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Rather than looking for that one strategy, I always recommend that people develop it themselves (even it is just someone else's work, but modified by you). In the long run, that is the best way to go...
Gave up on that years ago- as stated, I just want to see one working system. Seems like when you throw that out there, the common reply is what you said "develop yourself". Maybe one day someone will share one that they believe in.
Check out @kevinkdog's threads and webinars. He has good material and has openly shared a great deal.
But how do you qualify a "working system"? How many times do you interfere with the system and still call it a system? How many times do you adjust parameters, or adjust which days it trades, or change the signals (always gotta "add a filter").
Even systems are largely discretionary in the way the manager of the system controls it or alters it or directs it.
Something that is rarely discussed on nexusfi.com (formerly BMT) for whatever reason is portfolio trading using an algorithmic system with predefined rules. I still believe portfolio trading is basically the holy grail.
In this thread I'm going to document the development of an ETF-based "global tactical asset allocation" system. What are the goals of this system? It's meant to take the main role of allocating a long-term portfolio. Hopefully we will …
The key difference is the point I mentioned earlier, its the difference between gauging the results of just a few trades over a singular strategy, vs testing the performance of an entire portfolio. The fewer the strategies, instruments, markets and number of trades involved in a contest, the less accurate/valuable the results of the competition will be, as an accurate representation of skill/ability, imho.
If 10 users developed a single strategy completely at random, using no logic that they felt to be predictive or useful, and 10 other users spent a great deal of time on their single developed strategies and had great confidence in them, over a tiny number of trades there is a very significant chance a user from the former group would win the contest. . . due to sheer chance, randomness. However, vastly increase this number-of-trades, or time-in-market-of-all-trades-combined, and the chances of the best trader rising to the top increases significantly.
This is what put a slight damper on my excitement towards the battle of the bot competitions specifically. It seemed to me that a competition using such a small data pool is very likely to crown the *luckiest* trader over a short period of time, as opposed to the most skilled trader. . does this make sense?
This is not at all to diminish the importance of that competition, I think it was interesting and novel and useful, and brought some attention to systematic trading as a concept and practice. . . I was merely suggesting what would perhaps be a more comprehensive and exhaustive test of a systematic trader and their methods. I think if we went this route, and a few of us showed solid, consistent success over a reasonable period of time and significant number of trades, it could seriously change the way systematic trading is viewed, and could give others just starting down that path the confidence they need to continue.
Just a thought. . I'll begin the vendor search shortly here to see if I can find a few takers
This is an extremely important point. . . one of the most disturbing things about virtually the entire marketplace of vendors who market strategies, at least those that I've come across thus far, is that they always seem to (wisely, shrewdly, dishonestly) leave some wiggle room . . they leave a few parameters either undefined, or they have some settings that require user involvement, user tinkering. This is brilliant, of course, because when the strategy falls flat (and it almost certainly will, given enough time), the vendor can simply state 'well, you see, you had this setting at X, and it really should have been Y. . . learn from your mistake!'
I don't run a single strategy where every single variable isn't completely hard coded. There's absolutely no wiggle room, I don't change things. . . I have their entry times (time of day, day of week, etc) all hard coded, and its my personal belief that if you're using a decade or more of historical data to craft the strategy, you probably shouldn't be tinkering with it based upon the data from the past week or two or three. . in my experience, those who follow this practice tend to fare very badly.
Any strategy I create has to be a completely finished product, with nothing for me to subjectively or arbitrarily change or tweak over time. . . and I was stunned to see how often this isn't the case, and I'm still curious as to what the reasoning would be for this (leaving 'wiggle room' in a strategy, not setting everything in stone before its launch), other than dishonest (but effective) marketing tactics.
(Making an edit here to encourage users to follow Mike's advice regarding KevDog's posts and webinars, these are practically mandatory reading, imho, for those starting out down this path. . . this community owes him a big 'thank you' for his willingness to so openly share all that he has, as its such a rarity for successful/proven traders to be willing to show so many of their means and methods, concepts and ideas. . )
In my experience, the few vendors I know of that sell profitable systems right out of the box don't actively promote them largely because they don't want every Joe Schmo to have them. Some have some kind of robust "interview" process they make you go through, in addition to legal documents you have to sign before they let you buy.
From my point of view, they seem to be driven by a genuine desire to help people. But they're not willing to help just anyone.
Concerning giving the public access to their broker statements... I can think of several good reasons why the good trader-vendors aren't up for that. Unfortunately this doesn't help anyone build a case for or against them because obviously the bad ones refuse to provide broker statements as well.
Keep things complex. But not more complex then they need to be.
In my opinion, anyone that believes that is just naive and lacking all experience and using poor judgment.
Vendors making you sign legal documents is simply to prohibit you from writing about them, including how much of a waste of time it was after you (if you) learn from your mistake.
I'm making generalizations on "systems" that are for sale to retail users for say under $1,000,000.