How Turnmarks signals work

Turnmarks publishes trading signals from two rule-based systems, System A and System F, run on a portfolio of nineteen markets. A signal is a limit order — a price to enter at, a stop and a target — that you can place with your own broker. This page covers what a signal contains, when it arrives, why an order can move or come off before it fills, and what the performance history can and cannot tell you.

Signals come in five sections, each its own subscription — buy one or several: FX Portfolio Signals (13 currency pairs), Gold Signals, BTC Signals, Indices Signals (S&P 500 and Dow 30) and Energy Signals (WTI crude oil and natural gas).

Two systems, one idea

Both systems work the same way. Each waits for the market to pull back to a level and leaves a limit order there — a buy limit below the current price or a sell limit above it — so the order fills only if price actually comes to it; if it never does, the order is never filled. Both trade in both directions, and every signal says which of the two it comes from.

Every instrument runs both System A and System F, with settings chosen for that instrument. What separates the two systems, and how either finds its levels, is not published. That is deliberate: the rules are the product. Everything you need to follow a signal, and to judge the systems' record, is published.

Entry: a pending order at a price

The systems work only from closed price bars. When a bar closes, each system is recalculated, and any change to the orders it holds goes out as a signal. A message is never rewritten afterwards. If the picture changes, the next update says so.

• Every order has an expiry time. The signal gives a “valid until” time. Put it on the order at your broker and an order that never fills comes off by itself. You also get a cancel message when it lapses.
• One working order per direction per instrument. If several systems on one instrument want to buy at the same time, you see only the earliest order. The others are dropped, not queued: nothing is held back to be sent once that one has filled or lapsed.
• No adding to a position. While a position is open in one direction, no new order in that direction is sent for that instrument until the position has closed.

While an order waits: moved, cancelled, re-posted

A pending order is a standing instruction, and the systems keep checking it on every bar until it fills or lapses. So an order can change before it fills.

• Moved. The level an order was placed at can change as the market develops. You get the new entry price together with the stop, target and expiry that go with it.
• Cancelled. The setup behind the order no longer stands, a newer order has replaced it, or it has expired. Remove the order at your broker.
• Re-posted. Some cancellations are temporary. An order can come off for a while and be posted again later, as a new order, if the system still holds it.

Why so much movement? The messages are the systems' orders exactly as the systems hold them, with nothing smoothed over. The performance history on the site is built from those same orders under the same rules, moves and cancellations included. An order that was moved or taken off before it filled is not in the record as a trade, because it never was one.

Before a weekend or a daily trading break, an order that is due to change when the market reopens is sent at the last update before the close. That gives you time to adjust it before the open.

Exit: stop, target, and close at market

• Every signal has a stop. It is given as a price and as a distance in pips from the entry. The stop goes on the order when you place it.
• Every signal has a target, given as a price. It goes on the order too.
• Close at market. A position is often closed at market by a message instead of reaching its stop or its target. When that happens you get a “close at market” message for that position. The history books the exit at the close of the bar the message is issued on, so the sooner you act on it, the closer you will be to the recorded result.

Fills, stops and targets are not announced. Your order at your broker takes care of them. The four messages are only the ones that need you, or your software, to do something.

What a subscriber receives, and when

Updates go out shortly after a bar closes, and only when something changed. Everything that changed at one update, on every instrument you follow, arrives as one message. An update with no changes sends nothing. The messages come by Telegram, Discord or email, whichever you connect, and each channel gets the same summary.

A new or moved order carries one line per order:

• the instrument;
• the system it came from;
• direction and order type — buy limit or sell limit;
• entry price;
• stop price, and the stop's distance in pips;
• target price;
• valid until — the order's expiry time.

There is no position size in a signal. Size depends on your account and your risk, and neither is ours to know. The stop in pips is there so you can size the trade yourself, for example with the position size calculator.

Free and paid

Eight hours is long enough that most orders have filled, moved or lapsed by the time a free viewer sees them. The free view is there to show what the signals look like and how they turned out, not to trade from.

Reading the performance statistics

Each section and each instrument has a signal stream performance panel — for example on EUR/USD or gold. It shows the record of the exact orders a subscriber would have received, over the period named at the end of the page, “Backtest · from – to”:

• R is the unit. One R is the risk of a single trade, the distance from entry to stop. A trade that hits its stop loses 1 R. One that reaches a target twice as far away as its stop wins 2 R, before costs.
• Risk per trade turns R into percent of an account. The panel lets you choose 1%, 2% or 2.5%, with or without reinvesting.
• One position per instrument. A signal that arrives while a position is already open on that instrument is not taken.
• Typical spread and commission is off by default, so results are shown before costs. Switch it on to deduct a typical spread for the instrument and a commission from every trade.
• The equity curve moves when a trade closes. Drawdown is measured from each high to the next low.
• Profit factor and Sharpe ratio are shown alongside monthly and yearly results.
• Always read the number of trades. A ratio drawn from a few dozen trades says much less than the same ratio drawn from a few thousand.

What the figures are

The figures are a backtest: the orders the systems would have sent, replayed over past prices, for the period shown on each panel. Slippage and overnight financing (swap) are not modelled. Past performance does not guarantee future results.

Signals are information, not advice. Nothing on this site is a recommendation to trade, and no result is promised or implied. Trading carries risk, including the loss of your capital.

Times and clocks

Every signal time is computed and stored in UTC, the only timeline that never repeats or skips an hour. The site shows times in your own local time, converted in your browser. Prices come from a broker's live feed. The history and the live signals are computed from bars from the same source.