Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Preliminary backtest on 'double-top' and 'double-bottom' candles

This is still at an early stage, so it may not work on other pairs, but I just finished testing a 'double-top' and 'double-bottom' trading system on the USDCHF. I identified short-term support and resistance on the daily chart whenever two consecutive candles have very similar highs or lows (within 10 pips). A snapshot is below:


I found if the second candle had a range between 0.5 and 0.75 ATR(14), there's a good chance of a reversal. I excluded candles below 0.5 ATR(14) since these candles would already be traded with my Hermes low volatility system, and I wanted to avoid overlapping data between two different trading systems.

Candles with a range of over 0.75 ATR(14) don't seem to work so well. I think this is because the reversal is already under way if the second candle is large, and if you decide to trade it, you've missed out on the meat of the move. 

Anyway, with regards to the screenshot, I placed my stop loss at the top of the second candle, and my entry on the break of the bottom of the second candle. For long positions, just reverse the SL and entry. Here's a summary of profit factors for various R:R ratios: Total number of trades during the time period was 207.


1.75 reward:risk looked ideal. Here's the equity curve with an initial balance of $10,000, 2% risk per trade, starting from Jan 2001 to Jan 2014, using a 1.75 R:R ratio. 


It's a good start, but I know how these backtests can easily fall apart. Stay tuned...

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