High Probability ETF Trading

High Probability ETF Trading For All Strategy Report Chris White, October 2010

Contents Disclaimer...................................................................................................................................................... 2 Summary ....................................................................................................................................................... 3 The “High Probability ETF Trading” book by Larry Connors and Cesar Alvarez............................................ 4 Strategy Review ........................................................................................................................................ 4 Clarification of the R3 strategy ................................................................................................................. 5 The Problem .................................................................................................................................................. 6 A Solution ...................................................................................................................................................... 6 Modified Strategies with walk forward testing (results since book was published) .................................... 7 Note about the tests ................................................................................................................................. 8 Testing Method ..................................................................................................................................... 8 Results ....................................................................................................................................................... 9 Original book strategies ........................................................................................................................ 9 But/Sell next day at open variation ...................................................................................................... 9 Example charts ............................................................................................................................................ 10 Overall Statistics.................................................................................................................................. 10 Individual Trades ................................................................................................................................. 10 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................... 14

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Disclaimer This information is provided for educational purposes only. It should not be taken as a recommendation to buy or sell any security or follow any strategy. All trading involves risk and every trader is solely responsible for the trades that they make. Backtested results presented in this report use simulated trades. Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the results but it is possible that the results contain incorrect data. The reader is encouraged to independently verify the results using their own software and data.


Summary The book ‘High Probability ETF Trading’ by Larry Connors and Cesar Alvarez was ranked as a top 10 trading book of 2009 by Stocks, Futures and Options magazine. The book contains 7 high probability strategies that were backtested on a group of 20 ETFs over a 20 year period and were shown to have at least a 2:1 Win:Loss ratio. The strategies are easy to understand but difficult for the non-professional trader to implement. This report details a variation on those strategies that make them accessible to everybody. This report shows how the original book strategies have performed since the publication of the book up to August 31st 2010 – effectively a walk-forward test. It then shows how the variation has performed over that same time period and compares the original strategies to the variation.


The “High

Probability ETF Trading ” book by Larry Connors and Cesar

Alvarez Strategy Review The 7 strategies in the book are named as follows: 

The 3-Day High/Low Method

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RSI25 & RSI75

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R3 Strategy

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The %b Strategy

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Multiple Days Up (MDU) and Multiple Days Down (MDD) Strategy

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RSI 10/6 & RSI 90/94 Strategy

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Time-Price-Scale in

The strategies each have a long and a short entry version. The theme for the long strategies it is to buy long term strength on a pullback and for the short strategies it is to sell long term weakness on a rally. The long term strength or weakness criteria are the same for all strategies. An ETF is assumed to have long term strength if it has a daily close above its 200 Day Simple Moving Average and it is assumed to have long term weakness if it has a daily close below its 200 Day Simple Moving Average. Each strategy determines the short term pullback or rally as described in the following table Strategy

Short term pullback criteria

Short term rally criteria

3-Day High/Low

Consecutive Lower highs and lower lows* 4 period Wilder’s RSI below 25

Consecutive higher highs and higher lows* 4 period Wilder’s RSI above 75

Consecutive 2 period Wilder’s RSI lower Consecutive Bollinger’s %B under .2

Consecutive 2 period Wilder’s RSI higher Consecutive Bollinger’s %B over .8

Lower close for 4 out of past 5 days* 1st unit: 2 period Wilder’s RSI under 10

Higher close for 4 out of 5 days*

1st unit: 2 period Wilder’s RSI under 25

1st unit: 2 period Wilder’s RSI over 75

RSI25 & RSI75 R3 %b MDU &MDD RSI 10/6 & RSI 90/94**

Time-Price-Scale in**

1st unit: 2 period Wilder’s RSI over 90

Notes: * These criteria have an additional 5 period Simple Moving Average condition. ** These strategies involve scaling in or averaging down – the short term pullback criteria are only listed for the first unit.


Clarification of the R3 strategy The R3 strategy as described in the book needs a little clarification. In describing the R3 Long entry strategy the book states one of the rules as: “T HE

2- PERIOD RSI DROPS THREE DAYS IN A ROW AND THE FIRST DROP IS FROM BELOW 60”

One could interpret this to mean that EITHER 1. The first drop in RSI value gives an RSI value of 60 or below. OR 2. The first drop in RSI occurs after the previous day’s RSI value was below 60.

I have tested both of these conditions and found that the results as published in the book use the 1st interpretation. However the 2nd interpretation yields a higher average percentage profit and higher percentage of winners. The comparison is as follows (both sets of results are from my own independent testing) Strategy R3 Long (1st version) R3 Long (2nd version) R3 Short (1st version) R3 Short (2nd version)

Num Trades 692 428 359 253

Avg %P/L .93 1.12 1.21 1.35

Avg Hold Days 6 6 6 6

% Winners 75.6 79 70.2 72.7

Note that the 2nd version of the strategy has fewer trades over the testing period due to the more stringent entry requirements.


The Problem All of the strategies as described in the book have entry and exit rules for trading at the market close using signals that are calculated at the market close. A common way around that issue is to subscribe to a service that will notify you in the last few minutes of the trading day if a signal is likely to be generated. You can then place the trade after receiving the notification, but of course this means you have to be available to receive the signals and take action on them every trading day. It is possible that you miss out on the most profitable day and it is also possible that the signal is nullified in the last few minutes due to extreme market moves.

A Solution Instead of trading at the market close these strategies can be modified with this one small change: 

Enter and exit at the market open of the following day after the entry or exit signal is generated.

This variation allows anyone to follow these strategies providing they have access to end-of-day stock market data. End-of-day stock market data is freely available on the internet. Of course, changing the rules of the strategies like this affects the tested results. I have run back-tests using these new entry/exit timings over the original book strategy test dates and the same set of ETFs. In the tests I found that on average across all 7 strategies you can get 84% of the returns that the buy/sell on close strategy gave and 2 of the strategies were actually more profitable than the buy/sell on close strategies.


Modified Strategies with walk forward testing (results since book was published) The book tested 20 of the more popular non-leveraged and non-inverse ETFs over a period of time from January 1993 (or whenever the ETF was first publicly traded) to December 31 st 2008 (the last full year prior to the book publication). In this section I will present the modified strategy results from January 1 st 2009 to August 31 st 2010 as this is the time period immediately following the published results up to present day. This represents a ‘walk-forward’ test rather than a back-test because the stock prices could not have been known at the time of book publication.


Note about the tests Testing Method The tests were run on the basic versions of the strategies with no scale-in or aggressive 2 nd unit taken.

This makes the strategies extremely easy to follow and execute and also overcomes another concern which that of adding to a losing position. ETFs used The tests use the same set of popular non-leveraged, non-inverse ETFs that were used in the book,

namely: Symbol DIA EEM EFA EWH EWJ EWT EWZ FXI GLD ILF IWM IYR QQQQ SPY XHB XLB XLE XLF XLI XLV

Name Diamonds Trust (ETF) iShares MSCI Emerging Markets (ETF) iShares MSCI EAFE Index (ETF) iShares MSCI Hong Kong Index (ETF) iShares MSCI Japan Index (ETF) iShares MSCI Taiwan Index (ETF) iShares MSCI Brazil Index (ETF) iShares FTSE/Xinhua China 25 Index (ETF) SPDR Gold Trust (ETF) iShares S&P Latin 40 Index (ETF) iShares Russell 2000 Index (ETF) iShares Dow Jones U.S. Real Estate (ETF) PowerShares QQQ Trust (ETF) SPDR S&P500 (ETF) SPDR S&P Homebuilders (ETF) Materials SPDR (ETF) Energy Select SPDR (ETF) Financial Select SPDR (ETF) Industrial SPDR (ETF) Health Care Select SPDR (ETF)

Data Provider used All of the historical end-of-day data used for the testing came from http://finance.yahoo.com as I have

found that data to contain few errors. It is also quick to access and free. Software used All of the testing has been carried out using EdgeRater Professional (http://www.edgerater.com ) and

any charts that are shown in this section are also from that application.


Results Original book strategies

Strategy 3-Day High/Low - Long 3-Day High/Low - Long RSI 25 – Long RSI 75 - Short R3 – Long R3 - Short %B – Long %B – Short MDD- Long MDU - Short

Num Trades 155 112 190 115 159 117 219 147 240 147

Avg %P/L

Avg Hold

0.94 0.69 1.32 1.35 1.23 1.38 0.93 0.89 0.5 0.73

4 5 7 8 6 6 5 6 4 5

% Winners 76.77 67.86 79.47 73.04 75.47 71.79 76.26 64.63 71.67 65.31

BACKTESTED RESULTS OF THE ORIGINAL BOOK STRATEGIES FOR THE PERIOD 1/1/2009-8/31/2010 But/Sell next day at open variation

Strategy 3-Day High/Low - Long 3-Day High/Low - Long RSI 25 – Long RSI 75 - Short R3 – Long R3 - Short %B – Long %B – Short MDD- Long MDU - Short

Num Trades 155 112 190 115 159 117 219 147 240 147

Avg %P/L

Avg Hold

0.62 0.35 1.31 0.96 1.11 0.75 0.96 0.59 0.55 0.47

4 5 7 8 6 6 5 6 4 5

% Winners

$ Diff as %

67 59.82 77.37 69.57 72.96 67.52 69.41 59.86 64.58 62.59

66.31 51.06 99.35 70.84 91.25 53.68 103.75 64.98 110.55 64.33

BACKTESTED RESULTS OF THE BUY /SELL NEXT DAY AT OPEN VARIATION FOR THE PERIOD 1/1/2009-8/31/2010 Notes: 

The ‘$ Diff as %’ column shows the percentage difference in dollar amounts generated from the entry/exit on close test and the entry/exit next day on open test.

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The original basic book strategies have been profitable since the publication of the book.

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The modified buy/sell on open strategies have also been profitable since publication of the book

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The modified RSI 25 Long, R3 Long, %B Long and MDD Long strategies have performed very close to or better than the original book strategies.


Example charts These trade examples are taken from the buy/sell at open variation of the RSI 25 – Long strategy. Overall Statistics The following chart shows all of the trades from this strategy rolled-up onto one statistical view. Here

you can see that the majority of the trades are on the right hand side of the vertical 0% line, meaning that the majority of the trades were winners.

Picture courtesy of EdgeRater.com

Individual Trades It’s always difficult to know whether to show winning or losing trades and in what ratio. The test results

showed approximately 77% winners which amounts to more than 2 winning trades for every losing trade. So in keeping with that ratio (approximately) I will show 2 winning trades and 1 losing trade.


Winner 1: SPY Entry 9/2/2009 at 98.31 Exit 9/8/2009 at 101.48

Description of simulated trade: 

On 9/1/2009 SPY gave a signal because it was trading above its 200 day Moving Average and the 4 period RSI closed below 25.

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An order was placed to buy the open on 9/2/2009 and was filled at $98.31

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On 9/4/2009 the exit signal was given because the 4 period RSI closed above 55

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An order was placed to sell the open on 9/8/2009 (the next trading day after a long weekend) and was filled at $101.48

Total profit: $3.17 per share or 3.25%


Winner 2: EWZ Entry 7/8/2009 at 48.5 Exit 7/16/2009 at 51.02


On 7/7/2009 EWZ gave a signal because it was trading above its 200 day Moving Average and the 4 period RSI closed below 25.

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An order was placed to sell the open on 7/16/2009 and was filled at $51.02

Total profit: $2.52 per share or 5.12%


Loser 1: IWM Entry 10/28/2009 at 58.01 Exit 11/6/2009 at 56.87


On 10/27/2009 IWM gave a signal because it was trading above its 200 day Moving Average and the 4 period RSI closed below 25.

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An order was placed to sell the open on 11/06/2009 and was filled at $56.87

Total loss: $1.14 per share or 1.96%


Conclusion The 2009 book High Probability ETF Trading by Larry Connors and Cesar Alvarez contains strategies that continue to be effective to this day. The strategies as described in the book are difficult for the regular person to implement due to requirements of being available to receive signals and make a trade at the market close. With a slight modification to the entry and exit requirements whereby signals can be discovered using freely available end-of-day data the strategies can be used by all traders, from beginner to expert level. The modified strategies still provide high probability trades and in most cases give a winning ratio of 2:1, in some cases the modified strategies outperform the original ones. For more information and for a free Excel spreadsheet that downloads and calculates the signals for one of these strategies please visit: http://www.ETFTradingBandit.com


High Probability ETF Trading

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