Trading all pairs same currency at same time?

Beginner Questions
23

Yes I am using Thinkorswim’s “blast all” feature, works for up to 8 pairs at a time.

1 Like
24

I do most of my trading between 5A and 1P Pacific. Between 5A and 9A Pacific when London and NY are open is when I am seeing the most price action.

25

Not sure what to tell ya, I have not been using stops, just watch closely and if they all start to tank I blast back out to exit and lick my wounds. Still paper trading though at this point, all bets are off until I do this for real with live trading.

26

In the year that I have been practicing and teaching myself FX trading I have tried scalping the 1M chart, swing trading longer TF charts, and buy/hold the 1D chart…all have failed. I get in and out of these basket trades as fast as possible, and when I am not sitting at my computer actively trading, I have nothing in any trades.

27

I like your heatmap Och…can I advise one quick change…instead of calculating the percentage from the daily open like the bar chart website does…try shifting toward the main trading session…so…in other words…instead of comparing the current price to the previous day close to calculate the percentage…compare the current price to the close of an hour or two before the london exchange opens. 90% of forex trades come from the london/new york session…I tried it…and it seems to be much more efficient…more pips! LEt me know your thoughts.

2 Likes
28

I cannot change the barcharts heatmap I am using. But back that up with heatmaps from 3 other sites too, so sort of getting an aggregate of all 4 of them. Unless they all tell me the same thing, I stay out of the basket trade.

29

@acandan21,
Thanks for this suggestion, as I told you entry/exit rules still need to be tuned.
Let me be a little bit more explicit on what I am trying to do :

  1. The ‘heatmap’ has 2 timeframes (setup) :
    a. one as you understand to calculate the change percentage (daily, weekly or monthly)
    b. another one to refresh the heatmap (M15, H1, H4 or even D1 if T1 = W1 or MN1).

  2. The heatmap is refreshing figures on each tick, but the rank of the currencies and the buy/sell orders in the basket are only refreshed on the second timeframe basis. Arrows are to indicate if a currency is rising or falling…

  3. The main idea is to open close a basket on each new T2 timeframe whatever the basket is profitable or not. I hope I will have a statistical advantage (still need to be confirmed…)

  4. I try also now to calculate a moving average of the currency basket return pips. The idea is to open a basket only if that moving average is positive.

If I understand correctly your point, you suggest to calculate the change of a currency starting 1 or 2 hours before the NY or london opening bell, instead of the begining of the day (midnight)? I will try to add a parameter…

Regards,
och

30

Hi Av8rdan,
Can you please share the links of the other sites you are using map?
Regards,
och

31

I really like what your doing with this…I agree with the moving average as I did the same thing (I used Exponential, 5 and 12 periods…no shift). My suggestion was simply to have it “Reset” two hours before the London open…you don’t want the reset right before the main session…as you will need a few hours of data for good entries…and the standard daily TF is so arbitrary…there’s no benefit to using it if you’re trading the main session like most traders. Give it a shot…I think you will see your numbers improve. I’d love to hear your results.

32

And yours looks much prettier than mine!!!

33

I guess the best way to explain why the shift works is …you don’t need that arbitrary 8 hours during the Asian session where volumes and volatility are very low…relatively speaking. That’s 8 hours of tick movement which doesn’t really mean much to your trading plan (assuming you don’t trade the Asian session)…but can have an impact on your percentages…I personally won’t enter the trade unless I see .3% or greater on all pairs for the one specific currency that I’m analyzing. But that 8 hours can skew the percentage unnecessarily. Of course…if you trade the Asian session also…I would suggest making another chart solely for that session.

34

This is far too much detail for me. I am not that kind of trader. I subscribe to KISS, and in reality have now moved on to a modified version of that basket strategy, adding an element of scalping to it, exiting the losers and adding size to the winners. But I do not get into the percentages and detail like you are describing.

35

@acandan21,
I guess I got your point and know how to implement it into my framework. Will try to do it this WE, and try to backtest it from begining of 2018, just to have an idea, then I will try forward test next week. I will keep you update.

36

@Av8rdan,
You said you are using different forex map from different web site instead of barchart.com. Can you share thoses links?
Regards,

37
38

This is a very interesting trend following strategy. It sounds similar to the turtle trading strategy Richard Dennis came up with. In theory, I just read the book “The Complete Turtle Trader” by Michael W. Covel because its on Pipcrawler’s list (Pipcrawler’s Favorite Trading Books). Essentially, the traders would buy what was going up instead of waiting for a retrace which people tend to do and miss the trend. You might get some ideas from the book or better understand why it works. Donchian’s 4-week rule and Gann’s “Truth of the Stock Tape” have also been helpful to me to understand trend following.

I think more important than whether or not it should or shouldn’t work is that it does seem to work for you, so stick with it!

One last thing, it does seem that some forex pairs are positively and negatively correlated. This page might be worth looking into Forex Market Pair Correlations | Best Currency Pairs to Trade. You might increase your winnings by not buying pairs with negative correlation.

39

Thanks. I tried factoring in correlations and it got to confusing to me, I am a KISS trader. Things go sideways if I add to much to the charts or start analyzing everything too much.

40

Thanks to all for all you reply.
I already study pairs correlation but never manage to include in a bot. Will try to give it a second chance…

It seems by design this way of classifying pairs (Av8dran ForexMap) include correlation, or more excatly give a higher weight to most trending pairs…

Many things to do this WE… I hope it will be a productive WE…

Regards,
och

PS1 : Thanks to Av8dran for your links, I will study thoses maps this WE…
PS2 : Do not loose your time on the soccer cup… :wink: Personal thoughs…

Edit 1 : After a fast review of the new maps, the third one seems to be quit the same but less obvious, the second and first one show importance of timeframe confirmation. Guess I already include with second refresh timeframe and moving average, will see …

41

yeah no worries here about losing time with soccer, I live in the USA and we are not as crazy about futbol as our football.

42

Where are you from US, East , Central or West?