Ok, let's say you post your great system. Everyone starts using it. The system stops working... Why couldn't you then just start fading your system?
You know, if things were that clean cut, I think that if everybody played warcraft or any other chess game with the same strategy in mind, no one would win, you'd probably break even or lose a little, even with a winning strategy (doing everything right according to plan). Let's say everyone in the market traded like a robot with the same strategy: no one would get filled, and the market would be very volatile. It really comes down to how people are going to interpret the signals they are getting; some people will take signals as they are generated by the system, some will try to work around the system fearing the drawdowns. You never know what's going to happen next and you never know who is thinking what.
I think you guys have too big an ego. You think if you post your winning system, it will have an impact on the market? Give me a break! I give mine out for free all the time.
I've never traded a mechanical system so far. Further I've never had the luxury of sharing one that works, so these opinions are nothing more... Wouldn't medium to longer term trend following systems benefit from more traders using them (at least the entry portion)? After all, it takes being with the tide to profit on the trend, and the tide is made of people trading in the same direction as you. Am I missing a key fact here?
actually vanilla you are raising one very good point. Your assumption is that the trend is made up of people who think alike (buy/sell), and that's a valid assumption. The issue here, is whether your system NEEDS to enter at a particular price. If it does, you are going to have a hellish time getting in with minimal slippage since everybody is going to try to get that same price. If you have a system that is not price sensitive (like a @ market open or so for a longer term trade) it shouldn't matter as much, but you could still pay a pretty big premium if everybody is buying at the open.
1) in liquid markets there's like 0 chance the performance will be degraded 2) if you think there's big institutions just waiting for you to share your system and they'll take and run it into the ground, dream on. your system is not THAT good. (agree with db here) 3) now we've shown that the first two excuses are BS when we are talking about liquid markets. Now what's the real (biggest) reason? MERE HUMAN GREED (or unwillingness to share for free, if that sounds better)
I disagree Kay. If you think your little 1000/5000 shares competes with institutions you are wrong. The reason why institutions will not use your system is simple: they have way too big of a base to trade like the little guys. They'd move the market and incur heavy slippage, maybe even negating the effectiveness of the system. The little guys have an edge over the insitutions and that's David's edge over Goliath: flexibility and agility. Inversely, if you were going to trade an institution's system, you wouldn't make a dime, because you need the billions to make the kind of money they would get out of their system.