I am happy to be useful, Splitnik!
Of course, I have read some Ross's material. My understanding of his work comes to a simple conclusion.
He doesn't give a complete fixed system. He seems to do it and that is what he says: I show how I trade Ross Hooks. But you still have to tune them for yourself and for the market you are trading in. He gives a lot of elements of a good system. He gives general principles that he uses. He also shows how his students have tuned his method for themselves - and this is where the key is. You have to do some work on it anyway. You cannot just take a plain Ross Hook and trade it wherever you see it. At least you'll need some additional parameters.
I asked him in a chat, why his TTE very often leads to big losses. He answered, that in each particular market you need to devise money managment strategy for yourself. And this is where I finally understood what he was trying to tell all the time.
He also sells complete systems - I have never seen them and they are more expensive than books.
Indeed, even Joe admitted that he sometimes get caught in a mess, trying to trade 1-2-3 when 3 turns into 2 and so on - just like you said. There isn't an easy solution to that. Even Joe calls this a "messy trade" and that he hates it but have to go through it.
The trouble is - markets change. They tend to spend more time in congestions now, tend to give more spikes than real moves. These spikes get your stop-orders for entries activated and then pull them back inside a congestion, range etc.
What you can do is to recognise a congestion earlier. Joe Ross tells how to do it for free in his "TLOC". You can recognise them as early as 4th or even 2nd bar in some cases. After that - there is little point in finding 1-2-3 inside of them. When a congestion develops into a trading range - it happens on 15th-20th bar only, you can start looking for them, stil with some precautions. A new trend starts within a congestion/range, but not necessarily with 1-2-3. It can be some other directional move with some recognisable retracements. It can be a smaller congestion near the top of the range, or some shirt thurst with a hesitation before breaking out iventually, or a false breakout in the opposite direction first (there is such a setup on naked trader or somewhere else).
My idea was to take some simple setup - like a bar above MA. Then try to count how many times it fails and how many - doesn't. calculate p/l over the long run. Detect all failed runs and see if there is anyway:
1) to filter them in advance
2) to stop them earlier with smaller than usual losses
3) to close them earlier with a small but profit.
If you try to achive 100% of all this you will filter out all good trades as well. therefore, you should be a little bit more conservative and try filter out only some realy bad trades without loosing good ones - it is not possible 100%.
So, I have found that instead of looking for a bar above MA it is better to look for a short stay or a short hesitation on or after such a bar/candle - it almost always comes on good moves, but prevents you from entering many bad ones. Some good moves can be entered too late in this way. There is another approach - to enter aggressively, but exit if it doesn't go up immediately and tries to retrace/congest. Some other rules can be devised. I have also found that different level of aggressiveness/conservativeness can be used on different stages. More conservative at the beginning of a congestion and then more and more aggressive on 20th candle and further (or on a 5th swing).
Time of day can be taken into account. A breakout at the end of the day can be quite good on ES if entered aggressively because it doesn't have enough time/momentum to retrace back until 16-00. If you enter on the very first candle above MA - just wait until the EOD and close the position at market. The very first move at 9am-10 am can be the opposite - very dangerous to enter. A conservative approach will get you into a real move and bring windfall profits but an aggressive one wil incur big losses by 10-30 am. Do you see what I mean?
I am just trying to show that for a particular market on a particular time-frame you can fine-tune the simplest idea and be successful. Using only indicators without any price action doesn't give you enough room for fine-tuning at all!
You can also see my posts at "1-2-3 & ross hook" thread - don't remember an exact name. The thread is long but my posts are at the very end. If you search on "Joe Ross" you will find easily.
Good luck.
