I was thinking something similiar but just for the record a SL of 40 would have just missed it and you would have been stopped out - but a SL of 45 would have been good and not been triggered.
Hmm, according to my chart - which showed the range to be 41 pips (I excluded the last candles of the day’s earlier big buying move, this was not part of the normal range) - my 20:40 order would have triggered and won.
This is an exciting idea. I haven’t yet played with it any further, but this led me thinking to use the current opposite entry price as SL. I.e. the SL for the long entry would be the short entry = low - 6 pips, and vice versa.
It might be reasonable to use a limit for the maximum range to trade, maybe somewhere around 50 pips. Last Monday it was too much, and there was an unfavourable overnight trend anyway (as dissected in the thread).
At least quite many of the recent trades would have been saved by this.
It remains to be seen whether this would hold in the long run, and what would be an optimal TP. An initial guess: a bit above 50% of the overnight range.
The problem recently was that what we thought was ideal (not disproved yet BTW) is that a narrower range would mean a higher likelihood of a breakout. What the narrower range has seemed to mean is that the overnight volume is much lower than it should be. I can run some tests on overnight box size and apply 1:2 trades for that but the problem is that when the volatility is back to normal, the overnight box size can be 70-100 pips sometimes.
I see you guys are still mulling over the SL.
Sometimes I post my entry’s but I don’t post the TP SL anymore since I always use the same. (I posted it a few pages back 10~20 pages back :))
SL 50 TP 30.
According to SanMiguel calculations my account would be dead in about 3 month time, well fortunately I can say it is nicely up and had very few losses.
Usually I jump out of the trade in the morning ~10:00GMT (that’s when I turn on my computer) and therefore last 3 nights a made only very few pips (+16 this 3 nights) but still positive with this strategy.
Then looking later at the chart instead of jumping out with 1 or 9 pips let it go till ~11:00 GMT it would have triggered the long TP30.
It’s debatable if I still use the trevor strategy since I let it go that long but if you go back to page 2, you will see, most profits where done around 8~9 GMT. So what’s 1hrs more.
Not watching the trade during nights has a lot of advantages, besides not interfering with it, YOU GET A GOOD NIGHT SLEEP.
Until today the SL50 TP 30 made me money, no if’s but’s and when’s.
I could have gotten more, maybe, manually trading, but maybe not because the temptation to jump out when you see the candle going down is great. Meaning, manually trading is not the best at night. At least not for me.
Have all a great weekend till Sunday night.
That’s what I was pondering, as well. I’m actually thinking of a two-prong approach:
1.) When the trend is narrower (say 40ish or less), go with a SL equivalent to the range itself, insuring that several narrow price movements in such a channel won’t give fakeout stop losses.
2.) When the trend is larger (70-100) pips, go with a more conventional breakout ratio like 10:20 or 20:30. I am actually thinking that the [I]wider[/I] the range the more I want to just go with a very modest 10:20 pip TP:SL. This takes advantage of any breakout that - as a percentage of the whole range - is very achievable.
What I’m trying to establish here is a plan that has a high win percentage, regardless of the high/low range in question (wide or narrow).
Oskar, I definitely set my trades at the end of the box (midnight EST) then leave it alone. I agree that with a strat like this watching and micromanaging it might be counterproductive. I just go to bed.
Would you be kind enough to compile your wins and losses for us, along with your totals? It sounds like your generous 50 pip SL is not unlike what we’ve been discussing here.
Just a suggestion but you might be better off with a straight 30:30 using that strat or even 50:50 the profit factors are all roughly the same but you win more when you win or you lose less when you lose.
I’m really convinced that lower than 1:1 is not ideal for a strategy like this unless you use a small (5) trailing stop…especially if you are treating the breakout as a coinflip with no price action to help you decide on longs or shorts.
FirstFx is correct. It’s quite common in a few strategies to use twice the spread as a buffer though. However, we have been using 6 as the intial buffer.
buffer = 6 + spread for longs (10 in your case here 6+4)
buffer = 6 for shorts
Here it is, put these in your indicator folder, one makes a yellow vertical line at the beginning and end of the range we are using. and one colors the daylight hours blue.
I’ts attached to another post already but I don’t remember which page of the thread so I’ll attach it again here.
Ran some numbers back testing for this past week and came to the conclusion that had we used the trading range (difference of highest and lowest price from 2 pm EDT to 12 midnight EDT) for the SL plus 4 pips or 50sl , which ever came to be higher then the following net pips would have been made (assumes other order is cancelled - Tuesday was only iffy day but if you woke up before 9 am EDT and cancelled it you would be fine)
If 50tp then net is 50 pips (2 losses and 3 wins)
If 40tp then net is 110 pips (1 loss and 4 wins)
If 30tp than net is 150 pips (5 wins)
So under “modified” SL pips would have been:
Monday 75 sl (includes Friday pre trade session 2 pm EDT to 5 pm EDT)
Tuesday 50 sl
Wend. 61 sl
Thursday 50 sl
Friday 50 sl
So only Monday would have had a somewhat high sl.
Now if we used a straight 50sl the results would be:
if 50tp then net is -150 pips (4 losses and 1 win)
if 40tp then net is -70 pips (3 loss and 2 wins)
if 30tp than net is -10 pips (2 losses and 3 wins)
So based on the above overall best strategy looks to be a tp30 and modified sl.
Even a 50sl and 30tp would have not worked out too bad as the net loss would have been only 10 pips for the week.
So Oskar
How has 50sl 30tp worked for you over the past week? Month of August? Month of July?
When did you start using this 50sl 30tp? What where you using before and why did you switch? Any specific reasons for using this combo?
So are you saying that the 6 pips is derived by two times the spread of 3 pips?
And you are saying it is quite common? I assume you mean for a break out strategy?
Very curious here if you or anyone else can tell me the reason for using two times the spead?
It appears that Trever started using the 6 pips originally so maybe he can chime in here and tell me why or how he came to use 6 pips?
Your 50sl 30tp strategy testor report looks wrong as you are only using one contract vs the 30:30 and 50:50, where you use 2 contracts, so profit for 50sl 30tp should be much higher (guessing final balance should be $20,200 and not $15,100). Can you re run it with 2 contracts?
2 contracts? You mean use both the buy and sell orders in the same day?
I can run it doing that but it’s not part of the strategy on page 1.
The point is all the strategies are compared relatively anyway so even if I left both orders in, the profit factors would still be relative to each other. The net is a guide but is misleading because people use various different lot sizes including micro lots.
Definitely good to keep this in mind but based on 1 week’s worth of data you should be very careful.
Yep, that’s why, it’s his strategy though it seems accepted to use buffers of around 5pips on some strategies and 2xspread on others. Probably a personal thing - it’s a balance between avoiding fakeouts but not losing too much profit in proper breakouts.
Will do after weekend - think Alpari turns off their servers at weekend.
My point in all this is that you will make more using greater than 1:1 or 1:1 at a minimum.
Why would you risk more than you want to gain especially on the wider stops where it might not reach its target so consistently.
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[B]Have a good weekend all. Bank holiday in the UK on Monday so I guess volumes will be even lower than last week.[/B]
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No, I do not mean to use both buy and sell orders on the same day.
In your report for 50sl 30tp you have a “size” of 1 as compared to all your other reports where you use a size of 2. Using a size of 1 will make it wrong from a profit comparison point to the other reports you have produced where you use a size of 2.
Please run your 50sl 30tp again using a size of 2 as you will get a much larger profit.
Using a size of 1 will make it wrong from a profit comparison point to the other reports you have produced where you use a size of 2.
You are right, it was 1 in that separate report…my mistake…so for the moment you should double the profit amounts until I can rerun your strategy on Monday/Tuesday. The profit factor (gross profit/gross loss), which should not be doubled, is the [B]same [/B]no matter what the lot size is. So, as you can see between 50:30, 50:50, and 30:30 profit factors are similar therefore reducing SL or increasing TP will serve better. [I]Again data is only over 3 months but I figured running these for the most recent market price action would be better.[/I]
