I don't know. My trading is really short term that it really never mattered to me. I have couple of coustom indicators designed by myself. Indicators that are market based rather than based on intermarket data. But, having this conversation makes me think about to better improve my indicators by backtesting some.
I think the hardest thing about this game is loving money too much. The harder you work at it, the more consumed by desire for money you become. I think a key edge for successful traders is they distance themselves from money psychologically to the point where they can suppress the greed and fear and deploy their system(s) to get the job done, end of story. I might be flamed for this, but I just don't think consistently pulling out money from futures and currencies markets is the hardest thing in the world, necessarily. It only becomes so for the wrong psychological profile. Mark Douglas's books were the stepping stone I needed to make this realization. RoughTrader
First of all, I'm not agreeing with Ripley at all, but... Anyone remember that article (SFO maybe?) a couple years ago? It was like a sound meter of a busy NYC alleyway or something along those lines. The sound waves were printed like price charts, and traders ran backtesting on them. The same types of strategies were tested on real charts and those, the results being almost identical something like 80% of the time. Then there was one like that, but with coin flips or something... Scary stuff. Almost humorous. My take? If you're just watching charts with the same indicators day in and day out, yet it doesn't seem like you're getting anywhere, then maybe that should be your signal that it is time to try something else. Start flipping coins maybe...? Note: I think I may have seen that on TV. Like CNBC or a Discovery Times Channel segment maybe?
I guarantee you that if I ran my strategies on those random noise charts, they would all lose money due to slippage. But run them against real markets, and they all show very nice equity curves going straight up. But I agree, randomly generated stock charts will fool the majority of wannabe traders. Detecting the difference between random and real is crucial. Give me candle data, and I can instantly tell you if its bullshit random crap or a real market.
I think there are two things to consider. One is the issue of privacy. For me that is a big deal. The other is whether or not a trader is trying to sell some 1. service 2. advisory 3. software I agree that if you are a vendor, you may need to prove that your product adds value to the work. One of the best ways to do this is to post a P&L, especially if you can post historical records showing how your market offering impacted your trading record over time. For myself, I value my privacy. It doesn't mean that much to me to try to impress people, in fact I think I would be a little embarrassed to post my P&L. I think privacy is something we ought be concerned about in this society. I don't want to know the details of YOUR finances and I want to keep mine to myself. Just search under my handle and the word "privacy". I have always said the same thing. Steve