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Combined auto-entry and manual-exit strategy as a money management device
I have been a regular reader of this forum and Mike's blog for quite some time now and have been enthusiastically trying many of the great indicators posted - particularly Big Mike's and Sharky's. I am hugely grateful to Mike for setting this forum up and the talented people that freely contribute to it as I am certain that what I have learned and continue to learn is gradually transforming me from a hopeless amateur paralysed by fear of my own incompetence into a confident trader. Fortunately I have been very conservative with my trading and have been and remain in sim trading for 9 months to date with only the occasional live trade, therefore I have so far retained my (very) modest initial trading next egg.
Slowly a system that may (big emphasis on "may") prove to be profitable for me. I acknowledge that what works for me may not work for others as that seems to be a common experience among traders.
I noted that some traders on this forum use an auto strategy combined with discretionary trading and that appealed to me as taking entries has proven to be a pychological barrier.
My auto-entry strategy is dirt-poor simple: I use only the ADXVMA-internal_SharkyPkg indicator (Period = 7) and take longs when it is higher than it was 3 bars ago and shorts when it is lower than it was 3 bars ago. The indicator generally trends up or down or goes horizontal, therefore a change over three bars gives a useful signal. This is easy to set up using the wizard as I don't have the time to learn to write code effectively - I added a doorbell chime for an audio signal as well. I trade only 1 contract at present and use a 16 tick profit target. I don't presently use a stop as trades are automatically closed when reversals occur, but an 8-16 tick stop could (probably should) be used. I optimised and back-tested the auto-reversal strategy as much as I could on multiple instruments and % profitable varied from low 50s to about 70% - which of course does not correlate well with real time trading, but it provides a relative measure when assessing the variable settings. I reasoned that if I manually exit using a simple set of signals I should significantly reduce the magnitude of the losing trades without reducing the profitable trades too much.
For my manual exits I use the ECO2New2 (default settings) and the DoubleMAPaint_SharkyPkg (16EMA/16EMA and 36EMA/36EMA) indicators. When an entry occurs and the 16EMA DMA and ECO are in conflict, I immediately close the position, often for a few ticks profit or 1-3 ticks loss. When the DMA and ECO are aligned I let the trade run - I hit the 16T profit target more than occasionally but more often I manually close the position to preserve profits. When the ECO2New2 turns yellow, I close the position.
It's a very simple method and so far profitable (yielding about +$400-$600 for a 3-4 hour day for 1 contract). I have 6 charts open (I prefer the currency futures as I live in Australia and these usually trade well in the late pre-market time period, but ES and ZN are also good), which is OK on a 22" screen, and I prefer to use Point-O tick charts as they seem to work best. Currently I use 10tick Point-O but I am also trying 4tick Point-O charts. Generally I don't have more than 3 trades in different markets open simultaneously, which is OK to manage.
For me this simple method works because I can more effectively manage my money by terminating bad trades quickly and dispassionately (not letting the losers run more than a few ticks), and feeling comfortable about taking a profit early even though I usually leave a lot of profit behind - trading multiple markets stops me pondering on that. It has taken me a few days to become disciplined following these simple rules, but it was not hard to do.
In a sense this trading method is a bit like picking up rocks in a tidal pool - quickly look under one and if there's nothing of interest there, carefully replace it and try another one. Soon something really interesting (Crikey! - What a beauty!) will be found worthy of a closer look.
I think any auto strategy can probably be used together with discretionary exits in this way and I expect many traders do this successfully.
Big Mike submitted the zip file for Point Original Bars (Point-O bars) in this Forum in Downloads>NinjaTrader>Miscellaneous together with a brief explanation. I'm a great fan of range charts but I find Point-O charts to be consistently a little better when back-testing various strategies.
Can some one please guide me to a post or share a shell script that does auto entry and manual exits. I want to try a strategy of mine where i want to enter a trade automatically when my conditions are met and i want to control on when to come out.
Here is a shell I created for manual entries inside of a strategy. I modified the toolbar button code found at Toolbar Buttons - NinjaTrader Support Forum (.
I am planning on creating automated exits using manual entries, and thought some of you might …
I was planning on doing automated exits with manual entries, but never moved forward with it.
February 7 2014
version 1.3
Added a close position button and renamed flatten button to flatten account to be more precise.
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February 6 2014
version 1.2
Fixed a minor bug where it would not save button colors …
I downloaded it while back. And have been developing some advanced trade management beyond the current sma/ema trails. I've added some more few trails, exit rules (usually ma slope based) and $profit targets (all customizable via chart trader). So for I have SuperTrend,Chandelier Stops,three bar trail, atr, tick, adaptive laguerre, and Instantaneous Trend (and a couple custom) stops/trails. It's not production ready though still buggy from my additions, as I've been just so busy. But what it posted now is brilliant, the developer did a great job to start a manual entry/automated exit framework to build on. I def check it out.
This looks good but seems to require that you fire up the Chart Trader to see the indy. Is there a way to bring up the trading panel as a standalone panel without invoking the chart trader? The reason being is that I want to also run a strategy while this panel is up . And we all know that NT has problems with strategies and ChartTrader running on the same chart.