5 Min Index Trading

Hi waverider2,

I've been trading it purely on the signals per the rules I set out at the start of this thread. That's been a deliberate strategy even though I knew it wasn't optimal. I wanted to get some idea of to what extent ignoring the hourly trend would have. It seems, so far, that 50% of the gains are lost be trading counter-trend.

I'll review it properly over the weekend and make some revisions to the system to refine it. I'll post the new rules once they're worked out and then continue to post daily trading results.

I actually knew while I was trading the signals around 6350 area that I would lose on all the trades. Up until then I'd added a further 37 pips profit. I could have walked away but wanted to stick with the system to the end of the day.

Hi Jackozy,


You state a very important point, but very subtly at the end. "You favour the short side on Monday..."

With this method - do you trade purely by the signals or do you trade with your bias, the bigger picture and where the general trend is?

Thanks mate

Yeah. I knew when I started this that a sideways move would be bad but I figure that a 5 min chart is probably only sideways for a small percentage of the time.

I could probably tweak the slow MA to avoid some of the false triggers.

Interestingly, I was also counting waves and checking Fibs and today hit the 61.8% Fin of the drop from 6384 perfectly after a perfect set of 5 subwaves for wave C of 2 up. There was a bearish RSI divergence and everthing so it wasn't easy to stick to the system when it gave signals contrary to my other analysis.

The whole point of a system is that you stick with it though so that's what I did.

Pretty sure it'll favour the short side on Monday though.

sideways markets beats the best systems out there.
Thats why sideways is dangerous.
Interesting system never the less.

Just called it a day on this. Here's today's results:

15 trades, 5 wins for + 27.8 pts, 10 losers for - 49 pts

Total gain of - 21.2 pts.

Here's the daily chart showing why the results were poor today:



dl.dropbox.com/u/20815047/FTSE5min15_02_13.gif


A system using MAs clearly needs to be trending to work!

Hi remo,

Thanks for reminding me about that. I'll look into it over the weekend. Re glued to the screen, yes and no. At first I was as I wasn't sure how often the signals would come. After 3 days the average number of trades per day is 8 so it's only 1 an hour. You can get a pretty good feel for when it can be left alone for a bit - when the MAs are sideways you can't leave but when the crossover is clear (steep) then you can leave it for a bit.

I think updata also let's you set an alarm for when the trigger comes. In any event, one of the beauties of a system like this is that you can just exit your positions, go away for however long you want and then come back and start again at the next signal.

I'll carry on posting daily results as long as I remember to do so.