Trendfinder Trading Systems

Every intraday system went long 1 or 2 times.  The market went sideways in a very narrow range (only 4.9 points for the Russell 2000 and 7 points for the S&P 500) and the systems ended with a net loss.

The Cougars were the only systems to trade today.  They went long, the market went sideways the rest of the day, and they closed with a very small loss each.

Two of the systems that traded this week had a profit, and the rest had a loss.

Eight intraday systems went long this morning.  The trades started out well and there was great potential for a breakout to the upside.  Unfortunately it didn’t happen today and the market chopped sideways and down into the close.

Four systems went long today and had nice profits.

I made an update to every system effective March 21, 2011.  The table below shows the results for each system for trades from 3/21/11 to 12/31/11.  As usual, $50 per roundtrip trade is included for commissions and slippage.

COMPARISON RESULTS FROM 3/21/11-12/31/11

As you can see above, the updates did not help the results at all!  Every system would have had better results if the updates had not been applied.  In total, the profit since 3/21/11 was half of what the profit would have been without the updates.  The total max drawdown was about the same, with a slight increase due to the updates.

Wow, what a mea culpa moment!  Granted, 9+ months isn’t a real long time, but looking at these numbers it appears I overfit these systems with the 3/21 update.  Here are lessons learned again – 1) simpler is better and 2) don’t panic during a drawdown.  I am going to research this deeper and probably revert these systems back to what they were before the 3/21 update.

Four systems went long today and exited not far from their entries.

It was a disappointing start to the new year.  Most systems that traded ended with a loss.  Fortunately there is about 250 more trading days this year. 😉