I've made every possible mistake in the book when it comes to backtesting. You are wise to be cautious and throw your results out and start over. I recently had to throw away backtesting results due to a simple data type error that caused a number to be off in converting 10-Year and 30-Year Bonds to decimal. Gold on its own is not a problem but I am sure you will want to do inter-market analysis between it and various currencies. Again, I've had things be off on Yen or any really long floating-point numbers. I've got it worked out now. I'm doing everything from scratch in C# and VB. Maybe you won't have these issues with your language/libraries. Even if you are using a library of some kind to convert tick values on things like Corn, Soybeans, Bonds ect..ect.. verify the data on your own if you can. Trust but Verify.
I don't think a good 30day could be done on TOS. The intraday data only goes back 20 days. It could still probably be done but you could only score the +/-2's. I'm still doing NL's the old school way. It is a chore at times especially given how many currency crosses I track but I still believe the more nuanced marginal analysis I do is very important to my scoring and don't know how I could code that. Plus I'm not a terribly active trader so falling behind a day here and there isn't a big deal.
Got my multi symbol analyzer running. I see the error of my ways and I think its time to stop just trading gold. At a minimum I need to add silver platinum and palladium, at least until I have more time to devote to trading. I haven't even been paying attention to platinum lol. 30 day line starting on the 1st.
Mav, You might be interested in ... Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street The story of billionaire trader Steven Cohen, the rise and fall of his hedge fund SAC Capital, and the largest insider trading investigation in history.
So...what a week it has been. Last Friday I remembered that digging into ACD was on my to-do list having previously glanced at this thread while browsing the TA forum. Having recently read the Logical Trader, I spent the last week reading all 13000+ posts of this thread and watched 6+ hours of MF's seminar videos on YouTube (it's been a slow week at work, so....). It's been a deep dive to say the least but a very rewarding one. I'd go so far to say, epiphanic from a trading perspective. I'm essentially a stock/ETF swing trader and my trading biases were largely already derived from my personal observations regarding the significance of monthly and daily opening ranges. Adopting the methods and principles of ACD will likely fit with how I already view markets. Removing some of my other trading crutches is proving tricky so far (I am a bit of an indicator junkie), but I am a strong believer in simple concepts being the most robust and have already seen early signs that my trading psychology is benefiting from ACD. My thanks to Mav and many others for what they have shared here. It is truly an "island of reality in the a sea of diarrhea" compared to most ET threads. The generosity to impart wisdom and help those willing to put in the work sits very well with my personal values in a world where many folks just want to be spoon fed. There is a veritable treasure trove of resources within this thread for those willing to invest the time and effort. This has been a very rewarding week for me in that regard. On that note, I need to think about something other than ACD for a couple of hours