I had a terrible week and am losing for the month so far. I plan to review and just check that current market behaviour is not far outside the norms seen over the last 12 months, update soon this weekend.
All the best.
Yes it's been a poor couple of weeks for both the 0700 M30 bar entry and also 0600 H1 bar entry.
I've been thinking about this, and have recently traded with wider stops which has given a better outcome than the narrow ranges that these entry methods (above) dictate.
I'm not necessarily doubting the long term profitability of these aggressive entry methods, but I am finding in practice even though you get some high multiples of R profits, the high incidence of -2R days can erode these gains fast.
On many occasions, with tight stops, even when the first breakout proves to be in the right direction for the day's trend, you're stopped out and stopped in to the opposite trade before the market moves in the original direction without you, and you've banked a -2R loss. This has happened a lot recently.
By running bigger stops, if the first breakout proves to be the day's trend, you're much less likely to get whipped out. If the first breakout is false, and ultimately the second entry triggers, price needs to go further to cover the loss from the first trade. Also, there are fewer big % gains of course, because your stops are bigger, but this has to be compared against the fact that -2R double loss days are rare (as opposed to at least 50% of the time with the smaller stops).
It's all very well getting the odd +10R day, but if you have to go through 5 or more -2R days for everyone you see, you've spent all the profit in the big gain on a series of -2R double losses.
So what I've settled on after a great deal of thought and back testing, and have been doing this last week, is trading with stops that are about double what I was doing. Draw downs are less, double losses are far less common, there are many more days where only one order triggers, % of winning trades is greater. Of course the size (+ multiple of R) of the winners is less, but this is viewed against far fewer -2R days to have to cover.
Whether or not it is long term as profitable in all conditions, is hard to say, but I find it psychologically easier to trade.