An interesting method?
I was going over Van Tharp’s book
, which is a must have, – to present it to you guys in a future post; when I ran into a very simple volatility breakout method in page 3
, and I couldn’t resist posting it.
I think this would be a nice method to trade ESs and NQs.
Basically, determine yesterday’s true range (YTR), its high minus low plus any gaps to the extremes of the day before yesterday, – this is where the “true” comes from.
Bracket today’s opening (TO) with two stop orders:
The first, to buy at
TO + (0.4 * YTR);
the second, to sell at
TO – (0.4 * YTR).
I would filter my entry with a George Taylor day sequence outlook: buy, sell, short sell day. So, after a sell day, I would not take the buy order, nor would I take a sell order after a short sell day.
(For those who don’t want to buy the book see my next post on Taylor’s method)
I would consider the trade to be a failure if it back-tracked into yesterday’s close; so I’d place my stops, after executing my entry order, at YC – (0.1 * YTR) or at YC + (0.1 * YTR), for the buy or sell entry orders, respectively.
If the trade goes well, I would move my stop to breakeven at 1:30 PM.
In regards to profit exits, I would take my chips off the table on a 5 day EMA crossover, – to let it run a little.
Caveat emptor: I like the looks of the method, I will be back-testing and paper-trading it; but, I have no supportive data to tell me it will work.
I strongly recommend not trading it!
I’ll be following up on my progress.
Happy trading guys!
I found some other interesting reading on volatility breakouts from Chuck LeBeau (Technical Traders Guide to Computer Analysis of the Futures Markets) and Linda Rashcke (Street Smarts: High Probability Short-Term Trading Strategies) for those who care to dig deeper into the subject.
If you don’t care to purchase their books (although I highly recommend them, – listen, what’s $200 in books to avoid losses in trading), the following articles are very comprehensive… and, yes, they’re free:
Linda’s article is Volatility Breakout Systems (register to read all her articles, they’re highly recommended, and registering is free) and you will find Chuck’s methods in his Toolkit.
These are the links:
Chuck LeBeau:
http://traderclub.com/index.htm
Technical Traders Guide to Computer Analysis of the Futures Markets):
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1556234686/ref=pd_kar_gw_1/102-5212769-3004141?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155
Linda Rashcke:
http://www.lbrgroup.com/index.asp?page=DefaultPage
Street Smarts: High Probability Short-Term Trading Strategies:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0965046109/qid=1141217766/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-5212769-3004141?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
Volatility Breakout Systems:
https://www.lbrgroup.com/index.asp?page=ArticlesVolatility
Toolkit:
http://traderclub.com/toolkit.htm
Happy trading!