Big Ben Strategy - optimised

No today was -2r. As I'm noticing, Mondays are rarely wide-range days: perhaps price today was always going to go nowhere.

With the probable exception I'll make to trading Mondays, the backtesting and trading I've done has not focused on trailing or moving stops, so I don;t know if it wold work well long-term: what I do know is when I have tried adjusting stops, I definitely get stopped!
 
Yes a -2R day, and a run of 3 loss making days.
My thinking on discounting Mondays: If everything was equal, and there was no difference, by taking out Mondays you'd have only 80% of the trading days and (obviously) 80% of the profitability (or rate of growth) compared to trading 5 days/week. The question for me therefore, is would you exclude Mondays if they in themselves were loss making, or would you exclude then if they were profitable but just not as profitable as Tuesday - Friday?
To me, you'd obviously exclude Mondays if they were shown to be loss making from back testing, but I'd be inclined to keep them in if they were just the poorer day of the week, albeit they made at least some contribution.
I'm not sure there's enough data in 11 months of back testing to know for sure?
Interesting though, thanks for looking at it!
 
I do think this needs a heck more data than I've got so far to be categoric - probably running into multiple years preferably. To be honest I'm not going to wait that long - Mondays have lowest pip ranges across this pair and so many others, plus most inside range days plus fewest outside range days, I'm just going to take Mondays off.

Whether they're winners or losers long-term, Mondays are very rarely going to produce a multi-r win, and that's a key to this strategy - there is a limit to what you can lose but there is no limit to what you can gain, per session - so refraining from trades when there is no major win likely isn't much of a gamble.

Anyway, tomorrow's another day. Literally.
 
Yes that was just bad luck, just stopped in and just stopped out.
It makes me think there is no ideal perfect entry trigger, since 2 weeks ago I got stopped out of a couple of good moves by 1 pip!
Using the 6am H1 bar today worked out, I added slightly to the length of the bar to make R=20 pips. I was triggered long within seconds of putting in the orders, this then stopped out for -1R, but the short triggered at this point (of course) and ran down, giving me +4.65R on the short, so net for the day of +3.65R.
 
Just seen a manual short on GBP/USD closed on trailing stop, so that more than makes up for the double loss on BB earlier. Not a BB trade but hey, it all counts.

I agree, there's no magic to the entry or the length of r, or the time-frame or the range you use. I have seen people use the entire Asian session for their BB range, I have also see a trader use a 15-minute bar as his BB range, some people use time periods before the open, some people wait for price to show its direction and only set their range AFTER the open. I guess its what works works: what doesn't work doesn't work.

Tomorrow's another day...
 
No Big Ben trade today owing to range of the 0700 bar. Price struggled to make any progress recovering after yesterday's fall, and ended up just about +1r. This was never a great opportunity for multi-r gains, glad to have sat it out.

Onwards and upwards.
 
That's another Big Ben week finished for me, and it was a loser this time.

Doesn't often happen but with a maximum of only 5 days on which to play once, its bound to occur. Monday, Tuesday and Friday were double losers, Wednesday and Thursdays were zero days (Wednesday was a no-trade day and Thursday, made a small profit, but it was less than 1r). That should be my last Monday of BB trading, as the day statistically has such poor prospects owing to light trading volumes.

Still, April remains another winning month so far, at +7r net.

Have a great weekend (far as that is possible inside your house 23 hours a day.......).
 
So, Monday was a no trade day for me, as much of an average day's move had already taken place before I got involved.
Yesterday and today both good profitable days, which regardless of tomorrow (last trading day of April) will result in a good result for the month.
This is despite not starting until 7/4, making a couple of operational mistakes early on, and fairly quickly realising early on that I was running my stops too wide which wasn't allowing profitable trades to cover losers that were bigger than they needed to be.
What's apparent from the last few days, as well as through back testing, is how the day can often change for the worse after 2pm...Recent profitable trades would have had a good proportion if not all of the un-banked profit evaporate if the trade had been left on later into the afternoon. In fairness, I've been closing a bit before 2pm, and have seen better profits as a result. I know it's not exactly a representative sample but it is worth looking at.
 
jeffre5 said:
i agree i have closed off around 1300 hours
Click to expand...


Its a toss-up what to do when the market is a little jittery. If I had closed on time yesterday I would have made a better profit. Today, the reverse, I would have made a better profit closing early.

There is nothing fundamental behind the 2pm cut-off time, I just see that statistically it works. But that's not to say that 1pm or 1:30pm or even 12:30pm might not be better long-run.

Anyway, April's been another good month up to now and one more day to go. That will be 12 full months of backtesting and trading this strategy for me so I'll be updating stats in the next few days.

Onwards and upwards.
 
Bit of a bumpy ride but we got there in the end.

That's the end of April, I'll put up the monthly tally and the 12-mthly summary tomorrow/at the weekend.

All the best.
 
April threw up some interesting challenges on a day to day basis with some unusually wide 0700 candles and my realisation that statistically Mondays are the worst performing days of the week.

However, the overall result was never in real doubt and the net gain for the month was +11r. This is fine, the average monthly result being +8r and the average gain in winning months being +14r (the average loss in losing months is -8r).

April was the 5th consecutive profitable month and the 9th profitable month in the last 12. The total net gain over the 12 month period just ended is +104r.

Going forwards I am dropping Mondays' Big Ben trades and of course this month has 2 UK Public Holidays - so no trading next Friday 08/05: the other is a Monday anyway, the 25th (which is also a US public holiday).

All the best.
 
Just by way of demonstration, today's 0700 bar was very narrow range, 11 pips, and inside the previous bar. And the previous bar itself was only 18 pips. I played this conservatively today and used the high of the 0600 bar and the low of the 0630 to set my bracket trades. Came out with a profit from the short just under 1 x r.

Tricky start to the month but just following the simple principles.

Have a great weekend (far as possible anyway.....)
 
Never heard of Big Ben Strategy to be honest but seems promising. I'm pretty new to trading / investing so I'm looking to learn as much as I can. I'm more into day trading (I guess lol) so this seems like a suitable strategy right?

Thanks for the great tips, keep it up! :D
 
milanmilan1997 said:
Never heard of Big Ben Strategy to be honest but seems promising. I'm pretty new to trading / investing so I'm looking to learn as much as I can. I'm more into day trading (I guess lol) so this seems like a suitable strategy right?

Thanks for the great tips, keep it up! :D
Click to expand...

Yes, good for daytraders as you will never have more than one trade open and will always be flat every day at 2pm.
 
Interesting to see Greg Secker has just pout out a clip on Youtube describing another variant of this strategy - he calls it the Breakfast Breakout Strategy.

Some important differences from my own approach -
his strategy trades the FTSE100 index
because of this, price before 8am is not helpful: he uses the 0800 H1 bar to set the buy/sell range
there is only one trade per day - the opposite order is cancelled as soon as the first is triggered
the TP is the same as the 8am bar range

Unfortunately he doesn't go into detail about what unusual-sized ranges would exclude a trade for that day but I get the impression the strategy would be cancelled for the day when the range is unusually wide.

I did trade this variant a few years ago but never found the win rate reliable enough. I clearly remember in the first 2 weeks of one month getting 8 winners out of 10 trades. Then in the next 2 weeks 10 losers out of 10 trades. Win rate is key if you only have a 1:1 r:r.
 
Any updates, tomorton?
I think Tues and Weds was a washout. I think Thurs was a wide/no trade day.
 
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