Good Luck to you as well. I am very familar with Elder as his Triple screen is the basis for my system. However, he states trade the daily chart with the direction of the weekly and enter based on 60 min time frame. When I followed his system I broke even or lost a little. It is not the best system but if you trade based on the weekly and 60 min for entry I do better. This is a "Double Screen" system of sorts. That was what i meant about not knowing that others were describing this and almost ignoring the daily chart in trading. ( focusing on weekly and 60 min instead.) Also I do not like Elder's system of takeing profit at the edge of a channel and buy at value. As you know stocks can hug the edge of a price channel line for long periods of time especially in a strong trend like gold over the last 20 years. Elder would take profits as the price reached the edge of the channel whereas focusing on the 60 min chart will show you when to take profits and expect a pull back to "value" for another reentry at the center of the rising price channel. Also, I do not like Elders method of looking at the Weekly 13 EMA as a sign of direction. I use the direction of the weekly MACD Line unless its near the 0 line and then as decribed above I go with the next lower time frame. My results have been dramatically better after these changes. Lastly with regards to your system with large drawdown it is obvious that we are both trend traders. However, I think focusing on longer time frames means you will have more time for a trade to go against you....time is money. AND, because you focus on longer time frames you need to reduce your position size because your stops will likely be based off the longer time frame and farther away than if based off a daily time frame. Think about changing to one time frame lower than what you currently trade...this made a big difference for me as well. Lastly, your system sounds like it has a low win rate but high profit per trade that wins. See my recent discussion in the following thread on page 13 (http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3389866#post3389866). This will show you why you had a big drawdown even though your system didn't change. It may have been natural draw down as with any trend trading system or the markets may not have been trending at all. My discussion points out why with trend trading systems you generally need less risk per trade to help assure you do not have risk of ruin. That is why you lowered your risk per trade. If you run multiple MC Sims on your system you will be able to find the BEST % risk per trade for your system with an "acceptable" draw down or risk of ruin,...however you define those. I encourage you to read Van Tharps "The Definitive Guide to Position Sizing" where this is discussed.
Good Luck
