Cornflower Forex Trading System

The cornflower trading system is probably one of the best ema based forex systems and has been discussed a lot at the forex factory . I say it’s one of the best because I prefer simplicity in my trading rather than having one million indicators all saying one thing.

It is just a good basic ema crossover system and I like it so far.

It uses four ema’s

• 8 ema – which is supposed to show the fast money in the market
• 12 ema – which is supposed to the trend for the past half day
• 24 ema -
• 72 ema – showing the main trend in the market.

Cornflower Original System Rules

The original cornflower system is applied to only the 1 hour charts and the 30 minutes charts, though we have managed to use it very well in 10 min charts, 60 min and Daily charts which we prefer .

Pullback Entry

1. The 8, 12 and 24 ema’s are all above or below the 72 ema. In our xtick we have made this easier for you .All you have to do is to look at the oscillators at the bottom panel and if they are all in the same colour ( red for downtrend and green for uptrend ) , you have the right trading setup.
2. Price pullsback or retraces back to the 12 or 24 ema .The more aggressive the trend the shallower the pullback ie 12 ema.
3. Enter for 20 pips or hold depending on trader’s judgement of the strength of the trend.

Initial Crossover Entry

1. Price shown by the candle has moved above or below the 72 ema and closed near the top of it’s range.
2. 8, 12 and 24 ema are all pointing in the direction of the price move. Here with xtick ,you can use the first panel at the bottom to see the move.
3. Enter for 20 pips and hold if the trend continues.

Nia Cornflower rules

The system is fine as is and if followed with proper money management can be profitable. However the entry rules to me were still ambigous and having to wake up at 3am est is not a time for me to start guessing . So I added the parabolic sar just to confirm especially the aggressive entry.

I also changed the time period from 30min and 1 hour to using 60min, 30 min and 10 min timeframes. 20 pips is too small to trade using only one time frame as the original system suggested.

1. Only enter if the parabolic sar aggrees with you especially on the 10 minute chart and agressive entries.
2. Move your trade to breakeven as soon as the parabolic sar moves against your entry trend.
3. Only enter the market when all time frames are in the same direction. This avoids the problem of overtrading. So if the 60 min trend is down and the 30 min trend is down, follow the entry rules on the original cornflower system.

From the above chart, we see that though point A might have been an entry with the original cornflower, we did not enter until point B when all the rules on the nia cornflower were satisfied. It was a quick 20 pips.

You can download the original cornflower system at out downloads page.