Better Tests with Oversampling

The more data you use for testing or training your strategy, the less bias will affect the test result and the more accurate will be the training. The problem: price data is always in short supply. Even shorter when you must put aside some part for out-of-sample tests. Extending the test or training period far into the past is not always a solution. The markets of the 1990s or 1980s were very different from today, so their price data can cause misleading results.
   In this article I’ll describe a simple method to produce more trades for testing, training, and optimizing from the same amount of price data. The method is tested with a price action system based on data mining price patterns. Continue reading “Better Tests with Oversampling”

Build Better Strategies!

Enough blog posts, papers, and books deal with how to properly optimize and test trading systems. But there is little information about how to get to such a system in the first place. The described strategies often seem to have appeared out of thin air. Does a trading system require some sort of epiphany? Or is there a systematic approach to developing it?
   This post is the first of a small series in which I’ll attempt a methodical way to build trading strategies. The first part deals with the two main methods of strategy development, with market hypotheses and with a Swiss Franc case study. Continue reading “Build Better Strategies!”

The Cold Blood Index

You’ve developed a new trading system. All tests produced impressive results. So you started it live. And are down by $2000 after 2 months. Or you have a strategy that worked for 2 years, but revently went into a seemingly endless drawdown. Situations are all too familiar to any algo trader. What now? Carry on in cold blood, or pull the brakes in panic? 
    Several reasons can cause a strategy to lose money right from the start. It can be already expired since the market inefficiency disappeared. Or the system is worthless and the test falsified by some bias that survived all reality checks. Or it’s a normal drawdown that you just have to sit out. In this article I propose an algorithm for deciding very early whether or not to abandon a system in such a situation. Continue reading “The Cold Blood Index”

I Hired a Contract Coder

You’re a trader with serious ambitions to use algorithmic methods. You already have an idea to be converted to an algorithm. The problem: You do not know to read or write code. So you hire a contract coder. A guy who’s paid for delivering a script that you can drop in your MT4, Ninja, TradeStation, or Zorro platform. Congratulations, now you’re an algorithmic trader. Just start the script and wait for the money to roll in. – Does this really work? Answer: it depends. Continue reading “I Hired a Contract Coder”

Is “Scalping” Irrational?

Clients often ask for strategies that trade on very short time frames. Some are possibly inspired by “I just made $2000 in 5 minutes” stories on trader forums. Others have heard of High Frequency Trading: the higher the frequency, the better must be the trading! The Zorro developers had been pestered for years until they finally implemented tick histories and millisecond time frames. Totally useless features? Or has short term algo trading indeed some quantifiable advantages? An experiment for looking into that matter produced a surprising result. Continue reading “Is “Scalping” Irrational?”

Hacker’s Tools

For our financial hacking experiments (and for harvesting their financial fruits) we need some software machinery for research, testing, training, and live trading financial algorithms. There are many tools for algo trading, but no existing software platform today is really up to all those tasks. You have to put together your system from different software packages. Fortunately, two are normally sufficient. I’ll use Zorro and R for most articles on this blog, but will also occasionally look into other tools. Continue reading “Hacker’s Tools”

Boosting Strategies with MMI

We will now repeat our experiment with the 900 trend trading strategies, but this time with trades filtered by the Market Meanness Index. In our first experiment we found many profitable strategies, some even with high profit factors, but none of them passed White’s Reality Check. So they all would probably fail in real trading in spite of their great results in the backtest. This time we hope that the MMI improves most systems by filtering out trades in non-trending market situations. Continue reading “Boosting Strategies with MMI”

The Market Meanness Index

This indicator can improve – sometimes even double – the profit expectancy of trend following systems. The Market Meanness Index tells whether the market is currently moving in or out of a “trending” regime. It can this way prevent losses by false signals of trend indicators. It is a purely statistical algorithm and not based on volatility, trends, or cycles of the price curve. Continue reading “The Market Meanness Index”

Seventeen Trade Methods That I Don’t Really Understand

When I started with technical trading, I felt like entering the medieval alchemist scene. A multitude of bizarre trade methods and hundreds of technical indicators and lucky candle patterns promised glimpses into the future, if only of financial assets. I wondered – if a single one of them would really work, why would you need all the rest? And how can you foretell tomorrow’s price by drawing circles, angles, bats or butterflies on a chart? Continue reading “Seventeen Trade Methods That I Don’t Really Understand”

White’s Reality Check

This is the third part of the Trend Experiment article series. We now want to evaluate if the positive results from the 900 tested trend following strategies are for real, or just caused by Data Mining Bias. But what is Data Mining Bias, after all? And what is this ominous White’s Reality Check? Continue reading “White’s Reality Check”