Yes I suppose it's possible it was just luck but the equity curve is very consistent until the turn down. I'm still in the back-testing phase of my trading. I'm trying to come up with a mechanical method that can be automated. Apparently this is not an easy thing to do for some reason. It's making me feel stupid. But I'm learning to tone down my expectations and not put down payments on expensive sports cars yet.
Yeah this could be the basic reason. I'm hoping for some simple TA that will show this but in reality that may be impossible and the best indicator may be the system itself. Perhaps a combo of MA x overs and vix. Thanks.
A few of us (Madhedgefundtrader.com being another) spotted the end of the move using elliot wave, momentum, and fundamental analysis. I continued trying to trade my trend pullback system, however, and ended up having an experience like yours. Solution: develop a system that makes money in the chop. Coincidentally, another trend following approach worked here as well.
Well murray t turtle mentioned moving average. So I found this exotic highly complex tech indicator called the 50 day moving average. It seems that as soon as that thing started going down my strat - which goes long - stopped working. Who'd a thought it? And here I was thinking I had the perfect single strat that would always work in any market! It looks like above and below the 50 has a lot to do with how my strats do, along with volatility. My next step is code these conditions into my strats and see how they backtest. I'm hoping it will improve the results. I'm pretty new to strategy testing and development. I'm having a lot of fun trying different things. Who knows if anything will work but it's cool thinking stuff up and checking and tweaking it.