Golden Trident | Swing-Anchored VWAP Trend System — Strategy by blitz_locked
By blitz_locked
Performance Metrics
- Author: blitz_locked
- Symbol: OANDA:XAUUSD
- Timeframe: 1 hour
Description
Golden Trident is a long-only, daily-timeframe trend-following strategy built specifically for XAUUSD (spot gold). Rather than relying on a lagging moving-average crossover or a single volatility band, it reads market structure directly — tracking swing highs and lows to determine trend direction — and pairs that with a volume-weighted anchor price that resets at every structural trend change. This gives the strategy a "fair value" reference line that adapts to each new trend leg rather than dragging a fixed-length average behind it.The strategy is deliberately long-only. Gold has spent most of its liquid trading history in a secular uptrend, and countertrend short entries were found to meaningfully drag down both total return and risk-adjusted performance without adding diversification benefit — so the system simply steps to the sidelines when structure turns bearish, rather than fighting the dominant trend.Position sizing is intentionally simple: a fixed percentage of equity per trade, compounding as equity grows. Risk management is handled by a single wide "catastrophe" stop rather than a tight trailing stop — the strategy is designed to exit on genuine trend reversal, not to be shaken out by normal daily noise.How It WorksSwing Structure (Trigger): The strategy tracks rolling swing highs and lows over a configurable lookback. When the most recent extreme is a new high, structure is bullish; when it's a new low, structure is bearish.Anchored VWAP (Trend Reference): Each time structure flips, the volume-weighted average price calculation resets and begins accumulating fresh from that point — producing a trend-relative fair-value line rather than a static average.EMA200 Filter (Structure Confirmation): Long entries additionally require price to be trading above the 200-period EMA, keeping trades aligned with the macro trend.Chop Filter (Volatility Gate): Entries are blocked when recent price range is too narrow relative to ATR — this avoids entering on structural "flips" that occur during sideways consolidation, where they're most likely to reverse immediately.Exit: Positions close purely on structural trend reversal. No trailing stop is used, since research during development found trailing exits tended to cap winning trades prematurely without meaningfully reducing losses.Backstop Stop: A wide ATR-based stop exists purely as disaster protection for extreme, unexpected moves — it is not intended to be part of normal trade management.FeaturesSwing-structure trend detection (not a lagging indicator crossover)Self-resetting anchored VWAP trend referenceOptional EMA200 macro trend filterOptional ATR-based chop/consolidation filterConfigurable backtest date rangeTrade outcome visualization (colored boxes showing each closed trade's entry-to-exit range)Live dashboard showing current structure, volatility state, position size, and open P/LGold-themed visual design with gradient trend fill and directional bar coloringTips for UseTimeframe: Designed and tested on the daily chart. Shorter timeframes will likely need proportionally shorter swing/EMA/ATR lengths.Data quality matters: Backtest only over periods with clean, liquid, consistently-quoted price and volume data. Very long historical ranges on XAUUSD may include gold-standard-era pricing or unreliable volume that will distort results — the built-in date range inputs default to 2010 onward for this reason.Position sizing: The default equity percentage is aggressive. Test at a lower size first and scale up only after reviewing max drawdown and worst losing-streak length for your specific test window — position sizing should reflect your own risk tolerance, not just backtest profit factor.Shorting: Short entries exist as a toggle for experimentation, but are off by default based on backtest performance on gold's historical trend bias. Re-enabling changes the strategy's risk profile meaningfully.Not financial advice: This is a backtesting and educational tool. Past performance on historical data does not guarantee future results.