Good question, Mike. It would be easy to blame the market, so I won't - hence my use of it was as if the market had "changed", with changed in quotation marks, in TheStudent's thread. I believe that the combination of everything (stops, target, time of taking temperature, what to measure as temperature, what to wait for after taking temperature, etc. etc.) was curvefitted to the year's tick data, and that somehow this particular set of data, through a combination of chance and some inherent, unrepeatable pattern, made itself a good candidate for my particular criteria. I honestly maintain that this is more a testament to my lack of inspiration than to the market's temperament - this despite the fact that I am also an avowed and unrepentant intuitive trader.
...dis be Bess, here. The 'mus, he say in he sleep when he thing nobody lissen, dat he call he bes' sissem de "Holy Grable", cause she got such great long legs! Porgie, yo' stop dissin' yosef! Yo' be bettern mos' de no-count posterboards here!
...thanks for that detail. Fears like that get me up at 3:00 AM almost every morning (couldn't be the low blood sugar from drinking, could it?) to test out some new wrinkle that will help me believe that the systems won't go south today. Your response fairly begs the question, what was a recidivist discretionary trader like you doing testing a system? A walk on the wild side? Swinging both ways? Trying to reform? Is there a cautionary tale for the unwary there? Sorry, just my prurient interest in all things psychosexual.
...my paranoid concern about revealing to the fat boys that the little people know of statistically significant price levels is the following. I have read many posts by backtesters in recent months in various venues that reveal that they recognize that there is statistically significant exploitable structure in the markets. It is one thing to make a harebrained totally unsubstantiated assertion to that effect, especially if your posts in toto reveal that you are a harmless cretin (like me). It is quite another to cite actual numbers that reflect the verities of the market. The difference between a strategy which successfully shorts and one which successfully longs is two ticks! How much trouble do you think it would be for les garcons grasses to change their automated trading codes by two ticks? In all sincerity, I advise you to keep going down your path, but don't tell anybody but me what you discover. When you do post publicly, misdirect. The worse other schmucks trade, the better for you. Who the hell do you think takes the stupid side of losing trades?
...by asking the question you reveal that you do not derive intensely carnal pleasure from a winning trade, or from the prospect of winning promised by a particularly seductive backtest, complete with sadistic fantasies of the pain you have caused or will cause those who took the other side of your trade. If so, you do not approach trading with the proper mindset.
Hypo, thanks for the response. Your advice is priceless to me - I will also be sure to read up on those books (i have Pardos book somewhere around here). I will keep my system, along with the moon phase syncronization Indictor I use as a parameter (wink wink) to myself.
..you are too kind. As much as I respect Robert Pardo (look up his record as a hedge fund manager), I think the sadly late Bruce Babcock Jr.'s book is the superior one. Eternal thanks to Roscoe here for generously putting me on to it. It is the modern equivalent in cynicism and honesty to Richard Schabacker's (1934?) book on the stock market. Both absolutely pricelsss IMO. And hey, don't knock that moon shit, Katz and McCormick (do they have carnal relations?) say in their book that it is a useful adjunct to decision making. I myself swear by "buy Tuesday, sell Thursday", which is my own much maligned contribution to trading lore. It's so patently and blatently stupid that I have no trouble finding people to take the other side of my trades. I am so sorry that you find my advice priceless. I was hoping for a wire transfer.