Kreslik.com - traders community since 2006

Below is a fairly crude diagram of an idea I've been playing with today after looking across some of TRO's ideas, and I was wondering if anyone would know how easy/difficult it would be to code an expert advisor to backtest this?

Rather than using any specific time frame the buy sell orders are placed whenever the price has moved 10 pips, if a stop loss (set to 10) is hit, an order is placed in the direction of the move again. If the take profit (also 10) is hit, another order is placed in the same direction.


I am fairly new to forex trading, so: if the idea is REALLY stupid, I'd really appreciate an explanation as to why.

From a rough look:

ON EUR/USD

20/01/10 0800GMT- 0836GMT 120 pips
19/01/10 2000GMT - 20/01/10 0800GMT 60 pips
19/01/10 0800GMT - 19/01/10 2000GMT 210 pips

However, 18/01/10 0800GMT - 19/01/10 0800GMT lost 110 pips.

Any comments would be greatly appreciated

Didn't you post this on another thread here?

First price doesn't move 10 pips "stops" and then moves another 10 pips so the stop losses will be activated, second have you already learned about ranging and trending? Ranging means that it goes up, down, up, down so you will loose, and making EA isn't easy, no one is going to make you an ea with any proofs that your strategy works, test it in a demo account and then tell us how did it perform. Or google LFH trading simulator and follow the steps then you can test it for longer periods in a shorter amount of time.

It certainly seems interesting, though it smacks of overtrading. Keep us posted, I'm curious how your demo looks after a week or two of this.

Thats very similar to what I Succesfully do.
.
but I only trade at certain hours.

regards

C.

Very interesting. Did you test it through the recent month?

See if you can get blubb's attention: http://kreslik.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1885&start=0
or newschool's:
http://kreslik.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2216&start=0

In whole 2008 I played with EAs in demo and simulation, wrote literally dozens of them, had thousand ideas and of course also tried to automate the buy zone or psych lines. I even wrote a multithreaded simulation/optimization software because MT4 is singlethreaded.

The result of it all: Nothing. Or at least nothing I would rely on.

If you use deterministic entries and exits (fixed SL and TP included), all you'll get is a equity curve that looks like some chart itself... which also is unpredictable going up and down. Or going down long-term because of the spread! You basically end up trading this equity curve by switching the EA on and off or modifying it! That is silly...
An EA may be useful if it only enters and you exit... maybe. That would be easy for the buyzone, but if it helped you, I don't know. The buy zone or psych lines never really worked for me personally, I must admit.

blubbb

I had no idea you had worked extensively with EAs, both buying, writing and big time testing. I am in the midst of this very same project right now working with the very same BuyZone !!! It all seems so simple.

Could you take a few minutes and tell me about the various time frames, times to trade and not trade, and other parameters and variables you worked with? Was the donational indicator for the wick and tail frequency available for you in 2008 and if so was it useful to you in the trading design and strategy?

Thanks

Patch
In VA

I haven't ever bought any EA since I always wondered why the creators of working EAs would have to sell them... This was my first question. So I tried to rely on my skills to write one myself. This was my period of "system hopping" that everybody has and that in my case involved many nights programming and testing with no real result. I believe everybody has this "phase", but since everybody has different skills/hobbies/interests, it manifests itself differently.
Well, what else did I try? MA crosses. And multiple MA crosses. Many of the other squigglies, too. In fact, because of this time I'm totally immune to squigglies today. Heiken-Ashi is a squiggly, too, if you will. Then I tried to "improve" those EAs by trading with (or against) H1 and/or D1 color (I must admit, I never really saw a difference). And W1 color. And MN1. M15. And so on. And popular "candle stick patterns" (I got immune to them, too *g*). I then even got some results after taking many TF colors into account, but only because of overoptimizing (of course I didn't test all the variables/periods/combinations by hand...). Meaning that the EA would only work in the specific time window (in the past!) and pair it was optimized with.
I tried to automate ZLines when I first saw them and was instantly fascinated (still am) how conveniently price often bounced back from them. But guess what: Automated long term loss. And no, automatically waiting for momentum on lower TFs in a MZ on higher TFs didn't work either.

Well, I was young and still wet behind my ears. But no harm done. And it helped me to develop my idea what Forex is all about (at least how I understand it). I'm still learning like most of you are! If there are working EAs out there... I honestly don't know. I doubt it, though! But today I don't care anymore.

My advice: Don't even try to find an EA or indi that works. Study naked charts, try to see ZLines and momentum bars on lower TFs (not all 2x bars are momentum bars!). No software can do this for you. But I guess this is all different for all of us. As for me, I'm demoing and studying charts with the one tool I wrote, I see things occasionally, but I'm not yet feeling secure or I already would have removed the donation link.