Persistence and Anti-Persistence

PersistentAnti Forex expert advisor explores the idea of trend persistency. It is believed that the Forex market charts may switch between persistent and anti-persistent modes. In a persistent mode, the established trend is likely to continue. In an anti-persistent mode, a positive change is likely to be followed by a negative one, and a negative change will probably be followed by a positive one. Obviously, such a property, when detected, can be of great help to any trader. Going with the trend in a persistent mode and catching a reversal in ananti-persistent mode seems like a good idea for an effective trading strategy.

Applying the Concept

There are many ways to detect current (or, more precisely, past) persistence or anti-persistence state of the market, including Hurst exponent, Z-Score and others. Unfortunately they all have some significant disadvantages. The presented expert advisor uses a simple, albeit naïve, method to assess the short-term (anti-)persistence. It counts the bars that followed the direction of a previous bar and compares the resulting number with the number of bars that did not follow the direction of a previous bar during some (short) period. If the share of persistent bars exceeds some set threshold, the chart is believed to be in a persistent mode. If the share of anti-persistent bars exceeds the same threshold, the chart is considered to be in an anti-persistent mode. If neither number of persistent bars nor number of anti-persistent bars exceeds the threshold, the EA considers the current mode as unclear and abstains from entering new positions.

The most interesting part is that this expert advisor trades contrary to the detected mode. It will use a buy trade following a bearish bar and a sell trade following a bullish bar in a persistent mode. At the same time, it will issue a sell order following a bearish bar and a buy order following a bullish bar in an anti-persistent mode. This behavior seems completely out of logic, but it is a result of backtesting (without any over-optimization). Since the EA opens a position at the beginning of a bar and closes at the beginning of the next one (or the bar after the next one, etc.) without applying any stop-loss or take-profit levels, the strategy is completely reversible. Of course, you are free to experiment with reversing it back — there is an input parameter for that. Remember, that with a reversible EA, if your backtests result in big losses, you can always reverse it and end up with gains.

Trading Algorithm

The expert advisor is very simple and so is its algorithm of actions:

1. On new bar opening, go through previous N bars.
2. For each bar check if the preceding bar was bullish or bearish. Then compare it to the bar in the current iteration.
3. If both are bullish or both are bearish, record one point for the persistent mode. If bars’ directions differ, record a point for theanti-persistent mode.
4. Close previous position if a position in opposite direction should be opened or if neither persistence nor anti-persistence has been detected.
5. If Reverse is turned on (default) and ratio of persistent bars exceeds the given value, sell after a bullish bar or buy after a bearish one. If the anti-persistent bars prevail, sell after a bearish bar or buy after a bullish one.
6. If Reverse is turned off and ratio of persistent bars exceeds the given value, buy after a bullish bar or sell after a bearish one. If theanti-persistent bars prevail, buy after a bearish bar or sell after a bullish one.

This is it.

Backtest Results

The backtest of the PersistentAnti expert advisor was performed on the 50-month period of the EUR/USD W1 chart. A fixed position volume of 0.1 standard lot has been used. Net profit was $1,996 on $10,000 starting account balance with the maximum relative drawdown at 9.19%. This drawdown period lasted for more than a year, which is quite long. You must be prepared to face long-term losing periods if you plan trading with this EA.

Input Parameters

• N (default = 10) – the number of bars to look back for (anti-)persistence detection.
• Ratio (default = 0.66) – the ratio of (anti-)persistent bars to consider opening a new position or resuming with the current one.
• Reverse (default = true) – if true, trades contrary to the detected market persistence mode, otherwise trades in accordance with it.
• Lots (default = 0.1) – the number of standard Forex lots to open positions for. Ignored if MM = true.
• Slippage (default = 100) – the acceptable price slippage in pips.
• MM (default = false) – if true, fixed fractional position sizing will be used.
• MaxPositionSize (default = 5) – the maximum position size in standard lots when MM = true.
• OrderComment (default = “PersistentAnti”) – the commentary for positions opened by this EA.
• Magic (default = 2013041816277982) – the order magic number to filter positions opened by this EA. Used only in MetaTrader 4.

This EA is ECN-safe. You can freely use this expert advisor with ECN (market execution) brokers as it either does not apply any stop-loss and take-profit levels in its trading orders or sends only pending orders.