Quote from Boib:
I did find that when you factor in commission and slippage that the spread between the high and the low has to be quite wide.
Well as with any trading, the wider the range that you are trading the less important slippage is.
If you're scalping for a few ticks, slippage will ruin you.
If you're swing trading for 10-50 points, who cares about a tick or two of slippage.
That being said...
By increasing the spread between the high and the low you increase the amount you might make with a 50 / 50 win /loss ratio. But by doing that you also increase the % of capital you have a risk on any one trade.
The percentage between winners and losers is always the same regardless of the spread of the fib lines.
I also thought I read somewhere that when price retraced to the 62% level the odds were greater that it would get to the 100% retracement than to return to the starting point.
Remember that if it gets to 62% it has less room to go to get to the 100% than to get to the starting point, so you're probably right.
I cannot predict price, I don't know where it will go. That's why I average down. If it gets to 62% it probably will go to 100%, but if it doesn't, I make a lot more money.
Combine with hedging the other way and you can make money regardless of which way price goes. Well, sometimes your wins are reduced a bit, sometimes your big loses are reduced by a lot, and sometimes both sides win, which is awesome. Imagine as price is drawing down to the first 3 fib lines and you're averaging down, you're closing out trades for profit on the other side (in another account). I do this more on swing trades with index ETFs in my Scottrade account because I can get more control of position sizes than with futures, but like I said, more on this later when I have more time.