I'm 100% mechanical and it took me years to figure out something that worked. Since I can't program luck or intuition, I have to rely on numbers and stats. So these are some of my rules: 1) Trade only with a major trend. Use a short average (like 15) and a long average (like 50) to see whether to go long or short. 2) Once you know the trend from step 1, figure out WHEN to go long or short within that major trend. That's the easier part. Here comes the hard part. 3) You can't just reverse your entry parameters to get out of trades. That's why trading using ma crossovers doesn't work. Entries are usually decent if there's a good trend, but they get you out too late. You have to find some other parameters on which to base your exits (hint: look at volatility). Forget backtesting and most indicators. Come up with a sound theory, code it, and then let it run in real time for days and weeks and months on a sim account. If successful, then backtest it if you want and optimize. But if you have too many things to optimize, forget it. Then trading becomes voodoo. A solid system should be "simple".
Reading books is fine to give you an idea of where to start, and since you want to build a system, which I assume means automated, then you will need lots of technical help with regards to programming. But when it comes to what that system will actually use as input, there is nothing better than actually learning from the market itself. By the time you read about several methods, try out each one, learn the short comings of each of those trade ideas, you might as well have started from scratch yourself. As a start, try any demo trading package in real time and just play around with making entries and exits. Pretty soon you will see if you are doing something right or something wrong, and then you can build from there. In conclusion, let the market teach you.
No one place or teacher is going to teach you how to make 100% a year trading. In fact, very few traders or investors can actually earn these returns consistently, particularly as of 2016. The only way you'll learn to earn those returns is if you work hard to develop your own methodology -- and even then it's extremely likely you'll fail, unless you've got some extraordinary advantage or luck on your side. Be careful out there -- there are a lot of scam artists who will gladly take thousands of your $ with promises of great rewards.
Alright, I'll bite: https://www.quantconnect.com/ or https://www.quantopian.com/ for example offer easy to use hosted solutions. Even Trading View has backtesting for its Pine Script strategies these days I think. There are many, many others.
If you are not a Phd in maths etc. then....... 1. Find a profitable prop house 2. Hang around the guy making the biggest profits and learn how he does it.
When I need a 100% a year trading system I usually pick one up for $19.95 at Wal-Mart, unless they are on sale at Target for $15.95.
Dr. Howard Bandy has written several books on trading systems. He seems to have the background to do this. He was a university dean who also taught applied mathematics. Having said that, just consider the approach taken by nodoji. As I recall, she performed ALL of her backtesting by hand. No computer. She spent hundreds (thousands?) of hours reviewing charts and testing her ideas until she had a profitable and repeatable method. ----------------------------------- "Trading is about discipline...., patience..., repetitiveness..., with no opinion..., and one's ego set aside." -Redneck
I agree computers can be complex to learn and strange to use.... doing it all by hand makes lots of sense. But you have to get up very early to do charts with a goose quill pen if you want to track more than 500 instruments. That new fangled thing called the Internet should be avoided at all costs.
I did the same thing. Computers can't see everything the human eye can. You can't design a quantifiable directional model unless you see what's happening over and over again. Only then will you truly understand market mechanics/price action. Many programmers, never having gambled in their life, come to ET for advice on building algorithmic models without seeing the realities like risk, slippage, scalability, odds of entry, etc..... Real money trades and visual analysis of the structure allow you to refine systems properly. At least that's how I did it. I'm not aware of any substitutes. If I did, it would have saved me loads of cash. No shortcuts regardless of how smart you are. You burn, you learn. It's that simple. You need money, persistence, brains, and balls to get it right. Plenty of broke and scared educated derelicts out there.