For the past 3 years I have been hunting for treasure in numbers. It has become a hobby for me. It provides the same hope that buying a lottery ticket does, you know you won't win but the possibility is there. My main method of testing is with PHP/MySql, the stock data held in a database, PHP to manipulate and scour for patterns. I've tried just about everything I can think of. There have been plenty of false positives, sometimes it would take days for me to disprove an idea, but always there was something that proved it wrong. I'm at the point where I can test literally anything I can imagine, "visual" comparisons, comparing previous similar patterns, comparing against other stocks or investment vehicles, risk/reward models, support/resistance tests, etc.. if you can think of it, I've probably tested it or at least the same general concept. Every promising test gets retested in different time frames, different stocks, bad years, good years, etc.. It is scary how close to truly random the stock market is proving itself to be. Anyone have any ideas they've been toying with that they want me to test? I'll keep the results between the two of us.
I am just curious about your conclusion. After all the tests you have done, what is your conclusion? Thanks.
I was in similar situation years ago. You should never surrender and press on. Drop the technicals like a flu and focus on testing for price action and stay away from women and other sources of "can't be done"
just for the record, my definition of holy grail is consistently 51% or more profitable over different time frames and different investment vehicles, factoring in slippage and commission cost.
Why do you think that a pattern found in daily data for example must be profitable in other timeframes too? It sounds like you are immersed into a chaotic process. You need to set principles first.
I personally don't believe in patterns. Only what the data/market is telling me right "now". Smoothing the data helps reduce the noise, makes it easier to work with.
Ok so look at it this way. you had idea1, idea2, idea3, etc. Each idea had technique1, technique2, technique3 etc in it. All of those techinques and approaches were glued together in method1, method2, method3. Now. Make the computer jumble up methods, techniques and ideas, and make strategies out of them. Make it do that and backtest/fwdtest all of them (millions) until one comes up. Take out the creation and assumption part out of your strategy creation attempts and let the computer bash it out. Maybe it will find something. Humans need to be replaced completely, that's the problem. I was in the same position you are in now. Do not dispair, keep trying. This is a learning process. You pay for education.