Simple Cable + Euro breakouts journal (no indicators)

alexaherself

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These trades are neither time-consuming nor attention-demanding. Whether they’re profitable is another matter.

I’ve seen many similar ideas dismissed - and perhaps rightly - as “essentially random” and “invalid”, and am interested to discover whether the timing, here, might make this one any better.

For Cable and for the Euro, just before 3.00p.m., I’ll identify the high and the low between 1.00p.m. and 3.00p.m. (UK time: the first half of the daily period during which both London and New York are open), and enter (usually) limit orders at 3.00p.m., good for two hours only.

Cable - two OCO limit orders: long entry 2.5 pips above the 1.00-3.00 high, and short entry 2.5 pips below the low, each with a profit target of 21 pips and trailing stop of 21 pips. For the Euro (EUR/USD), exactly the same but TP 18 pips and TS 18 pips.

There’s a vague similarity between this and something called the “Big Ben Method”, or something similar, I think? I believe that was/is based on London early morning trading, and that it may be based on so-called “overnight support/resistance levels“? My own suspicion is that overnight ranges/levels don’t signify nearly as much as ranges when trading’s active on both sides of the Atlantic?

I’m hoping that the price movements that trigger the opening of trades with this system will, overall, be something more than just random volatility.

For the moment, I’m planning to keep it as simple as that. Possible improvements to think about in future might include …

1. Not entering a trade if there seems to be a significant chance of its quickly hitting resistance, on the basis of recent levels of support/resistance

2. Filtering the trades according to underlying trend (however defined)

3. Filtering trades according to what proportion of the ATR is “already accounted for”

4. Entering on a pullback rather than on the initial breakout (conceivably better for the Euro than for Cable? Not convinced about this)

Comments/suggestions/observations are welcome. With no intention of limiting the conversation I’d like to mention a few little points in advance …

(i) I’d be interested to hear any perspectives on TP’s and SL’s (my normal trading doesn’t use either of the ideas of TP’s and SL’s employed here), bearing in mind that my specific, perhaps-too-ambitious, perhaps-inappropriate objective is for non-time-consuming, non-attention-demanding trading. I always instinctively feel that entries are “relatively easy” and it’s perhaps exits which primarily determine one’s fate and fortune

(ii) for myself, I have no great interest in any suggested improvements involving “indicators”

(iii) I may not be able to post every day, and will often post after the trades (the method is of course relatively objective and the trades easily enough retrospectively verifiable - I‘ll take my figures for this thread from Oanda charts)

(iv) There may be a decision to be made about whether it’s worth trying anything like this, at all, on Friday afternoons?

(v) It’s unclear to me whether this idea, if it works at all, is truly based on support/resistance rather than on trend

(vi) It might occasionally be necessary - as the parameters are currently defined - to use market, rather than limit, orders (and sometimes even to miss a pip or two, as well)?
 
Monday 20th May

Cable: high 1.52122, low 1.51973
Long entry 1.52147, TP 1.52357, TS 21 pips
Short entry 1.51948, TP 1.51738, TS 21 pips

Euro: high 1.28690, low 1.28424
Long entry 1.28715, TP 1.2895, TS 18 pips
Short entry 1.28399, TP 1.28219, TS 18 pips
 
Monday’s results

Cable: long entry 3.11p.m (short entry cancelled)., TP 5.27p.m.

Euro: neither limit order reached by 5.00p.m. (long trade would have entered at about 5.25p.m., and still rising - maybe a profit missed by the 5.00p.m. cut-off? There‘ll be many - and many losses missed, too.)

Cable
Today’s profit: 21 pips
Cumulative profit: 21 pips

Euro
No score yet!
 
Tuesday 21st May

Cable: high 1.51578, low 1.51271
Long entry 1.51603, TP 1.51813, TS 21 pips
Short entry 1.51246, TP 1.51036, TS 21 pips

Euro: high 1.28760, low 1.28577
Long entry 1.28785, TP 1.28965, TS 18 pips
Short entry 1.2855.2, TP 1.28422, TS 13 pips

Rightly or wrongly, I've made the Euro short trade only 13 pips target, today, because of recent support at about 1.2840. (The long Euro trade remains 18 points, but in reality that's already cancelled by the opening of the short trade.)

(Edited to change the word "resistance" to "support")
 
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Tuesday’s results

Cable: short 3.01p.m. (long entry cancelled), stopped out at 3.43p.m. at 5.1336, losing 9 pips

Euro: short 3.01p.m. (long entry cancelled), stopped out at 3.36p.m. at 2.8572, losing 2 pips

Cable
Today’s loss: 9 pips
Cumulative profit: 12 pips

Euro
Today's loss: 2 pips
Cumulative loss: 2 pips

My concerns about "support" for the Euro turned out right, really. The 13-pip target seemed a good idea at the time, given the apparent level of recent support. With hindsight 11 pips would have been much better. Easy to be wise after the event. :eek:
 
Looks like you are scalping but with well managed R/R to grab a few pips.
 
Looks like you are scalping but with well managed R/R to grab a few pips.

Maybe! :) I admit I don't think of it as "scalping" but maybe many people would? The aim's certainly for a fastish, smallish profit. I'm just hoping that the proportion of profitable trades will be more than 50%, which I think it could be, if the price movements that trigger the opening of trades are, overall, something more than just random volatility.


Wednesday 22nd May

Cable: high 1.51098, low 1.50835
Long entry 1.51123, TP 1.51333, TS 21 pips
Short entry 1.50810, TP 1.50600, TS 21 pips

Euro: high 1.29588, low 1.29156
Long entry 1.29613, TP 1.29793, TS 18 pips
Short entry 1.29131, TP 1.28951, TS 18 pips
 
Looks cool :) I trade the London open break, and have thought about the nyo break, but generally use the 3Ducks method for day trading. One thing that strikes me is that you are using a 50:50 r:r with a trailing stop, I've tried this early on and got stopped out too many times (this was when I was using mainly fib retracement bounces) on the breakouts I use set stops e.g 20 pips either way, on the 3D I'll use a stop based on the 1hr hi/lo (5min entry) once the trade as moved 20 pips in profit I'll either take a portion off and set the sl to breakeven or set the trailing stop to 20pips (or whatever breakeven is), if I where to develop your breakout strategy which looks goooooood, I'd use the 3D indicator to confirm trend and set a wider stop loss then trail back from breakeven once the trade had it its first target. But that's just my view, I did for a while counter trend the nyo on 30min tf's worked well only stopped due to not being available during the nyo, but soon will be again :D then again if I hit 20/30 pips or a 25:75 r:r on the London open breakout ill be kicking back for the rest of the day.

Peace, pips and happiness.
 
One thing that strikes me is that you are using a 50:50 r:r with a trailing stop, I've tried this early on and got stopped out too many times

Ah, interesting - thank you. Yes, I was concerned about this possibility, never having tried it before. The other alternative that occurred to me was just to do a "fixed stop". Well, we'll see.

on the breakouts I use set stops e.g 20 pips either way, on the 3D I'll use a stop based on the 1hr hi/lo (5min entry) once the trade as moved 20 pips in profit I'll either take a portion off and set the sl to breakeven or set the trailing stop to 20pips (or whatever breakeven is)

This is a little more like what I normally do (I adjust TP's and stops according to support/resistance, anyway). But that's all "subjective". I thought I'd try and make it semi-automated (or at least include only subjective bits that can be included at the time of the trade). A wheel may come off, of course. :eek:

Thanks for the comments, good to know someone's looking, anyway. And good luck with the early morning ones. :)
 
Wednesday’s results

Cable: long 3.00p.m. (short entry cancelled), TP before 3.01, gaining 21 pips

Euro: long 3.00p.m. (short entry cancelled), TP before 3.01, gaining 18 pips


Cable
Today’s profit: 21 pips
Cumulative profit: 33 pips

Euro
Today's profit: 18 pips
Cumulative profit: 16 pips

(Should probably stop now, while it's in the black - maybe for the last time! :sneaky: ).
 
Nice profits (y)

I took +20 of the morning breakout eurusd and then trailed the stop on gbp to +6 pips. I'm still unsure about trailing stops but I'd prefer to take 6 pips then break even. As soon as I've 20 pips in the bag I'm out to be fair. spiting the trade 70 / 30 taking 70% off at my first target and allowing 30% to run with the stop to break even. but i'm liking the 20 pips set and forget ez money.

I'm getting over letting the longer runs go, it's frustrating TP'in at 20pips then watching the candles run and run - but i starve for low risk consistency, i spent too long on the roller coaster of pips, profits and heart break.

If the trades don't set up in the morning i'll hunt the 3 ducks but I'm interested to see how your ideas play out using the hi/lo from 1-3pm looks cool. As for as Friday's go i like to out before NYopen but then i have ran trades until 18:00 GMT i can't see why running from 3pm to 6pm would be an hassle - i guess time tells all.

pips and peace
 
Well done on the morning breakout. :cool:

I'm still unsure about trailing stops

Same here - this is only an experiment for me. I'm not trading this in my real account, only on a demo! :|

Normally I trade various kinds of consolidation/congestion breakouts, and 1-2-3 formation trend reversals, and I usually let a proportion of winning trades run, with those, after locking in some profit on the half/two-thirds of the trade I've already closed. (When it goes well!). But that requires attention and concentration, of course.

(I'm waiting for someone - often my father - now to point out that all trading requires attention and concentration. To which I'll say that maybe some requires mostly previous attention and concentration and can actually be traded relatively simply? :whistling ).

spiting the trade 70 / 30 taking 70% off at my first target and allowing 30% to run with the stop to break even.

This is more like what I normally do. But we'll see. As you say, an effortless 20-ish pips could be looking very attractive. It all depends on how the books balance in the long term, allowing for all the losses. We'll see.

"Awaiting today's developments"! :)
 
Thursday 23rd May

Cable: high 1.50847, low 1.50608
Long entry 1.50872, TP 1.5108.2, TS 21 pips
Short entry 1.50583, TP 1.506373, TS 21 pips

Euro: high 1.29213, low 1.28824
Long entry 1.29238, TP 1.29418, TS 18 pips
Short entry 1.28799, TP 1.28619, TS 18 pips
 
Thursday’s results

Cable: short 3.55p.m. (long entry cancelled), stopped out at 4.03p.m. at 5.0756, losing 17.3 pips

Euro: long 4.48p.m. (short entry cancelled), TP 4.50p.m., gaining 18 pips

Very unusual to have a short trade and a long one, like this (but the extremely unfortunate Cable trade opened only by about one pip, sadly - would have been 41-42 pips better off without that happening :( ).


Cable
Today’s loss: 17.3 pips
Cumulative profit: 15.7 pips

Euro
Today's profit: 18 pips
Cumulative profit: 34 pips

And have a good weekend. :)
 
Today's Euro trade chart ...

Dotted blue line = low
Solid blue line = low entry (not reached/cancelled)
Dotted green line = high
Solid green line = high entry
White line = high target
 

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Friday 24th May

Cable: high 1.51255, low 1.50738
Long entry 1.51280, TP 1.51490, TS 21 pips
Short entry 1.50713, TP 1.50503, TS 21 pips

Euro: high 1.29594, low 1.29132
Long entry 1.29619, TP 1.29799, TS 18 pips
Short entry 1.29107, TP 1.29927, TS 18 pips

Never quite sure about Fridays! :|
 
Please excuse the typo in the post above. The Euro short trade target is of course 1.28927, and not 1.29927 as stated above.

The Cable trade (long) was stopped out, losing about 8 pips. The Euro trade (short) is currently open, and not looking too healthy at all. :eek:

Sometimes difficult to decide what to do. If it doesn't look like reaching either its target or its trailing stop before New York closes, I'll have to take a view, later this evening, on when to close it (I'm certainly not leaving it open over the weekend).

This unfortunate Euro trade order was hit by one tenth of a pip! :(
 
Stopped out on the Euro trade, too: not a great surprise. :(

Friday’s results

Cable: long 3.21p.m. (short entry cancelled), stopped out at 4.33p.m., at 1.51206, losing 7.4 pips

Euro: short 4.39p.m. (long entry cancelled), stopped out at 7.12p.m., at 1.29285, losing 17.8 pips


Cable
Today’s loss: 7.4 pips
Cumulative profit: 8.3 pips

Euro
Today's loss: 17.8 pips
Cumulative profit: 16.2 pips

(I'll include Fridays in the main results, of course, but also keep a separate record of them, for later comparison purposes. Friday cumulative results: -7.4/-17.8).

And have a good weekend. :)
 
Tuesday 28th May (Monday was "Spring Bank Holiday")

Cable: high 1.51265, low 1.51006
Long entry 1.51290, TP 1.51500, TS 21 pips
Short entry 1.50981, TP 1.50771, TS 21 pips

Euro: high 1.29430, low 1.29077
Long entry 1.29455, TP 1.29635, TS 18 pips
Short entry 1.29052, TP 1.28872, TS 18 pips
 
Tuesday’s results

Cable: short 3.01p.m. (long entry cancelled), TP 3.13p.m., gaining 21 pips

Euro: short 3.01p.m. (long entry cancelled), TP 3.14p.m., gaining 18 pips


Cable
Today’s profit: 21 pips
Cumulative profit: 29.3 pips

Euro
Today's profit: 18 pips
Cumulative profit: 34.2 pips

Overall balance
Currently +63.5 pips
 
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