much may destroy it. You only have to miss one 10R trade as a result of tweaking to really damage the returns. Finally if trading since Jan 1 you should be up 15R or so according to me. If not you need to look closely at your money management which may be letting you down. According to me:
Jan + 8.5
Feb + 14.9 (an absolutely outstanding month
March - 8.4 (to date)
Nutrader, it is very tempting to start adjusting the system in order to increase its profitability, I am afraid to do this though because from a statistical perspective even during these past 3 weeks we had approximately a 60% chance of winning every time we took a trade. It is very difficult to take a trade when you feel like you know for a fact that it will not work out, and seem to be proven right every time.
Tonymand, by (-8.4R) you are referring to the R-multiple correct? Do you know the pip totals for the past few months? Also in your opinion is the current period how the system trades normally? If the system seems to have streaky periods doing something as simple as staying out of the market after a run of 3 bad trades or so and waiting to see a winning trade to signal a better market, could save many more pips then what�s gained in one good trade.
I know that I am critiquing his system (I do have faith in it because I am trading it), but I would also appreciate it if Pipsurfer would do a video and share his thoughts on the current month so far.
WCF choosing to stay out of a trade because of what one believes is a bad signal is not adjusting the system it is simply using a bit of judgement before entering each and every trade. I am personally not comfortable with the completely automated way of trading any system i believe every trade should be taken with a bit of caution, but thats just me, even if i am not yet qualified to do so i generally look over the charts, look at the recent highs & lows etc & make my judgement before entering,
Tony are your results based on taking all signals & forgive me for the stupid question but what does the R mean in your results figures
thanks
hi, anyone downloaded the Cawabunga indicator? I downloaded and installed but i not sure how to use this indicator.
And after i read this thread, i try to follow it exactly but i even cant find a trend to trade.
Nutrader, I agree that using judgment and looking at price action, support resistance lines, ect. Is a very profitable way of trading, but I believe that Pipsurfer�s goal was to take all of that out of the equation. I think that his purpose was to create a simple system that new traders could follow, without making any judgment calls. If you enjoy analyzing the market and making decisions this system may not be for you.
I was also thinking about waiting for the price to move 5 pips above the close of the entry candle before entering the trade, this may keep us out of a few trades that move in the opposite direction from the get go and eventually stop out, while ensuring we don�t miss any trades to the upside.
you may read this So You’ve Finished The School Of Pipsology…Now What? | Forex Blog: Pip My System and this Cowabunga System FAQ | Forex Blog: Pip My System first.
after installing the indicators v2 anypair, the color of the doted line in the 15m chart will tell you the 4h-trend. blue=up, red=down. the arrow will give you the signal.
I actually have a lot of faith in the system & i have been following the rules vigorously, I just personally dont like trading the mechanical automated way, I try to use a bit of discretion when entering as well as exiting. With a mental stop instead of a hard stop loss i can monitor the candle which hits the stop level & judge to close or leave open to possibly break even, as happened to me on yesterday’s pm trade. this has saved me a few losses recently, but on occasions like this morning when the stop is hit with some momentum you have to get out
Nutrader and WCF
R is the risk reward multiple so 60 pip stop 60 pip win is 1R. PS reports this but does not include spread. If you take the figs for the year he did a complete review then do some adjustments for spread the yearly return is about 90R and this has held up since I started tracking it
No it is not based on everytrade due to my timezone. I pack up about 14.30 GMT
If you are adjusting the method using price action, trends etc (all of which is not only reasonable but part of making this your own), I would advise you to track the results of the original method. You need to ensure you are improving it. Also dont forget to ask yourself whether an 8R monthly return isnt pretty staggering. On a 2% risk model thats 16%. With compounding that would quadruple your account in a year.
I have now seen this method through many different market types and as I have said before it seems pretty robust to me
Finally I dont keep a record of pip counts. They have no meaning
somebody has a template file for MT4 for the cowabunga system.
I am not searching for the indicator which is in the other thread.
Tonymand,
Thank you for sharing your knowledge of the system, I really appreciate it. Concerning the R-multiple, I feel like I understand the ratio and its meaning, but I cannot seem to wrap my mind around how it accurately represents the long term performance of the Cowabunga system for two reasons.
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Because the Cowabunga system has dynamic stop losses and take profit levels theirs is not a standard risk-reward ratio. This means that if two systems average 90R per year but one system averages a risk of 20 pips and the other a risk of 40 pips the profitability of the systems would differ greatly.
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Secondly, if two systems had the same R-multiple but one took 150 trades over a year long period and the other took 200 trades over the same period the gain or loss of the systems would be very different from one another.
Again I appreciate the information so correct me if I am wrong, but with only the R-multiple to compare data and considering the two variables I just pointed out how is this ratio of any relevance over the long term?
Thanks