Traders' Roundtable

Longmemory

Why do you note the percent wins rather than returns and drawdowns for your systems? Percent wins is not very meaningful. Put a 0.5% profit target on anything and you will get about 80-90% wins but not high returns.

Rod

Why ?
The main reason was, it's been two or three years since my last override and I just felt like jumping the system again , simply for the hell of it. At 15 filled trades per day, one cheat per three years is an "override rate" of 85 parts per million (PPM), which would pass ISO-9000 quality ...

You're hilarious Sluggo. Good value.

Horizon21786 wrote: One of my best reads last year on the brain was:

"The Brain that Changes Itself" by Norman Doidge, MD - easy read and very interesting.

Completely concur. That is one of the most enlightening books I have read.

The issue is that picking tops is almost impossible mathematically. Strategies that do it also short on strong trends that keep on going up!

I beg to suggest that this is not the issue. Picking temporary tops isn't that impossible. And tops don't have to last forever, just long enough to make ...

You cannot know where the peak was until it has passed. In effect, traders trying to find peaks only helps the trend traders cause that much more.

Instead of trying to trade or find peaks, jump to smaller time frames and trend trade those time frames. For 2-5 day trades look at 10 - 15 bar ...

I've found that a top down approach works well with the S&P 500.

First, determine the intermdiate-term trend. No small feat there.

Then use a counter-trend strategy to sell short on rallies. That's
the easy part. Getting out of your system's way and not screwing
up...a lot harder.

D

DanzMan ...

Thats a good answer Sluggo - thanks. Landry and Connors swing trading books.
(To be honest I dont have Tblox (I use C#, but will use Tblox when the cost is a smaller percentage of my account)).

Hi all. I've been testing various ideas for a short S&P system. The purpose is, if you have a portfolio of stocks, you may want to hedge, at peaks, against market declines like this week.

Ive tried CCI, RSI, ADX, DI+/- and ROC. Nothing really works. Perhaps the answer lies in market internals like ...

Levi

Risky doing that, as your new positions may not have the same edge as if they had been entered at the correct time/price. I would wait for new signals, personally.

If you are just concerned about sizing, then your method makes sense, else you could be risking too much. You could use your ...

This is a mechanical trading forum. Why are you asking "why"?

When entering orders, think "accuracy". I.e. accurate as per your written and robustly tested system.

Dont use this system. You could have 8 losses in a row, one win, then another 8 losses.

Just use testing.

Great post Sluggo, as always.

Smartmoney.com has a great screener, that I use on the first Sunday of every month to determine my stock universe for the month. You have to subscribe, but its only about 9.95/mth and good.

Here is one way a systems researcher might explore the question of which markets are, in general, the friendliest to trendfollowing systems.

Choose ten or twenty very different trend-following mechanical trading systems. (not just the same single system with twenty different parameter settings ...

I agree. I lost over half my account trading forex, even though I had backtested many methods, but then found the 'Holy Grail' by trading just long term trends.

I pay much lower spread per month as a percent of my account by doing so, get whipsawed less or not at all by unexpected intraday moves ...