Topic: Help with closing points...

Hi I just discovered this program and it's amazing. Now if I could only figure how to use it effectively!

I was just trying to make a simple strategy with MACD crossovers on a Eur/USD hourly chart. I had come up with a pretty profitable strategy that enters and reverse on MACD signal line crosses and exits at any time when a large period SMA is hit. However, if I set the closing point to "Moving Average" I can not add any closing logic conditions because you can't do that if your closing point is Moving Average. What I essentially wanted to do was close the position at the SMA ONLY IF the MACD was below the 0 line, or some other related condition.

How do I do this?!

Also, on a more important note, if I use a few systems that seem to be consistently profitable I will test them in my broker's practice account, but how accurate is this exactly? I mean using data from a 3 year period from about the beginning of 07 to September 2010 from the Eur/USD. If I take a strategy that appears to be consistently profitable on just the one pair for a 3 year period, can I assume it should be profitable in the future? Are there strategies that seem to work with several different pairs? Because it seems most strategies that appear to be incredibly profitably with the EUR/USD will quickly empty your account with GBP/USD or USD/JPY

Re: Help with closing points...

You can use only one at a time - MA or MACD. There is a possibility if "Bar Closing" is selected and MA and MACD are added with appropriate logics and logical group settings (a,b or aa), not sure though how it turns out as there are many variables which are critical in terms of performance, but test and experiment is the best advice I can give you at the moment.

About (back)testing - the testing results in FSB are more or less solid, if there are none or very few ambigous bars marked in the statistics. For a better evaluation it is better to divide the data to 2 or 3 pieces, especially when optimization is used somewhat extensively. If you do optimize, I strongly advise you to use out of sample (OOS) option in the optimizer, 'cause your test will give you a more direct indication how your strat would have performed on unknown data (i.e live trading). Make a search on walk-forward testing, that'll help you a lot I think.

If I take a strategy that appears to be consistently profitable on just the one pair for a 3 year period, can I assume it should be profitable in the future?

The answer really depends upon the strength of your belief in technical analysis.

One or multi-pair performance - many consider that a truly robust strat performs well on different pairs and ranges. From my experience both ways are possible.

Re: Help with closing points...

All good information! Thank You...

Re: Help with closing points...

You might also pay close attention to the Sharpe Ratio shown in the overview...... a mark of 3 or better indicates good things in the future.

My 'secret' goal is to push EA Studio until I can net 3000 pips per day....