The Chimp`s "Forex Trades"

[PYenner]

Originally Posted by sundowner My inexperience makes precise definition of s/r, let's say uncomfortable, yet I have seen prices respect these (past) levels time and time again. My opinion is that fundamentally the market is driven by psychology as even the shakers and movers in this market are human beings and respond to defined markers.

Ditto, I have see GBPJPY come back to a human number like 235.00 like a fly on shit, can't keep away from it. So yes you see historic prices respected over and over. But those same human money movers who respect sr some days also have enough savvy to burn sr users often enough to keep them from getting rich. I have seen the market fly straight past a price it had previously clung to like a fly. I am a doubting thomas about every single establishment system, that is just me. I have also seen sr prices not get respected. Most of all the market seems downright devious to me, especially GBPJPY, as much as I love it I do so want to burn it back the same way it loves to burn me...

Originally Posted by sundowner What I am looking for is indicators that will define the turning points, and yours do quite well...the other thing I have difficulty with is the draw down. Profitable or not, correct direction or not, it's hard to watch the market move against you as far as it can and still hold on if you're using real money.

Sunny the best advice I can give you from months of just that problem, drawdown on entry or pullback during a longer term trade, is... treat drawdown as you would a fully realized loss because it is every bit as bad. If your entry timing gives you drawdown then look for an entry setup that has you stopping out before drawdown builds. Ditto for pullback during a trade, it is nuts to watch unrealized profit evaporate, particularly when you realize that you might have closed or reversed and be making money out of the pull back instead of losing money. Current price is the irreversible reality, mightbe's are for suckers (and I'm trying to stop being one), sure it might come back (and it might not), but if you are building drawdown the reality is you are going backwards because your thinking tells you (wrongly, may I suggest) that it serves a good purpose (like what exactly?). I now classify tolerating drawdown as denial (dat famous river) and the creek it takes you up dont smell so sweet.
Forgive what may seem like a tactless reply, but I am just finding my way back out from the path you seem to be starting down. Imo, stop out is better than getting that sick feeling as things go backwards. Watch it happen from outside the market where it gives you no pain. Wait for a good "Walter" entry with momentum behind it and you are back in without drawdown or much waiting. If the market is being a sod, sleep like a baby and come back the next day.

>>Profitable or not, correct direction or not, it's hard to watch the market move against you as far as it can and still hold on if you're using real money<<
Perfect description of what GBPJPY does to you, that is its speciality.
Yes you can do long term trades and take the heat that goes with them.
I used to do that but thanks to Walter I now wonder why I ever bothered.

If I do get back to trend trading I hope it will be more like a series of scalps aimed at minimum drawdown (seriously small) and no tolerance for pullback, take it while you got it and don't let the market get any back.

I once entered a long term trade a day early simply because the entry price came up. Next day the market bottomed just 5 pips below my entry price then went up for the next week (what a hero). If only I had scalped out there (what a sucker). For the next month it did ugly whipsaws (gbpjpy again) and I did eventually take a profit I could and should have taken much earlier. When it came time to re-enter for the second half of the pattern, boy did I get multiple burns. The price bottomed out, started up then pulled back 100 pips, ouch. Bottomed out started up, pullback 150 pips, ouch again. I lost count after 350 pips.

From my own bitter experience, please heed some words...
Do not get hardheaded about being able to call an entry price or direction, that has cost me so much money it is not funny, do the exercise, be aware of what it tells you, BUT DO NOT RELY ON IT OR EXPECT IT. The market is not that green or easy.
Any such rigid expectations are a ball and chain on your brain and as much a liability as an asset.
There are some very savvy money movers who seem to rely on making money from other peoples reliance on fixed thinking and sr prices are a classic example of something they know every bit as well as you.

On the psychology front they are well ahead on that game and gbpjpy is the right place to find that out the hard way.

Again forgive the lack of tact, but you gotta admit, its honest fwiw..
Regards
Bruce

[PYenner]

Originally Posted by unicorn A lot of versions have been developed: adxvma_12 bars, adxvma_16_bars, adxvma_6bars, adxvmatest3, you name it... and it is not clear which one is regarded as the best for this task. I would very much appreciate your clarification regarding which is the final version of the vma indicator used for the setup and the timing, AND the exact parameters used (because the charts posted do not show any parameters). Perhaps a chart in Ninja Trader would help to clarify the final settings.

Yes I need to tidy the mess up and as you say, get the charts displaying the parameters. There is also a small bug in adxvma6 which is what they all are, except for the original fantailVMA1_1. Thanks to another poster who pointed me towards a handy site I can now start tidying things up into a final version which may be called adxvma7 but it is a tidy up that should only really affect mt4 users, there is no great new stuff to be ported. As such it is on the back burner, it works so the need to tidy it up is not urgent.
There might be a vma8 but for the moment I doubt if it will turn out to have anything significant to contribute, will have to try it to find out.

Forex volume is one way I am going at the moment, while Walter goes into futures volume where it can be done to its best. I am also giving top priority to my trading income which has been on the backburner for too long now.
Adxvma7 tidy up may be a month away, I expect to lose a few weeks to other business demands and then xmas gets busy anyway which halves the time for trading stuff. I might have to go AWOL for a while too, depends on what goes down next week, stuff is happening that might mean closing down one of the businesses 10 years earlier than planned <governments, don't ya love em sigh>.
Bruce

[sundowner]

Greetings PYenner,

I thought your recent reply was brilliant actually.

Thank you for taking the time to point out, as the elders of the Sechelt Native Band say, “the perils of my walk�. Better to hear it now than experience those sad truths live trading.

Far from being offended by the directness, PYenner, I appreciate the counsel and the gracious way you have treated these silly newbie posts of mine.

Chalk it up to inexperience, excitement and enthusiasm for new ideas and the great potential of these threads. I think if I were in your shoes, reading these inane posts of mine, I would have said STFU (I had to google that) and listen you damn fool.

In truth, I will do exactly that (STFU) and see what evolves.

Still like to see adxvma 7…. Sorry, just can’t help it.

Regards and thanks.

[PYenner]

Originally Posted by walterw what sounded interesting to me is what you mentioned about bid and ask volumes... interesting... could this generate some synthetic delta ?

I have some hopes but also trying not to have hopes because it is nowhere near as good as real volume. Bid and ask is only available from live feed, that data isn't stored in history charts, so any volume info that can be built from it can also not be stored easily. Bit of a pest, experiment and see what comes out yeah?
Cheers
Bruce

[PYenner]

Originally Posted by sundowner Thank you for taking the time to point out, as the elders of the Sechelt Native Band say, “the perils of my walk�. Better to hear it now than experience those sad truths live trading. Far from being offended by the directness, PYenner, I appreciate the counsel and the gracious way you have treated these silly newbie posts of mine. Chalk it up to inexperience, excitement and enthusiasm for new ideas and the great potential of these threads. I think if I were in your shoes, reading these inane posts of mine, I would have said STFU (I had to google that) and listen you damn fool. In truth, I will do exactly that (STFU) and see what evolves.

Glad it was received ok.
You aint no fool, just human like the rest of us.
Each path brings both payoff and peril, big learning curve.
Walters path promises payoff with minimum peril and I love that.
Scalping came naturally to me, trend trading was a new opportunity that came to me later and the perils showed up in time.
So I am comfortable with scalping, it fits my fingerprint as Soultrader calls it.
If scalping is too fast for you, then maybe your fingerprint will be in longer trades. So don't shut up and don't stop trying. Do keep talking.
This forum is a great sanity saver for traders.

The entry drawdown thing has been called catching a falling knife.
It does not have an easy answer that I know of.
You are right to identify it as a major problem for longer trades.
They also have an obviously high payout per trade.
My losses came out of profit, they were not outright losses.
So it can work but the drawdown or outright losses are very testing, high psycho impact and that is why I look for alternatives now, less stress.
I did not find a good drawdown/stoploss rule for longer entries, things varied too much from week to week.
So you asked a damn good question but the best I can say is it remains a toughy, didn't find a good answer to it yet.
Tolerating drawdown was the only way I was able to trend trade gbpjpy, it did work overall but hell you can lose big too, the psycho stress was the killer, it was turning trading into a high stakes gamble and that was bad news.
What you are attempting is possible, its just damn hard on your insides.
GBPUSD or EURJPY are probably safer than GBPJPY.
Sorry for the unconstructive nature of my 2 cents worth.
I have not finished my first year of trading yet so I am still a noob too.
Bruce

[unicorn]

Originally Posted by PYenner Yes, I need to tidy the mess up and as you say, get the charts displaying the parameters.

Hello Bruce;
I thought that you have transferred to Ninja Trader.

Originally Posted by PYenner There is also a small bug in adxvma6 which is what they all are, except for the original fantailVMA1_1. ... it works so the need to tidy it up is not urgent. Bruce

I realize that cleaning up the code is not your priority, BUT please explain
1) why the _16, or _12 or _6 suffixes, I thought that they are minor fixes...
2) why the _test3 ? what are you testing? what is the outcome? better, worse?
3) what is the minor bug?
4) what are the input parameters and their corresponding values, as selected by Walter on his charts.

I have coded adxvma6 in Amibroker but the vma curves I get are not identical to what Walter has on the posted charts.
What I worry about is the following:
a) there might be a small bug that creates the difference ; small BUG - big disappointment!
b) I certainly do not want the good attributes of the adxvma6 to be due to a small bug; and I certainly hope that after the bug is fixed, the shape of the adxvma6(adxbars=6) will not be transformed and become less successful in indicating the horizontal effect and the laddering.

PLEASE paste on a message the few lines of code that have the bug and explain what the problem is; you can fix the bug at your convenience later.

Last BUT not least, if you are going to place trades using this, you need as much verification by others, programming the same idea and verifying that it always produces the same desirable result.

Take care.
Unicorn.

[unicorn]

Originally Posted by sundowner Here is a chart showing a couple of successful trades this week.

Hello sundowner;

Nice trades.

Why did you not take the first cross of the white curve (I assume no_lag_ma) and the red curve (I assume adxvma6(adxperiods=2) ).

By the way please clarify:
which indicator is the white curve, what value is the parameter?
which indicator is the red curve, what value is the parameter?
which indicator is the green curve, what value is the parameter?

When did you exit the trades?

cheers.
Unicorn.

[walterw]

Originally Posted by unicorn Hello Walter; I understand that the vma research has come to a conclusion regarding the trade setups. A lot of versions have been developed: adxvma_12 bars, adxvma_16_bars, adxvma_6bars, adxvmatest3, you name it... and it is not clear which one is regarded as the best for this task. I would very much appreciate your clarification regarding which is the final version of the vma indicator used for the setup and the timing, AND the exact parameters used (because the charts posted do not show any parameters). Perhaps a chart in Ninja Trader would help to clarify the final settings. As always, your charts and presentations are appreciated. Regards; Unicorn.

Hi Unicorn, thats precisely what I am working right now... taking some decisions into wich is the better combination of indicators, even I am still not convinced of using NT as it has data problems... so I am letting the sands settle down and once I get the most simple and optimized combo I will make it public on a new thread... my idea is going live with that defined combination and be consistent posting my live trades during a year at least...

So that thread will be diferent to the research threads as it will show something already defined and used on the live realm... it will be cool... cheers Walter.

[sundowner]

Hi Unicorn,

To answer your questions:

Green ADXVMA6 Bar (6)

Red ADXMA4 (4)

The white line is a DECEMA 12, virtually identical to the HMA 9.

I was not at my computer at the time of the first indicated trade, and it was well on its way so I waited for the retracement, hoping to see a continuation of the trend.

Exit when decema (white) turns to cross red (4). I struggle with exits.

Hope that answers your questions.

[walterw]

EXCELLENT Advices here Bruce ¡¡ I like your clear understanding in not getting married with any particular bias about the market but riding the waves and taking home the pips of each of this momentum driven waves... (call it scalping, etc ) certainly vma`s do a great job in creating a great amplified visual context to take this very simple trades and profit on a regular basis...

No needs to buy and hold or short and hold... if the trade its not going on the correct way you are out (tight), there will be lots of oportunities ahead ¡¡ thats the beauty of trading, it is a signed blanck check of oportunities, just need to focus on taking the ones that really have the best competitive potential output, and vma`s do a great job showing those ones...

Nice inputs here guys... cheers Walter.