No down years until this year (not a big draw down, but my take is the edge is gone). Thousands of trades each year where each individual trade has a negative expected return if there was no edge.
If it has had single down quarters in the past, it can have 2 or 3 down quarters in a row just by really bad luck. If you trade even a good system over many decades you will eventually see some really bad outlier drawdowns.
This guy was recently trying to work out a paper account. https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/ibkr-paper-account-fill-issue-via-api.385898/ Pay attention to his messages, that is not someone who has been trading for 17 years, he is full of shit.
That doesn't mean any thing. He could be trying out new strategies in a paper trading account, that is what it is for. After all, if your primary strategies have stopped working it's back to the drawing board to find something else like he admits.
ok, if there is something I learned on this forum is that every single one that starts with "I've been trading for X years" is full of shit. For example, melon, another one with that sentence "He has been trading for 30 years!"
Every strategy I have ever pursued went trough paper trading as part of the process. As I wrote in my original post I am now coding. I do not want to waste time on you.
After 17 years, you are still working out how fills work? really? ok, I also don't want to waste time on you.