The Nine Strategies
A strategy is one repeatable rule, built for one kind of market. Your bot carries nine — think of them as a workshop of nine specialist tools. This lesson is the tour: what each one hunts, its analogy, and its natural habitat.
7.1The map of the workshop
You already know the habitats from Lesson 5. Here's where every tool hangs, plus the one that runs the workshop:
7.2The trend-followers — riding the current
Three tools for markets that are going somewhere. They differ in temperament: one is simple and always watching, one is paranoid and rarely speaks, and one specialises in the exact moment a trend is born.
7.2.1MA Crossover — the speedboat and the tanker
The simplest honest trend tool, and the one from your Lesson 3 card. When the speedboat (fast EMA) overtakes the tanker (slow EMA), recent prices are decisively stronger than the established course; when it falls behind, the reverse. No judgment, no nuance — just the overtake.
Entry fast EMA(10) crosses above slow EMA(50) → BUY · crosses below → SELL
Exit the risk stack's SL/TP (ATR stop, 1:2 target) — or the opposite cross appears first
Dials fast period (10), slow period (50), EMA or SMA — the exact "EMA 10/50" from your card
Habitat confirmed trends, ADX 25+ — the regime gate keeps it there
Weakness whipsawed to death in ranges (Lesson 5's proof figure), and always slightly late — a tanker takes time to visibly turn. It pays that lateness gladly in exchange for never missing a big trend.
7.2.2Sentinel — the night watchman with five lookouts
Your system's most elaborate strategy, evolved from a manual trading method (Papingo 3.0) into a fully automatic one. Its philosophy is conviction through agreement: no single lookout can raise the alarm — several independent ones must report the same thing at the same time. You met all five in Lesson 6's specialist section.
Lookouts SSL Channel (which side of the road) · NonLagDot (early turn scout) · 50 SMA (the established course) · Waddah Attar (enough energy? dead zone = no trade) · MACD signal bars 8/17/9 (gap direction)
Also on duty Heiken Ashi trend-health check · a choppy-market detector · an ML confidence gate · the news filter — any one of them can veto
Exit ATR-based stops and targets, managed as the trade runs
Habitat established trends where quality beats quantity
Weakness patience-testing: with this many locks it can sit silent for days. That's the design — and why it pairs with BreakoutGuard below.
The detail to love: every Sentinel decision is logged with a plain-English reason string — it was built to explain itself, the same philosophy as your recommendation cards.
7.2.3BreakoutGuard — the crowd at the door
Remember Lesson 5's room? Sometimes the room shrinks: candles compress, the squeeze, ATR contracts — a crowd pressing tighter against a door. BreakoutGuard watches the squeeze and does nothing… until the door bursts open. Its stated job in the code: catch big moves being born, before Sentinel rides them.
Entry five conditions together: band width below the squeeze threshold · ATR compressed vs its own average · a close outside the band (the breakout candle) · tick volume above average (the crowd must roar) · MACD histogram agreeing with the direction
Exit an ATR trailing stop rides the new move — or a close back inside the band means the breakout failed: leave immediately, small loss, no arguing
Habitat the transition from ranging → trending; the one tool that works the border between regimes
Weakness false doors. Breakouts fail constantly — which is exactly why volume and MACD are locks on the trigger, and why the failed-breakout exit is as important as the entry.
7.3The mean-reverters — playing the walls
Three tools for markets going nowhere — where the profitable bet is that the walls hold. Same family, three levels of caution.
7.3.1RSI — the rubber band, plain
The classic fade: when the band is stretched hard, bet on the snap-back. Beautifully simple — and blind: it never checks whether the band is tied to a moving truck. That check lives upstream in the regime gate, which is the only reason this strategy is safe to run.
Entry RSI(14) below 30 → BUY the snap-back · above 70 → SELL it
Exit the risk stack's SL/TP — reversion toward the middle is the thesis
Dials period (14), overbought (70), oversold (30)
Habitat confirmed ranges only — ADX low, clear walls
Weakness the truck. In a trend, "oversold" just keeps getting more oversold while you keep catching the falling knife. Never let it trade without the regime check.
7.3.2RevertX — the rubber band with a safety checklist
Everything RSI does, plus the paranoia RSI lacks. RevertX refuses to play until the market is confirmed indoors and the price is actually at a wall — four independent locks that must all open for one trade.
Lock 1 confirmed range: ADX below threshold and the 50 SMA flat — no truck anywhere in sight
Lock 2 RSI at an extreme — the band is genuinely stretched
Lock 3 price at/beyond a Bollinger Band edge — touching the room's actual wall, not mid-air
Lock 4 %K crossing %D back from the extreme — the snap-back has started, you're not just hoping
Exit mean-reversion target with ATR-based protection
Weakness rarity — four locks means few trades, and it will miss moves RSI would have caught. It trades certainty for frequency, deliberately.
7.3.3Grid — the fisherman's net
The strangest tool in the box: it predicts nothing. It hangs lines at fixed depths around an anchor price and simply trades every crossing — buying low rungs, selling high rungs — harvesting the chop itself rather than any opinion about direction.
Setup anchor at the first price · levels every 20 pips (grid_size) · 5 levels above and 5 below the anchor (num_levels) — an 11-rung ladder
Entry price crosses a rung → alternating BUY/SELL signals, structurally buying dips and selling pops inside the box
Exit each rung's trade closes on the swing back; risk caps bound the whole net
Habitat calm, well-behaved ranges — the pond
Weakness its mortal enemy is a trend: a big fish that drags the whole net out to sea, stacking losing positions rung after rung. Grid is the clearest case in the toolbox of "the habitat is the strategy" — safe in the pond, dangerous in the current.
7.4The scalpers — small bites in busy hours
Two tools for harvesting many small moves fast. Everything about them is shaped by one fact from Lesson 8: the spread toll is paid per bite.
7.4.1Scalping — the seagull
Quick momentum bites on M1–M5 charts. It uses the rawest instrument in Lesson 6 — plain momentum, zero smoothing — because at seagull speed, lag costs more than noise.
Entry 3-bar momentum points a direction → take the bite
Exit fixed and tight: TP 10 pips, SL 5 pips — a built-in 1:2 on every bite
Safety a hard cap on trades per run (20) so one frantic session can't spiral
Habitat tight-spread majors in busy sessions, M1–M5
Weakness the chip-shop tax: a 1-pip is 10% of every single 10-pip win. On a wide-spread pair or a dead session, this strategy loses by construction — no signal quality can save it.
7.4.2PulseScalper — the surfer of the busy tide
A more disciplined cousin: same small waves, but it only ever enters the water during the few hours when the sea is busiest and cleanest — and it goes home after a fixed number of waves.
Session the only — the day's deepest liquidity, tightest spreads
Entry the EMA ribbon (three speedboats: 5, 8, 13) all aligned like a wave set · RSI confirming the push
Exit 10–20 pip targets with a tight ATR mooring line
Safety a daily trade cap — after N waves, leave the beach with your winnings intact
Weakness idle most of the day, and helpless when the overlap itself is choppy. Both are accepted costs of only surfing good water.
7.5The dispatcher — and the consensus rule
7.5.1AdaptiveEdge — the head chef
Not a dish but a kitchen. AdaptiveEdge reads the room first, then hands the order to the right specialist — it is Lesson 5's regime→strategy map compiled into a single strategy, with two doormen at the kitchen entrance.
Trending → routes to MA Crossover + MACD directional signals
Ranging → routes to RSI mean-reversion signals
Volatile → doesn't bench entirely: reduced position size, wider stops, and a stricter confidence bar
Doormen an ML confidence gate (a learned "does this setup usually work?" check) and the news filter — either can turn an order away
Weakness inherits its crews' weaknesses at regime borders, where classification itself is uncertain — the hardest moments for any system, human or machine.
7.5.2Combined — two experts, one veto each
A bonus pattern worth knowing because you'll meet it everywhere in good systems, including your own acceptance ritual: consensus with veto power.
Entry MA Crossover says BUY and RSI is not already overbought → BUY · MA says SELL and RSI not oversold → SELL
Veto any disagreement, or RSI in an extreme zone → no trade at all
Idea the trend expert proposes, the stretch expert can refuse — fewer trades, each better-vetted. Sound familiar? It's your gate ritual, in code.
7.6Who's on duty?
⚙ Who's on duty? — set the market, see the roster
This mirrors what the strategy selector does before any card reaches you: most tools are benched most of the time. A quiet roster isn't the system failing — it's the system working.