SMR - The Trader’s Edge CH. 3: How to Enter The Trade Pg 53
Another Way to Improve Your Odds: Verification of the “B” Signals
Using confirmation of the Buy/Sell signals, as we just explored in the first part of this
chapter, is an excellent idea if you want to have better odds of entering a winning trade.
But it gets even better.
When I first examined the chart behavior of the Buy/Sell signals, I was not satisfied with
the win/loss ratio of the Buy-B and Sell-B signals. Even when using confirmation, I
thought the overall probability of success was just “OK,” but not anything to get overly
excited about. I had hoped that these signals would be significantly better than what I was
seeing. Because the B signals were by far the most common, I wanted to find a way to
improve their success rate. The A, C, and F signals seemed to work reasonably well, as long
as the rules for confirmation were followed. If I could just get the B signals to achieve a
fairly high degree of reliability, then I knew I would have all the tools I needed to make up a
truly superior methodology, and not just another “pretty good” one.
I must confess that I got pretty lucky. One of the early Beta Testers for the SMR Pro
software sent me a letter about the method he was using with the SMR Pro signals. I won’t
go into the details, because I since discovered that there are some problems with his
method, at least from my perspective, that keep it from being a first-class approach. In
short, it works great during its “streaks”, but then it misses a whole lot of good signals. But
one component of his method turned out to be a real gem: the CCI-FP indicator.
One of first things I tried when looking for an improvement to the B signal was to check its
success rate against the CCI-FP: how many times did the B signal succeed whenever the
CCI-FP was also flashing a particular signal. I was very impressed with the results. Almost
spooky, it worked so well. And no, it’s not 100%, but it’s good enough to pay some very
serious attention to.
The name I chose for this tool is “Verification,” to set it apart from the Confirmation tool.
The CCI-FP Indicator is a Departure from “Pure” SMR
I know that some long-term fans of SMR will have an objection to introducing a “foreign”
indicator into their methodology. They believe that the SMR Signals (MA, DL, and SL) are
everything you ever need to trade successfully, and throwing anything else into the mix is
downright sacrilege.
While I can understand how someone would feel that way, I have a different perspective. My
mission is to always strive to create the very best trading methodology I can, and to
continually look for ways to improve it. I do this both for myself, and for the users of the
SMR Pro software. I am willing to do whatever I need to do. If adding another indicator or
two improves my chances for success, then I will gladly do that, even if it irritates some
purists.
I consider myself pretty lucky to have found a tool that works as well as it does to improve
the success rate of the Buy-B and Sell-B signals. I will continue to use it and recommend it
until I come across something that works better.