Hello, I am an amateur trader with 2 years of experience. I used to do day trading through prop firms, but I just don't have the time and psychology right now to focus on staring at charts. To be honest, it was ruining most of my relationships. So, a couple of months ago, I really started looking into algorithmic trading.
I've developed a few strategies and ways to get high-probability fundamental outputs on Forex (scoring yield differentials, central bank shifts, and macro momentum), but I am really struggling right now with the execution part of the code.
I've backtested several execution strategies over my fundamental engine, and they all bled out for different reasons:
* **Tight ATR Trailing Stops:** I tried a 2.5x ATR trailing stop, but the normal FX daily noise—especially the midnight "witching hour" when spreads suddenly widen and the market dips 1%—chops me out right before the massive trends explode.
* **Donchian Breakouts (Buying 20-day highs):** I found out the hard way that FX is heavily mean-reverting. By the time price broke a 20-day high to confirm the trend, the move was completely exhausted and I ended up buying the absolute top.
* **Deep Pullbacks (Buying 20-day lows):** I tried waiting for a massive discount while the macroeconomic data was heavily bullish. This just turned into catching falling knives. If the macro trend is actually strong, a drop that deep usually means a structural failure, not a discount.
Because of this, I am currently trying to just ride the trends with a very small risk percentage, but I keep getting chopped out or giving back all my floating profits on the round trip.
So my question is: could anybody perhaps share their experience with catching these macro Forex trends? What are you looking at when entering, and what's your risk management like?
* Do you buy shallow pullbacks (like a simple moving average touch)?
* Do you completely ignore technical entries and just DCA/scale in slowly while the fundamentals are strong?
* Do you wait for volatility to squeeze before entering?
Any advice from people who actually hold positions for weeks/months would be massively appreciated.