Staring at a graph.

[Arbu]

Thanks for the advice. Don't worry, I do go out quite a bit.

I'll explain the hedging strategy a bit better. If I stake £2 with the company offering to cover £100 of my losses ("A") and £1 with the hedging company ("B") I should be able to make £50 either way, as long as the market moves enough. But if I make money with A so that I'm say £100 up there and £50 down at B then I can trade again - a £2 trade with A and a £1.50 trade with B. If I then lose £200 at A then I'm £100 down there net (no loss) and £150 - £100 = £50 net up at B. So, whilst I am hedging, there's still a trading side to it, because I can make more money if I get things right at A. If my balance at A ever goes down to -£100 then that's the end of the game.

I'm looking at the chart but only using the fact that it's been trading between 5750 and 5770 since midday yesterday and relying on it to carry on doing the same (seems in fact it has now gone below this range). Nothing more sophisticated than that. That approach seems to have worked for me previously in trading stocks.

 

[Talbs!]

Not sure if this will work but ive attached a 5min ftse with some of the technicals i look at , some very good oppos to make money trading outright without the need for hedging ? See what u think ?

 

[Arbu]

Not sure if this will work but ive attached a 5min ftse with some of the technicals i look at , some very good oppos to make money trading outright without the need for hedging ? See what u think ?

Hmm, well I've analysed the Bollinger Bands, EMAVG (yellow line on your chart) and MACD. And each of them would be profitable, I have to say. The Bollinger Bands would leave you with quite a big open position at a loss at the end period of your chart but I suppose that's a sign that the FTSE was still undervalued, and it has since come up again, so it's OK. MACD and EMAVG seem to give fairly similar timings for entries and exits. To be fair on myself though, I did make money with my simpler methods too.

If it's this easy it feels like I ought to be able to just go ahead and start making money. I ought to read more about these indicators to get a deeper understanding of them, and there's probably a skill in being able to work with more than one of them at a time. But maybe it's not as hard as I've been telling myself.

 

[shadowninja]

Scary possibly, a blessing most definitely.

100% agreed but at the time, you feel like your world has ended.

 

[Arbu]

100% agreed but at the time, you feel like your world has ended.

Hey, don't put me off. The only reason I'm trying to get into this is because I feel I ought to have more money in order to get married. I've got enough money for me.

 

[Talbs!]

Dont be put off Arbu ! The way i work it i just use the upper and lower bollinger to see if the market is getting ahead of its self maybe to take some profits, i use the MACD to get in and out of the trades. Works for me ! Have a read up definatley worth your while ?

 

[Arbu]

Dont be put off Arbu ! The way i work it i just use the upper and lower bollinger to see if the market is getting ahead of its self maybe to take some profits, i use the MACD to get in and out of the trades. Works for me ! Have a read up definatley worth your while ?

Thanks, I understand what you're doing, and the logic behind it. It ought to be possible to have a computer notify you when your conditions are met, but one thing at a time.

 

[Talbs!]

It should but wheres the fun in that ! There are systems out there that executre on MACD crosses so its nothing new !

 

[Arbu]

Dont be put off Arbu ! The way i work it i just use the upper and lower bollinger to see if the market is getting ahead of its self maybe to take some profits, i use the MACD to get in and out of the trades. Works for me ! Have a read up definatley worth your while ?

Just to clarify, are you saying that you use the Bollinger bands to determine the strength of the trading opportunity and the MACD to determine the timing?

 

[Talbs!]

Just to clarify, are you saying that you use the Bollinger bands to determine the strength of the trading opportunity and the MACD to determine the timing?

No thats what i use, works well for me aswell as using stochastics. These computer programmes use all osrts but i know some run just on MACD.

 

[forexkunta]

WOW, this is a crazy forum. I personally use MACD RSI and 3 sma's set at 13,21,34 to determine my trades, as well as Elliott Wave. WORKS for me. It really doesn't matter if a person stands on their head and pisses on the wall, if it works and is consistent, then use it.

If you look back on any pair, and you use nothing more than the cross of the 0 line on the MACD, and use it consistently, it will more than likely be profitable. There will be months when it is less than, but other months will make up for it. Bottom line is being consistent with the method.

 

[Arbu]

Not sure if this will work but ive attached a 5min ftse with some of the technicals i look at , some very good oppos to make money trading outright without the need for hedging ? See what u think ?

Am producing an Expert Advisor on MetaTrader to see how this works out. The trouble with using MACD and Bollinger bands of course is that they work very well while the market is ranging, but if it starts to trend, there are opportunities to lose masses of money. Maybe my Expert Advisor should have sold a little bit later in the attachment on the basis of MACD reversing and crossing the signal line, but the trade would still have lost a whole lot of money. OK I don't have any stop losses in my program, so that's the next thing to put in it. But this is taking a hell of a lot of time and I fear I could end up searching for ever for some holy grail. Hedging is easy.

 

[Pat494]

I'd consider it a huge leap just to understand, quantify and/or define metrics for such concepts. We still have arguments about whether some animal species are self-aware. Our understanding of such concepts is very primitive.

There are many computer scientists who disagree with me. But many in the field said we were just 10 years away from such abilities for the last 25 years. It's like we are always 10 to 20 years away from having a practical fusion reactor and have been so for about 25 years.

Just to mention the possible ways ahead.
Memristors are coming very soon. You just switch on the computer and they light up the last page you looked at instantly. None of this booting up malarkey. Much quicker.

I was watching a programme on TV about some scientists who are controlling a robot wirelessly with the aid of a slice of wired up ratbrain. It will steer the bot around objects, It is rewarded with an electric pulse and can learn. Well the big-boys may well get the scientists to forecast long/short with the same sort of biological hardware.
Scary or what

 

[Arbu]

I spent the best part of today writing an Expert Advisor on Metatrader using the ideas given here. It buys and sells on the strength of MACD and Bollinger Bands for 15 minute bars and determines whether the price is ranging or trending from 4 hour bars. If the price is ranging, short and long trades are allowed. If it's trending then only trades in the direction of the trend are allowed.

Once I had it working I optimised it on Brent crude by varying the strength of the Bollinger Band signals required to make an entry. It made a 1.3% profit at the optimised level (I could have made larger trades to increase this). I then ran the EA on nine other indices, two of these made profits, the rest losses. The average profit/loss was a loss of 0.2%.

I'm grateful for everyone's help on here, but to be honest this seems like a complete waste of time. I suppose I could keep trying more and more new ideas in the hope that eventually I would find some deep secret about the markets and become rich from it. But I don't honestly believe I ever would. And even if I did it wouldn't even be a very satisfactory way to have done it. I'm losing interest in the idea of trading.

 

[SanMiguel]

I spent the best part of today writing an Expert Advisor on Metatrader using the ideas given here. It buys and sells on the strength of MACD and Bollinger Bands for 15 minute bars and determines whether the price is ranging or trending from 4 hour bars. If the price is ranging, short and long trades are allowed. If it's trending then only trades in the direction of the trend are allowed.

Once I had it working I optimised it on Brent crude by varying the strength of the Bollinger Band signals required to make an entry. It made a 1.3% profit at the optimised level (I could have made larger trades to increase this). I then ran the EA on nine other indices, two of these made profits, the rest losses. The average profit/loss was a loss of 0.2%.

I'm grateful for everyone's help on here, but to be honest this seems like a complete waste of time. I suppose I could keep trying more and more new ideas in the hope that eventually I would find some deep secret about the markets and become rich from it. But I don't honestly believe I ever would. And even if I did it wouldn't even be a very satisfactory way to have done it. I'm losing interest in the idea of trading.

Trading is not simple programming, it takes skill and interpretation.
There are algos in the market and they make up a large percentage but most of it is scalping and the other expert ones out there don't simply trade bollinger bands or indicators, it is a lot more involved. For example the best ones in the stock market are using, volume, sigma, inputs of the put call ratios, breadth indicators, analysis of the NYSE tick volume, etc.etc none of which you can do easily with a metatrader EA. And these algos have been invested into with big money,

 

[arabianights]

Do people who are into technical analysis actually spend the whole day staring at graphs waiting to spot the various patterns emerge? Or do they write computer programmes to tell them when the patterns are emerging? I'm not suggesting a computer programme to place the trades, but rather one to give an alert whenever the patterns emerge. Must be incredibly boring watching a graph for the patterns yourself if you don't have a computer programme, surely?

They gain some excitement by slowly yet surely donating me their money

 

[the hare]

I spent the best part of today writing an Expert Advisor on Metatrader using the ideas given here.

You spent a whole day and still couldnt crack it

Making money with TA must surely be impossible

 

[Arbu]

You spent a whole day and still couldnt crack it

Making money with TA must surely be impossible

It's so boring, a day was more than enough! From what SanMiguel's saying there must be teams of statisticians who are employed solely to try to crack this sort of thing. And, given enough time and backing, it can be done. But what a boring job.

I was trying to get to the bottom of Bund_Gekko's assertion that I could make money by looking at MACD and Bollinger bands where my losses are covered without resorting to hedging. I don't think I agree with him.

 

[SanMiguel]

It's so boring, a day was more than enough! From what SanMiguel's saying there must be teams of statisticians who are employed solely to try to crack this sort of thing. And, given enough time and backing, it can be done. But what a boring job.

I was trying to get to the bottom of Bund_Gekko's assertion that I could make money by looking at MACD and Bollinger bands where my losses are covered without resorting to hedging. I don't think I agree with him.

Bund Gekko can't spell his signature correctly.
The problem you are going to run into trading bollinger bands is that you will get caught in a trend and no indicator is going to tell you quickly enough that you are in a trend until you have already traded against it a few times. You could try adding ADX and moving average filters but the lag isn't going to help you much. What was the RR on your EA?

 

[Arbu]

Bund Gekko can't spell his signature correctly.

True, I should have paid attention to that. But he claims in his profile to be working as a prop trader at a Bank/IB/Hedge Fund so I took him seriously.

RR - presumably rate of return? I'm not sure how you would calculate this - it obviously depends on the size of stakes you place.