Big Ben on the FTSE100

FWIW - this week has been a tough one so far. Not sure if that's the market or just me, but fun it hasn't been.

However, knowing when to stay out as per above - excellent advice and a definite skill. Well, two skills actually. Recognising the situation and then acting on it by not trading.
 
Glad its not just me Bramble - its a lonely game this when its not going well. I'm going to go back to trading my demo account while its like this - see if I can't learn something.
 
I'm glad other people are finding it tough at the moment as well! A rare day off for me today where I could just sit and watch the markets all day and I made absolutely no trades whatsoever. I even thought I'd have a dabble at pocrel's system today and resorted to adjusting the vertical scale of the charts to try to get some bars to resemble pin-bars!

This week going to be a lost cause?
 
Hey boys, for those of you floundering on ftse, i thought i'd give you something to consider...

check out the spreadsheet and note the losses when adx is low compared to when it is high. Obviously anything where daily adx is less than 17 should be given a wide berth and anything over 25 treated much more positively. Anything in-between is your discretion...
Look at the lowest 15 values of adx - if you had avoided those trades, your profit over the period would have virtually doubled (for both series...).

To paraphrase mr gekko...'Avoiding losses is right, avoiding losses is good, avoiding losses works, avoiding losses captures the evolutionary spirit...'

But you should really check these things out for yourself before incorporation them anyway...i might be fibbing...

any thoughts welcome...
 

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please stop wasting your money and spend the money on your family or give it to charity there is no edge here move on.
 
Interesting splashy. ADX should serve to confirm relative strength of a prevailing trend, and we have already seen that BB trading through a strongly trending market should be more profitable.
 
what is everyones view on where the FTSE is goin?
currently we are trading 6030s.
anyone know any key resistance/support levels??
 
I don't have a clue moscheeno, and Big Ben does not absolutely have to have a directional bias anyway. It doesn't really matter if the 20-day trend is up if you're shorting for an hour and a half. Bartlby tends towards with-trend BB positions though and he might have an opinion.
 
End of another week, and I'm still shy of the FTSE because of the poor 20-trade showing, 7-13.

Chart performance this week was 0-3, over the last 4 weeks 4-10. I'm trading the old friend GBP/USD until the market resumes its regular behavious traits, and that is making me adequate money for the time being. By the time I return to the FTSE I will have some up to date results on GBP/USD and will continue to monitor it in the background in case we get another Libya or Greece.
 
Having an opinion on the Ftse is bad for me. Thursday I had an opinion that it wouldn't make new highs and closed my order before it got filled - it would have been a winner.

Essentially I'm placing a big ben trade based on a calculated pivot point - if the big ben is above the pivot I go long - if its below I go short. I haven't been doing it long enough to show if there's any meaninful correlation - it was just an idea that seemed logical when I came up with it.
 
Having an opinion on the Ftse is bad for me. Thursday I had an opinion that it wouldn't make new highs and closed my order before it got filled - it would have been a winner.

Essentially I'm placing a big ben trade based on a calculated pivot point - if the big ben is above the pivot I go long - if its below I go short. I haven't been doing it long enough to show if there's any meaninful correlation - it was just an idea that seemed logical when I came up with it.

IMO anything that is used constantly will work. Whether it works enough times to justify its profitability is up to the trader and , to an extent, backtesting although I don't believe in backtesting too far. I don't use pivots but I have other beliefs, though, that seem successful and although I used to poo-poo the use of pivots it, really, doesn't matter as long as we are happy with our success rate.
 
Quote from Tomorton: "End of another week, and I'm still shy of the FTSE because of the poor 20-trade showing, 7-13."

Your decision to stay out of the FTSE has been well vindicated Tomorton. I had a delay with my continuing analysis of GBPUSD last week (One computer destroyed plus family things), but continuing this week.
Trades last week:
FTSE NT -11 -11 NT -11 (Should I follow your example :confused: )
GBPUSD NT NT -20 NT
 
Actually, not great. the FTSE chart is showing Big Ben trades 1-1, still in negative territory over the last 20 trades, while my trading proxy, GBP/USD is worse at 0-3. Tomorrow is carrying a lot of hope.
 
I am feeling generous today so here is a passage from Reminiscences that you should read:

The beginner knows nothing and everybody, including himself, knows it. But the next, or second, grade thinks he knows a great deal and makes others feel that way too. He is the experienced sucker, who has studied not the market itself but a few remarks about the market made by a still higher grade of suckers. The second-grade sucker knows how to keep from losing his money in some of the ways that get the raw beginner. It is this semisucker rather than the 100 per cent article who is the real all-the-year-round support of the commission houses. He lasts about three and a half years on an average, as compared with a single season of from three to thirty weeks, which is the usual Wall Street life of a first offender. It is naturally the semisucker who is always quoting the famous trading aphorisms and the various rules of the game. He knows all the don’ts that ever fell from the oracular lips of the old stagers excepting the principal one, which is: Don’t be a sucker!

but dont read this and dont let it sink in because it's rubbish advice.
 
This week's FTSE chart performance ended positive, 2-1, which is encouraging, though the 20-trade run is only 8-12 and the 4-week performance 5-8, so I will stay off the FTSE for the time being.

Long-run win rate is still a fraction over 60%.

Trading all days since 09/05, regardless of BB range, would have given a win rate of 42% (18-25). Ignoring trades where BB range was 1.25x 10d Av. BB range has given 46% (16-19).
 
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