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Trading: Primarily Energy but also a little Equities, Fixed Income, Metals and Crypto.
Frequency: Many times daily
Duration: Never
Posts: 5,057 since Dec 2013
Thanks Given: 4,409
Thanks Received: 10,225
Yes. Me! I had a hypothesis I tested. I was wrong. I lost money. I'm hoping to correct that soon.
Yes. Me!
Yes. Me!
Yes. Me!
Skepticism is actually good. Way too many snake all salesmen in this arena. But watch the video. They explain that not only are full commissions included but they also include an estimate for slippage. My performance was 100% as advertised. I've been trading full time for over 20 years. Please don't take this as a noob with no idea what they are doing.
I agree PF > 1.5 is difficult. @kevinkdog runs a "members only 6 month system club". One of the qualifying conditions is annual Return/Drawdown of 2.0. Sure I can break the rules and meet that qualification, but then the system inevitably fails the true 6 month test. Meeting the requirement and passing the 6 month test is really tough. I hate it. It's my arch nemesis. As I have stated above, I believe the isystems platform is the real deal - but the real issue is can you pick the right systems. In my first attempt I failed. If it was easy. Everybody would do it.
Being blunt did you actually read the entire thread and my related journal? If you do, and have more questions feel free to ask, here, in my journal or by PM, I'm more than willing to help others who are seriously interested, assuming they are willing to share as well.
At one point I thought that the fund manager relied on several systems to handle several markets and that made sense for a while.
Then I realised they were turning them on and off when it suited them.
In my own system testing, I realised that when the market was trending the trend following systems made a lot more money than the ones that did well in channels and the trend following systems actually lost money if the channel type environment went on long enough.
Volatility was another variable. Some days were low range others were worth a weeks worth of trading in one day.
News was another variable.
Seasonality was also a factor.
And sometimes the markets just did random stuff one could not explain, that any system would struggle with.
So it became apparent to me that it was vip to know what systems you want to be running in what environment.
No sense paying commissions for nothing.
Some systems can trade every few seconds. Some can trade two times a year and make the same money.
Diversifying is one way to approach this but we are not all Bill Gates funded. So having one for channels and one for trends is a minimum capability or nice starting point.
So the idea of adding a layer of complexity by NOT knowing how exactly a system makes its decisions to buy or sell on any given bar, day or week seems to make the process harder by a factor of 100 if you don't program yourself. Because you want to match the right system to the right market condition choosing the right system is vip to me.
Knowing when to turn it (them) on and off is vip. So unless you can diversify you have to read the market too.
I got to the point where i was thinking when product A does this product B should do that. So the ideal system would be cross linked to multiple products (thinking US dollar, gold, oil, equity indexes, commodities?) as well as a news service and NOT be in the market during eco releases. This required a calendar.
And that is when real life interrupted.
So to sum up having the decision making process cloaked/hidden when you buy a black box makes the whole system trading process much harder. I think you are much better off to program your own ideas and that way you know why you made or lost money.
To be honest with this structure of fees and high commissions (+ slippage), I doubt anyone would be making consistent profits (>6 months) on any of these systems. That was the issue with the system I invested in (and supposed developed and run by one of the best CTAs of that company). The goal was just to churn clients capital with fees + commissions, not to help any client.
The same issue probably here. I would love to be proved wrong... anybody made any money (live!) with these systems on a period greater than 6 months?? Can someone put their results live month by month?
I've put real money on several systems and lost money on almost all of them. I've been trying to make a profit on iSystems for over two years with no luck. I choose a system with what appears to be an outstanding track record, but shortly after I activate the system it starts losing and continues losing for months. I'm not talking about a couple systems. I've watched this happen over and over again on almost every system I've traded. I've traded almost two dozen different systems. I wish I could tell you why this keeps happening but I can't figure it out.
You're getting these results due to data mining bias and curve-fitting. The best explanation that I've seen regarding the phenomenon of data mining bias is the paper on System Parameter Permutation here:
We looked at the TradingMotion / iSystems platform. It's well done technically, but in our opinion it has one important design flaw:
There was no way to retire a system.
However, the management of systems is essential!
Only the vendor knows when a system is not viable anymore and therefore it should be the vendor's responsibility to take care of this.
Retiring could mean that a system data is still there for later review but the system is stopped, no more data is collected and nobody can be subscribed to it.
We requested such a feature but it never happened.
The result now is that there is a huge number of systems which are not taken care of. The customer has no idea if a system is still valid.
This makes it almost impossible to be profitable for the customer. How can he know when to stop a system?
We should not forget, markets change and no system will work forever. At least fine adjustments may be required over time.
We found Striker superior to TradingMotion / iSystems because with Striker, only live trades are tracked. Usually the developer trades the system himself with Striker.
Given this fact, the systems on Striker are much better managed than on TradingMotion / iSystems.
Another advantage is the Portfolio Feature
Striker offers to the developer the possibility to create Portfolios. A portfolio is a group of systems and the developer can change the selection of systems any time. Tracking happens always live of whatever the portfolio consists of.
This means a customer can subscribe to the Portfolio and the developer then looks for the best selection of systems at any moment of time. The customer has not to worry about systems not being viable anymore, or requiring updates. The developer takes care of this.
In my opinion in this way the customer has the best chances to be profitable.
I trade in my personal account 3rd party systems on Striker profitably. But I only look at vendors which are profitable for the totality of ALL the systems they offer. And I only subscribe to Portfolios of systems.