jcl
Registered: Jan 2012
Posts: 407 |
02-13-12 08:39 AM
Quote from mizhael:
I've heard that the most rigorous backtesting mechanism is the "walk-forward" optimization where you optimize your parameters dynamically.
This maximally emulates the way strategy developers backtest and apply our trading strategies: at any point of time, one optimizes the parameters based on the data from the past history, and then apply the "optimized" model onto a certain future period; after a while, one re-calibrates by refitting the model to updated data.
After the "walk-foward optimization", there are only two parameters that are global and floating - the lookback period in the "walk-forward optimization" (i.e. on each optimization, what past data does on optimize his model on), and the forward step size (i.e. how often does one re-calibrate)...
Any thoughts on how to choose these two global floating grand parameters?
If I run another bigger optimization on top of these "walk-forward optimizations", and I found that:
1. The overall Sharpe Ratio is 2.09 if I re-calibrate the model every 12 months, and use the past 6 months data in each optimization.
2. The overall Sharpe Ratio is 1.98 if I re-calibrate the model every 1 day, and use the past 6 months data in each optimization.
And based on above results, I choose to re-calibrate the model every 12 months, instead of every 1 day, I feel I am just data-mining... what do you think?
Any better approaches?
Thanks a lot!
The forward step size is a compromise between test duration and test accuracy. As a rule of thumb, a step size should cover at least 20 trades.
The lookback period is important for performance and depends on your strategy. Some strategies require a long and others a short lookback period. The reason is that the markets changes over time. You don't want to have too many different market situations in the lookback - it's just the opposite of a fixed parameter optimization. The lookback period should cover several 100 trades for a good parameter quality.
We found that a lookback/test ratio of 85:15 works best for most strategies.
Your strategy seems to be quite robust when it has about the same results with a 2:1 as well as a 150:1 ratio.
WFO requires parameter-free strategies, so you also need a mechanism that regularly recalculates the parameter while trading. When your trade platform does not support this, you'd need restart the strategy, download newest price data, and run a WFO cycle again after every step. This would be more difficult with a one day step size, than with a one month step size.
|
