Somewhat, yes. I’ve been using this method for only 2 months now, and given it’s nature of holding time I’ve made less than 50 trades. That being said I’ve been active in as few as 5 pairs and as many as 14; I have yet to manage anything close to the 28 limit.
I am similar to Sweet Pip in that I can very quickly go from 10 open trades to 4 open trades, and it will take a week or two before I decide to open up more. I feel like entry is the most important aspect of the trade, so I have no problem waiting out price movements to get into an area that I like. I think somewhere between 1 to 3 signals a week is perfectly fine with this style of trading.
Hello guys,
It’s good to see many people are trying this methodology. I have also been trying this for more than three months now. The main problem I am having now is when all the open trades go against me. Most of the times they will change direction and become favourable in a few days, but hanging on to the losing positions for a while appear quite difficult for me, at least psycologically. This usually happens when the whole portfolio is heavily burish or bullish towards one currency, as balance can go down by 10-20 percent.
What do you do in this situation? Do you think there could be something wrong with my position sizing?
You said that [I]most of the time,[/I] a group of losing trades (which happen to be in correlated pairs) will turn in your favor. This indicates that you have identified the trends correctly, but your entries were not perfect.
[B]Rather than messing around with your position sizing, I would suggest that you work on timing your entries.[/B]
An emerging trend, suitable for trading with Mastergunner’s methodology, will generally offer you more than one optimum entry point. If you can nail one of those [I]optimum[/I] entry points — and that’s the big challenge, isn’t it? — then your position will move immediately into profit, never showing you a loss on paper.
As I see the task for all of us who trade this methodology, there are three main parts to each trade, and we have to do a good job (at least, overall, on average) with each one them. They are (1) identify a suitable trend [I]early,[/I] (2) identify and grab a [I]workable[/I] entry price, and (3) identify a breakdown in the trend [I]early,[/I] and get out at that point.
From what you’ve told us so far, it appears that you’re doing (1) and (3) well enough.
But, it’s probably being too early or too late with your entries — item (2) — that’s causing those scary drawdowns.
Thanks Clint,
I couldn’t agree more with your three points. As MG mentioned he was entering the trades on retracement. At times I see a strong trend which doesn’t show indications of retracements any time soon and I want to jump on that. Some times it works like recent movement of AUD/USD and some times it doesn’t as price retraces and if this retracement is big the drawdowns can be big. It appears also quite important to recognise the market we are in. This goes back to your first point. As I see it, and I might be wrong, the methodology can only be applicable in trending market and not in many ranging pairs we see recently.
As you mentioned I should work on my entry points among other things like when to take the profit or how much give room for the trade. These could be quite challenging as there could be some rollercoaster movements in the balance.
Thanks again.
I’m guessing that you want to know more about [I]exits,[/I] rather than entries.
Your question #1 implies that you have a 50-pip stop-loss — or, that you think maybe a 50-pip SL would have been a good idea — and, therefore, a 50-pip move against you indicates a possible failure of your trade.
And your question #2 implies that you think a certain profit target should have been reached in a period of one week, and therefore, failure to reach that target indicates a possible failure of your trade.
The portfolio methodology, as originally detailed by Mastergunner, contains no specific rules for exiting a position. There is nothing in the methodology regarding an initial stop-loss, or an initial profit target.
In simplified terms, the methodology involves identifying and entering a valid trend, and holding your position for as long as the trend remains valid. Obviously, this requires a solid understanding of trend-trading, including successful strategies for (1) identifying a trend, (2) entering in the direction of the trend, and (3) identifying the end of the trend.
[B]In the Mastergunner Portfolio Methodology, the end of the trend is the basic exit signal.[/B]
Mastergunner has not specified rules for identifying trends; instead, he has left it to each trader to use his/her own preferred method of trend identification. There are many ways to identify a trend, and entire books have been written on that subject. I’m not going to attempt a review of those methods. You can study trend-trading on your own time.
I will tell you that my preferred method involves simple trend-lines and trend-channels, and that I define a breakdown of the trend as a retracement (of a certain size) out of the trend-channel. The retracement which triggers an exit (for me) is the close of a daily candle below an up-channel, or above a down-channel, by more than 38.2% of the channel range. For example, if an up-channel has a range of 200 pips between channel boundaries, then the close of a daily candle more than 76.4 pips below the lower channel boundary signals an exit of the position. Why 38.2%? Because it’s an easy percentage to drop onto a chart using a Fibonacci tool, and it seems to work.
None of the above is meant as a recommendation for you; it’s merely an example. Develop your own ways of identifying trends, and identifying when they collapse.
A number of traders on this thread have introduced the idea of adding stop-losses and profit-targets to this methodology. And that can definitely be done successfully. But, it represents a different trading concept from the one outlined by Mastergunner; and, if you go that route, you need to understand that you are trading a [I]variation[/I] of the original methodology.
To return to your question #1, above, if you are a competent trend-trader, then part of your competence involves being able to select good entry points. Generally, this means entering a trend, in the direction of the trend, [I]on a normal retracement within that trend.[/I] If you get it exactly right, then your position will move directly into profit, without retracing further. In other words, you won’t suffer an initial loss (on paper), before moving into profit.
If you’re good at this, you may decide that (1) when you get your entry right, you don’t even need a stop-loss, but (2) when your entry is defective, you ought to bail out before your loss exceeds x-number of pips. If that’s how you determined the 50 pips mentioned in your question, then it might be a very valid exit strategy. Once again, it’s a variation of the basic Mastergunner methodology. [B]But, what matters is what works.[/B]
If “bias” ( as you are using the word) means the same thing as “trend” — then, yes, hold onto those trades — if you intend to trade this methodology the way it has been presented here.
Thanks Clint. It has been a very informative reply to my question. I started with a live account which was a big mistake. Now I am trading a demo acc and a small live account, taking things easy and zen-like. Scalping is not for me anymore.
I am still practicing how to look for the best entry points and staying in the trade that I entered. And staying long in the trade without getting emotional is probably the hardest thing to do. Also allowing breathing space in the form of probably 40pips for retracement is needed too, for more volatile pairs, a larger pips difference may be needed. I will try all methods with the demo account and will paste all results in a month time to see how well mg99 methodology works for me.
hi guys hows eve is everyone doing?..there are no posts in a while…hope that is not a bad sign
i am following this thread for a few months already…some other things in life prevented me from committing to this as much as i wanted, but now am i back…making a one word.doc out of this whole thread and getting with my demo start…hope everyone is having a good results
thanks for the reply medisoft… glad to hear this thing is still going on…
a lot of things in real life get me sideways to, so i will try to get on this thing hard
I’m taking into action an adapted version of this method (some small variations) and in spite of not having a big enough sample of orders I’m identifying some problems/errors that I have. By the way, I’m using Daily charts to get the entry signals.
The one that concerns me more is the exit. Normally my entries are ok, most of them go green from the beginning, but the exits are a different story. Sometimes they turn from green to red after a while, and sometimes I close the order in profits but leaving too much on the table, for instance 1/3 as it happened with one trade that I had that reached +200pips and was closed at +140pips.
I think the problem is that I’m looking for an exit signal on the daily chart. Now I’m changing that and I look for the exit signal on the H4 chart. Many things can happen in 24h.
So what I’m doing now is to look for entry signals on daily close for all the pairs just once a day, and I look two or three times for exit signals on H4 only for the pairs that have an order running.
Not much movement in the thread lately. Let me write down some impressions.
I think it wasn’t a good idea to go down to H4 charts. I’ve been moving one step forward and one step back since I started using H4 and I’ve been winning and losing with literally no progress. What happened here? I spotted some mistakes. Let’s try to summarize:
First of all I can not fully monitor the charts in the H4 frame because I have a job. There are 6 bar closes per day and I can’t be awake or available for all of them. I lost good signals at some moments I wasn’t monitoring.
It became a bit tiring (I wouldn’t say stressing), having to (or trying to) monitor all the pairs multiple times a day. Not funny anymore. So I guess at some points I wasn’t focused completely.
A bit of noise/fake signals. I’m no sure if I can use the term “noise” in such a big time period like H4 but I got several fake signals. My sample of trades in both D1 and H4 are not that big but I would say that I got less fake signals in D1.
I don’t know if I should try to finish the month on H4 or just directly continue from today on D1. Most probably the second option.
I spoke in my quoted post that in D1 I was leaving too late the trade leaving too much on the table, but on H4 I’m a bit overloaded and finding fake signals. My conclusion is that I go back to D1 and still have to work on my exits. Maybe I just could try to use H4 only for the exits on my open trades.
Hi all. I’m here again after a while. I had a pretty busy year and I was out of trading most of the time.
Recently I took again my trading and it seems that a big pause just to forget almost everything is good for trading.
It had been 2 weeks since I started again my trading and that left me with a nice 20 percent without exceeding a 2 percent risk on any trade.
I placed on my brain a milestone: to trade profitable until I recover all the losses and then double my account. This must be before I decide to add more money.
I’m trading the 28 pairs in daily view looking for price action on clear support and resistance levels that happen to be also 50 percent retraces.
I’m setting targets of 3 times risk instead of letting them run and I’m adjusting stops when I see price action that makes me doubt about continuation.
I will wait for a month to see if I can continue like this or it is that I got lucky and got only trending pairs.
My 2 cent: My current positions as of this morning are: BUY EURUSD, GBPJPY, EURAUD. SELL AUDNZD, USDCHF, EURGBP. Weekly timeframes, wish i had the full 24-28 pairs but these are the only ones i could see to do at the moment.
