With retirement, I no longer want to trade too frequently (used to trade with 60m chart) - Been studying weekly Heikin and it seems to perform well - below is an example - simple trading rule: buy when weekly heikin bar closes above 7wEMA, sell when it closes below 7wEMA (and this means the heikin bar body actually touches the 7wEMA, not just the wicker line - another rukes seems to be working well is: Buy when weekly stochRSI(10) is above 0.5 and sell when it dips below 0.5 - Note only two trades in 2023
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The power of compoundng.
bridgewater,
Nice looking chart if I do say so myself, however IMHO I think you were losing money.
Using the EMAâs is you best choice so says Google⌠SMA vs EMA.
The attached chart will show the HAs. buy and sell gong above and belwo the black line
Or for a one shot, notice the red ark (smiley face) on 10/26 as a buy signal to buy the following day. and then on 3/21/24 as a sell signal to sell on the following day.
Now, if a batter comes to the plate 62 times and hits 62 singles and doubles, what is his batting average ?
per the rules, QQQ had 7 or 7 at bat with ZERO losses. Only two (2) rules are used,
per the rules, QQQQX had 9 for 9 at bat with ZERO losses
Quill - a poor church mouse scratching for a living as a Swing Trader.
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Quill, while many market behaviors are similar between time frames, they arenât always exactly the same. Bridgewater has clearly stated and shown Weekly period charts and you daily. It may be Honey Crisp Apples to Golden Delicious, so still apples to apples, but run your charts weekly and see if you have the same.
Bridgewater, interesting chart and approach. I have worked a lot with price relative to Heikin Ashi, have generated several TOS adaptations for calculating and using, but mostly daily interval work. I tried some weekly, but put it aside when backtesting was not encouraging. Using an average of HA candle values versus price and various averages, the TOS strategies studies looked very encouraging but could never get it to workout when backtested in Excel.
Up at my lakehouse working my toosh off cleaning up after winter and getting ready for full Spring and Summer. When Iâm back in Olympia where that data is, will pull it, blow the dust off of it once again and look at weekly. Do you use ThinkorSwim? Happy to show some of the scripts if they might work in your approach.
Back to work, later!
Lakedog
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The charts used here seem to be only of the strong rally that started at the end of 2022. Does this system perform well in a choppy market, or a primarily down market like 2022? Or does it eat you up with false breakouts the gradually cause principal to dwindle? This seems like a very simple system and the implication is that it is very easy to get rich off of it, if so, why hasnât everyone discovered it? There must be a catch somewhere. No?
Bridge,
Try swapping in a 5-period triangular MA for your 7-period EMA. Havenât yet done a rigorous back test. But using it seems to eliminate some whipsaws but still captures the major moves.
Would agree with using StochRSI(10) as it crosses over/under the 0.50 line.
Charlie
Pete,
re: Simon Sez III
re: Teeter Totter
re: Touting
If touters were to show Simon & Co. charts, they would lose customers in a heartbeat. So they create complex charts that would make your head shake
I made Simon so easy that a 6th grader can do it within a few hours of practice and following the simple two (2) rules. My two (2) nieces are now in the 6 figures.
From your charts at first glance, it appears you are using moving averages where the green line crosses up and over the red line.
I attended several IBD seminars in Santa Monica, CA. I had dinner with Mr.William OâNeal. He told us to buy Lennar (LEN) to help pay for the seminar.
Going to show you that Simon works in any condition. You must follow the rules or get burned. Will show you SPXS / SPXL teeter tottering. In 2006 with 50K as a bankroll to 2014, I earned over 12 million. From 2014 with a 100K bankroll to 2022 earned a little over 13 million. from 2022 to the present bank rolling 100k.
You are welcome to back-check at your leisure.
I own all and manage the 12 SPDRs. eg. XLE, XLK Since 2006. Pays nice quarterly diviâs all at the same time.
I got laid off on May 1st, 2007 as a Senior Principal IC (integrated circuits) Layout Designer, designing complex state-of-the-art computer chips, standard cell libraries, and INPUT/OUTPUT cell libraries for 41 years and tried to get a job as a greeter at COSTCO ( COST) and wasnât hired. So I bought the company ( stock that is ) a few days later and the rest is historyâbankrolled 10K at the Gate on or about May 4th, 2007. The power of compounding works well. The sister to Cost is V. Doing extremely well with both of them.
The rule for buying out of the gate has been modified to buy the first green bar after the price label is posted to prevent minor head fakes. When at the Finish Line, THe price label appears at the same time as the next bar appears. Sometimes there are no problems with the trade and there are times when there are minor head fakes. Patience and discipline will kick in when sticking to the rules.
I start looking at the charts at 10 am and again at 3::30 pm every day.
I wish the best,
Quill -
(Attachment SLV - SharpCharts - StockCharts.com.url is missing)
(Attachment GLD - SharpCharts - StockCharts.com.url is missing)
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I hesitate to put this up, but I found a couple files to quickly try. I decided to post it as I think it will help stimulate further discussion.
ThinkorSwim has a quasi-backtester. You can write script for strategies and it will play it out. But there are a lot of caveats, too many to list here, so DO NOT take it as definitive or anything absolute. However, looking at price action (closing price) interacting (crossing above versus below) with an average of the Heikin-Ashi candle body averages (meaning the average of the OHLC of an individual HA candlebody plotted as a line) does show some promise.
This is QQQ weekly graph for 3 yrs. The bottom insert is TOSâs âfloating P/L.â Using their measurements, obviously itâs positive. I wrote this script and included the capacity to very the interval and the type of moving averageâŚexcept triangular EMA (Sorry Arindam, just wasnât on my radar at the time). If you run the various moving averages you get their estimates of P/L investing $100 per âBuyâ and âSelling allâ for a sell signal. Below is the period-MA-Profit/Loss:
7-SMA 3304
5-EMA 9752
7-EMA 8898
7-Hull 7104
7-Weighted 6006
7-TEMA 12200
5-TEMA 15250
Interesting. DO NOT TRADE BASED ON THESE COMMENTS. I need to recheck the script and make sure there is not a simple error misleading everything. I have been here before, only to find the bug. I also prefer to confirm with Excel hard data, although, I havenât written such for weekly intervalsâŚwill need to work on that.
The goal is to say that it is interesting and, more importantly, that any perspective and input is wanted, needed and appreciated.
Lakedog
@Quillnpenn If you had a seminar with Bill, you know they donât use trendline crossovers as buy signals. All the charts I showed had recognized bases such as cup, flat, double-bottom, cup with handle. The standard buy rule is when the price breaks out of a base at high volume. Perhaps that coincides with certain trendlines somewhere. I did mention that the IBD team will talk about early buys, perhaps when you bounce off the 50dma on high volume or break a downtrend in the right side of a base.
Congrats on the $25 million gains, guess you arenât a poor little church mouse scrapping for a living! I am a little confused, if you had $12m 2014, then why did you restart with $100k to get the next $13m. Why not keep compounding the $12m?
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The trades in 2022 had some small losses. But thatâs the goal: having a few small losses during a bear run and stay in for the large gain during a bull run - BTW, this works best on high alpha stocks, such as IBD20 or the list of Saulâs stocks
Bridgewater
Lakedog: thanks for your analysis - I will try out 5wEMA - BTW, will appreciate any info you can share on the TOS script - Iâve been using stockcharts , have a TOS account but have not tried it
bridgewater
Lakedog,
I ahve been using TOS for years and would appreciate any help you may offer with your area of expertise. I usually buy canned programs. Some are good while others donât work by having a 4 bar delay.
I wish you the best
Quill
I wrote this script and included the capacity to very the interval and the type of moving averageâŚexcept triangular EMA (Sorry Arindam, just wasnât on my radar at the time).
Lake,
Everyone will have their own preferences as to which MA type to favor in their charts. I like triangular MAs, because --due to their underlying mathematics-- they seem to offer a good balance between âtimelinessâ and âstrength of trendâ, whereas I never use EMAs, and especially not HULL MAs, because they plot so erratically. (IMHO, natch).
If youâre looking for a low-cost back-tester, try StockAnalyze, which offers almost the capability of MetaStock but at a fraction of the price. https://stockalyze.com/
Charlie
Pete,
I kept moving money around focusing on COST, V, AAPL, QQQ, and the 12 at https://www.sectorspdrs.com/ and 45 passive income paying monthly dividens.
i have a divided spreadsheet of 12 portfolios with 15 monthly paying stocks in each portfolio. Currently using the first 3. I use Income Calendar by Contrarian Outlook to help me. I have 4 brokers, one being M1Finance.com to monitor them.
I use Stockcharts, Traders PRO, and Barchart. Getting information out of them is like pulling teeeth.
eg. https://www.barchart.com/news/chart-of-the-day klick on the first one, My log book has over 1000 stocks and counting.
At the very last line and notice âSince the Trend Seeker signaled a buy on 3/ 8 the stock gained 43.08%.â at every chart they mention the teaser. I have tried to buy every whichway a list of Trend Seeekers from them. They wonât do it. Unless I am missing something on how they go about creating the Trend Seekers.
Talk about the HOLY GRAIL. I called up the CENX chart on stockcharts and see where it was bought on 3/8/24. At barchart, I have searched and searached the wwerd 'Trend Seeker".
Quill
My two âgo-toâ programs are Stockcharts and TOS. StockCharts has expanded tremendously over the last few years. I do have a subscription as I feel I have gotten so much out of it in use and learning. They have expanded their scanning, sharpcharts, ACP, etc and I have started to use them more to do a lot of work. But I use TOS as my trading is through TD Ameritrade. And will continue in the future via TOS as TDA is absorbed by the borg, Schwab. Plus, TOS allows me to play with scripting and allows me to use RTD (real time data) transfer into Excel spreadsheets. I probably sound like a programmer, but that couldnât be farther from the truth. Iâm a rewired oncologist who is just enjoying exploring the geeky side of life and keeping my mind active. Iâm no expert but am always learning. You need to decide how things fit for your goals and needs.
TOS is a massive program that I learn something new about daily. Unfortunately, I donât always remember what I run across and often end-up relearning it weeks later. 
Such is life. Point is, I struggle with where to tell you to begin if you havenât ever loaded it up. Other than to say, load it and just explore to start. It has a paper trade aspect that you need to log into as you start it.
Thereâs a guy on the internet, âShortthestrike,â who Iâve seen some of his options videoâs and has been pretty straightforward and clear. He has a TOS Tutorial for Beginners. I have not watched it, but strikes me that itâs likely a good generalized intro. Thereâs a few million others out there.
I am more than happy to share anything I have, especially since you have been kind enough and open to share your idea. The key to having any discussion and learning. As far as the specific script, I have decided to rewrite it specifically for your comments. What I posted was a hastily edited/adapted prior script and I would rather post something more specific. But again, Iâm not a skilled coder, it may end up trash! Once I have that, will post.
Speaking of which, one significant problem with TOS strategies is their narrow limitations on order execution timing. This is especially problematic with Heikin-Ashi studies as the candles do not reflect gaps and what looks like a winner is really a looser given the timing of buys and sales. I understand you wait for the candle body close, but do you try to sneak in buys just before the close on some Fridays? Or always wait until the open on Monday for orders?
Look forward to more discussions.
Lakedog
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Hard to offer expertise when it doesnât exist!! 
I suspect an old chip designer has far more experience and skill at coding and such than me. But I am happy to do whatever I can. Understand, a large portion of my approach is âspaghetti against the wallâ not strategic.
It sounds as if you have a specific question, should we take it to another thread and explore it?
Iâd also offer my number one resource for scripting headaches, UseThinkScript.com. This is an amazing collection of folks who readily share their skills to specifically address questions. It is free or you can join and get access to some more specialized programs. I learned so much using the free aspect that I pay for membership now. Understand, for legal reasons, they do not knowingly discuss commercial programs, but so often you can find similar programs or portions of scripting for another process that can be adapted. I think they are tremendous.
Happy to do whatever,
Lakedog
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Quick followup: As I previously mentioned, the major problem with TOS Strategies and using it as a backtest is accurate order execution timing. That difficulty is magnified with using weekly intervals. Made several manipulations and clearly, for long-term (10-20 years) analysis of data, I wouldnât trust it. Therefore, to more accurately assess things, have to go to Excel or if Arindam would kindly use the Backtester he uses and has suggested. I donât have time right now to analyze, will play with it over the next weeks, but nothing quick.
I can hear the voices now saying Iâm an idiot, just look at the graph, of course it works!!! Yes, it looks very positive and is in this market defined uptrend. The issue is what does it do during chop. Hence why doing a decade or two of backtesting helps tremendously define the potential. Additionally, looking at Heikin-Ashi candles is misleading. These are calculated candle bodies, especially the opening price. It is NOT the price you buy at. It hides major jumps or gaps. Devil is in the detail.
I would suggest focusing on the Stochastic RSI as the trigger, or a combination. Be curious to look for other confirming indicators. Curious about how this weeks candle will look, but itâs only Tuesday.
Now to figure out how to lump the raw data by weeks in Excel⌠gotta love a challenge. Edit note-Yahoo has data in weekly format as well as daily. Sweet!!
Lakedog
âThe issue is what does it do during chop? Hence [thatâs] why doing a decade or two of back-testing helps.â
Lake,
Bingo! Thatâs the problem with all âsure-fire, canât miss, never-failsâ trading systems. Nearly anything works some of the time. But nothing works all of the time. Hence, trading systems are betting schemes, and one had better know what the probabilities are of a pattern paying off, so that positions can be sized accordingly.
Iâve got house guests coming back to back for the next month. So not much time to do any back-testing. But the problem of knocking together a viable trading program based on weekly bars interests me, and Iâll get to it as I can.
Charlie
I feel like I wasnât clear on what I was trying to say. That or Iâm misreading what youâre saying Charlie.
The approach and strategy as laid-out by bridgewater is very solid and I actually feel that it does have a role and use. The trick is to be sure of the optimal situation and market environment to apply it. What I feel, actually know of that is not working, in this situation is using TOS Strategy Script as a backtester. The advantage to using TOS is that you can simply code variable types of moving averages (I added Triangular), as well as set any interval for the averages you want and easily compare with a few key strokes. Itâs the AddOrder command that gives misleading P/L results. I can still use it to get some relative data comparing those variables, just not the absolute bottom-line. In Excel, I have to write separate formulas for each different type of average and each interval. A mountain of work and so, so easy to screwup a formula that trashes it all. But going to Excel to evaluate makes more sense to me to be more definitive. The approach itself is solid.
A few years ago, I was playing with generating a price line using the average of the OHLC of Heikin-Ashi candle bodies and using regular OHLC price looking for signals. It seemed okay in a graph but not always very well in TOS testing, especially trying weekly. Iâm beginning to think it may have been screening with Thinkorswim was more the problem. Started doing Excel work, but was getting into too massive of formulas to want to continue. Shouldnât be too much work to plug this data in for this since I have most of the calculations in a spreadsheet already. Famous last wordsâŚ
Back to cleaning the raspberry bushes.
Lakedog
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Lake,
Permit to say that I was one misunderstanding the nature of Bridgewaterâs project. But also permit to say that his project is his project, to do with as he wishes.
What youâre describing as being able to do in TOS is what can be easily done in MetaStock. But also, with coding, it can be done in Excel. Itâs just a matter of setting up the variables, importing the data, and having the spreadsheet auto-update. But then comes this question/problem, as Kaufman, Stridesman, and others lay out in their books on building/testing trading systems: What might back-test well probably wonât test well out of sample (because markets change). Said other way, âOptimalityâ is fragile. Instead, what should be saught is ârobustnessâ. (Hence, Murphyâs work on âinter-market analysisâ.)
Charlie
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A follow up :
âSince the Trend Seeker signal as mentioned, Barchart is now playing games when they removed the Trend Seeker signal infomation and is spitting out uggggggly charts (black and white).
Stay tuned.
Quill -