One strategy, any market: what changes and what doesn't

The rules on this site don't care what's being traded. Stocks, futures, options, forex — one setup, one timeframe, the same conditions. That claim gets a lot of pushback, so here's what changes across markets and what genuinely doesn't.

What stays the same

The setup is a set of conditions about price and time on one chart. Conditions like that don't know what instrument they're looking at. A chart is a chart. If the conditions are met, there's a signal; if they aren't, there isn't. The market underneath is irrelevant to whether the rules fire.

So the record on this site is a record of one set of rules. Not a futures record and a separate forex record. One.

What changes: the costs

Every market has its own commissions, fees, spreads and data costs. Futures charge per contract with exchange fees on top. Forex is usually built into the spread. Stocks charge per share or per trade depending on the broker. Options have their own fee structures again.

The rules don't care. Your costs care enormously. Which is why the record is in points — the point count is the same whatever market the signal fired in, and the costs are yours to subtract.

What changes: the hours

Futures trade almost around the clock. Stocks have a fixed session and a pattern day trader rule in the US that requires a minimum equity in a margin account to trade frequently. Forex runs continuously across sessions. The rules only produce signals when the chart is open, so the number of signals per day is different by market even though the rules are identical.

What changes: the point value

A point on one instrument is not a point on another. A micro futures contract has a fixed dollar value per point set by the exchange; a stock's "point" is a dollar of price; a forex pip is a fraction of a cent multiplied by position size. Every session on this site names the instrument, so the point value you multiply by is always the right one.

What changes: liquidity

Some markets fill cleanly at the level the rules produce. Some don't. Slippage — the gap between the level on the chart and the fill you actually get — is the cost that varies most by market and most by time of day. It's the one cost that never shows on a statement and the one most likely to turn a winning signal on the chart into a losing trade in the account.

What this means for reading the record

Every close names the instrument and the timeframe. Compare sessions on the same instrument and you're comparing like with like. Compare across instruments and remember that the points are the same but the money isn't.

The record is one strategy, everywhere. What that strategy is worth to you depends on where you run it and what it costs you there — and that arithmetic is yours.