How you build your portfolio of trading systems?

April 23rd, 2023, 05:43 AM

You have dozens of trading systems, how you choose the ones to put live? How you manage them?

April 29th, 2023, 05:32 PM

I started trading before computers to protect assets and done by telephone and slippage was very common and seasonal were more prevalent in several markets. Air conditioning and heated housing has changed that in my lifetime. Using a phone was the only way to communicate or personally go to the broker who was not near. I drew charts from the local newspaper data an used trend lines. Because brokers were clueless on how to trade. I guess I just never found one who was anywhere as accurate as I was. When seasonal started to depart, so came computers.

When the computer trading platform was created I decided to trade for a profit and that was decades ago. Advertisers contacted me to give advice and found it worthless. Pure worthless.

With that I sought other advice to learn more profitable ways to trade. I was attracted to Elliot wave theory. Elliott principles were analyzed by a computer in Australia and I was lucky to be connected to that information. I supplied data from America by computer in exchange for information. Found out later the likes of Bill Williams, Pretcher, and Robert Miner and others were creating systems from that information and so I started reading everything I could from them.

Robert Miners book, two or three sentences in the middle stated if one would draw a line from the beginning of wave 1 to end of wave 2 and in the future wave 4 will hit that line or go beyond it so one knew where wave four is and then it is just going one wave lower wave of the fifth to determine end of wave five or if it will be a failure. I still use that today. This was worth the price of the book and more. Throw out all the other noise. Then again who would spend bucks for three sentences.

I have used in the past an oscillator to count the waves. I am intrigued by indicators, but they are really worthless as lines are far more reliable for me and easier to use before computers and today with computers.

Some say they can not see a wave count and that is true when a larger wave takes over. Just wait the wave count counts come back every time just before it turns. Majority of the time a market turns with an extended wave five or what appears an -a-b-c- wave. This is one wave smaller. The lessor wave count, fifth wave will fail. I define wave failure to be anywhere between 618 retracement to just barely making a new high.

I use the half hour bar to get a feel for market direction for the day direction. I got this from Linda Ratchze (sp) in the book, Market wizards where she uses an hour.

I have used many platforms that say they can predict the waves and presently testing wavebasis, and have no verdict on it as I am in a trial an most likely get a subscription to finish the testing. It does simplify some things for me, but worth the cost?

Design a profitable method and follow it methodically. All the greats have done the same. Take the losers in stride as it is just a business expense. Do not let it turn into an addiction of gambling.
charley

April 29th, 2023, 06:55 PM

Correlation!

Doesn't directly answer your question @M4STR0 but here's an old post of mine from elsewhere on the forum that will get you started on thinking about correlation in portfolio's

SMCJB

To illustrate this let me use a simple example of 4 systems, that each make the same amount of money. In this example Sharpe is just Average/Std Dev,

Now let's combine these 4 systems into 6 different portfolio's that each contain 2 systems each.

Not surprisingly all portfolio's make the same amount of money. The portfolio with the best Sharpe ratio is the portfolio that combines systems 2 and 4 and almost goes straight up. That might seem obvious since the two individual systems with the best Sharpe ratio's were 2 and 4. But the 2nd best portfolio is the combination of 1 and 4, and system 1 has the worst Sharpe ratio. The worse portfolio is 1 and 2, which may surprise people given that 2 has one of the best Sharpe's and is also included in the best portfolio.

So why is this?

Correlation.

Positive correlated systems amplify movements, while negative correlated ones mute them. So as long as systems have positive expectations you want to have uncorrelated systems rather than correlated ones. (Which is why I mentioned the correlations of my 6 systems in one of my first posts!)

As you can see the portfolios with the highest Sharpes were the portfolios that combined uncorrelated systems, while the portfolio's with the worst Sharpes combined correlated systems!

How you build your portfolio of trading systems?

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How you build your portfolio of trading systems?