"risk management it is more than that. just to trade break outs and not risking more than x% per trade is not enough for CTAs today. this is too simply. there is much more to it" Yes if you try to use the original turtle system you would likely lose all your money. The CTA's today have different entry criteria to pick a trend from the bogus move. Expectation is also different. No one with a right mind thinks huge moves like gold are likely today due to market and monetary manipulation. hence you stops and exit need to be more lenient...But as long as the core is the same money management takes the cake over technical and other mumbo jumbo anyday. Oh yeah and you need some money possibly a million plus.....
Your assertion is completely false. I recently backtested the Turtle system and it continues to do reasonably well, particularly if you follow the risk control scheme. It's not quite as good as a system like Aberration, but it still works. Also, you dont need a million to trade it. Even with $100,000 you can get the right diversification and have pretty good risk management. -bbc
but anyone can cherry pick a commodity and backtest it on certain dates with gold and dollar and look great. So what? Incidentally what did you backtest it on? Crude or gold with dates well picked OR on all futures for long periods? PS. I like trend following but I bet you a dollar for a doughnut that most if not all CTA's and hedge fund managers who are trend followers have tinkered with TT system to get consistent results!
Clearly market selection is a big issue. I tested in on the basket of commodities that I trade in my Aberration account. I picked the basket in 1998, so while you could certainly argue that it was cherry picked at the time (I chose only commodities that had a history of good trends), it has performed quite well since it was selected five years ago. It consists of currencies, energies, interest rates, and softs (ie lumber, cotton, etc.). I dont trade metals, agriculture, meats, stock indexes, or anything illiquid. -bbc
I only trade domestic and when I did my original testing, the metals didnt really have a good history of trends. There have certainly been a few massive moves, but also a lot of false breakouts. As far as foreign markets go, from what I've read LME is a pretty strange market. I read the following page, got confused and decided to stay away ;-) http://www.aima.org/aimasite/articles/Feb99/edfman.htm -bbc
ic. what is "domestic" for you - it seems you are either awake quite late or not domiciled in the US. peace