The traders from the experiment were known as turtles, and the strategy was named the Turtle Trading Strategy. The idea was simple:
Find 20-day high breakouts
If the trade moves into profit, scale into another position
Align the stop losses of all trades to the same level
Trail the stop losses along the lowest price of the past 5 candles
Repeat until 4 trades are open, and ride the trend until it stops
It was a completely mechanical system with no room for discretion. The stop losses were based on the ATR indicator values at the moment of entry and would be aligned to the most recent entry’s stoploss. The trailing of the stop losses would begin when a certain threshold of total account profit was reached.
Step 0: Access the Strategy Concept Template [1 Min]
Click the button to load the trading bot directly onto your canvas:
Templates are for educational purposes only.
The template is designed to run on the Daily Timeframe.
Your canvas should display these blocks. Check? Let's continue!
Step 1: Export the Trading Bot [1 Min]
Before diving into customization, export the trading bot with the upper right 'DOWNLOAD' button.
Step 2: Upload to MetaTrader 5 [4 Min]
Don’t know how? Refer to our help article How to Run Your Profectus Trading Bot in MetaTrader 5 (MT5).
Step 3: Understand the Logic [10 Min]
Automating the turtle strategy in Profectus is not very difficult, but it can look a bit intimidating because we’re programming 4 entries and 4 stop loss adjustments. To make it easier, we divide it in 4 sections.
The Turtle Entry. We first plot the highest price of the last 20 candles and store it in a variable. We then check through a Trade rule block if the price crosses this highest price, and take the first buy position. This trade receives group number 1, to track it in later stages. After the trade, we reset the highest price variable back to 0
The ATR Stop loss calculations. In the Turtle strategy, for every additional trade, we adjust the stop loss of the already open trades to the same stop loss level as the newest trade. We build this simply by checking if a trade is open, and assigning the most recent ATR value to the Stoploss variable.
Stacking positions. In this section we add 3 additional trading positions when price moves in our favour. Every 0.5% profit gain, we add another position and at the same time we adjust the stoploss of the already opened trades to the stoploss of the most recent trade (as we calculated this in the previous section). We do this simply by selecting the open trade, checking the floating profit for that trade, and adding a new trade with another group number. The best practice is to user group numbers 1 to 4.
Trailing stop loss. In this final section we have a simple stop loss trailing module which activates when the last trade (trade number 4) also runs 0.5% in profit. At this point we check if current price is above the lowest price of the last 5 candles. If yes, we select all trades, by adding all group numbers, and trail the stoploss along the lowest price of the the last 5 candles. All trades follow the same stop loss now.
This is what the strategy looks like on a chart.
Step 4: Make It Your Own [10 Min]
You can adjust and experiment:
Add more strategy rules or include the Turtle Strategy components in your own strategies
EXPORT and see the differences.
Play around with timeframes and assets
EXPORT and see the differences.
Refine the rules to fit your own interpretation of the Turtle concept
EXPORT and see the differences.
Templates are for educational purposes only.
The template is designed to run on the Daily Timeframe.
Conclusion
The Turtle Strategy is a unique way of trading with the trend and emphasizing the edge by adding more positions when the trade goes in your favour. It's mechanical and universally applicable across all markets. Now it's your turn—apply the template, tweak the logic, and make it yours. 🚀