Best Thread GBP/USD Breakout

I can only tell you figures mentioned by Claudia near the end of the year. I don't use her method for entering trades, so have never backtested myself, but have no reason to doubt the figures she wrote about.

I purely trade a b/o of the 6am candle - not been great this year so far, but 8 trades, 5 winners.
 

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On cable I wouldn't be inclined to wait for pullbacks, EU generally I would more so.
What we've seen this morning is a fake out in each direction- stop hunting. May be a break later in either direction - try some orders further out with smaller lots, although with the inside bar forming there may not be too much momentum today. Or wait for the break then straddle the hourly candle.

In recent history price does seem to get more choppy at this level and we're at what loos like a pivot on the daily.

If the markets go REAL choppy - i.e. huge spikes either side for any length of time you can effectively do the reverse of this system - sell the hourly highs, buy the hourly lows and either have a fixed target or sell at the end of the hour.
 
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Would you extend this to all GBP and EU pairs? Just wondering given that there was a nice pullback in GBPJPY around the 61 Fib retracement this morning

On cable I wouldn't be inclined to wait for pullbacks, EU generally I would more so.
What we've seen this morning is a fake out in each direction- stop hunting. May be a break later in either direction - try some orders further out with smaller lots, although with the inside bar forming there may not be too much momentum today. Or wait for the break then straddle the hourly candle.

In recent history price does seem to get more choppy at this level and we're at what loos like a pivot on the daily.

If the markets go REAL choppy - i.e. huge spikes either side for any length of time you can effectively do the reverse of this system - sell the hourly highs, buy the hourly lows and either have a fixed target or sell at the end of the hour.
 
Would you extend this to all GBP and EU pairs? Just wondering given that there was a nice pullback in GBPJPY around the 61 Fib retracement this morning

Generally, and very generally at that, on the hourly, cable tend to breakout and go more than it breaking out , pulling back and then continuing. VERY generally EU tends to pull back more.

As far as the other pairs I don't know as I don't look at them anymore.
 
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Peeped over the parapet but retreated - so no dosh today :)
 

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I was wondering Claudia, why you play your breakout system until 9:30 a.m.? Is this due to personal preferance, or have you found that the time limit placed produces more consistent results?
 
Hi guys this b/o system really struggling so far this year. Was just wondering if it would be more successful if the target was reduced to 10 pips. Might look at this later and back test from 4th jan.
What you think?
 
Re: GBP/USD Breakout -not a winner every day

This is the problem many traders have - they flit from system to system or endlessly tweak and pontificate. What you could do is continue on reduced stakes or demo for a while. Remember that losers are like buses - sometimes they arrive in groups:)
 
Re: GBP/USD Breakout -not a winner every day

chaps and chapesses,

I too have not enjoyed these recent false breakouts. So I have added a 4 pip buffer above or below high/low overnight extremities and then asked for the remaining 16 pips.

Surely 20 pips at .1 lot size or 10 pips at .2 lot size achieves pretty much the same result (give or take spread)??
 
Did anyone have a breakout chart of Cable like this?
 

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From your charts it looks like you are considering the wicks to calculate your range. I do not, as per Claudia'a original system....

Sorry folks. I will not post anymore charts to avoid confusion.:)
 
Sorry folks. I will not post anymore charts to avoid confusion.:)

I dont see why not Neil. I and i think a lot of other readers
could clearly see it wasnt Claudias system
but your's where you use the wicks as the overnight range.

Ged
 
Hi to everyone on the Claudia thread - my first post.

I have been trading options, cfds and futures for quite a while, but have been drawn to forex over the past half year or so. I have learned a great deal from these forums and hope I can contribute something. This is a great thread - friendly and productive people and a profitable system as well.

I was actually looking at the Big Dog breakout at FF and coded a simple EA to test. Before I get flamed for my first post I do understand the serious limitations on backtesting. I simply wanted to get some feel for how it (and other breakouts) should have performed over time, their consistency, likely drawdown patterns and what the optimised parameters might look like. I got diverted away from that thread to this one as I really like the simplicity of this system. I have modified my EA so it can replicate Claudia's system and I have sanity checked the results over the past month or so where figures have been given in the forum. I get reasonable agreement, but still a few more losers that Claudia.

So just to check that I have Claudia's rules straight.
The range is from the highest of the opens and closes, to the lowest of the opens and closes on the hourly bars from (opening at) 1am-6am (all times GMT).
At 7am or after enter on any break of the range.
Only 1 trade per day in the direction of the first break.
20 pip SL and TP.
Cancel any orders not filled at 9:30am.

One issue which is not clear to me is how to treat Daylight Saving Time. I have coded the EA with the DST adjustments for London (and New York for those trading that break) for 2007-2009, (only used for backtesting obviously). It would seem that logically we would want to make the adjustment so that we are entering trades at the same time (in local time) each day. I have run 2 trials from start of 2009 to now. One uses DST adjustment and the other does not. Surprisingly, the one which does not - i.e. looks for trades starting at 7am GMT is the better performer.

So to the results.
As I said - I got a reasonable alignment between my results and Claudia's, (over the small range I checked) but mine are not quite as good. I guess the devil is in the detail and I probably need to investigate the minor discrepancies to see where the failings lie. One point is that MT4 uses the Bid data to establish range, whereas Claudia used mid Point. I can probably correct for this, but would have thought that the results would even out over time.

Now the first system made a profit of $700 for this period and the second actually lost $200.The EA does not have any advanced money management built in. Each trade is fixed. Currently I have it at 0.1 lot per trade, so the result in $ should equate to the overall number of pips. The reports are attached.

Where to from here.
I did some earlier trials and got much better results playing around with the SL and TP levels - a few over 3000 pips for the year, even with the limitations in my program. Everyone is welcome to test over a range of variables - the EA is quick and can test hundreds of combinations in a hour. The attached instruction document shows how to setup all the variables. There is a lot of scope to test different pairs, timeframes, number of bars, method of calculating range, etc. Remember though we are trying to find generally robust patterns with consistent results, not just a specific cherry-picked combination which aligns perfectly with our backtest period. I personally think this system is a winner. The results of most test combinations are definitely skewed to the positive.

What I would like to do now is to understand the differences between my results and those actually achieved. Then maybe look at the TP and SL levels - is there a better combination than 20/20. The EA has a built in option to move the stop to break-even at a trigger point, and this seems like it may be worthwhile for this system, to protect against small gains turning into losses, but it needs to be tested. It also has the option of a trailing stop, but I have not really seen performance improved by a TS for these short term trades. Anyway lets see if any of this leads us anywhere productive? I will be very interested to see your results.

Sorry my first post was so long - I wanted to keep all of this together and will be briefer in the future.
 

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IMO what I'd do at this point is wait until it starts showing some wins again, and then come back with smaller trade sizes.

That's what my plan says, but everyone is different!
 
Yeah HT think Ill give it a miss for a while until it gets a few wins again. Anyone know any decent systems I can use in the evenings, (7-11 pm GMT)
 
Yeah HT think Ill give it a miss for a while until it gets a few wins again. Anyone know any decent systems I can use in the evenings, (7-11 pm GMT)

Why not do something from the 4 Hourly or Daily (not above if you want a bit more action) that requires you to look once a day, set/move orders and that's it?
 
Why not do something from the 4 Hourly or Daily (not above if you want a bit more action) that requires you to look once a day, set/move orders and that's it?

Which markets does this work best on during these hours?
 
Yeah HT think Ill give it a miss for a while until it gets a few wins again. Anyone know any decent systems I can use in the evenings, (7-11 pm GMT)

If you're talking about intraday trading think about when each session starts - London, New York, Tokyo, when they have lunch, when they finish.
 
Which markets does this work best on during these hours?

Hmm, well let's say you're trading off the 4h. (GMT) I would check at the London open around 7-8am, place any orders and then check back just after noon (not really necessary if you have trailing stop orders) and once more in the evening, 7-8pm. Since you're basically doing a long term day trade, with the possibility of holding overnight, it doesn't really matter what market you trade on since you'll be holding them through every market probably. Just trade the main pairs, GBP/USD, EUR/USD, JPY/USD, USD/CAD, etc etc.

This is a good site that shows the opening/closing times of each markets;

http://fxtrade.oanda.com/resources/fxmarkethours/

(All the above is simply my opinion)! :D
 
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