More precisely, figures for net liquidation were: initial: 1,525,169.97 "final": 6,116,254.59 (this change is in about 605 days). (As we noted in previous posts, for some reason (probably a bug?) the IB reporting system only allows to select a later initial date.) To be more meaningful, possible metrics to evaluate strategies should include risk measures and actual capital usage (as the entire "capital" deposited in an account may not be used, or not used all the time). Algorithms work the same, with "real" or "paper" money. Unfortunately, people do not As it's well known, I mainly work on platforms and algorithms for automated trading: as to "taxes", I would leave the word to those who are knowledgeable in the field. [I only noted, in time, a certain correlation between losses and people who cannot "see" ways to efficiently manage this aspect. As they are both correlated with an "exogenous variable" which can be easily guessed.] Algorithmically, we can produce a suitable "order matching" and PNL decomposition) to optimize possible tax issues, under guidance of a skilled accountant, when the issue needs to be addressed. (Also the timing of algorithmic "investment" phases, could possibly be suitably directed.)
With your understanding of statistics, why did you not start running live trading in parallel with the paper account so that you could track in realtime any statistical negative deviation of live? If you are producing a positive paper result (arbitrarily) 1000 trades in, why not run a live mirror at a fractional sizing and fractional risk? It would seem that with your sensitivity to probabilities that this would have been an immediate and completely obvious thing to do.
Thank you tradegee. If you start 2 instances of the bot, one on a "paper trading" account and one on a "real money" trading account, you will see that they are essentially identical. The only occasional small differences is in the execution price which usually is more favorable in a real account. Nothing really noticeable in the grand scheme of things. (As to trading on real money accounts, we do that too.)