Trading the Formula Around the Globe

Making the formula work on US futures markets is almost a given by now.

What still surprises me — after all these years — is how well it travels.

Does breakout trading work outside US markets?

The honest test of any method isn’t whether it works where it was built. It’s whether it works somewhere nobody designed it for.

Here are three cases I keep coming back to.

Sweden: 200 strategies in a few days

Henrik is one of the earliest adopters of the formula in Europe. He’s been trading it since 2018.

Three things make his story worth telling.

He applied it to Swedish markets — small, unusual, not the kind of market anyone builds a method around. He’s also a co-founder of the Nordic Autotrading Society, which means he is not a man easily impressed by gimmicks. He’s seen what works and what doesn’t across an entire community of traders.

And when he started, it took him only a few days to develop his first 200 breakout trading strategies.

Two hundred. In days.

What happened after the first excitement?

This is the part that matters more than the initial rush.

On 25 April 2018, Henrik got back in touch — the formula had paid for his trip to the Canary Islands.

On 25 May he wrote again with another update.

Then he sent his LIVE results from February to June: as a complete newbie to the formula, in just five months, +30.55%.

You could call five months luck. So keep reading.

Henrik kept updating us through the following years. The most recent update came in November 2021 — three and a half years after he started. The same strategies he created in 2018 were still working. He’d also tested the formula on stocks, and that worked too.

That’s the point I want you to take. Not the 30.55%. The fact that strategies built in 2018 were still producing in 2021, untouched.

The formula is timeless. It worked in the past, it works now, and it will keep working.

Russia: +55% a year on four markets

A few years ago Andrew Swanscott and I ran a small Breakout Challenge — get traders building viable breakout strategies in 14 days.

People joined from all over the world. I had no idea we had anyone from Russia until Vladimir emailed me.

He’d applied the formula on Russian futures markets and was making +55% yearly.

What exactly did he build?

He shared everything, and it’s almost embarrassingly simple:

• 15-minute timeframe
• POI: Yesterday’s Close — CloseD(1)
• Space: 3 x ATR
• Exit: a trailing stop-loss

That’s it. That’s the whole strategy. He sent that email in February 2020, with his live equity curve attached.

Now — I’ll be straight with you. Vladimir’s live equity curve is only so-so. He sat in a small drawdown for a while, and if that’s your reaction, you’re not wrong.

But consider two things. The formula had never been tested on markets as exotic as Russia’s. And every new tool takes time before it runs smoothly — some of that learning curve is baked into the curve itself.

There’s also a structural lesson here. He was trading four markets. That’s a good start, not a finished business. Bigger portfolios across genuinely low-correlated markets are what keep drawdown periods short.

Still: +55% a year, fully automated, versus the 0-1% your bank offers. That works for me.

Asia: Hang Seng, SPI, MSCI Singapore, Nikkei

The most astonishing example so far comes from my friend Andrew Swanscott — one of the very first adopters of the formula, and someone with a reputation in this industry built on transparency and honesty.

Andrew is perhaps the only trader to make the formula work on Asian Indexes:

• Hang Seng (Hong Kong)
• SPI (Australia)
• MSCI Singapore
• Nikkei (Singapore)

Four Asian index markets, one formula, no re-engineering.

What should you take from this?

The lesson is not complicated. Sweden, Russia, Hong Kong, Australia, Singapore — the formula is incredibly universal. It works far outside US markets. It pays for family vacations, sometimes very quickly, and it pays for a few fun toys too.

Where and how you use it is completely up to you.

There’s only one rule.

You have to use it.

Nothing happens if you sit on your hands and let scepticism decide for you. A revolution demands effort, action and dedication — and a little faith. Then even the impossible becomes possible, often faster than you expect.

I grew up under a regime that told me nothing would ever change. Then it changed in a matter of weeks.

In a time of high inflation, rising prices and the next crisis somewhere around the corner, you want a Plan B.

This can be it. But only if you start.