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- 24 July 2008
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having questions like this help me to qualify why I do what I do, which helps me to spend a little time thinking about things more, which is never a bad thing
Thats what it is about. You come up with a thesis and test it on the market. It will let you know pretty quickly how wrong you are. Most of what I have read on the net has been quickly disproved by my testing. Doesnt matter who thinks your a dill if the market tells you, you are the forex king! LOL!
What you essentially have to do is impose a set % move up or down as a cutoff for the test in order for the test to accurately have a 1:1 ratio. This opens up an extra set of variables to any test done that can greatly influence the result.
On most of my pattern testing this is why I use a moving average on the ATR. As volatility goes up so does your ATR. Its not perfect but it tries to adapt to changing conditions. But in saying that when I use individual bar size as R/R it hasnt changed the results.
quite a few of the patterns I've tested in the thread so far have shown differing levels of performance over different timeframes
Yes and I believe there is good reason. I now trade 1hr+ timeframes even against my wishes. Prefer the action of the shorter stuff but have come to the realization that the bigger stuff trends better. Also I think because the stops are wider out and less trades you are better protected against noise. The ratio of spread to your profits is also lessened when taking bigger trades. ie 2pips is a lot when you take 10pips profit. Not so much when you take 100pips trade.
Something else I believe is that winrate is inversely effected by risk/reward. ie if you are chasing 1:3 you will drop back to 33% and you chase 1:4 you go back to 25%. (based on random entries). So really the 1:1 probably not a big deal. This gets to the crux of the matter, is it your pattern that is causing price to head in a certain direction. Or is it just being "fooled by randomness". (I recommend reading the book of that title too).