Forex and DAX Live: 18 Months of Stops, Pips, and Break-Evens

Forex and DAX: 18 Months of Live Trading, Pip by Pip

Can you make money trading Forex and DAX from home using four-hour charts and a modest account? For a little over a year and a half, a retail trader published every entry, every stop, and every exit in real-time. No courses to sell and no audited account. Just signals, plenty of pips, and a few break-even exits.

What is a Signal System on Four-Hour Charts?

The start reveals the profile: no robots or promises of monthly returns. A signal system on four-hour candles in the forex market, DAX signals on daily charts, and intraday trading on fifteen-minute charts. Scalping was ruled out from the start, due to stress and because it would require changing brokers. The first orders came in December 2015: a short on AUDJPY at 86.87 with a stop at 87.20, which triggered with a 37 pip loss, and a short on GBPAUD, closed at 2.0491 with a 270 pip gain as the price stalled at resistance with oversold conditions on lower timeframes. The first lesson arrived unvarnished: the system also loses.

The Numbers: 270 Pips on One Trade, 3 Pips on Another

Every move was announced with entry, stop, and target. On the downside, 40 pips on EURUSD, 59 on USDJPY, 39 on EURAUD, and 14 on a fifteen-minute EURUSD. On the upside, 209 pips on GBPJPY —a short from 145.02 closed at 142.93—, 27 pips on EURGBP, 19 on another trade on the same pair, and 5 on an AUDUSD that was liquidated before the US GDP data.

And an intermediate category that almost no one publishes: trades closed at break-even. After the 270 pip peak, the account filled with entries at the entry price. No private statistics show that.

The DAX as a Compass: the 9,910 That No One Breaks

In January 2016, with the index fighting to regain 9,910, the thesis was explicit: until the DAX surpassed that level, there would be no upward consistency. Breakouts proved false, and the S&P 500, which had formed a triangle, mimicked the failure. The German index set the pace, and everything else was noise.

The string of entries leaves its trace: short at 9,245, long at 9,255 to grab 7 points, short at 9,730 with 35 points profit, short at 9,817 with 23 loss, and short at 10,424 with 16. In 2017, a long at 12,288 for four points and a long at 12,624 that ended in a 100 point loss.

40-Point Stop and 10-Point Target: The 0.5 Ratio Recipe

Against the risk-reward ratio of one or greater, the opposite proposal emerged: widen the stop to 40-50 points and adjust the target to 10-20. In other words, bet on being right often with limited upside. The example put on the table: entry at 9,803, exit at 9,822, 19 points which at 25 euros per point exceed 400 euros.

The other approach dispenses with a fixed stop: open one or several contracts, close as soon as there's a profit, and exit immediately if the entry fails. With 8 points, 200 euros. The detail of how both approaches are combined —and what happens when the daily and hourly systems overlap on the same entry— is where this story becomes uncomfortable.

Does CADJPY Serve as a Leading Indicator for the Market?

For weeks, it was argued that CADJPY anticipates what the indices will do in the trinc hours, with a correlation presented as almost perfect. The thesis was repeated several times and never verified with public data. What did become clear was the side effect of reading others' predictions: anxiety about missing the move, hasty entries, and signals that the system had not yet given.

Where's the Meat: In Minor or Major Charts?

The most valuable self-criticism of the entire exercise came halfway through: "the meat is in the majors." A concrete example. The daily system gave a short entry on January 4th, the position was held for three days, and exited on the 7th: about 600 points that were left on the table. Meanwhile, real trading continued to fight for crumbs on 5, 15, and 30 minutes, with stops in impossible zones and exits on the first bearish candle.

Eighteen months later, the tally is still open: no audited account, no announced ruin. The 600 points from the daily chart are still there, within reach, waiting for someone to stop looking at the five-minute chart.