Perhaps you are right, but if so, experience is going to have to prove this to me. For example, I believe that as long as both the crimson and midnight blue moving averages are sloping downward, the best course of action will be to sell and that this will never change. Similarly, if both moving averages are sloping upward, the best course of action will be to buy, and no matter how the markets evolve, this will always hold true. Whatever the system, it need not be much more complicated than this.
Wait a minute!
I just wrote that my final, final version looks a bit more confusing than most of those leading up to it and that this is because I discovered that
the system works a lot better using a number of envelopes that have a lot of overlap rather than just three or four reflecting widely dispersed time frames.
That contradicts my opinion that a system "need not be much more complicated than this." So what gives?
To be honest, the image from Post #56 comes from a slightly modified version of my "final, final version" the emerged as I was analyzing my four-hour charts. So, the versions
wasn't final after all, right?
Yes and no.
The midnight blue moving average is a smoother version of a moving average it replaces. But they measure the exact same thing and are virtually the same. Again, the midnight blue one is simply smoother.
The crimson moving average
is actually a change. It is a "faster" (more accurate) substitute for the moving average it replaces. So in a sense, it is not so much a
new final, final version as much as it is an improvement on the old one.
But still, if a system "need not be much more complicated than this," then why did I write in my thread on automating trading systems that "in its final configuration, it involves monitoring several baselines, envelopes/price ranges and signals, with a different protocol for each specific setup and for different situations and conditions"? Doesn't that sound pretty complicated?
Well, this was in reference to micro managing intraday positions at the one-minute level. The perspective represented by the image from Post #56 paints a picture taken from much, much father away, sort of like the difference between describing how water behaves in terms of simple observations and how water behaves at the molecular level.
What water is doing at the molecular level is irrelevant for most people.