Trend-following systems offer PRECISELY that verifiable mathematical edge you are talking about, that's why I mentioned them. Of all the trading systems out there, the ones that exploit the trending nature of all freely-traded financial markets are the more robust and the most consistently profitable.
That's the nature of the markets. All you have to do to have the market "knock you on your ass" is to keep doing what you did before that was successful. (How cruel is that?) IOW... the market "shifts". Your objective as a trader is to "tune-in" and adjust.
%% Good. Amen on using all data; QQQ goes back to 1999. Markets like QQQ tend to go up/uptrend 75% of the time; but have bear trended down 80% for 3 years bear. NOT really a mystery.Markets can only; uptrend, downtrend, chop-slop-sideways trend/barbed wire range...................................................... Back to my uptrending charts
Suit yourself, but it won't change the facts. Sick and tired of hearing that "markets change" routine.
Oh please, a simple data series analysis shows that market's prices are not normally distributed. In other words, markets trend, meaning they have the tendency to keep doing whatever they were doing.
There's nothing consistent about trend-following. Trend-following funds had been lagging other strategies in the fund world for years before 2020. Many of these funds were making boatloads in the 80s, 90s and in the 00s they went flat. In fact the contrarian funds have vastly outperformed trend-following recently. What's the verifiable edge you're talking about? Sounds like you have the market figured out and can demonstrate this through numbers. I'd be happy to backtest this as you're talking in general terms -- saying a trading style is all you need to produce profit, strategy being irrelevant. You're talking as details are irrelevant. Absolutely everything in the markets is about details, finding needle(s) in a haystack. All broad generalizations are useless and based on nothing.