WHAT ARE GOOD ENTRIES AND EXITS in FOREX?

WHAT ARE GOOD ENTRIES AND EXITS in FOREX?

Given a mechanical trading system that contains an entry model to generate entry orders and an exit model to generate exit orders (including those required for money management), how are the entries and exits evaluated to determine whether they are good? In other words, what constitutes a good entry or exit?

Notice we used the terms entry orders and exit orders, not entry or exit signals.

Why?

Because “signals” are too ambiguous.

Does a buy “signal” mean that one should buy at the open of the next bar, or buy using a stop or limit order?

And if so, at what price?

In response to a “signal” to exit a long position, does the exit occur at the close, on a profit target, or perhaps on a money management stop?

Each of these orders will have different consequences in terms of the results achieved. To determine whether an entry or exit method works, it must produce more than mere signals; it must, at smne point, issue highly specific entry and exit orders.

A fully specified entry or exit order may easily be tested to determine its quality or effectiveness.

In a broad sense, a good entry order is one that causes the trader to enter the market at a point where there is relatively low risk and a fairly high degree of potential reward. A trader’s Nirvana would be a system that generated entry orders to buy or sell on a limit at the most extreme price of every turning point.

Even if the exits were only merely acceptable, none of the trades would have more than one or two ticks of adverse excursion (the largest unrealized loss to occur within a trade), and in every case, the market would be entered at the best obtainable price. In an imperfect world, however, entries will never be that good, but they can be such that, when accompanied by reasonable effective exits, adverse excursion is kept to acceptable levels and satisfying risk-reward ratios are obtained.

What constitutes an elective exit?

An effective exit must quickly extricate the trader from the market when a trade has gone wrong.

It is essential to preserve capital from excessive erosion by losing trades; an exit must achieve this, however, without cutting too many potentially profitable trades short by converting them into small losses.

A superior exit should be able to hold a trade for as long as it takes to capture a significant chunk of any large move; i.e., it should be capable of riding a sizable move to its conclusion. However, riding a sizable move to conclusion is not a critical issue if the exit strategy is combined with an entry formula that allows for reentry into sustained trends and other substantial market movements.

In reality, it is almost impossible, and certainly unwise, to discuss entries and exits independently. To back-test a trading system, both entries and exits must be present so that complete round-turns will occur.

If the market is entered, but never exited, how can any completed trades to evaluate be obtained?

An entry method and an exit method are required before a testable system can exist.

However, it would be very useful to study a variety of entry strategies and make some assessment regarding how each performs independent of the exits.

Likewise, it would be advantageous to examine exits, testing different techniques, without having to deal with entries as well. In general, it is best to manipulate a minimum number of entities at a time, and measure the effects of those manipulations, while either ignoring or holding everything else constant.

Is this not the very essence of the scientific, experimental method that has achieved so much in other fields? But how can such isolation and control be achieved, allowing entries and exits to be separately, and scientifically, studied?