Categories
Blog

Backtesting can’t be used to forecast the future

The past is not a good guide to make predictions about the future because the future will be different. One should take as little as possible but as much as necessary from a backtest. A backtest shows how an idea would have worked out in the past if one followed a specific set of rules. […]

Categories
Blog

The house edge

In a casino you want to be the house not the gambler. Think of the house edge. The more people come to play, the more a casino can take advantage of its statistical positive expectancy. I hadn’t put much thought to it until couple of years ago a backtest clicked to me. A smaller edge […]

Categories
Blog

Timing the Nasdaq 100 index (QQQ)

Earlier this year I posted a simple strategy on how to beat the S&P 500 index with market timing. I had done the backtest on 21 years of data in AmiBroker. I am now publishing the results of a backtest using the same strategy on the Nasdaq 100 index. The backtest was done in TradeStation on […]

Categories
Book Reviews

Sunny J. Harris – TradeStation Made Easy! – Review

In 2019, my trading started to turn more into quantitative style. First, I backtested ideas manually with charts and spreadsheets, then switched to AmiBroker. I’d been thinking of signing up to TradeStation, a popular trading software and brokerage since the ’90s. Even though AmiBroker Formula Language (AFL) differs from EasyLanguage (EZL) by TS, the process […]

Categories
Book Reviews

Kevin J. Davey – Building Winning Algorithmic Trading Systems – Review

Kevin Davey is a professional systematic trader with over 25 years of experience. He has achieved triple-digit annual returns in three World Cup of Futures Trading Championships. He won the competition in 2006, and got 2nd place in 2005 and 2007. I have listened to him speak on many podcasts. Kevin is a respected trading […]