About

The Barkworthy Notes focuses on teaching a trading strategy called the Diagonal Entry Model (DEM) combined with Dynamic Trend Following (DTF) for day trading and swing trading, primarily using ES and NQ futures to teach and demonstrate. The community and services offer insights into the DEM, which involves identifying trend reversals with specific diagonal patterns for risk-informed entries across various timeframes. It includes courses with detailed rules for risk and position management, live trading sessions and a community for traders to ask questions and share charts.

The approach emphasises simplicity, early trend entries, and disciplined risk management to help traders achieve success.

My Friends Call Me Barky…

I have always been passionate about understanding the workings of things. My desire, obsession to figure out how things work and enthusiasm to try and master things myself are what lead me to explore countless aspects of physics, sports, history, music, science, crafts, wood works, market behaviour and more. It is through this strong desire to understand things that I landed on fly fishing for salmon with double handed spey rods. Like golf, it is the technique behind the cast that makes it complex and very difficult to master. My inability to perfect it is what keeps me engaged. I have often noticed in life, that when I understand something, master it, I typically lose interest. This is why markets keep me locked in. Like fly casting, you can get close, but mastery is always one step away.

Like any other explorer, I love making notes and sharing my findings. My historical interest got me excited about salmon fly fishing history, more specifically how the English lords introduced it in Norway in the early 1800’s. When I discovered a wealth of Victorian fly patterns and instructions on how they were dressed, I started a community to share my findings. Of course I needed a social profile and nickname for the avatar. I casually grabbed the name of my favourite Victorian salmon fly pattern, the Barkworth.

This was back in 2013, but the name stuck. Ever since then, my friends call me Barky.

The Barkworth – dressed by my friend Ryan Houston

Market Behaviour

Unlike others, I entered price charts from the top down. I started with The Wave Principle and Gann instead of starting with the basics and simpler concepts like supply and demand. After spending a few years to understand and master the 13 recurring patterns across timeframes, tracking the S&P 500 futures primarily, things started to work and my no-nonsense approach gained traction on Twitter (now X), primarily because my proposals consistently worked, and I accurately called marked reversals—like the COVID bottom and 2022 Super Cycle top—earning a following for my precise, unapologetic style, though the vast majority is just looking for confirmation of bias.

Armed with experience and technical prowess, I hunted for an entry probability model to manage risk and capitalise on directional setups. Exploring alternative technical methods, I found that Gann boxes and Pitchfork trading illuminated FIB confluence through geometric precision. Relentless backtesting revealed that consolidations at key Pitchfork diagonals were the linchpin for defining risk, as long as they are drawn on the leading timeframe, seamlessly reconnecting to the Wave Principle. By stripping away the FIB levels and the Gann lines, these setups revealed their core diagonals and lead me to design my system and entry model.

Diagonal Entry Model

My Diagonal Entry Model is extremely simple, really. The concept is based on basic trend structure. The elegant interplay of higher highs and higher lows—or their bearish counterparts, lower lows and lower highs, seamlessly integrated with the EMA9, which is the moving average that all traders turn to for confirmation. You must understand that an EMA50 or even an EMA200 is an EMA9 on a higher timeframe, but more about that in the instructions that set you up for success.

Back to the entry model, this pattern of higher highs and higher lows fundamentally defines an uptrend, organically shaping the EMA9 as a dynamic reflection of price momentum. When price retraces to test a trending EMA9 and encounters support, the Diagonal Entry Model facilitates a risk-calibrated opportunity to engage, capitalising on price’s endeavour to validate EMA9 support by forging a new high, thereby perpetuating the prevailing trend with precision and discipline. At the same time, when price fails to make or hold this new high, a reversal is initiated.

This concept is the Holy Grail that so many claim doesn’t exist. Well, the Holy Grail would be to hit the button and never look back. Of course this is not possible, but combined with stone cold risk and position management rules, win rate of up to 97% are possible, primarily depending on a trader’s understanding of the model and more importantly: their discipline.

Dynamic Trend Following

My system of Dynamic Trend Following simply utilises the understanding that when markets are in uptrends and the EMA9 is trending on a daily timeframe, when that daily EMA9 uptrend ends, price seeks the weekly EMA9, which mathematically aligns with the daily EMA50.

So where other traders stick to one timeframe to set it all up, DTF will have you leap across timeframes to engage with the leading EMA9. After all, price action manifests as fractal patterns, with the same formations and entry models observed on lower timeframes elegantly replicating over extended periods on higher timeframes.

Dynamic Trend Following masterfully integrates the robust trend signals of the higher timeframe EMA9 with precise lower timeframe entry models, optimising position sizing while minimising risk exposure for a refined and strategic trading approach.

Services & Community

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