GRBB and PIPS testing

To take accounts seriously, last week I made 10 trades. 6 losses, 1 breakeven and 3 winning trades. All trades were of size 1 mini lot. Total loss of USD 236.85, winning trades raked in USD 277.48. So that makes a gain of USD 40.63 for a 30% hit rate. Starting capital was 355.87, so that makes my gain over 10% for a week's trading.

I am very happy with this week. Not because of the gain of 10% (after all, 40 bucks is hardly anything) but because I managed to follow my declared intention to use and actively test a system.

And after trading conscientiously for a week, I realised this is not an impossible and unachievable dream. I can possibly trade properly and profitably by the end of the year of so. In fact, I hope it's earlier. But hard work awaits. Another observation: This week was a difficult week to trade. Mainly because many pairs are hitting or have gone beyond historical highs or lows. So it is hard to say if the pairs have momentum, especially when I'm trying to trade using TNT methods.

My consolation is that, many a times, I spot the trade when the price is quite close to the short Moving Averages. So I get really good positions. In fact, my profitable trades ran my floating capital to a high of USD 900+ at some point in time. (But you really have to discount 300 off that because of an earlier mistake, profitable one though)

So that's one more issue. How do I get the best out of a trade? I had trades that ran up to more than 200 pips positive but then hit my protective stop at +120 pips. I think it's probably every trader's heartache. But it shouldn't be. Especially if you are trading according to your system. Having said so, always evaluate your system and trading methods and see if you can get more out of the market. That's where the bookkeeping columns suggested by Dr. Alexander Elder is very useful - maximum paper profit and maximum paper loss after stoploss/profit target levels are hit. That would help one track if one is trading too conservatively or being overly greedy.

Met Firman yesterday. Had a good session of info-exchange. One thing I can never match Kelvin and Firman is in their boundless energies and devotion to trading. From Firman's end, he told me of 5 different methods he tested the last week or so. The most interesting is probably rainbow moving averages. I think I want to put in a picture of that here to show you guys how fascinating the visual representation of price movements can be. So here it is:

Beautiful, isn't it? This picture, of course, shows a downtrend. Unfortunately, the system is designed for scalping. Not my style definitely.

So my next move is this. Oh, before that, I should say my good but unprofitable trades this week mostly were signals from the TNT method. So I'm admittedly in favour of testing the PIPS and GRBB methods now. Quite a powerful indicator in hindsight. As are many indicators. So I'm alerted by Firman to the "REPAINTER effect". Essentially it means indicates change their signals according to past price data so that it appears, during backtesting, that the indicators work perfectly in accordance with trends in price changes.

So that task 1 of the week. Check out if the GRBB is a repainter program. And to have that. Once a day I will take a picture (screenshot) of the currency pairs on my charts and indicate (by putting in arrows) when the last bar is when I took the picture. Then I'll match them to those I see on the following day to see if they changed.

The second part is, certainly, to trade the system. For that I think I want to be thinking of the best time frame to trade in. So I'll put in the GRBB-PIPS indicators on 1 hour charts as well and monitor them according to current trading rules.

So that's my aim for the week. I'll submit my report next week!