Anti Trend and Trend Following Systems

 

In the course of my trying to develop the Holy Grail of trading, I have written and tested literally hundreds of systems. As you can see, most of them have been failures. However, a handful seem to be profitable, some more some less. Here are some observations that I made during this course. Please comment on them.

1. In general, anti trend or trend fading EAs seem to do better. It maybe easier to come up with marginally profitable anti trend system than a Trend following system which is profitable.

2. The systems that trade infrequently seem to be more profitable than the eager beavers.

3. Only a handful of currencies and contracts can be traded using trend following systems.

4. Longer term systems tend to be generally more profitable with wider stops.

5. Markets change on a dime and sometimes their behavior makes you feel that you want to strangle the market.

6. We all want to be millionaires overnight and a slow and steady system that is profitable but trades infrequently is easily discarded after a couple of losses.

Thanks for reading and your comments.

 

I believe the best approach capitalizes on both pullbacks in trend and trend change. I've found the latter more difficult to learn. A separate consideration is time frame. Good setups will occur on varying time frames based on current volatility.

 

Maji

I am currently testing a strategy within my H2 system on this very idea you have posted. So far, I have ran it twice in the last 2 days. I was very surprised with the positive results that I would continue testing it through the end of this month for my BCC - belief, consistency, confidence - level. As you may already know, the HAMA PAD Trading Approach and the H2 Trading System are trend following.

Funny you mentioned anti-trend because I have named the strategy H2 Counter Trend Attack Plan. Kinda like one of those Homeland Security thingy. Anyhow, it will deter any trade attempt against current trend for a given currency pair. It will also manuever around and about the ranging market conditions. I called the primary indicator Trend Guard.

I will be posting result updates whenever I can find the time on my thread here at TSD and on this thread if Maji permits.

ENJOY!

fxcruiser

 

cruiser,

Good luck with those EAs. They look promising.

You can post the results here... that is not a problem. However, it may better suit you to start your own topic where people can discuss the system. You don't want my philosophical rants to distract your system.