JillyB's Blog

[JillyB]

Amendment to Trade 23

So trade 23 missed it's target and like all good traders I wanted to know why. The answer it seems is simple. It's the range.

Trade 23 - on all ocassions it has occurred before - has fallen around 20-30 points from the open. Once this low has been established it has then rallied between 60-70 points. If the range has been narrower (in all other occasions it has been a 40-45 point range) then the high has been hit. However today as the high was further than the 60 -70 point uptrend, it fell miserably short of it.

I've now amended this trade to make it more accurate in respect of its targets and expentancy. Next time it should be a more accurate target that's given.

I'm sure I'm giving too much away here, and people are writing this down thinking - aha! thats at least one trade we've figured out. But as there are 70 of them in total, I'm sure I'm not giving too much of the system away. ;-)

 

[JillyB]

Bank Holiday Monday Blues

The Dow is currently at 11,280 which gives me Trade 24.

This is a SELL down to the low at 11,254, then look for a reversasl and a BUY trade back up to the open.

If the open is above 11,280 then we will still have the same set-up.

I will update this later.

EDIT:15.30

Stopped out for -49 points. Eeek!!! This is horendous and I'd had such a good week last week - hit all my weekly targets. What do they say about pride coming before a fall.

The excessive stop loss was just a trial. I don't intend to let it get this far out again. But after the two losses where I was stopped out and it then turned and hit my target I decided to give this one a little more leeway. Unfortunately for me it hasn't paid off.

I didn't record Fridays trade as a win or loss because I didn't think it was fair. I made 45 points out of the trade and with the adjustment for the wider days range, it would have been spot on.

Today however, we definitely have a loss - and what a loss! Not only that we have a dip below 80% for the win rate. Now I can't allow that!

So far we have 68 trades in total 54 winning trades and 14 losing
Winning trades (54) = 1778 points
Losing trades (14) = 353 points
Nett points = 1425

54 winning trades out of a total of 68 trades gives me a 79.4% win rate (not good enough!)

 

[Pat494]

I enjoy reading your journal. 80%+ is a very good figure for results. I expect you may be tempted to go commercial and code it up sometime. Which system would you use ? Metastock, Trade Station perhaps ? Perhaps when the opening is covered then move on to another sector of the day or night ?

 

[dcarrigan]

still a1 profit/loss ratio. i know you need faith in your system but mondays turn of hurricane changed market direction right from the bell. imo

 

[JillyB]

Inside Candle Bollinger Turn Trade - Today's char

Now I didn't trade this - I was thinking about it - but with it being a bank holiday, I wasn't sure if this would affect the Cable and the trade set-up.

As it happened it didn't so here is today's chart (just for Neil - by the way )

Although it was in consolidation for a long time it still broke out and there were at least 20 pips to be made here.

 

[JillyB]

Inside Candle Bollinger Turn Trade - Friday's cha

There were two trades on Friday for this system and here they are - First the 8.00am trade. A sort of what happened next.

The next image shows what happened. The initial target is always the MA, but you can always place a stop here after the candle has formed and let the profits run.

There was a second trade on Friday when the 12.00 candle formed inside to the 11.00am. Here's the chart for it.

 

[JillyB]

No Trading Today

We were without broadband today - and this time it wasn't just me. There was a main cable failure and the whole of the Island was without broaband for over 5 hours. They reckon that it is going to have cost companies millions in lost business - but as for me it was just frustrating.

The Dow opened on exactly the same spot as it closed last night, which gives me an odd trade and one that doesn't happen very often. It's basically a reversal trade. The first part of the trade you sit out and what which direction the Dow goes in and then for the second part you trade it to reverse back to the open. The movement away from the open will be 30-40 points and the reversal will ususally be after 5pm.

As far as it went, the Dow behaved impecably today. It went down to begin with and then consolidated for a while, before heading back up to the open in the afternoon session. It would have been possible to take 35 points after the spread on this quite easily. And I missed it. I also missed two set-ups on the 1 hour inside candle bollinger turn trades on the cable.

All in all not a good day. Let's hope for better tomorrow.

 

[JillyB]

Goodnight Harvey

There will be no trading today.

The vet is coming at 4pm, to put our little dog Harvey to sleep. He's not been well for some time now and I know it's the best thing to do, but it's breaking my heart.

He has less than 2 hours of life left and I just don't know what to say or do anymore, so please excuse me today.

Goodnight Harvey.

 

[ChowClown]

Sorry to hear that Jilly. Trading must be furthest from your mind right now.

 

[neil]

Sorry to hear the news. I know what it's like to lose a loved pet after so many years.You never lose the memories.

 

[JillyB]

Stats for the 1hr Inside Candle Bollinger Turn Tra

I've now backtested the set-up to the 13th March 2006 - which is as far as my data will let me on a 1 hour chart.

Up to and including yesterday the system had generated 117 trades with 105 wins and 12 losses. Win rate of 89.74%

Winning pips = 2613
Losing pips = 224
Nett pips = 2389
Nett average pips per trade = 20.42

Most losing trades in a row = 2
Most winning trades in a row = 28

Positive expectancy
(89.74 x 24.88) / (10.26 x 18.67) = 11.66

I've changed a few of the parameters in that - no trade will be entered after 8pm (was 7pm previously) and all trades must be exited at 11pm (was 9pm previously) except Fridays which is still 9pm.
Breakouts must be greater than 2 pips to qualify the trade.

CMC allows you to trade 24 hours a day which means that I can do this, however I notice that other dealers stop trading at 9pm, so this may slightly affect the pips gained.

All in all it seems to be a good little setup and I've noticed that it also works quite well on the USD/JPY - I forget who mentioned this to me - but thanks anyway.

EDIT 12.45
Forgot to add earlier, that the target for the trades is 20 pips or the MA whichever is closest ( in a continuation trade I would be looking for 20 pips) unless it zips away on news, in which case I would lock in my pips and then trade it to the end of the 1 hour candle.

EDIT: 12.50
Greatest value of losing trade = -37
The two losses in a row were a -34 and a -13.
Stop loss is set at opposite side of candle - see earlier charts.

 

[JillyB]

Trade 10?

At the moment the Dow is at 11,386 which gives me Trade 10. This is like trade 58 only with a reduced range and is incredibly difficult to trade.

However if it goes closer to yesterdays close we may go to Trade 6, or if it goes nearer to the high of yesterday we will go into Trade 21.

Both of these trades have a BUY up to the high of yesterday and possibly up to 20 points above this and then a SELL down to the open, possibly on to the close - this will depend on which if any of these trades are triggered.

Sorry I can't be more precise than this, but until the open I won't know which trade it's going to be. I will, of course, update it as soon after the open as I can.

EDIT:14.49
So it opened at 11,389 which does indeed give me dodgy trade 10. This one is even worse than Trade 58 for making sense of.

So far I've managed to take 5 points on the uptrend. But now I'm waiting to see if it goes above the high of yesterday at 11,401. If it does this then I wll be looking for a Sell trade back down to the open. The price may go 10 - 20 points above the high before it starts to turn, so watch for this.

 

[Pat494]

I had it pencilled in for an initial rise too,but held off because of the Iranian problem

 

[JillyB]

So it was Trade 10

The open was at 11,389 and it was Trade 10.

As I stated this should give us a BUY up to the high at 11,401 and a SELL back down to theo open.

In reality there weren't many points to be made here 8 on the way up and 8 on the way down. But the trading plan got it right (for once!) So after a string of unfortunate losing trades we are now back into winning ways.

This now gets us up to
Total number of trades 70 - 56 winning and 14 losing
Winning (56) = 1794 points
Losing (14) = 353 points
Nett points = 1441

56 winning trades out of a total of 70 gives a win ratio of 80% (back in familiar territory!)

 

[JillyB]

Amendement to 1 hour Inside Candle

I'm wondering about putting a statement in my rules for the 1 Hour Inside Candle Bollinger Turn Trades, that states when the trade has gone 15 pips or more in the direction of your trade you move the stop to breakeven (or +1).

This way it would cut out a couple of the losing trades and make them instead breakeven. It also doesn't do the mental state any harm - it's always better to have a breakeven or +1 trade than a losing trade.

Any thoughts on this?

 

[ChowClown]

...sounds a good idea, Jill. I use a similar approach on an FX breakout method.

 

[Pat494]

Good idea. That is why the SBs dont include trailing stops. It would ruin their profit figures !!

 

[ampro]

I guess a lot depends on your risk-size parameters? Given that a good majority of these breaches-turns at the BB extremes occur around Big Numbers & half primes, you'll occasionally run the risk of re-tests? Are you considering trading every potential set-up (long & short) or focusing on executing with the larger trend (pullbacks to s&r)? That might influence your stop/risk aims.

 

[dcarrigan]

it may be okay using level stops with sbs. i trade futures and one of the things that i have picked up is that stops on futures can be seen by the market,can be taken out before index turns.

 

[JillyB]

it may be okay using level stops with sbs. i trade futures and one of the things that i have picked up is that stops on futures can be seen by the market,can be taken out before index turns.

I don't actually set the stop loss though. I know it and I put a line on the chart at that level, but I manually trade it when it's hit. It takes discipline and a couple of hours watching the screen sometimes, but at least the marketmakers can't play games with you.