ATR, Highest High Lowest Low, SMA 200 Strategy

A trend-following strategy inspired by the Turtle Traders, using Highest High Lowest Low, ATR, and SMA 200 for entries, stop-loss, and trend filtering across va

Published · Updated · Methodology: Technical Indicators

Part of: Moving Average Strategies

  • Methodology: Technical Indicators
  • Content type: strategy
  • Timeframes: 1-hour (short to medium term), Daily (larger timeframes), Weekly (larger timeframes)
  • Markets: Not specified, but implied for any market with trends (e.g., forex, crypto mentioned in disclaimer)

Indicators used

  • Highest High Lowest Low
  • ATR
  • SMA

Source video

Decoded from: La Estrategia SIMPLE con la que Richard Dennis Convirtió $1,600 en $350 MILLONES by Trading Simple — watch the original

Key timestamps:

  • 0:00 - Introduction to Richard Dennis and Turtle Traders
  • 2:40 - Core principles: fixed percentage risk, cut losses, let profits run, trade trends
  • 3:00 - Risk management: 2% of account per trade
  • 4:00 - Philosophy: lose small often, win big rarely
  • 6:00 - Psychological challenges of the strategy
  • 6:40 - Price action and structural highs/lows
  • 7:00 - Indicator: Highest High Lowest Low (settings 20)
  • 8:40 - Indicator: Average True Range (ATR) (settings 20, SMA smoothing)
  • 9:40 - Indicator: Simple Moving Average (SMA 200)
  • 10:00 - Entry rules for long positions
  • 10:40 - Stop loss calculation using ATR
  • 12:40 - Take profit rules
  • 13:40 - Strategy summary and profitability
  • 14:00 - Timeframe considerations (1-hour vs. daily/weekly)

Strategy overview

This page's title names three tools, and only one of them is a moving average: a long-horizon SMA marks which side of the trend price is on, which is the standard job of a long average. The other two are the interesting part. A highest-high/lowest-low channel plus an ATR reading is the signature toolkit of the Donchian-style breakout school — buy the extreme of a recent range, size the trade by how much the market is currently moving — and that is exactly the tradition the source video is about. Here the moving average is the junior partner, an orientation line behind a volatility-and-range framework.

The video is Spanish-language, from the channel Trading Simple, and its title — "La Estrategia SIMPLE con la que Richard Dennis Convirtió $1,600 en $350 MILLONES" — makes a claim about Dennis's own career, not about results from this indicator set. What the published chapter map actually covers is telling: after an opening on Dennis and the Turtle Traders, the timeline goes to core principles, then fixed-percentage risk per trade, then the emotional arithmetic of losing small often and winning big rarely, then the psychological difficulty of holding to it, and finally price action and structural highs and lows. Six of the seven chapter markers are about money management and mindset. Not one announces an entry trigger, an exit, or a filter condition. This is a retelling of a trading philosophy, and it is honest about being one.

The timeframes on file — 1-hour for the shorter horizon, with Daily and Weekly for context — fit that philosophy rather than contradicting it: this is position-holding territory, where "let profits run" has room to mean something. There is no decoded rule set on file for this entry, so this page does not pretend to one. What it can offer are the questions worth carrying into the source: is the break of the range extreme the actual trigger, or only the context for a discretionary read? Does ATR govern the stop distance, the position size, or both? And does the long moving average veto counter-trend signals outright, or simply tell you which direction you are fighting?

Topics

atr strategy · highest high lowest low indicator · sma 200 strategy · trend following strategy · turtle traders strategy · pine script · tradingview strategy · technical indicators · forex strategy · crypto trading strategy · 1 hour strategy · daily timeframe strategy · swing trading

Frequently asked questions

Who was Richard Dennis and what did the Turtle Traders do?

Richard Dennis was a commodities trader who, in the early 1980s, ran an experiment with his partner William Eckhardt: he recruited a group of novices — the "Turtles" — and taught them a mechanical trend-following system built on range breakouts, fixed-percentage risk per trade, and holding winners for as long as the trend lasted. It is one of the most frequently retold stories in systematic trading, and this video is one of those retellings.

How do ATR, a highest-high/lowest-low channel, and a long moving average work together?

In classic breakout systems each tool has a distinct job: the highest-high/lowest-low channel marks the recent range extremes that define a breakout, ATR measures current volatility so risk and stop distance can adapt to how much the market is actually moving, and a long simple moving average such as the SMA 200 acts as a directional filter. That division of labour is the general pattern — how this specific video defines each piece is a question for the source.

Does the $1,600 to $350 million figure refer to this strategy?

No. That figure appears in the video's own title and refers to Richard Dennis's trading career, not to any result from the indicator combination listed on this page. No performance data, win rate, or backtest result is claimed here.

Does this page include the video's exact rules?

No — there is no extracted rule set on file for this entry, and its published chapter map contains no entry, exit, or risk-rule chapter to extract from. Strategy Decoder catalogues what the source actually documents, including when that is a philosophy rather than a rulebook, so you know what you are getting before you watch.

About this strategy page

This trading strategy was decoded by Strategy Decoder's AI from a public YouTube trading video and turned into a structured, reviewable specification. In the interactive app this page shows the full entry and exit logic, risk management settings, the indicators involved with their parameters, AlgoWizard-compatible logic and a Pine Script export ready for TradingView backtesting — plus an automated backtest verdict when one has been computed for this strategy.

Strategy Decoder catalogs 2,229 decoded strategies. Each one is extracted with confidence scoring, cross-linked to the indicators it uses, and kept up to date as new videos are processed daily. Load this page with JavaScript enabled to use the interactive tools, or start from the strategy explorer to filter by methodology, market and timeframe.

Other versions of this strategy

More decoded strategies