Stop Press! New Q2 Backtest Results Posted
Plus New Best Practice For Running NT8 Strategy Analyzer
Important: There is no guarantee that these strategies will have the same performance in the future. I use backtests to compare historical strategy performance. Backtests are based on historical data, not real-time data so the results we share are hypothetical, not real. There are no guarantees that this performance will continue in the future. Trading futures is extremely risky. If you trade futures live, be prepared to lose your entire account. I recommend using these strategies in simulated trading until you/we find the holy grail of trade strategy.
Backtests—can’t live with them, can’t live without them. They are the bane of my existence when it comes to strategy selection, and yet I live by them. Why? It’s the best tool we have (for now). But, in the same way that a gold detector can give false signals, so can the backtest.
I use each backtest (click here for updated Q2 backtest) as a way to select which strategies to run in the forward test. Some forward tests have been successful, others haven’t. For more information about the forward test please reference the latest Mudder Report.
As we learn more about which strategies are successful in the forward test, it also gives clues about which best practices to adopt in the backtest. Still, there are issues. I thought I’d experienced them all, but little did I know last Sunday that I would have a new issue at my door.
What’s the issue?
The data source.
NT8 pulls data and stores it on your local computer every time you run a backtest. The process speeds up the analysis. I knew this. What I did NOT know is that this data can become corrupted so you need to “re-pull” data from NTs server every day in order to ensure you have the most “accurate” data for the backtest.
How do you you do this?
Emily, from NTs scripting support team, provided the following instructions: