The (self indulgent, heh) Travis Nine is a discretionary trading system that I am trying out with my demo account. Here is how it works. At a predetermined time during the day I will enter a position with all nine pairs that I trade. I will enter in the direction of the trend and hope that the trend continues for just a couple of hours. At the end of a couple of hours I will exit all positions that have not hit my TP or SL.
During preliminary testing this has been highly effective and is meriting more experimentation.
Here is how I enter a set of trades: between 9-11 AM Eastern time I look at the H1 charts for all of the pairs. If the trend is clear I take a position in the direction of the trend. If the trend is not clear, I will zoom out a bit to see what the H1 looks like over a longer time period. If it is ranging then I take a position that agrees with the range, selling if it is at the top of the range, or buying if it at the bottom of the range. If I can not make up my mind and am severely conflicted in deciding which direction to enter on a pair, I will just leave it out for that round.
Money management (for each pair):
Take Profit � 3% of entire account
Stop Loss � 1.5% of entire account
Leverage � I am using 50:1
Position Size � I am trading with 11% of my account with each pair
Why could this possibly work? Because following the trend works more often than it does not. Yes, on each set of trades there are pairs that whipsaw, reverse and go against you to stop you out. But the point is that the winners will be bigger and more frequent than the losers. Spreading the risk over nine different pairs increases the chance of your success. This is an extremely risky strategy and you could lose 13.5% of your equity if all the trades go against you, but then again you could gain 27% if all the trades go in your direction. Of course, you can adjust your money management according to how risk averse/tolerant you are. Personally I would be happy if this could produce an average of 2% each day I trade it. However, thus far the numbers have been much higher.
What I expect to change over time:
The pairs � If I find that a pair does not trend well enough to accurately follow, I will drop it and possibly replace it with another one that does.
The time I look to enter trades � I plan on finding another time frame in addition to the morning to enter a set of trades, possibly early afternoon EST.
Virtually anything else � If something needs to be refined I will change it let you know how it affects the system.
In the coming weeks I will post results and possibly some screenshots with examples of how I determine a trend in a pair.
Thanks for reading and feel free to post questions or comments.
Okay I decided to enter a set of trades at 2:30 AM EST, just because volume was picking up and I could determine the prevailing trend easily on several pairs…
1 � EUR/GBP Short
2 � EUR/JPY Long
3 � GBP/USD Long
4 � USD/CHF Short
5 � EUR/USD Long
6 � USD/JPY Short
7 � GBP/JPY Long
8 � USD/CAD Short
9 � AUD/USD Long
See here’s the power of this method… Before I made this post, I had entered all my trades. All of them were in the red because of the spread and my unrealized P&L was -1.5% of my account. But by the time that I am writing this seven of the nine pairs have continued in the direction of the trend and now my unrealized P&L is hovering between 1.75% and 2.5%…
I am going to go to sleep and post the results in the morning, along with the next round of trades.
Thanks for posting this. Simple systems like this sometimes turn out to be the best systems, so keep at it!
I have a question about your position sizing. You say you’re risking 1.5% of your account per trade (13.5% total over all the pairs), but you say you’re trading with 11% of your account with each pair. I’m confused. Could you explain a little more what you’re doing in regards to lot sizes per trade??
What I mean is that 11% of my account is used as my position size, but I have my stop loss set to take me out of the trade if the loss reaches 1.5% of my entire account. So if my entire account balance is 1,000 then the stop would be initiated when the trade was $15 in the red.
So last nights spur of the moment trading didn’t go so well. I netted approximately -5% off of that round of trades.
That is the first time I tried to trade that session. Typically I try to stay in just a couple of hours, this time I let them go overnight. In the future I think I will widen my SL and TP if I try that again. I was stopped out on a couple of retraces that eventually moved in the direction of the trend.
This mornings trades are:
1 � EUR/GBP Short
2 � EUR/JPY Long
3 � GBP/USD Short
4 � USD/CHF Short
5 � EUR/USD Short
6 � USD/JPY Long
7 � GBP/JPY Long
8 � USD/CAD Long
9 � AUD/USD Long
Several pairs are in a range, and I don’t like the way they look, but as this is an ongoing experiment I entered the trade anyway. I’ll let you know how it goes.
This mornings trades went well. Certainly much better than last night.
I was able to net approximately [B]3% [/B]on my account.
Until tomorrow!
P.S. I will only update this thread with trades that I take in the morning (approximately 9-11am EST). I do plan on expanding this method to other sessions, but for now that is what this thread will cover.
A great day for this method. I placed my trades at 10:00AM and closed them at 10:26EST for a [B]5.5% gain[/B] on my account.
Here were my positions:
1 � EUR/GBP Short
2 � EUR/JPY Short
3 � GBP/USD Long
4 � USD/CHF Short
5 � EUR/USD Long
6 � USD/JPY Short
7 � GBP/JPY Long
8 � USD/CAD Short
9 � AUD/USD Long
I am undecided as to how I go about taking profits if the trades are moving in my favor immediately. As of right now I feel that if prices have immediately swung in my direction and I have an unrealized profit of 4% or more on my account, I will just close all the trades and call it a day.
As I said initially, my long term goal with this method is about 2% each trading day, and so far, I seem to be exceeding that. So holding onto a 5% gain on my account and hoping it reaches 8, or 10% seems greedy to me. I’d rather lock in a good days profit than risk having prices reverse on me.
Take care guys!
Travis
P.S. Has anyone had any experience with this method yet? I would like to hear about it.
I haven’t tested the method out yet, but I plan too do some backtesting of it over the weekend.
Have you considered moving your stoploss up once you get to 4% profit? You could move it up to lock in your 2% and then, since you can’t lose, try and let your profits ride out to 8-10%.
I’m looking forward to an experienced member testing it. Thank you.
I think that would work, but I probably wont manage each SL individually throughout the round of trades. I trade this on the side while at work. I work in a hectic IT environment and sometimes I can not monitor my trades for indefinate amounts of time. Sooo… That leaves me with my current method. Which is that if its going in my direction, take the profit, and if not ride it out.
Sorry guys. I meant to reply but somehow I forgot and the thread got buried.
When I started to backtest this I realized that it’s impossible. It’s 9 trades on 9 different pairs per day! It would take me about 100 hours to get any length of backtesting results done, so I gave up.
I still think it’s a good system if anyone else has the time/will to backtest it.
It would take me about 100 hours to get any length of backtesting results done, so I gave up. 