Trading System Back Testing! Know These Shocking Limitations

Your trading system needs thorough testing before you decide to trade live with it. A trading system might comprise of a set of indicators. You need to know how well your trading system and its set of indicators work in a particular market.

How to do backtesting? Using a backtesting software makes it very simple and easy. Backtesting uses historical data to test the performance of the trading system under the past market conditions.

Now, back testing is done with historical data. What this means is that although your trading system might perform very well with back testing, it may not work in the present market. Market conditions keep on changing and what worked in the past may not work in the present. In the same way, what didn’t work in the past may start working now.

In other words, no two trades work out in exact the same way twice. SO you have to be careful when looking at the back testing results and take it with a pinch of salt. However, there are still some advantages of back testing a trading system.

Some markets are highly seasonal. For example, if you are a commodity trader and tend to trade agricultural commodities like the grain, seed or the livestock, these have a fixed planting and harvesting cycles.

On the other hand, you might not find much seasonal trends in the currencies and bond market. Some though talk of the January Effect but this effect is not that pronounced now a days. In case of stocks, stock prices tend to rise at the end of each month and the first few days of each new month as institutional investors tend to put new money to work during that time frame.

Back testing can also help you establish the amount of time a particular market tends to run in a certain direction. For example, in case of US Dollar Index, its trend lines tend to last for months to years.

But to tell you the truth, backtesting can only give you a rough guess about the performance of the trading system under live trading conditions. There is no substitute for live trading results!

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More on Money Management Rules

As a currency trader, you should give utmost importance to proper money management in your trading. Most traders dont give much time to money management. They learn a few forex trading strategies and jump into live trading. After losing a good portion of their equity, they come back to money management. Dont do this.

The most important thing for you as a trader is to develop trading discipline. Discipline is the ability to plan your work and work your plan. Give your trade the time to develop without hastily taking yourself out of the trade because you are uncomfortable with the risk.

After you suffer a loss, you develop doubts about your trading system. Discipline is the ability to continue to trade your system. All successful traders are highly disciplined traders. When you dont achieve immediate success, you become disappointed too soon! The most important quality as a trader that you can possess is persistent.

Those who quit too soon or apply their system haphazardly do not trade in the markets enough to allow their system to produce the wins they are looking for. To develop persistence, force yourself in the beginning to do everything to the rules of your trading system.

Learn to follow trading rules and a trading system consistently and persistently. The proper application of trading rules is important consistently and persistently for becoming a successful trader. Applying trading rules properly is also one of the most difficult to learn. The problem comes when you as a trader try to analyze the markets initially. Study of past trades is very simple and very easy. You have the power of hindsight with you. It is much easier to recognize direction, entry, exits in examples of past trades.

Recognizing opportunity in the now is much more difficult. Following trading rules and a trading system is no easy task. It requires discipline on the part of the trader to obey the rule that he/she is following even when the initial response or the opening trade does not work out. Trading rules are not perfect. They will fail you at times.

You need to learn to accept losses in your trading career. In the course of trading, losses are going to happen. Even very successful traders suffer occasional losses. No trading system is 100% precise and accurate. There will be losses even when your application of the trading system is consistent and flawless. You need to develop the ability to accept your losses. There is always the 10% unexpected factor in trading.

Losses can occur due to two reasons. The first major reason is when a trader fails to follow the tested rules and guidelines of a trading system due to lack of discipline. The second major reason is when the trading system fails due to the 10% unexpected changes in the market conditions.

Always, always use stop losses in your trading. A stop is a market order placed some pips away from the entry price in the event that market prices turn and move dramatically opposite from the anticipated direction. The idea behind the stop is to prevent a loss from running away too far.