First Post here, hope I got it right.
I have been trying to re-create the MATS method to trade the spot currency market. Mainly the Euro.
I have attached a chart of Friday's action.
First some background. This method is based on the duel auction process and Market Profile. According to the site, there are no technical indicators used. This is something that I happen to like.
The red doted lines with the aqua blue line in the middle is called a Balance Area. A Balance Area is created when there is a series of consecutive PaintBars. When the next bar is not a PaintBar (in this chart green), a line is drawn at the high of the highest PaintBar and a line is drawn at the low of the lowest PaintBar. The a Line is drawn at the midpoint. The idea is that price will tend to trade up to the midpoint giving an entry into the market. If the High is made first, then the low, we have a Selling Balance Area. Conversely, if the low is made first followed by the high, we have a Buying Balance Area. A order is placed +/- 1 or 2 pips below the midpoint as the entry price. If the bar that is not a PaintBar, and trades up to where the midpoint is, then enter on the next bar. We do not know if it is a PaintBar until the bar closes. The Balance Area buy/sell is just one of the trade types in the MATS program.
I have also taken an some ideas from other sources. Mainly the idea of the "magic hours". These hours are from 7am EST to 12pm EST. I have read that these are the best hours to trade. I believe this is true because all the big boys are trading during this time. That is, the e-mini traders are trading and the NYSE is also open during this period (9am open). Using the idea of Initial Balance from Market Profile, I would not trade during the first 30 mins of this period. Hence no trade set up is valid before 7:30 am. On this chart there is a yellow line that stops at 8:35 am EST. The additional hour is added because of a News release that came out at 8:30. In other words, the non-trading time increases on those days when certain news releases are coming out. This partly done because of low volatility (this idea is used by Mark Fisher when he extends his opening range) and because of some issues related to currency trading (spreads/re-quotes/connectivity) during news times. Not to mention that the release can bring wild price swings. While that increases the volatility, it is not good for the trader trying to capture directional movement (trend).
On this chart the red arrow points to the first signal. Since the high was made before the low, we know it is a selling Balance Area. Price trades up towards the midpoint and a short entry is signaled. Mats uses a 1.5 tick stop, I have been using 15 pips as the initial stop level. The next Selling Balance Area does not move back enough to the midpoint to give us an entry. The last Selling Balance Area occurs just prior to the green arrow. This one would be ignored, however, as price had moved 55-60 pips. The green arrow points to the first Buying Balance Area and where we would enter long.