1. The moving averanges are not better than a coin toss to predicting future prices. 2. Testing different values of N is curve-fitting. The moving averages can help by focusing your view on the important spots of the chart. You could use them for ...

Measuring the 'edge' you get from a moving average

I found 2 but one is by far more profitable. As soon as you're able to find one you'll see that finding another one is very easy. You simply know where you must look for them. It is anyway easier to stick to one or two and optimizing them instead of ...

YOUR results with live, fully-automated EAs??

I use to put the stops where the conspirationists would expect and this is exactly a few pips on the other side of the last significant candle. Guess what, it happens extremely rare that they are triggered followed by a movement in my direction. ...

Stating The Obvious and The Quest For Wisdom

charlyher, relax man. Card counting in Blackjack works if the casino doesn't reshuffle the deck after every round and they let you play after they find that you're doing it. Casinos expand and don't go bankrupt simply because most of their games ...

A Systematic Approach to Markets

Hey guys, sorry for the interruption, a few of you seem to have found a new religion or at least some form of divinity. Instead of trying to decipher every small word of Darkstar what don't you take a deep breath and think a little bit with your own ...

Stating The Obvious and The Quest For Wisdom

According to the price action on the EURUSD H4 chart his entry price is nothing more than a close of a candle which showed that the bears don't have enough power to push the prices down. For the moment 1.3800 has been completely rejected and my ...

Stating The Obvious and The Quest For Wisdom

That formula is too complicated and doesn't make sense before you start trading. As long as I can backtest 10 years of data and I know the maximum drawdown and the potential win then I'll look if the 2 * maxDD and win / 2 are still ok for my taste. ...

How do you gain, and measure, your trading system's statistical edge?

My tests really showed 39000 pips from 2002 to 2009 without stoploss. Also 80 and 100 days were the best choises, with fewer and fewer pips for 60, 40 or 20. EURUSD seems to be the great winner using Donchian, the other pairs behaving less ...

How do you gain, and measure, your trading system's statistical edge?

I know this but the first post wasn't about market's microstructure. Actually this thread is about nothing in particular, I see only experienced traders who share some points about trading in general.

Stating The Obvious and The Quest For Wisdom

My humble opinion is that somewhere a few traders are able to make money using the simple behaviour of price. They identified some inefficiencies and capitalize on them. I think I found 2 of them, they worked in the past, they worked this year and I ...

Stating The Obvious and The Quest For Wisdom

I would use a stoploss = 2 * ATR or more. If you don't use a SL then you can't really say how profitable your system is. Risk for example 2% per trade and adjust your lot size depending on SL. Doing this you'll see that the number of pips has ...

How do you gain, and measure, your trading system's statistical edge?

If "visually backtesting" would work all the traders would be rich. You are inclined to see only the profitable trades and to skip the bad ones, the best example being the crosses of averages. No problem anyway, I understand why you don't like ...

Are MAs Like 50/100/200 Important In Trading?

Let's cut the crap and play a game. We toss a coin. For every 4 heads in a row I give you 100$. For every tail you give me 50$. Your chance being 50%, you will become rich. Deal?

Double up and get rich???

Maybe I didn't understand what you meant but the probability of 10 losses in a row with a system which produces only 5% losses is 0.05 ^ 10 and not 5%. Actually is that amount multiplied by 100, if you consider the result in percent.

Double up and get rich???

There's something missing from that calculation: the biggest drawdown in pips or better, in percentage of the account if a trader would risk 1% on every trade. Anytime I look at a profitable system is not the reward that I'm interesting in but the ...

How do you gain, and measure, your trading system's statistical edge?

The fact that using EMA 85 has been very profitable for some months or one year has no meaning TODAY. I need only a few minutes to find the best EMA for the last 3 years but I'm 100% sure that this will stop working in the future followed by a flat ...

0400-0700 GMT Breakout Strategy

It doesn't make sense to adjust the parameters to the pip using data from the previous month. These kind of breakouts are profitable with any imaginable parameters if the trend is strong and lose big in a ranging market. The last 2 months weren't ...

0400-0700 GMT Breakout Strategy

All these strategies will fail if there's no way of skipping some bad trades. A profitable system must exploit some inefficiency or market behaviour which can't be found on the chart alone. The chart can only help a trader positioning himself at a ...

How to cut losses and letting winners run

It doesn't work, it is too simple. There are programs which try all the possibilities that you can imagine and if it would be an edge in some breakout of a daily candle they would have already taken advantage of it.

How to cut losses and letting winners run

Those money managers have an edge because they optimise the entry, in your own words: MM is just a tool, nothing more. To be profitable you must have at least one variable in your methodology which puts the odds in your favor. The variables of the ...

A trader's edge - myth or reality?