Today Trade
At the moment the Dow is at 12,117 which gives me Trade 1
This is SELL at the open to the low at 12,098 and this may continue down to 12,077 - 12,070 (use a trailing stop for this part). If it goes past 12,065 there will be no reversal and it will keep going down.
Otherwise look for a BUY trade below the low at 12,098 to go up to 12,148.
EDIT: 17.55
Well that was another two winning trades for today.
Yesterday we had one win out of two as the entry point for the first part of the trade wasn't achieved - it was a sell above the high at 12,118, but instead the index moved straight down and hit the target. However the second part of the trade (a buy up to the high at 12,118) worked perfectly and would have netted 12 points after the spread.
So in total that's another 3 winning trades to add to the system. The statistics now look like this.
111 trades in total with 88 winning trades and 23 losing trades.
Winning trades (88) = 2519 points (28.62 av points per trade)
Losing trades (23) = 617 points (26.82 av points per trade)
Nett points = 1902 (av for 111 trades = 17.13 points)
88 winning trades out of a total of 111 gives a win ratio of 79.28%
The positive expectancy for the system is
(79.28 x 28.62) / (20.72 x 26.82) = 4.08
I've now been trialing the system here for 26.5 weeks and it's averaging 71.77 points per week - which isn't too bad.
I think I'm going to call it a day now with posting the trades before the open of the Dow each day as I think I've achieved what I set out to do in the first place. I've now proved to myself that I have a viable system with a 78 - 80% success rate and a fairly good postive expectancy. In posting the trades before the open, I've also proved that it is possible to trade this quite easily without getting panicked at the last minute when the Dow opens. I also think that the signals the system gives aren't too difficult for anyone to trade - even if you don't really understand charts or the stock-market, you simply have a target price and a stop loss and let the market hit one or the other.
The only part of the system that is more suited to discretionary trading are those trades with further targets that may be achieved using a trailing stop loss. Here, I agree, that a knowledge of the market, TA, etc would be more than useful.
Anyway I hope this journal has been as useful to anyone reading it as it has been to me in keeping it. The system has evolved well during the last six months and I'm really pleased with where it has come to. I still have one or two tricky trades, and there are still several new trades to fill in, but this will just take time. In the meantime I will just keep trading it. My one worry is something happening to it - so much so, I have the computer copy and three back up copies as well, just in case anything goes wrong. I really don't know what I'd do if I lost it, there is so much information in there that I wouldn't even know where to start to try and replicate it.
Anyway, happy trading to all - as I sign off my journal for the last time.