The Two-Day Workweek

June 12th, 2019

How hard do we need to work?

Working hard is the answer to anything, right?

Do you want something? Work harder!

But working too hard can screw everything up.

For example, I was looking at a very complicated system several weeks ago. The creator was on a podcast and the amount of work, thought, and explanation was impressive.

Then I looked at his track record–and it was just so-so. In fact, it was not as good as most boring trend-followers who basically do nothing.

What’s the point of working ninety hours a week on a complicated system if it gets beaten by a simple one? What’s the advantage of complication for the sake of complication?

Of course, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. We need to work just hard enough to get the best results without falling for the myth that complicated always equals better.

So my question is: how little can we work and still do very well?

The system this week is a countertrend system that I’ve talked about before (and discussed in a webinar on last week at the Festival of Traders). It’s the Weekly Pivot system.

This system waits for a move away from Fair Value (the Weekly Pivot point) and then enters the trade toward the Weekly Pivot. If price drops below the Weekly Pivot, we go Long. If price rises above the Weekly Pivot, we go Short. We’ll be entering as price moves the opposite way we want, so this is clearly against the trend.

We’re only going for a 20-pip profit target while using an emergency stop of 110 pips. We begin our trade 114 pips away from an untouched Weekly Pivot.

Here’s the catch, though. We only trade on Sundays and Mondays.

Just two days. We ignore the rest of the week. And if you don’t get Sunday bars in your neck of the woods, then you only trade one day per week.

That’s not much work. Even if we didn’t use a robot, that would amount to just a few minutes of screen time to set up the pending orders.

How did it work out? Here are the results from 2003-2019:

A few big takeaways.

One, I used the same settings for every pair. No optimizing.

And yet it was profitable on all 16 pairs and made over $194,000.

If it works on 16 different pairs, that tells us it’s pretty robust. In fact, I can’t remember testing a system that was profitable across that many pairs.

And, once again, this system only trades on Sunday and Monday. No other work needs to be done. The research shows that the most powerful reversion move comes early in the week. Working harder/longer in this case only makes things worse.

Seeing profit on that many pairs (with little work required) intrigued me.

So the rest of the week, we’re going to see how much money we can actually make from this simple, “lazy” system.

Talk to you soon.

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Disclaimer:
It should not be assumed that the methods, techniques, or indicators presented in these products will be profitable or that they will not result in losses. Past results are not necessarily indicative of future results. Examples presented on these sites are for educational purposes only. These set-ups are not solicitations of any order to buy or sell. The authors, the publisher, and all affiliates assume no responsibility for your trading results. There is a high degree of risk in trading.

HYPOTHETICAL OR SIMULATED PERFORMANCE RESULTS HAVE CERTAIN INHERENT LIMITATIONS. UNLIKE AN ACTUAL PERFORMANCE RECORD, SIMULATED RESULTS DO NOT REPRESENT ACTUAL TRADING. ALSO, SINCE THE TRADES HAVE NOT ACTUALLY BEEN EXECUTED, THE RESULTS MAY HAVE UNDER- OR OVER-COMPENSATED FOR THE IMPACT, IF ANY, OF CERTAIN MARKET FACTORS, SUCH AS LACK OF LIQUIDITY. SIMULATED TRADING PROGRAMS IN GENERAL ARE ALSO SUBJECT TO THE FACT THAT THEY ARE DESIGNED WITH THE BENEFIT OF HINDSIGHT. NO REPRESENTATION IS BEING MADE THAT ANY ACCOUNT WILL OR IS LIKELY TO ACHIEVE PROFITS OR LOSSES SIMILAR TO THOSE SHOWN.