Nothing, Mark, you got it right. It's better than buy and hold, nothing more, nothing less. That's a sizeable client pool if you know how to approach them.
Hi Aquarians, I worked for an institutional investor, and just a tip - never say to an institutional investor the returns are guaranteed. So the system trades stocks and is related to cycles. How long is an average cycle? How long is the average holding period? How does it perform in ranging markets? You have tested it on stocks. On other instruments too? Investors like to have their money invested. What is the average and what was the longest time period you were not invested in the market? Did you trade live money on it? Most of the money managers or startup founders started with the first investment coming from 3Fs: Family, Friends and Fools Good luck with your system!
Exactly. I never understood these folks. They claim their system is beyond impressive and yet they don't want to have their own skin in the game.
Good question. For the retail investor, put it simply, I'll refund the $500 paid on the strategy full description + software to trade it if it doesn't fare as advertised (makes more than the market, given the preconditions implied by the historical market behavior). It's like the Black-Scholes algorithm. You can see it's correct and makes money provided that the spreads are big enough to account for the error in estimating volatility (they used to be much bigger around the time the model was introduced). I would refund the money if the model is proved to be incorrect. But I would not refund the money if the market changes, spreads become too tight due to increased competition or suddenly the stocks stopping to move as random log-normal daily returns. So I am confident enough that my model is accurate with respect to how the market behaved so far, and moderately confident they will continue to behave so ... but cannot guarantee that
I'll have to be more precise when I say "guaranteed" but there's as much of that as rigorously possible on a quantitative algorithm. Not the technical analysis thingamajig nonsense or the mystical buy on full moon, sell on half moon etc. But mathematically proven and patterns inferred from data with statistical evidence they are way above random occurrence. I won't say much about holding period but it's definitely not intraday trading, I'm using longer periods. Couldn't find s**t (patterns) into short and very short timeframes. The algorithm won't work in all markets and all stocks but it's very clear on which it does, so just select those and forget the others. >> Did you trade live money on it? Not yet, partly because I want to avoid my system being reverse-engineered from the trades I make. There will be plenty of time to trade it, I've no reason to rush now. Especially since we're talking relatively little extra return and longer time periods, the profit I would make doesn't balance the risk of the system leaking out.
I think you're living in a dream world. 99.999%, hell, all of those "performances" shatter to pieces in live trading when reality strikes. I've seen plenty such "champions" and how they lose investor's money.
Hm, maybe getting real big investors will be difficult, if you do not have a live track record. Why not start there? Start trading it with own funds, no matter how big or small. Once you have a real track record, start approaching proper investors. Would you like to be a fund manager or are you looking to sell the algo?
Sell the algo. I'm also considering selling to retail investors, I know approaching big ones is not easy. But I already have contacts in the "big ones" world, one reason I'm discussing this here is to prepare myself for presenting to these guys. But with them I got one chance, don't wanna blow it before I'm ready. I reckoned if I can convince enough retail investors that my strategy is worth paying $500 bucks for, it'd be orders of magnitude easier to present my case in front of the few billion dollars ones I'm 1 degree of separation from. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_d...s of separation is,as the six handshakes rule. )