Here is an idea: Hire a programer, pay him his fees, but give him the wrong variables for your strategy. He will do the work, but won't be interested, since the strategy won't work. Then you can change the variables...
Except the programmer has access to apply 3 dimensional optimization techniques and can probably find more robust parameters than you can!
Exploit the curse of dimensionality: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1380164#post1380164 You can make the workload of the reverse engineer grow as Order (N to the 20th) quite readily.
Yes you could add a ton of switches and quadruple the cost of having your idea programmed, only to learn that you no longer are left with a system but a toy that does not make money! IMO, If you want to make money as a system trader, you need to be on the same page with your programmer, or be a programmer yourself.
yea its me - i wasn't back one day they kicked me off here. oh well back now the moderator thought i was a troll. i told him i wasn't out to steal their little planet here. i told him they should be paying me to post. anyway i would like to tell you but they are frowning at any news i have so i will just lay sort of low and they can read about it one day. maybe if i drew some trend lines and had some endless rule based after the fact trading method they would welcome me. after all my name is close the color of chocolate. mark brown
I actually thought that thread was an interesting solution albiet a complex one. When I was learning EZ language I offered to program people's ideas for free so I could be challenged and learn more with the basic premise tthat if it worked I could trade it as well. MOST of these ideas people had were very very simple concepts based in existing indicators which are exceptionally easy to program using easylanguage. Thomas STridsman insists that a system be simple in order to work. However, I've programmed in some of his and not found them to test forward very well. My hunch is that most of the systems that are working for traders are exceptionally complex actually and take in many factors and most likey use custom indicators. I'd love to find the simple system that would work well for 10 years or so (to prove it is robust... even if those 10 years are averaged over various instruments). I've not yet found it. In fact, I've only found one simple system that I'm considering trading - and it still needs some improvements and I don't feel it is robust enough for "commercial quality."
Mark Brown: "i told him they should be paying me to post." I think they should!! So few actual "elite traders" on this board makes people like Mark Brown a gift... thanks Mark, for all that's worth.