johnnypasado:
Sorry to anyone wanting to view the GIF at this time, apparently the file is only stored on their server for a few days.
The problem is that every symbols movement range/ oscillation / forces / behaviors, whatever you want to call it, changes. For example December's EURUSD 2015 behavior may be like AUDCAD's March 2001 behavior (theoretical not actual, just making a point) or what not- the only way I would trust an EA to work in the future is if it can work on over 50% of the symbols I want to use with the same settings. Because you are right, each symbol has a different behavior- but their behavior is not exclusive even to it's own symbol, month to month the variation can be crazy, year to year also. We can never trust the "best setting" from an optimization to work tomorrow. We must subject an EA, trying one pair of settings on all symbols because over any unit of time all symbols exhibit different behaviors.
Exactly, one single configuration, all symbols really is the beset stress test, thanks for agreeing with me ;) and i think a white noise test with random small medium large and massive price swings is a great stress test as well. I actually have a fantastic idea about how to implement this type of test, but right now I'm spending all my time working and studying in a summer session class at school and have no time for coding for the rest of the month. If anyone wants to try to code the idea private message me.
The highlighted part: Absolutely agree with this. And it can be hard for traders to understand the difference between a bad trading plan and a good trading plan's bad month or two.
Say if a breakout strategy worked on a symbol last year, and all of a sudden it becomes fake-out season on the instrument, when do (or should) we decide to adjust the algorithm to trade against fake-outs? It is possible that by the time we notice and adjust the algorithm, that fake-out season will end and normal breakouts occur again- this is all theoretical and overly simplified problems, but even so are real problems none-the-less.
When using EA's I wouldn't ever pick the one that says "use only on XY symbol with ABC settings", it either means 1) it does not work on many symbols or 2) the programmer didn't care to test it enough so why should I trust the code in the EA? Anyway, that's why I learned to program in the first place :) I was just a ballroom dance teacher when I first got my feet wet trading ~10 years ago, sometime later I bought Fap Turbo and was thoroughly disappointed when it lost thousands of my dollars- and my hatred for those guys increased every day, they never answered my emails, not once, I tried other EAs too with the same bad results until I broke and decided to learn to program.
Before I ramble on with my whole life's story I'll just finish now and say thanks for your replies guys, I'm sorry the GIF isn't there anymore... I'll try to post it here as an inserted image, if it works you'll see a gif with changing images, if not it will just be a picture of the first frame.
Ok before "Add coment" i can see the gif changing images, lets see if it works after posting...
Simply speaking, model building for trading is as highly uncertain as trading itself.
At every single step, your best bet is to stick with most sound statistical decision. It is because you don't want to under or over estimate your models.
In my view, trading model is very honest, as long as you know what you are building, they will do exactly how you specified no more or no less.
To be honest, constant optimization is not too much issue for model builder. More important thing to discuss is what is the data you work with. (i.e. Stationarity or non statationarity to start with, and many more to consider).
In my view, econometrics and time series forecasting books are the bible for this. They will tell you most of answer what model builder want to know.
Good book by reputable Professors in the area.
Plus I like your opintion on fab turbo. I really support on it. :) :)
Kind regards.