She splits her own records this way too — two touch points and three — so the page keeps them apart rather than blending them into one number.
- Draw the line by hand, and draw it thick. “I want it to have room to capture as many touch points as I can.” A touch is close enough, not exact.
- Count the touch points. Two, or three or more — she runs these as separate playbooks and keeps their records apart.
- At least a week of data behind the line, measured from the first touch point to where you would enter.
- The action line is the line that breaks. That is the signal.
- The safety line is the OPPOSING trend line. No opposing line, no trade — “I have to have a point A, a point B for the opposing trend line”. She sits out breaks at all-time highs for this reason alone.
- Low risk means close. How far is the break from the safety line? Near is low risk. Far means the stop is miles away and she passes, however much the move hurts to watch.
- The stop is the safety line, trailed along it by hand as the trade goes her way.
- Get out when price closes back through the safety line. The line makes the decision, not her.
Two numbers she never gives. How near counts as a touch, and how close to the safety line counts as “low risk”. Rather than pick one, here is every combination. The last column is a plain stop in place of her safety line, for comparison.
| a touch is within (ATR) | “close” is within (ATR) | touches | trades | her model | with a plain stop |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.1 | 1.0 | 2+ | 25 | $1,031.30 | $1,644.24 |
| 0.1 | 1.0 | 3+ | 19 | $1,211.71 | −$715.71 |
| 0.1 | 1.5 | 2+ | 39 | $666.14 | −$434.53 |
| 0.1 | 1.5 | 3+ | 29 | $1,011.71 | −$847.47 |
| 0.1 | 2.5 | 2+ | 56 | $582.13 | −$434.53 |
| 0.1 | 2.5 | 3+ | 47 | $475.27 | −$847.47 |
| 0.2 | 1.0 | 2+ | 25 | $1,031.30 | $1,644.24 |
| 0.2 | 1.0 | 3+ | 25 | $1,031.30 | $700.74 |
| 0.2 | 1.5 | 2+ | 39 | $666.14 | −$434.53 |
| 0.2 | 1.5 | 3+ | 38 | $645.11 | −$757.13 |
| 0.2 | 2.5 | 2+ | 56 | $582.13 | −$434.53 |
| 0.2 | 2.5 | 3+ | 56 | $509.72 | −$757.13 |
| 0.4 | 1.0 | 2+ | 25 | $1,031.30 | $1,644.24 |
| 0.4 | 1.0 | 3+ | 25 | $1,031.30 | $1,526.21 |
| 0.4 | 1.5 | 2+ | 39 | $666.14 | −$434.53 |
| 0.4 | 1.5 | 3+ | 39 | $666.14 | −$524.06 |
| 0.4 | 2.5 | 2+ | 56 | $582.13 | −$434.53 |
| 0.4 | 2.5 | 3+ | 56 | $582.13 | −$524.06 |
Whether her safety line beats a plain stop depends on those numbers. At most settings it does, sometimes by a lot. When “close” is tightened to one ATR, the plain stop does better. An earlier version of this page led with “her safety line is doing the work”. That only holds at the setting we happened to choose, so it is no longer the headline.
| playbook and setting | trades | win | a trade | 95% range |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2+ touch points · her model | 39 | 61.5% | $666.14 | −$90.66 to $1,461.93 |
| 2+ touch points · an ordinary stop instead of the safety line | 58 | 20.7% | −$434.53 | −$1,650.14 to $857.65 |
| 2+ touch points · her line, but taking the far breaks too | 59 | 55.9% | $413.61 | −$482.82 to $1,347.90 |
| 2+ touch points · neither | 58 | 20.7% | −$434.53 | −$1,624.05 to $862.50 |
| 3+ touch points · her model | 38 | 60.5% | $645.11 | −$140.69 to $1,498.10 |
| 3+ touch points · an ordinary stop instead of the safety line | 58 | 17.2% | −$757.13 | −$1,889.88 to $390.95 |
| 3+ touch points · her line, but taking the far breaks too | 57 | 56.1% | $317.15 | −$589.84 to $1,244.67 |
| 3+ touch points · neither | 58 | 17.2% | −$757.13 | −$1,879.33 to $462.81 |
The same table, live. This one follows the two switches above, and it is what the pickers on the chart drive.
The rule almost nobody copies. Everyone draws trend lines and everyone trades the break. What she adds is a second line that must already exist before she is allowed in, and it doubles as the stop and the exit. The page lets you turn exactly that off, which is the only honest way to ask whether it matters.
Against doing nothing. A random entry taking the same sides and holding the same length of time makes −$58.33. Gold rose $262,370.00 a contract across this period, and she was short on 25 of these 39 trades against 14 long — so this is not a rule quietly collecting an uptrend.
Why so few trades. Every filter she uses removes candidates: a week of data behind the line, the touch-point count, and the break having to land within 1.5 times the day's range of the safety line. She says as much herself — the hard part is passing on set-ups. It is also why six years of gold leaves 39 trades, and why nothing here reaches significance on its own.
Everything else worth saying
The control is the model against itself. There is no random entry here. Each arm runs the same sessions and removes one of the two things he says is the edge, so the comparison is his model with a part missing rather than his model against something unrelated. The no strict rule arm is the interesting one: it enters when price merely returns and touches the level, which is exactly the mistake he says the rule exists to prevent.
This is a floor on his model, not a measurement of it. He says the skill is in the reading — “you have to train your eyes” — and a mechanical version of a discretionary model is the worst case it can do. What this page can say is narrower than a verdict on him: coded to the letter, on this market, his two stated rules do not separate from doing without them.
Three bugs we found by the numbers being impossible. The first version of this test reported a 100% win rate on every arm. The check on which side of the entry the stop belonged was inverted, so it kept only the trades whose stop was placed the wrong way round — each closed on the next bar at a fabricated profit. The second: requiring an opposing line to exist filtered nothing, because on a six-year chart there is always some old line lying around, so two arms came out identical. The real control is removing the line, not requiring it. The third: the fallback stop was wider than the low-risk filter allows, so the control arm produced no trades at all and the comparison was empty rather than unfavourable. Every number here is from after those three fixes.
Both of her playbooks are published, not the flattering one. She keeps two-touch and three-touch records apart and so does this page. They agree here, which is worth knowing either way.
What the safety line really is. It is a stop that moves with structure instead of with a fixed distance, and it doubles as the exit signal. That is the part worth taking from this page even if you never draw a trend line: the comparison is not trend lines against no trend lines, it is a structural stop against an arbitrary one.
What this test does not do
We tested the mechanical skeleton: the level, the liquidity test, the strict rule, the stop, the targets and the partial. We did not test his eye for which level matters, and he is clear that reading the chart is the skill: “you have to train your eyes.”
- “Respected and moved away” had to become a number. Here it is: price leaves the level by at least one ATR without trading back through it. He eyeballs it. A different threshold marks different levels as liquidity and gives different trades.
- Our choices, named. Swings are fractal highs and lows with two bars either side, and a swing is only usable two bars after it forms. Stops sit one ATR beyond the swept extreme. Half comes off at the nearest opposing level and the stop goes to break-even there, which is his rule — he will not go break-even before a partial.
- One timeframe. He is emphatic that the model is fractal and that he reads a higher timeframe for bias before dropping down. This is 5-minute bars alone, so the higher-timeframe context he uses to pick a direction is absent.
- He trails, we do not. He rolls the stop up under each new low as a move develops. That is a judgement call bar by bar, and a mechanical version of it would be our invention rather than his rule.
- The replay is a sample. Every number is scored over the whole period; the chart ships 36 set-ups on the two-touch playbook and 35 on the three-touch one, which is enough to see the pattern without a page nobody can load.
If you use a pair that is not in the grid, or a filter you think matters, say so and we will test it the same way and publish it.
Around $500,000 in profits, verified with broker statements. Trend lines and nothing else — “purely a naked chart”. Chart Fanatics publish the same playbook in writing and the two agree. She trades platinum; this is tested on gold, which she names as a valid substitute.
Read it in their own words first: Tori's Trendline Trading Playbook →