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I used to lose a lot of money in the markets!

I was an emotional wreck. For years as a discretionary trader I never made a dime but would
continually lose money. During those times I really felt like a loser as I could not figure out
this game called trading. It dawned on me that I was just another average trader losing
money and losing my faith that I could ever trade and make money.

All these have changed when I discovered automated trading.

Moving to a quantitative trading and automating my trading changed how I traded forever!
Suddenly trading made sense as I could backtest trading ideas before putting my money at
risk. I discovered what worked and what didn’t before putting money on the line. The
emotional baggage of pulling the trigger to open a new trade disappeared as the computer
made that decision for me. Likewise the computer made all trade management decisions
from how many contracts to buy to when to exit. It was awesome and I never looked back at
my old ways!

There are several important aspects you need to master to become successful at system
trading. On our website we highlight these aspects and go deeper into the knowledge and
skills you need to know! So, I hope you take advantage of the website and this free guide.
There is gold to be found here!

If you have any questions about system trading, you’re invited to ask us
at: questions@systemtradersuccess.com. We’ve dedicated to educating the retail trader just
like you. We’ll be happy to help in every way we can.

Truly,


Jeff Swanson
System Trader Success

Helping You Become A Successful Trader

System Trader Success has dedicated to helping you become a successful system trader. We
specialize in helping the average retail trader in building and trading automated trading
systems.


• Discover profitable market edges.


• Learn how to avoid over fitting your systems so they work on the live market.
• Helping to ensure your system work on the live market.


If you’re new to System Trader Success, visit our home page and you’ll find more
information about the topics that interest you.

We also share exclusive tips over on our various social media channels.

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The Problem
How To Take Advantage of Multiple Timeframes Easily!

I wrote this guide to help you better utilize your programming skill by creating more
powerful trading systems. This technique I'm going to show you is one that can radically
improve a trading. While I can’t say it will improve every trading system you work on,
learning this technique is a great tool for you to know. I’ve personally seen the benefit of
utilizing multiple timeframes to enhance the performance of many trading systems.

In this guide I’m going to show you how to use two timeframes within a single chart. I will
use a higher timeframe chart (daily) to filter trades on a 15-minute chart. By utilizing these
two timeframes I will turn an ugly looking equity curve….

…into something that looks like this…


SYSTEM TRADER SUCCESS PAGE: 5

The Multi Timeframe Advantage 



A technique employed by many successful traders

A common technique used by traders is


utilizing multiple timeframes. Often this is
done to filter trades. For example, a trader
may be executing trades on a 30-minute chart,
but will utilize a daily chart to determine the
overall bullishness or bearishness of the
market. The idea is to use the higher
timeframes as a guide to which direction you
should be trading on the smaller timeframes.
By doing this you are trading with the
prevailing direction of market on higher timeframes. Another common use of multiple
timeframes is to locate a specific trade setup on a daily chart yet use an intraday timeframe to
help pinpoint an exact entry point. Doing so often results in smaller stop loss values and
potentially more profit.

Naturally for those of us who would like to build a trading system we would like to take
advantage of this multi-timeframe technique as well. In this brief guide I'm going to use
TradeStation’s EasyLanguage to show you how to access information on a higher timeframe
and use that as a filter. In fact, we will be using the higher timeframe to both filter trades in
the direction of the overall market direction and locate trade setups. It’s a powerful concept
and one you will want to use in your personal trading.

During this report I’m going to refer to two different charts. First is our “long-term chart”
which will be our highest timeframe. In this case, that will be a daily chart of the S&P E-mini.
The second chart is the “primary chart” which is our 15-minute chart of the S&P E-mini. Our
long-term chart will be used to determine the overall bullishness or bearishness of the market
and to locate potential trading opportunities. The primary chart will be used to pinpoint our
trade entry.

ACCESSING TWO TIMEFRAMES IN EASYLANGUAGE PAGE 5


SYSTEM TRADER SUCCESS PAGE: 6

To get started we will need a trading model. To keep things simple I’m going to use a trading
concept that we explored before on the website, System Trader Success. The article is called
“RSI and How To Profit From It.” In that article we used a two-period RSI on a daily chart as
a foundation for our entry signal. More specifically, we are going to utilize the Accumulation
Method of RSI. All these means that we are going to add the RSI value over the past three
days. A trade is then triggered when that 3-day sum is below 45. The formula will look like
this:

RSI Total = RSI From Today Closing Price + RSI From Yesterday’s Closing Price + RSI From
Two Days Ago Closing Price

ACCESSING TWO TIMEFRAMES IN EASYLANGUAGE PAGE 6


SYSTEM TRADER SUCCESS PAGE: 7

Our Simple Trading Model

We will open a new position if the following rules are true:

1. The closing price on our primary timeframe must be above the 200-day simple moving
average of the long-term timeframe.
2. The accumulated RSI Value is below 45 on our long-term chart.
3. The accumulated RSI Value is below 45 on our primary chart.

What are we doing here?

• Rule #1 ensures we are trading when price is trading above the 200 daily moving
average. This means we are in an overall bullish market.
• Rule #2 says we want to see a pullback on the daily chart.
• Rule #3 says we want to see a pullback on our small timeframe.

Rules #2 and #3 are working together to find a pullback that is both appearing on our higher
timeframe and in our lower timeframe.


ACCESSING TWO TIMEFRAMES IN EASYLANGUAGE PAGE 7


SYSTEM TRADER SUCCESS PAGE: 8

How To Do It 

Within TradeStation we will first create our primary chart by simply opening a new
chart and loading the S&P on a 15-minute interval. Next, we will need to add an
additional S&P symbol to our chart to represent our long-term chart. We can do this
right within our current chart. By inserting another symbol within the same chart we
can tell TradeStation to place the symbol on subgraph two. Once it’s on subgraph two
we can easily access the price data on that chart from our primary chart. Here is how...
The key to accessing our higher timeframe chart is to use the keyword “data2″. This
keyword tells TradeStation to use the trading symbol located on subgraph two. In other
words, our daily chart. It’s important to properly declare all variables associated with
data from subgraph two. Let’s declare two variables: One will hold the RSI value from
our primary chart while the second will hold the RSI value from our long-term chart.

Here is the variable declaration:

RSI_Primary(0),
RSI_LT(0,data2);

Notice that we initialized both variables to the value of zero. However, notice the extra
parameter on the RSI_LT variable. This is telling TradeStation that we plan to use this
variable to hold values from our subgraph (our long-term chart).

From this point we can use the following code to populate the variables with the correct
data:

RSI_Primary = RSI( Close, 2 );


RSI_LT = RSI( Close data2, 2 );

In the example above we are filling RSI_Primary with data from our primary chart. More
specifically, we are passing in the closing price of the bar that just closed on our primary
chart. On the other hand, for our RSI_LT variable we are passing in the closing price from
data2.

It’s that easy to access data on our higher timeframe chart.

ACCESSING TWO TIMEFRAMES IN EASYLANGUAGE PAGE 8


SYSTEM TRADER SUCCESS PAGE: 9

Building A Better Trading Model


Taking Trade In Direction Of Major Market

Below is the code used to compare the current closing price on the primary chart with
the 200-period moving average on the daily chart. We are setting a boolean flag to true
if we are in a bullish market. This is done to ensure we are only going to take trades
when the closing price is above the 200-period moving average.

BullishFlag = Close > ( Average( Close data2, 200 ) );

Filtering Trades On The Daily Chart

Here is the code used to filter trades on the daily chart. In this case, we wish to use the
same RSI accumulation method to locate a strong pullback on the daily chart. By
combining this filter with our bullish market filter (above) we are following a basic
trading principle of the S&P E-mini futures market. That is, we are buying pullbacks
within a bullish market.

RSI_LT = RSI( Close data2, 2 ) + RSI( Close[1] data2, 2 ) + RSI( Close[2] data2, 2 );

ACCESSING TWO TIMEFRAMES IN EASYLANGUAGE PAGE 9


SYSTEM TRADER SUCCESS PAGE: 10
Final Code

The final code looks like this:

Variables:
BullishFlag( False ),
RSI_LT(0, data2),
RSI_Primary(0);

RSI_Primary = RSI( Close, 2 ) + RSI( Close[1], 2 ) + RSI( Close[2], 2 );


RSI_LT = RSI( Close data2, 2 ) + RSI( Close[1] data2, 2 ) + RSI( Close[2] data2, 2 );
BullishFlag = Close > ( Average( Close data2, 200 ) );

If ( BullishFlag ) And ( RSI_Primary < 45 ) And ( RSI_LT < 45 ) And ( EntriesToday(Date) <= 0 )
Then Buy next bar at market;

Setexitonclose;
Setstoploss(250);

There you have it - a simple trading strategy built upon RSI that utilizes two timeframes. The
video below shows this process and the trading system in much more detail, so I encourage
you to watch it. The code used in this strategy is available as a download from the resource
section below.

You have just learned a very valuable technique that you can put to use in building more
profitable trading systems. Try this technique on some of your existing systems and see if it
improves them. Sometime a simple filter on a larger timeframe will produce great results.

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SYSTEM TRADER SUCCESS PAGE: 11

Video Demo

Accessing different timeframes from within a single chart is simple to do, but difficult to
explain in words. It is much better to actually see the process. Thus, I created two short
videos to show you how to do it.

Checkout the Video Demo here.

VIDEO #1
Watch these video
VIDEO #2 Demonstrations

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SYSTEM TRADER SUCCESS PAGE: 12

CONGRATULATIONS!
You’ve just learned a very powerful technique that can really transform your trading. No
joke! Test this technique on every system you build. Like I said before, it may not always
work but it's worth trying!

For more information visit our website, System Trader Success for content rich articles on all
aspects of successful system development.

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SYSTEM TRADER SUCCESS PAGE: 13

How To Build Profitable Trading Systems

Do you know the proper steps at building profitable trading systems?

If you liked this helpful guide you’re going to love the eBook, “Discover How To Build
Profitable Trading Systems”.


It’s great that you learned how to use two timeframes, but there is much more to successful
system development. If you liked the technique of using two timeframes, you'll love my
eBook on building profitable trading systems.

It's a complete step-by-step guide or blueprint on the


very steps I use to create profitable trading systems.

###### If you would like to learn the steps I use to avoid


curve fitting, proper testing, and help ensure your
system will work well into the future check out this

###### link.

###### Learn More

######

ACCESSING TWO TIMEFRAMES IN EASYLANGUAGE PAGE 13

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