Trendfinder Trading Systems

This month the intraday systems ended relatively flat, and the swing systems ended with a loss.

It’s already the end of September??? That month sure flew by for me. Overall, the stock market didn’t move that much, especially considering all of the political and macro events that occurred. I’m seeing a mixture of bullish and bearish indications going forward. Looks like the market will continue to chop around until there is a clear winner between the bulls and bears. If nothing major happens, the bulls will likely be the winner.

The day trading systems did very well this month. The swing systems had 1 winning trade and 4 losing ones. For all but one portfolio, the day trading profits made up for the swing losses.

MeanSwing3 EMD was the big winner this month. Overall the portfolios did very well. The intraday systems had a few trades at the beginning of the month then went dormant as volatility was low. We shall see if volatility is returning now and there is more trading activity in August.

The majority of trades were winners this month, and every portfolio had a nice profit.

This was one of the worst months for these trading systems. The first few days of the month were great. We had two systems long with nice open profits, and then Trump announced he was raising tariffs over the weekend. After that the unpredictability of the market made for very tough trading conditions.

It was a pretty quiet trading month since the stock market had very little movement.

Quiet periods like this don’t last forever. We shall see when something can rock this quietly bullish market.

The standout system this month was SimpleSwing2 ES. Overall, each portfolio had a net profit this month.

Not much to say about the market right now other than not much is happening. The Fed is now neutral to slightly accommodative. Large cap indexes are over their 200 day moving average, and small cap indexes are below. I could make some comments/predictions about this, but it would be waste of time. I think it’s better to let the market do what it does and utilize trading systems to profit from the moves.

Volatility evaporated from the market this month. Because of the lack of stock market movement there were no daytrades and very few swing trades. When volatility returns, trading activity will pick up.

The intraday systems had a profit overall. The swing systems had large losses. I will be releasing new swing systems shortly (probably next week).

We went from the white knuckled grip of a bear market in December to a “meh” January. With the change of direction from the Fed and improved breadth in the stock market, we may continue the bullish grind for a while….until the next shoe drops that scares traders.

To say it was a volatile month might be an understatement. Not surprisingly, the intraday systems overall had a gain for the month, and the swing systems overall had a loss.

2018 will probably be remembered for many years to come. It was an historical year with lots of unusual/rare price movements and politics. For these systems, I am very glad to see the performance of the daytrading systems (especially Spring ES) and saddened to see the poor performance of the swing trading systems. It certainly appears that the mean-reversion character of the stock indexes for the past 20 years has changed. Also, the magnitude of swings has increased such that stop losses are getting hit too frequently. I’m working on new swing systems or filters to use, and will utilize them as soon as testing is complete.