Investment Strategies
More Information
The programs have all been tested to ensure that they run and to inspect the results of the tests. The programs are not guaranteed to accurately reflect the program descriptions, nor are they guaranteed in any other way except: they were all developed as part of my trading pursuit and solely for my own personal use, with the exception of a few that were developed after my retirement. They are specifically not guaranteed to produce profitable results and are not sold for that purpose. They are sold to help the buyer accelerate his trading education without the personal and financial cost that the author had to endure. I believe that many of these strategies produce excellent results (50% or over profit on the cost of margin plus largest observed drawdown), but many produce very bad results. Many of the later are still recommended today in the current investment literature. Hopefully the buyer of these strategies will learn to beware of such recommendations. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. No matter that a strategy makes sense and sounds good, if it doesn't test well, it is very unlikely that it will work for you. Don't put your money on some strategy published in a slick book without first testing it. You will find many strategies here. Some have been highly touted but turn out to be more sour than a lemon. Some are, as far as I know, my own original ideas. My ideas, like the published strategies, contain both good and bad. For me, knowledge of both the good and the bad is important because even the bad strategies contain ideas. One idea can be worth millions in this business, as in many other businesses. I believe that many of the strategies presented here are so worthwhile that they will enable those that use them to far outpace large and well known money managers. I personally did very well, once I had learned the important lessons contained here, as well as some other important lessons that are apart from these computerized strategies. In fact, my average annual percentage return was 5 times what I hoped to make when I started in this business. Now that I am enjoying the quieter pursuits of retirement I hope to maintain a tangential contact with this most fascinating game by helping others (I was originally a teacher) and by testing occasional new strategies.
Any new strategies that I have personally conceived and developed, or any new ideas that I develop from public sources, will be included in the next edition. The next edition will be free to purchasers of this, the first edition. I have already completed a lot of work for the second edition. It will be much larger than this edition and more expensive.
The strategies covered here include many different approaches. They are the fourth series that I have written. This series is the result of two predecessor series. In addition I wrote a day trading and very short term series which is not included here. With few exceptions, these strategies, unlike the former, require only the normal high, low, open, close, and, occasionally, volume data.
These strategies were produced by me, or found in publicly available resources, for my own personal trading while I was still an active trader. A few were ideas I tested out of curiosity and love for the game after I retired. Before trading became my primary occupation I was a professional computer programmer for many years. I used that background to program the strategies presented here, and to test their effectiveness.
It is possible that there is some duplication. With over 700 strategies programmed from different sources, some of the strategies may be duplicated. I did find a few such duplications and weeded them out. As far as I know, there are no duplications or errors remaining. Naturally in a work of this size other errors may occur. I would appreciate notification of any errors that you may find, no matter how small. Any corrections will be included in the next edition, which will be bigger and better and more expensive, but free to all purchasers of this edition. If there are any serious errors I will send an email notification to purchasers of this edition.
Multiple entry and multiple exit strategies are presented. I have personally tested each one of these. Many of these strategies are variations on a theme. In particular, B644 through B672 are a series that present the development of an investment idea. Most of the strategies in this series produce very good results in historical back testing, although a few are not worthwhile. That will not be true for all of the strategies here. Many, although standard and popular strategies, do not produce worthwhile results. It is a valuable lesson to learn that some strategies are not worth putting into practice. Even though a strategy may not itself be worthwhile, it may still contain one idea that, in another context, could be quite valuable.
There is no other series of strategies so well developed as B644 through B672. Many series consist of only 1 or 2 strategies. That is because I have usually discarded the strategies that produced results inferior to the ones retained. The inclusion of B644 through B672 presents an example which you can follow if you wish to expand on the strategies presented here.