Very simple EA for programming

[magft]

seems to me that we see strategies like this all the time that work great during trends and bomb with ranging, especially martingales. So why not just disable trading every time a trend stops? there's tons of code like squalous breakout indi to detect ranging and then wait for a breakout and new trend. might reduce the deep recovery trades by reducing the bad entry points.

If you can somehow manage to filter out the ranging market then any indicator or reverse martingale (like this one) based strategy would be The Holly Grail. Do this for trending market, Martingale based strategies will be unstoppable.

I think we should discuss this fact more, about filtering trending and ranging periods as accurately as possible.

I totally agree this is what kills most systems, opening trendy trades in ranging market or opening oscillator trades and you get caught the wrong side of a trend so need to recover.

What we need is a method for establishing what the market is doing? Reading through the different systems this is the issue with all of them and not an easy answer, if it was we would all be rich by now

Ive looked at the usual ideas MAs, BreakOut boxes, ADX, etc but none really help. Started to look at neural networks but it is finding the correct inputs for a pair that limits their usefulness.

I'm open to suggestions?

Regards

Mike

[garyfritz]

AK is right. If you had a reliable ranging-vs-trending indicator, you would own the solar system by now.

Ranging? Buy/sell with a simple OB/OS indicator like stochastic -- or just stand aside and wait for a nice juicy trend.
Trending? If fast MA > slow MA, then sell, else buy. Exit when you start ranging again.

That's it. That's all you need to be a megagazillionaire. You "just" need a good range/trend indicator.

[blahn]

I think the puzzle is a bit more complicated than just finding a good range/trend indi. I'm going to guess it's more the methodology of implementing the right indi for the right rules, at the right time. For example. When I, or probably anyone else here, look at Empty4 charts, we can scan through them and within 5 to 10 seconds on each chart we can tell if they are ranging or trending. And all the indis mentioned by everyone work just as well. flat ma - ranging, low adx - ranging, rsi rising/falling trending, squalous breakout box - ranging (which btw almost always falls on the ranging chart sections our eyes are drawn to as well). But it isn't the fact that we know we are trending or ranging that gives us the million dollar edge. I'm still just a break even trader after all that still has to work for a living.. I would propose taking a system like this one, with a known rising equity curve due to it's trend reliance, and a repeatable weakness to ranging, and systematically attack the weakness with range filters. Or, attack the range weakness another way by modifying the recovery to add a drawdown buffer on each loss. ie, after 2x recovery gets stopped out, wait 20 more drawdown pips before 3x. when 3x gets stopped out wait an additional 40 pips before 4x opens. etc. anything to eventually move the recovery outside of a range before it can multiply too high.

[garyfritz]

Remember that it's easy to see trending-vs-ranging when you look at the chart, but that's *history*. It only helps you with trading if the market continues to do what it's been doing -- and they have a nasty habit of not doing that whenever you depend on it.

I agree that you might be able to improve things by standing aside when you see you've gotten into a range. Of course, it's also entirely possible you'll "take all the losses before you figure out you're in a range," then "stop trading and whoops, the market just took off, and I missed the profitable trades at the start of the move" -- and it's entirely possible the filter costs you more than it saves you. Ask me how I know.

[blahn]

I hear ya. and have noticed the same thing trying to filter out all the ma cross strategies i've been using. This, along with all my manual trades, breakout trades, trend trades, etc, leads me to believe it's all basically a crap shoot.. And yet we keep trying. Heh, I've been thinking about that for a while now and keep coming back to the idea we'd have just as good results using a shotgun approach. ie, just blasting trades at every pair on the crim with a 2 to 1(or 3 to 1) reward/risk. as long as 50 percent of the pellets hit, u're ahead of the game.

[SteveHopwood]

Gary, blahn, your thoughts are most welcome at http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... f=12&t=521 You inspired the thread. It may go nowhere; we shall see.