Range and timing: John Last's Forex Jokers

John Last's Jokers are useful in three games on the market ;) (market states).

For each game (phase) we have one joker.

You can play three games and they come over and over again. Range, Breakout, Trend, Range, Breakout, Trend and so on.

For each game you have one joker ;)

This is a tactic for range daytrading

Here look at this screen shot below.

Here I try to make an accurate timing of the range.

The idea is as follows. Range can be played but we need it to be fairly broad. This is clearly visible on the fractal bands, but also the common Bollinger is also useful.

In the narrow range (from the perspective of fractal technical analysis) is difficult to be played. Why? Because then orders accumulate  on both sides and it is a matter of chance where will break, and the fake break - outs are pretty nasty. We have to wait patiently for a breakthrough, not to bet which way will break. Well the general technical analysis bet for the continuation of the previous trend but on the 5 m time frame this is ... hard.

OK loot at the screen shot again. We have a christmass tree here but if you wait for Santa Claus this is a good thing to do.

1. Brain trend setting 14 (You can optimize the smoothing visually or run the Brain Trend EA in order to get the best performing set on the current market state)

2. Bollinger bands with 20. This is the fast Bollinger.

3. Bollinger bands with 60 period. This is the slow Bollinger.

The idea is to match roughly with Bollinger of 20 on  15 m time grame. So I multiply the period of three (According to Bollinger should do 2.1 standard deviation increase in the period but you need a special indicator to do that).

4. Oscillator-based digital filter and here a simple smoothed stochastic works (on this chart I use a commercial product but nowadays you can find good indicators easily)


Watch for signals from reaching the two borders of Bollingers the fast and the slow. You can use only the slow if you want.

Then use your price action skills, or use oscillators or wait for convirmation from Brain trend.

Even better you can have your individual oscillator based range system.

Or look for overbought or oversold  levels of your favourite oscillator.

What makes this different is that we do not identify a fractal break - out from the FGDI, or iVAR indicator. And not peak in the indicator: variation of the Hurst exponent.

A can add many confirmations of stochastic on the 15 m time frame but it is useless.

The idea here is that we have two independant statistical tools that come together with pattern recognition.

The Bollinger bands are giving a deviation from the central tendancy.
The Fractal indicators need to detect an anti-persistent situation.

Then you can bet for the reversal.


About Money Management seems reasonable following system:

When signal meets the criteria found three items:

1 Close for a small profit to cover the transaction costs
2 Close at the reaching the midline of the 60 period Bollinger
3 When you reach the opposite levels of resistance and support levels of the channel opposite Bollinger.

Position 2 and 3 can have dynamic stf opso Brain The line.



-Be careful with the News



Trend Joker

Never  counter the trend by having  fractal dimension in the RED of FGDI and the fractal bands have to be wildly apart there. Again a brutal reversals are possible but to catch them you should not suppose it but to react ASCTrend or Brain trend are a good choice.



Range Joker 2

Rage divide it into two types. Narrow and wide. Narrow is risky.


Break-out Joker 3

We have a valid break when fractal dimension crosses 1.5. If this is accompanied by a large variation of the Hurst exponent is morethan- a strong signal.

Again Joker # 1.