Hey guys, I've been successfully trading for over 4 years now, been reading a lot on ET but posting for the first time today. I'm trading 1 system that trades intraday and 1 system that has 2-3 weeks holding period. These both systems working just fine over last couple of years but this is all I'm trading so here is my question to all of you who trade systems: Does anybody trade only 1 or 2 systems for a long period of time or do you guys usually trade 5+ systems? What is the longest period your system worked?
I trade 4 systems across 20+ markets, all automated. Most of my systems are working on daily bars (too much potential for execution error intraday across 20+ instruments), but I apply some intraday systems on a few currency pairs and the e-minis. Some suggest that trading many systems is good to average out rough patches for any particular market system pair, but I believe the same can be achieved with just one or two systems applied to a breadth of markets that vary in correlation with each other. Some managed futures funds opt for the latter choice, such as Christian Baha's SuperFund. That fund uses one strategy (don't know what it is), and one of the keys to his success (I presume) is his application of that strategy to a broad variety of derivative markets. No hard and fast rule about this one though. RoughTrader
I agree with RoughTrader on this, in that you can either employ different strategies or the same strategy (tweaked) across many different markets. Even combining two strategies can really smooth the equity curve. I use five core systems - and am in the process of farming them out to single stocks which will take the number of systems employed in the 100 area. But the diversification effect diminishes with Systems ++. Regards and good trading