Donchian Channels Strategy - Long Term Trend

8 oct 2020

For Educational Purposes. Results can differ on different markets and can fail at any time. Profit is not guaranteed.

This only works in a few markets and in certain situations. Changing the settings can give better or worse results for other markets. This is a longer term trend following strategy that uses Donchian Channels for trend following and uses the upper and lower bands to find price breakouts to enter the market and then uses the middle band as a trailing stop to exit. DCs are known as the original trend following strategy made by Richard Donchian.

Usually the middle band uses the same length of the upper and lower bands in its calculation but I included the default option of using a middle band that is double the length of the other bands, but also an option to use the regular input length that most Donchian strategies use if needed. If long term trends are somehow found, this longer middle band lets the profits run longer and lets you see where the long trends were at if the market had any. The double lengthed middle band looks surprisingly very similar to a 3x ATR trailing stop, which is the recommended setting Wilder suggested for trend following. If a good ATR stop or other trailing stop can't be found, this longer middle band can act as a substitute for it.

For some reason I can't seem to find anything related to Donchian strategies on here despite the popularity and simplicity of it, not even a single working one to my liking, so I made my own. It seems this strategy only works in trending markets. I intentionally handpicked a market that the backtest does well on to illustrate the potential it might have for other markets where trending following strategies might work on and what to expect the results in those might be. Trend following strategies are said to have high profits but at the same time lower accuracy due to the failure rate of being able to catch the right trend. If you all got any suggestions or feedback please let me.