Standard settings

M

mcteague

Probably a very basic question
It was recommended to me that instead trying to get an edge by fooling around with the setting on my indicators that I simply use the standard setting. This was mostly because it is best to see what the crowd is looking at.

But! as an example:

Stock charts sets the bollinger band based on 20 periods
trade ninja defaulted to 14 when I was looking at the es.

I've seen different stochastic settings on different sites.

So how do I know what the "standard" settings are? or if there really are any.
 
Greetings M,

I believe the answer is simple enough. You must go back to the basic "going in premise" that John Bollinger established when he first created the indicator. And I believe I read somewhere, that his initial premise was based on some market cycle studies John conducted earlier. This is likely how he first settled on the 21 day "standard" for his bands, and how this number has since become known as the "industry standard".

Understanding this info now, you still might want to conduct some "independent" cycle studies of your own, on the particular trading vehicles that you are following. This way you can determine for yourself if current day results are still congruent with Johns initial findings. You can thereby adjust your bands accordingly to optimize their performance.

Hope this helps.

KDASFTG

BTW- John was a member of this forum at one time. So if you're still out there John, please correct me if I got the story wrong.
 
Quote from mcteague:

Probably a very basic question
It was recommended to me that instead trying to get an edge by fooling around with the setting on my indicators that I simply use the standard setting. This was mostly because it is best to see what the crowd is looking at.

But! as an example:

Stock charts sets the bollinger band based on 20 periods
trade ninja defaulted to 14 when I was looking at the es.

I've seen different stochastic settings on different sites.

So how do I know what the "standard" settings are? or if there really are any.
More...
FWIW the standard settings for MACD are 8,17,9 (exits) and 12,25,9 (entries). The setting of 12,26,9 that you see almost everywhere is a typo that got of control. The "logic", such as it is, for the original settings is

2/(8+1) = 2*(2/(17+1))

and

2/(12+1) = 2*(2/(25+1))
 
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