Forex Mechanical Systems Showdown (October 21)

I’ve rounded up the SEVEN mechanical forex strategies right here to see how they stack up against each other.

I’ve got a neat systems snapshot table for their latest performance down below, but keep in mind that the time periods and some trading assumptions vary among my fellow FX-men.

Cowabunga System

This good ol’ classic Cowabunga System (that’s been raking in pips since ’07!) looks at the 4-hour chart for the main trend and the 15-minute chart to catch entries. It also makes use of EMA crosses, along with RSI, MACD, and stochastic indicators.

Pip Surfer picked up on a market trend change early in the week and looked for short trades. However, no valid signals came up then. Read more.

HLHB Trend-Catcher System

The Huck Loves Her Bucks mechanical system uses a simple EMA cross method, combined with the RSI and ADX indicators, to catch short-term trends on the 1-hour charts of EUR/USD, GBP/USD, and USD/JPY.

Huck’s system did a better this week than last week just by closing one open trade to make room for another. She got a net +53 pips (+0.18%) after seeing +7 pips in the previous update. Not bad, eh? Read more.

Happy Hunter Trading System

Happy Pip has recently ventured into mechanical trading strategies and has since come up with a day-trading system that uses HHHL, LHLL, and IB candlestick patterns for entries.

Her system comes in two flavors:

1. The Happy Hunter Price Action System 4.0 (Fixed TP Variant)
2. The Happy Hunter Price Action System 4.0 (Trailing Variant)

And after last week’s lackluster performance, both Variants had a pretty solid performance this past week since the Fixed TP Variant closed out the week with 3.09% in gains, while the Trailing Variant captured a slightly bigger 3.72% in gains. Read more.

SMA Crossover Pullback

Robopip’s newbie-friendly SMA Crossover Pullback trading system is as simple as its name suggests. This strategy features an SMA crossover method to gauge the trend and a stochastic pullback entry signal on the 1-hour charts of EUR/USD, GBP/USD, and EUR/JPY.

This system caught another set of early exits in the past few days, and the “too little, too late” positions yielded a 135-pip loss or 0.90% dent on the account. The remaining play on EUR/JPY is looking good, though. Read more.

Short-Term Bollinger Reversion Strategy 2.0

This Short-Term Bollinger Reversion Strategy 2.0 is one of Robopip’s newest creations and is currently being tested on range-bound pairs like CAD/CHF and USD/CAD.

A bit more sideways action on these Loonie pairs led to a few good signals on this mean reversion strategy, with one of the positions grabbing a full win. This amounted to a 82-pip or 1.64% win for the week. Read more.

Inside Bar Momentum Strategy 2.0

Another tried-and-tested system is Robopip’s Inside Bar Momentum Strategy 2.0 which monitors purely candlestick price action, free of any technical indicators, on the 4-hour charts of GBP/JPY and USD/JPY.

Just a couple of signals each for the pairs on this system in a relatively slow week, but USD/JPY scored back-to-back wins again. Unfortunately, the loss on Guppy ate up those gains and left only 25 pips for the week. Read more.

Forex Systems Summary