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Evaluating Your Strategy

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 Tad Slaff, Co-founder/CEO at Inovance

 Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Creating a trading strategy is only the first step to trading successfully. You must then evaluate its performance and decide if you can trust it on a live account.While so much attention gets paid to coming up with a strategy, there is...


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4 comments on article "Evaluating Your Strategy"

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 Alex Krishtop, trader, researcher, consultant in forex and futures

 Wednesday, March 11, 2015



Good work on the robustness assessment and risk management basics. One question: while you are correct that considering a percent return figure along doesn't make sense, why measuring returns of fx strategies in percent at all? It's so highly leveraged that percent gains not only doesn't tell anything about the strategy itself (I mean, "pure" strategy without money management), but can be downright quite misleading. Although I know that most non-sophisticated investors understand only gains in percent.


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 Tad Slaff, Co-founder/CEO at Inovance

 Thursday, March 12, 2015



That's a great point, Alex. The percentage return can be heavily distorted by high leverage and turn a terrible strategy into one with seemingly impressive returns. Looking at the total return in pips, or calculating some of those other metrics like RPT off pips, does have it's advantages.

However, even from the start I try to evaluate my strategy from a holistic view, with money management. I have seen bad "pure" strategies perform very well with the right risk and money management and vice versa.

At the end of the day, it is up to the strategy developer and investor to take the time and really evaluate any strategy before going live.


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 Alex Krishtop, trader, researcher, consultant in forex and futures

 Sunday, March 15, 2015



In general I could agree with any word you say, but I hope you understand that you reply raises far more questions than provides answers. Since we're in the Algorithmic traders association's group, it implies being mathematically precise with definitions and metrics, right? Then I'd be happy to discuss terms like "bad strategy", "good strategy", "perform very well", "right risk and money management", and especially about methods that allow to "evaluate my strategy", preferably quantitatively. I suppose this could have been the most productive discussion in this group ever.


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 Tad Slaff, Co-founder/CEO at Inovance

 Monday, March 16, 2015



I agree that mathematically precise definitions and metrics are needed; however, some issues arise with the subjective interpretation of the metrics and the different investment profiles of a trader.

Some traders will put a premium on a certain risk-adjusted return metric while others will be more concerned with limiting the downside of a particular strategy and another might just be looking for a strategy that is uncorrelated with their other investments.

I think we can agree that there are some objectively "bad strategies" but making the claim that there is an objectively "good strategy" for all types of investors is a little more problematic. One must first define what "good" means to them and how to measure it, then it is much easier to compare multiple strategies to find one that fits the specified criteria. Examining the different characteristics of a strategy and figuring out how to quantify them is the first step to coming up with your own criteria.

This is very worthwhile and productive discussion that every time of trader and investor needs to have when coming up with a strategy.

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TRADING FUTURES AND OPTIONS INVOLVES SUBSTANTIAL RISK OF LOSS AND IS NOT SUITABLE FOR ALL INVESTORS
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