The ACD Method

[Samsara]

Quote from RCG Trader:

Actually, it is. Why? You are still following the process. Follow the process. Take your three minutes and follow the rules. If you get a good A up, price is clear of the most recent daily,weekly and monthly pivot ranges that you have then take the trade. A trend starts and ends with a single price point. If it gets thru the ACD filters, then price action is in your favor. Take your trade.

All right then, thanks for the direct response. I'm not in your camp, but bygones shall be bygones.

In other news, anything unusual on your radar that's quietly making a move? Would you have taken an interest in yesterday's cotton or cattle setups (BAL & COW for the ETFs) based on today's price action?

How does cocoa look to you?

 

[RCG Trader]

Quote from Samsara:

All right then, thanks for the direct response. I'm not in your camp, but bygones shall be bygones.

In other news, anything unusual on your radar that's quietly making a move? Would you have taken an interest in yesterday's cotton or cattle setups (BAL & COW for the ETFs) based on today's price action?

How does cocoa look to you?

My analysis of COW would have gotten me in on the daily chart at the close today it looks like price broke the weekly pivot up at 2967. A good A up following a buy signal on my system was made at 2902 but there was a lot of selling in the past weeks and price has not sufficiently cleared the MAs that I use. There is also a negative slope to the MA i use for trend. I would take this trade on minimum position strength. Stop would be at 2889, one penny below the bottom of the pivot range on the daily chart.

Too many gaps on the BAL daily chart, so would move up to weekly. Got a buy signal four weeks ago, good A up at 6454, but this is on heels of a tremendous down trend. Im in at 7543 and would manage this trade on a weekly chart. Full position on this one due to a positive MA slope and good clearance from short term MA's

I will start doing scans for stuff in the mornings so we can talk about it all. I think we should start posting ACD based trades on here, so this is a good idea Samsara. We can talk ACD all day without revealing one iota about the systems we use.

 

[Joman]

Quote from DonCorleone:


i do have one question for those with experience using this ACD method. have you tried making a blackbox or graybox so you can trade multiple number of stock symbols or futures? i'm daytrading CL only right now but would like to expand/branch out in the future once i get a decent track record. if you could share your experience and know a good programmer i'd appreciate your feedback. TIA.

I'm currently working such on such a system for EUR/USD in Multicharts.

Haven't found better that a break-even system for now: it's quite difficult to model the price action in the OR or following the OR to determine if you will take the A up, or fade it or wait for a C ...

The human brain is much smarter to quickly understand the kind of market we're in (chop, wide range, strong strend, weak trend etc..) and adapt the method to the trading day.

 

[Maverick74]

Quote from Joman:

I'm currently working such on such a system for EUR/USD in Multicharts.

Haven't found better that a break-even system for now: it's quite difficult to model the price action in the OR or following the OR to determine if you will take the A up, or fade it or wait for a C ...

The human brain is much smarter to quickly understand the kind of market we're in (chop, wide range, strong strend, weak trend etc..) and adapt the method to the trading day.

Let me forewarn you. Mark Fisher in his book talks about using ACD as a casino and I agree with this concept very much. What that means is that you if you SOLELY focus on just one product, you are going to end up forcing yourself to take sub par trades. You really want to trade as many products as possibly and only focus on the best trades. This is just a suggestion. I know how guys fall in love with one product or like to "get to know one product really well". But I think you will find trading much easier if you open yourself up to all markets.

Let me also add that the Euro along with the S&P are two of the worst products to trade because they are so crowded. Stops galore. Very choppy and very messy. Also, automating ACD can be very difficult since it's a price action based methodology.

Having said that, I'm in the process of automating an intra-day stock strategy based on ACD. More of a grey box. This only goes to show that you shouldn't trust everything I say.

 

[Joman]

Quote from Maverick74:

Let me forewarn you. Mark Fisher in his book talks about using ACD as a casino and I agree with this concept very much. What that means is that you if you SOLELY focus on just one product, you are going to end up forcing yourself to take sub par trades. You really want to trade as many products as possibly and only focus on the best trades. This is just a suggestion. I know how guys fall in love with one product or like to "get to know one product really well". But I think you will find trading much easier if you open yourself up to all markets.

Let me also add that the Euro along with the S&P are two of the worst products to trade because they are so crowded. Stops galore. Very choppy and very messy. Also, automating ACD can be very difficult since it's a price action based methodology.

Having said that, I'm in the process of automating an intra-day stock strategy based on ACD. More of a grey box. This only goes to show that you shouldn't trust everything I say.

Thanks for the advice. I've focused on EUR/USD because I've manually traded this market for a while and found it great as a dsicretionary trader (nice breakouts and intra-day swings)

However, it's a totally different beast when it comes to automation. I like the idea to diversify on different markets and my next run of tests will definitely be focused on a basket of futures and maybe some stocks.

With regards to automation, I think entries are quite simple, you can only have a couple of entries every day once you've defined A and C, and I'm pretty happy with my levels.

Therefore I think the major challenge is to design a comprehensive set of rules for exits that will adapt to the price action following the entries.

Oh well... still few years of work, there's no rush to get rich

 

[Samsara]

Quote from RCG Trader:

My analysis of COW would have gotten me in on the daily chart at the close today it looks like price broke the weekly pivot up at 2967. A good A up following a buy signal on my system was made at 2902 but there was a lot of selling in the past weeks and price has not sufficiently cleared the MAs that I use. There is also a negative slope to the MA i use for trend. I would take this trade on minimum position strength. Stop would be at 2889, one penny below the bottom of the pivot range on the daily chart.

Too many gaps on the BAL daily chart, so would move up to weekly. Got a buy signal four weeks ago, good A up at 6454, but this is on heels of a tremendous down trend. Im in at 7543 and would manage this trade on a weekly chart. Full position on this one due to a positive MA slope and good clearance from short term MA's

I will start doing scans for stuff in the mornings so we can talk about it all. I think we should start posting ACD based trades on here, so this is a good idea Samsara. We can talk ACD all day without revealing one iota about the systems we use.

Interesting -- it does seem you've done your homework on incorporating Fisher's thought processes into your own. Nicely done.

Those setups look good to me, but they were chosen with arbitrary monthly ranges, which violates the theory to me. Given that, I'm only watching to just get a feel. Cocoa does likewise look interesting to me, but from the short side.

In the coming days I might post a shot of my layout to solicit opinions and highlight some differences (I use volume profile instead of pivot ranges, for instance). Not sure if it's worth putting anything out there publicly.

 

[mfbreakout]

Quote from Samsara:

Interesting -- it does seem you've done your homework on incorporating Fisher's thought processes into your own. Nicely done.

Those setups look good to me, but they were chosen with arbitrary monthly ranges, which violates the theory to me. Given that, I'm only watching to just get a feel. Cocoa does likewise look interesting to me, but from the short side.

In the coming days I might post a shot of my layout to solicit opinions and highlight some differences (I use volume profile instead of pivot ranges, for instance). Not sure if it's worth putting anything out there publicly.

Please do post your lay out. We are trying to share and learn.

 

[mfbreakout]

Quote from Maverick74:

Let me forewarn you. Mark Fisher in his book talks about using ACD as a casino and I agree with this concept very much. What that means is that you if you SOLELY focus on just one product, you are going to end up forcing yourself to take sub par trades. You really want to trade as many products as possibly and only focus on the best trades. This is just a suggestion. I know how guys fall in love with one product or like to "get to know one product really well". But I think you will find trading much easier if you open yourself up to all markets.

Let me also add that the Euro along with the S&P are two of the worst products to trade because they are so crowded. Stops galore. Very choppy and very messy. Also, automating ACD can be very difficult since it's a price action based methodology.

Having said that, I'm in the process of automating an intra-day stock strategy based on ACD. More of a grey box. This only goes to show that you shouldn't trust everything I say.

Great points. You sound like MF through your writings. It's great to see someone who has gotten MF philosophy down cold.
Like MF says when a patient comes to a doctors office and doctor checks pulse of the patient- if there is no pulse, regardless of how good of a doctor he/she is, nothing will happen. Doctor will simply ask " Next". Next seems to be MF favorite words for set ups , instruments etc..


Going over my records of CL trading, i can clearly see, if i had only traded 30% of the time CL ( 30% seems to be rough average when real ACD set ups happen) my P&L would be 50% better.

I am in the process of figuring out what else to trade ( have already ruled out all the indices, 6e) on days when CL is dead. Any ideas?

By the way , I am so much into Mark fisher that i use MFbreakout as a screen name and had to work for 2 months to find a connection to have my copy of The logical Trader signed by the MASTER.

He has terrible hand writing but still looks beautiful.



Thanks,

 

[RCG Trader]

Quote from Samsara:

Interesting -- it does seem you've done your homework on incorporating Fisher's thought processes into your own. Nicely done.

Those setups look good to me, but they were chosen with arbitrary monthly ranges, which violates the theory to me. Given that, I'm only watching to just get a feel. Cocoa does likewise look interesting to me, but from the short side.

In the coming days I might post a shot of my layout to solicit opinions and highlight some differences (I use volume profile instead of pivot ranges, for instance). Not sure if it's worth putting anything out there publicly.

Discussing the concept of ACD does not require public disclosure really. For example, my levels seem arbitrary to you because you do not know how, or why, I have them. The nice thing about ACD as anyone can come along and discuss an ACD trade and reveal nothing about the system. So post away, I know I will be.

A scan of action friday revealed no stocks or ETFs that I would mention on the thread. I took an ACD short on the Euro that is so far working out well.

 

[Maverick74]

Quote from mfbreakout:


By the way , I am so much into Mark fisher that i use MFbreakout as a screen name and had to work for 2 months to find a connection to have my copy of The logical Trader signed by the MASTER.

He has terrible hand writing but still looks beautiful.



Thanks,

No way mfbreakout. I thought that handle was just chosen randomly! Cool stuff. LOL.

BTW, Mark doesn't need his ego boosted that much. Have you read the book "Asylum". About 1/3 of the book is about him.

http://www.amazon.com/Asylum-Renega...=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1315613424&sr=1-3