A wise observation:
sluggo wrote: "What is good?" (more precisely, "what is good in my opinion?") seems to have many different correct answers.
Is MAR the best? I'm not so sure. Best would be absolute return for most spectators. I say "Which would you rather have, $100K at the end of 5 years or $1,000,000?". A spectator will say "$1,000,000". Then I say OK go trade it and become a
speculator, and watch most of them blow up on some crazy drawdown that lasts 3.5 years.
I would take it a step further and propose to you that "good" is going to translate into "trade-able for you". Can you stick to the plan. If you stick to high MAR's (and for sake of argument let's say this behavior continues and is not curve-fitted, etc), in my opinion you will find those systems "easier" to trade than measures that place less emphasis on MaxDD.
In big MAR systems, you are being compensated for however wild the drawdowns are (i.e. big drawdowns equal BIG annualized returns). Even then I would still look at that MaxDD number and assume it is going higher than your empirical or even live results suggest. Adjust risk/leverage accordingly...
All that said I view any single system with a MAR > 2 as highly suspect, and probably wouldn't trust anything with a MAR > 1 if it has a lot of trade logic or less than a couple thousand trades.