As the title says, since a grid on EUR/CHF seems to be such a safe and profitable thing,
I am wondering why this is not done by more traders out there.
Of all trading suggestions on "professional" websites, a grid on EUR/CHF is not among them. Shouldn't this be a no-brainer for every trader?

If SNB will remove the floor, it most probably will be a HUGE jump down with all grids wiped-out. Most probably it will be on weekend, so technically U can do nothing and may be even go negative of your total account, depending on your broker. This will happen sooner or later. Guaranteed. Only question is how much money U can made before and this has something with gambling.

I see various EUR/CHF grids are becoming more and more popular in the retail trading, especially since EUR/USD break-outs are not performing good last half year and many traders see EUR/CHF grids as next "holy-grail". Which is one of signs of quick future strategy death. For me personally I don't believe in "holy-grails" in fx and don't want to go with the crowd - just because many times U are simply already late. Like in any pyramid those who are first early birds they benefit the most, others are wiped out.

On the other side there is no signs yet that SNB will change its policy in near future.... Pure fundamental - go get it

Thanks, since I don't have much trading experience myself, you gave me a lot of insight.
I thougt until now I would be able to get out in time once the ceiling is removed, but it seems like I have to take other precautions.

Indeed, any grid trading system has its risks and you must be aware of them when trading it.

I think there is no danger that the evil SNB suddenly removes the price floor at a weekend. The Swiss won't remove it without good reasons and lengthy discussions in parliament, and certainly not at a weekend. So you had plenty time to get out in that unlikely situation. But there are two real risks involved in such a system:

The first one is that the CHF moves in only one direction or not at all for a long time, leaving you with open positions that cost you rollover every day if they are sell positions. The other danger is that the EUR/CHF rate has a floor, but no ceiling. If the swiss economy collapses, the rate will climb, and it's a bad thing to have open sell positions at 1.25 when the rate is at 1.50. You can avoid those risks when you restrict trading to long positions, but this requires more capital and reduces the profit. Although I think the Z5 risks are smaller than the risks of most other systems, they are certainly not zero.

Thanks for the answer, I am aware there is always a risk to every strategy.
I just like Z5 because of the simple idea behind it and I was wondering why it wasn't more popular since it is this easy to understand

I just realized that Z5 can be run with NFA restricted settings, so I decided to give it a try on my demo account. Looking forward to seeing how it does.

After some weeks of trading I think that Z5 isn't something for my nerves. :-) The drawdown is somewhat of huge and it will take it's time till price will reach those low areas again...

@some of you who are trading/testing Z5:

Since some weeks I have only 4 to 6 trades out of price reach.
There are three short trades at 1.22489, 1.22737 and 1.22611
Two trades above current price (short at 1.23116 and long at 1.23495).

Here is a list of the last trades:

11.04.2013 14:28 11.15.2013 10:15 EURCHF Buy 0.07 -1499.90 - 1.23245 1.23483 23.8 12.77 10d 0.83%
11.08.2013 15:30 11.12.2013 10:19 EURCHF Buy 0.07 -1499.50 - 1.23111 1.23366 25.5 14.06 3d 0.92%
10.24.2013 09:02 10.25.2013 12:38 EURCHF Buy 0.07 -1499.80 - 1.23125 1.23364 23.9 13.20 1d 0.87%
10.17.2013 14:45 10.22.2013 16:58 EURCHF Buy 0.06 -1500.00 - 1.23373 1.23637 26.4 12.48 5d 0.83%
10.17.2013 19:08 10.22.2013 15:30 EURCHF Sell 0.05 -1500.00 - 1.23365 1.23203 16.2 6.11 4d 0.41%
10.15.2013 16:43 10.17.2013 12:16 EURCHF Sell 0.05 -1500.00 - 1.23495 1.23250 24.5 9.40 1d 0.63%
10.07.2013 07:34 10.09.2013 11:14 EURCHF Buy 0.07 -1499.80 - 1.22738 1.22992 25.4 14.09 2d 0.96%
10.03.2013 20:00 10.04.2013 14:47 EURCHF Buy 0.06 -1500.00 - 1.22516 1.22750 23.4 11.13 18h 46m 0.76%


You see Z5 took only eight trades within the last two and a half month. Is the number of trades okay?
I think this is because I've only have ~1500€ banked there and the manual says that the needed capital should be 3500€. Is this right!? When I would add 2000€ would Z5 trade more often or just increase the lot size of a trade?


Thanks in advance :-)

Mmmh. Okay. I did a quick Z5 test on another PC. The result says it took 796 trades in 2011 - 2013. This would bev ~23 trades/month.

So I guess that at the moment EUR/CHF is not trending and therefore Z5 can't trade that much as in the past were price did move more...

With more capital it would not trade more often. To the great lamento of all traders that exploit this effect, the CHF has not much moved in the last time.

We have already changed Z5 so that it trades much more frequently in this situation. The new version will come with Zorro 1.20.